Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
Two years before—Just tryna get some love.
THISTLE
The marble beneath my knees ached as I waited.
My trance broke a few times as the night passed in quiet. The moonlight created a low silver glow beneath the heavy curtains across from me.
Ace slept, and I waited, kneeling, as the hours ticked by, Bunny tucked at my side.
He rewarded dedication often enough that this was worth it. If he was pleased when he woke and I’d been good enough, he might use me before he left.
Glade had been gone for over a year now, so it was just me and him, and no other Omegas.
Finally, a sharp knock on the door jolted me from my trance and I heard Ace’s Head of Security, Dale, from the other side.
Ace sat up, blinking sleepy eyes, then he swore under his breath, standing from the far side of the bed.
Oh fuck.
I had seconds.
Ace hadn’t spotted me, but Dale would, and he’d tell everyone what he saw. In a flash of utter panic, I dived up onto the bed, scrambling beneath the blankets just in time for the sound of the door to open. I tugged the corner of my top over my shoulder and messed my hair a little.
I stretched, rubbing my eyes like I’d just woken up, Bunny in my fist. From my periphery, I could see him glancing in.
Would he notice?
Would he go back to the Brotherhood guards and tell them that I was Ace’s Omega? One good enough to be invited into his bed.
Even Glade hadn’t had that. Sometimes Ace had gone to her bed, though. They’d never slept together, but he would hold her all night—it was a punishment for me, knowing he was touching her.
I hated it.
I hated it.
I hated it.
My fists closed in the blankets.
Don’t act crazy.
He didn’t like it when I lost my temper.
Act like an Omega who’d just woken beside her Alpha.
It was hard not to grab the blankets and run them along my skin. The fabric was still warm from his touch, his electric scent enough to make me dizzy—touch I was always so desperate for.
When Ace finished, he shut the door and turned back to the room. I shrank down beneath his ice-blue gaze.
He returned to the bed, watching me intensely, and I shifted to the edge of the mattress, nervously calculating how far I was from the floor.
“What do you think you’re doing, Omega?” he asked.
His eyes drifted to the fabric that clung to my breast, to the gown that was tumbling over my arm.
Was that look… wanting?
He hated revealing that he wanted me—got angry if I tried too hard to seduce him, but I’d never stop. Not when it came with this feeling of elation.
Of being… enough.
I opened my mouth, then shut it, letting the blanket fall. I was still chilly, and just like I’d hoped, his gaze flickered toward where my nipple pressed against the fabric.
“How did you get in?” he asked.
I bit my lip, eyes burning. I hated lying to him—I hated denying him anything at all—but if I told him, or even shot a glance toward the balcony, he’d make sure I never visited again.
And I think it was good for him to have me in here. It was my job to keep him well, even if I disgusted him.
“I… could take care of you?” I asked, hopefully.
“You think I need taking care of?”
“No.” I chewed on my lip. “Well… It’s been a while, and I thought you might want to… use me for some relief.”
This little voice in my head kept telling me he should want me, and I don’t know what I was doing wrong.
Ace just sneered at me, though. “I don’t need you, Omega.”
“Then you should, uh… punish me?” I asked hopefully. Sometimes that involved him touching me.
“Get out.” He didn’t even sound angry, which hurt even more.
“But I ? —”
“Get. Out.”
KNOX
I’d fallen asleep without being able to shake the image of Thistle, knees hugged to her chest, peering down at a Monopoly board as she played with Bunny and Rogue through the bars of the cage.
A few times I woke, arms far too empty before nightmares trapped me.
Five years before—Capture.
This was the start of the chains, before Rogue’s mansion. I’d presented as an Alpha at the late age of twenty-two, and I’d been taken from the streets not long after.
I’d been dropped into an arena.
Into a hunt.
An endless forest surrounded me, a monitor on my ankle so I couldn’t truly escape.
I was here for sport.
Before me was the shadowed figure on a forest floor. A flickering, blurring shape that had once held meaning too agonising to hold on to the details of in memory.
It was the horror at the core of all nightmares.
Her scent was there, too, the sharp bite of absinthe tangling with the dust and juniper trees.
A scent match in a nightmare.
“Bella Morgan.” That, I think, was the first time I’d ever heard Rogue’s voice. I don’t know how long I’d been here. Hours. Days… It was impossible to know. “You killed my mark.”
I was bound and sick. I’d just gone through hell, and here was an Alpha kicking up dust in frustration at how that inconvenienced him.
“Should have been faster, Manzo.” Bella’s voice grated, just like every memory of her did.
Rogue drew his lips in a snarl of frustration, eyes darting around the fire where her pack sat. The remains of the brutality I’d been forced to watch was laid bare—there was crimson on their hands and clothes, staining the very stones that scattered the clearing.
Then Rogue’s eyes had fallen on me, and he’d waved his gun my way. “What about that one?”
“The Alpha?” Bella didn’t even look my way as she picked blood from her nails. “Was fun, making him watch. His screams were almost the best.”
“I’m taking him,” Rogue growled. “I’m done in here.”
Taking… me?
I didn’t want that. I wanted this to be over. All of it.
“Are you?” Bella asked, something deadly in her voice as she eyed him.
“Will you challenge me?” Rogue asked, eyes raking over the lounging crew of Alphas, none of whom looked like they were interested in a one-on-one fight.
“Fine.” Bella let out a false sigh, a cruel smile flashing on her face. “Have him. I already got what I wanted.”
Three and a half years before—The day of the switch.
“You thought you could leave me?”
Chains were sore upon my wrists, and cold water shocked me awake.
I blinked, staring up into frigid eyes.
A hulking monster sat in a chair before me, within the iron bars of the basement cage I was chained to.
A monster I now knew too well, because I’d been chained to him since he’d plucked me from that nightmare a year and a half ago.
And I’d run…
For the first time, I’d escaped. I’d been free for a week, if that, before bounty hunters caught up and dragged me back here.
To him.
“I found you in that forest, in the hands of monsters. They’d have killed you slowly and painfully…” Rogue wore a neat white button up, though he was undoing the cuffs as I watched. “I saved you. When am I going to see some gratitude?”
I hated that mantra.
He’d found me in hell itself, and instead of putting a bullet in my skull like I’d begged, he’d brought me here.
Psychotic, cruel, and insane, this monster had seen me curled up and broken on a distant forest floor and decided he wanted a claim.
The only claim he’d ever made before or since.
I hated him.
But everything was worse now. Now, I’d fled and failed.
I was tired and hope was a faded, distant smudge, slowly vanishing into the horizon.
“You’re mine,” he said quietly. “There is nowhere you can go that I won’t find you.”
I shivered, silencing the broken sound that wanted to escape as I saw him tug a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket.
“Hell.” The word slipped out before I could stop it.
“What?”
“Try dragging me back from Hell.”
There was something dangerous in his eyes as he stood, fist closing painfully in my hair as he dragged me up to face him.
“Tell me what that means?” His voice was quiet and calm.
A threat in its own right. I clenched my jaw, but didn’t answer. I wouldn’t, and I didn’t have to.
He could torture me tonight, but I had nothing left, and there was one thing he couldn’t stop me from doing, not unless he wanted to chain me down here to rot forever.
I finally had nothing left to live for.
And that meant he couldn’t keep me.
But none of that was enough to save me from the fury I could see in his eyes right now. From the pain that was coming my way.
“You’ll get over it.” He cuffed me on the cheek, teeth flashing against dusky skin. “And tonight? It’s just business, Knox.” I didn’t look at him as he got to his feet, his voice hateful. “What else do you suggest I do with a pet that won’t do as he’s told?”