Chapter 3 Theo
I smell him before I see him.
My body responds before my brain catches up: pulse spiking, a flush of heat starting at the base of my spine and radiating outward in a slow, terrible wave. Between my legs, the first treacherous hint of slick.
No. No, no, no.
I know what this is. I know it the way you know a fire alarm, not because you've studied the sound but because your body was built to react to it.
The alpha in the doorway has stopped moving. He's gripping the frame with one hand and he's not coming in and for one irrational second, I think maybe he'll turn around and leave and I'll be able to breathe again.
But he doesn't. He stands there and I watch his knuckles go white against the wood. What's happening to me is happening to him too.
Then he steps inside and I get my first proper look at him and the calm, clinical part of my brain goes quiet.
He's tall. That's the first thing. He’s tall and broad across the shoulders in a way that makes the room shrink, that makes the air feel like there's less of it.
He has dark hair, cut short and a jaw that could have been designed to make omegas stupid.
My eyes go to his mouth and then away very quickly because looking at his mouth is doing things to my heart rate that I do not have the capacity to manage right now.
He's wearing a dark suit, no tie, the collar open at the throat, and he moves with the unhurried confidence of a man who has never once had to wonder whether he's the most dangerous person in any room he enters. The sheer physical mass of his body answers the question for him.
He's beautiful and desirable, and his mere presence makes me want to shove down my jeans and bend over the table.
The thought arrives without permission and I crush it immediately, shove it into the same locked compartment where I keep everything other dumb thought that could get me killed.
"Everyone out," he says. "Viktor stays."
His voice goes through me low and even, the way his scent did, right into my chest, my stomach, lower. I press my hands flat against the table because I will not let them shake. Not here. Not in front of him.
The two security men leave. The door closes. The room gets smaller.
There are two of them now. Him and the man who came in behind him. The other alpha is older, wider, with a face carved from granite. Viktor. I file the name away. Information is the only currency I have and right now I am very, very poor.
The alpha pulls out the chair across from me. He sits. The distance between us becomes four feet of table and nothing else, and his scent intensifies with proximity until I can feel it on my skin, warm and heavy.
He picks up my ID and turns it over. His fingers are long and his hands are steady. I can’t help noticing the way his forearms look where he's rolled his sleeves back, the dark hair on his wrists, the width of his hands.
Stop it. Stop it. It’s just pheromones. It’s just my body doing what evolution designed it to do, which is identify a compatible mate.
He sets the ID down and looks at me.
Eye contact is a mistake. His eyes are dark and when they meet mine, my body does something catastrophic.
A full-system surge starts in my gut and floods upward, tightening my chest, heating my face, sending another rush of slick that I can feel and God, if I can feel it then he can probably smell it and if he can smell it then—
"Nice to meet you, Theo Holland," he says.
Every molecule of air leaves my lungs and I know who he is: Dominic Novikov. My prime match. He has to be.
I don't react. I have been not-reacting for years and I am exceptional at it. My face is a wall. But something happens, perhaps some fractional shift in my scent that my body produces without my consent, because his eyes change. A certainty settles into them that wasn't there a second ago.
"Theo Holland," he says again, quieter. Not a question.
The room is very still. Viktor, by the door, has gone completely motionless. I can feel him watching, reading the situation with the same detached calculation I'd use on a deck of cards.
My mouth is dry. My hands are still flat on the table.
I don’t bother to correct him. He knows my real name. Pretending he doesn’t isn’t going to do me any favors.
He leans back in his chair. “How long have you been counting?"
Pretending I’m something I’m not isn’t going to help me either. "A few years, but I was about to leave. Not come back for a long time. I’m more than happy to still do that."
Novikov looks at Viktor. Viktor's expression doesn't change. “Sure,” he says. “Why my casino?"
Something’s wrong. I’m obviously small fry. I’m not even worth making an example of. He should not be asking me questions. I should have been shoved out the door with a stern word. Maybe a roughing up if I were unlucky. How did he know I was here? Did he scent me somehow?
I don’t think he did. He seemed as surprised as I was when he walked in this room. They grabbed me for card counting, but that doesn’t make sense either. I shouldn’t have the boss interrogating me.
He raises his eyebrows. He’s waiting for an answer.
"I chose it for the same reason I choose any casino. It has high traffic and a busy floor. I didn't choose it because it was yours."
"You didn’t bother trying to find out who owned it?”
He thinks I came here on purpose. Because it was his.
"No."
He raises his eyebrows again. He’s still looking at me, making eye contact. I can’t help it. I look away.
“Who do you work for?”
Cold splices up through my belly and wraps around my heart. “No one. I swear. I'm not working for anyone."
His scent is everywhere. I can taste it at the back of my throat and it's doing things to my concentration that I am managing through willpower alone, which is a finite resource and I can feel it depleting.
"He’s not going to give them up," Viktor says from the door. First time he's spoken. His voice is flat and disinterested in a way that is more frightening than anger would be. Anger is emotional. This is professional. "Not without an incentive."
The cold spreads out, fear swallowing my body whole and turning my skin to ice. Card counters are a nuisance, but we’re mostly solo operators. If I’m working for someone, that makes me a lot more than a nuisance.
“I’m not working for anyone,” I say and it comes out as a whisper. “I swear.”
“Your word doesn’t mean much,” Novikov says.
Part of me finds my spine. “And I haven’t done anything illegal. Counting cards isn’t illegal. You have no grounds to keep me here.”
Technically, I'm right. Card counting isn't fraud. It's just arithmetic, keeping track of the game and adjusting my bets accordingly.
Just a brain doing what brains do, which is recognize patterns. Casinos don't like it because it shifts the house edge from their side of the table to mine. They’re allowed to ban people like me because they have the right to refuse service. But that’s it.
I know my rights. The problem is that I doubt either of these men care.
"Card counting isn't illegal," the alpha agrees. His voice is almost pleasant. It almost purrs the way it goes through me. "Collusion is. So which part of the operation are you? Spotter or big player?"
The words land and my stomach drops.
"Because we've been pulling counters off this floor for weeks," he says.
"And every one of them has sat in that chair and told me the same thing you're telling me.
Independent. Working alone. Just a guy with a good memory.
" He tilts his head slightly. "Meanwhile, someone is running false shuffles through my dealers and coordinating plays across my tables, and the people doing the counting look exactly like you. "
I’m an idiot. This is my own fault. I’d noticed they’d seemed to have heightened security and I’d sat down and played. I should have turned around and walked away.
The security wasn’t for me. It was for a ring. Someone is targeting this casino and I’ve been caught in the net.
And the thing that turns my stomach cold is that I can see how it looks. From the outside, I am indistinguishable from a ring spotter.
My brain races. I don’t know how to prove I’m not. Proving the absence of something is much harder than proving its existence.
He stands. Slowly, the way someone moves when they want you to understand that speed is available to them and they're choosing not to use it. He comes around the table and I lose the barrier of four feet of wood and metal between us and his scent quadruples in intensity.
Against every instruction my brain is sending, my chin tilts up to follow him.
It’s pure instinct, and it's happening anyway because he is right there, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off him, close enough that if I leaned forward six inches—
I don't lean forward. I keep my hands steady and I stay completely still.
"Next you're going to tell me you don't know who I am," he says.
He's looking down at me now and the angle does something to the power balance that my body understands even if my brain is still scrambling to catch up.
He is above me. I am below. Every omega nerve ending I possess lights up with the wrongness and the rightness of it simultaneously.
"I know you own the casino," I say. My voice is thin. I hate how thin it is.
"Dominic Novikov," he says, confirming it. And then, quieter, leaning closer: "And you're Theo Holland. Are you really telling me, that you of all people being here is a coincidence?"
I can't speak. My mind is screaming at me to run and there is nowhere to run.
He steps back. The distance returns and I can breathe again, barely, and my hands are shaking now and I can't stop them so I pull them under the table and lay them flat under my thighs where he can't see.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper, and he’s not going to believe me. I wouldn’t.