Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
ACE
Thistle had always been different.
When I first met her, I tried not to face her truth—tried to ignore the pieces of the puzzle that would show me the inevitability of falling for her.
But there was one day when I’d realised it went deeper than trauma or circumstance. The day I’d realised what a soul match truly meant—even if I’d spent too long after, trying to run from it.
It had shaped the picture I’d finally painted of the Omega I was destined for.
Four years ago
I was hosting a gathering at my mansion when they finally found him.
There were a few guards around, guests who were due a show, and I was happy to provide.
Glade attended too, seated at my side, perfectly poised.
Everything—down to the infallible mask of serenity she could keep in place so well—was arranged perfectly.
At last, Thistle appeared with a guard. She spotted me first, breaking from him and crossing to me.
“You wanted me, Alpha?” Her violet eyes were bright. Her eyes shone—until she saw the man my security team had just dragged in.
“I have a… gift.”
Dark hair ran in the family, and the man was a mess, straggly locks standing up this way and that. His light eyes looked tired, their lustre dull. He was sporting a few bruises as well, his weak form frail as the guards held him up.
When Thistle caught sight of her father—a man who’d given away his own daughter—all the excitement drained from her face.
I knew the story.
He’d owed money to the wrong kind of people. They’d left a note for drop-off, but Thistle had found it, and she had been the one to go to his place.
Whether it was because she’d planned it well or because they’d underestimated the tiny Omega who’d arrived, I didn’t know—but that meeting hadn’t gone the way the two street thugs had expected.
“I want to hear it for myself. You sold her off because she killed the men coming after you?” I asked.
“Killed them?” Her father looked wild, his eyes bulging, darting across the room sporadically. Thistle shrank further, panic stark on her expression as her eyes fixed anywhere but on him.
“T-they said they’d h-hurt you…” Her voice was weak. “I was trying to… to fix everything… I thought you’d be proud of me f-for once.”
“Proud?” Her father’s tone was so incensed it seemed he thought he might win the upper hand if he convinced me. His weathered face twisted further as he looked back at me. “Do you know what I found? She didn’t just kill them—she’s unnatural—a freak!”
The truth that had jarred me most that day hadn’t been that her father had abandoned her. Or that when I’d put a gun in her hands and told her to show me blood, that she’d pulled the trigger on her own family without pause.
It had been the only part of the story she’d left out.
When I’d first discovered Thistle, she’d been trapped with a cruel pack for years, and I’d believed—or wanted to believe—that it shaped her. That when I gifted her that Alpha, and she’d carved him into pieces, leaving me with dreams of her I’d never been able to shake, that it had been vengeance.
But the story her father told painted a different picture.
What he’d told me of the bodies he’d found, of what she’d done to them—from an Omega with no trauma to feed from…
No.
Thistle wasn’t just a product of her darkest moments. This part of her—the part that drove those around her mad—that matched me in every way.
It was innate.
Thistle Maverick—my soul match—had never been drawn to blood to impress me. That drive was a core piece of who she was right down to her bones.
One she’d been taught to hide. To be ashamed of.
Chaos swept across Bella’s party, but I didn’t move from Carrion’s chair. The play had gone through each stage perfectly. Bella had even locked them in the room together.
A gift.
I’d caught the moment Thistle’s teeth had sunk into the Alpha’s flesh. Not for one moment did I doubt she had done what she was supposed to. If she’d used the blue gem on the bracelet I’d given her, everything would go perfectly.
Sure enough, the tide shifted—each new note that played, a perfect harmony.
A smile curled my lips as the Alpha stumbled, crashing to his knees in front of Thistle.
My Omega took a breath in the bond. I’d been sure—but Thistle had never been a sure creature. It was where I fit so perfectly into her equation, and when given that balance, she rewarded me with a show I couldn’t find anywhere else.
That day, four years ago, I’d pressed the gun into her hands as I faced her father. I’d stepped dangerously close, unable to help myself—my body had encircled hers as I’d nudged her gun arm up.
I’d leaned in, her chin in my hand so I could feel the warmth of her body, her back pressed to my chest. Perhaps he’d said something or looked afraid, but I never found out. There had been nothing else in that moment—just wind and rain, and the flash of lightning electrifying the air.
It had been a guilty, dangerous thrill I’d indulged in as I’d whispered, “He sold you. Show me blood, Omega?—”
The words were barely out of my mouth before, with a bang , she’d pulled the trigger. Her father had dropped to the floor, unmoving, with a hole between his eyes.
Unlike every other time she’d killed, she hadn’t been excited or happy.
The tremor in her whisper had given her away. “You… you weren’t supposed to see that.”
That had unsettled me.
Today I would show her she never again had to be afraid of who she was.
I hadn’t realised how rewarding it would be, just seeing her confidence—matching my move without question. Unlike Knox and Rogue, she’d never wavered.
Through the screen, it was clear when the poison began to take effect. Her relief turned quickly into sparks of excitement as the Alpha collapsed entirely.
The chorus.
A beautiful dance, just for me.
The room around me shifted.
“Open it!” That was Bella’s voice—interrupting the harmony.
Right.
The cue.
I could have almost missed it, leaning forward in the chair as I was, fixated on the screen as Thistle pried the knife from the belt of Rodrick Banner.
I lifted my drink—enough to let those in the room who still waited for my signal know it was time. I wasn’t having this cut off short.
There were enough in here waiting to know when they could prove themselves to me—either to throw their bets in on my side, or to ensure I knew they were loyal so I wouldn’t spill a single secret.
This trafficking ring was a carefully curated circle of mutually assured destruction, but they had no such dirt on me in return.
There were a few security guards in here that my team had contacted.
They were willing to flip with the tide.
If I could prove an upper hand, they’d join.
There was the click of a gun’s safety. A growl.
“ What are you doing?”
I shoved away the foul sound of Bella’s shriek, dragging my attention from the performance just enough to see the Sloan pack blocking the locked door.
I’d bought their family’s loyalty when I’d bailed them out of debt to drug runners in Vegas.
And two security guards had flipped already—ones who’d worked for me in the past.
Good.
Everything was going as planned.
On the screen, my Omega had calmed now, with a blade in her hand as she kneeled over the Alpha whose eyes were wide as his body failed to respond.
He was alive, for now, though he couldn’t move, not with the poison coursing through his veins.
For a moment, I shivered, transported back to the nights in which I’d been drugged, and Thistle had claimed me.
Her touch was running up my neck as she adjusted my head, cutting back a few buttons so she could get a look at my chest.
I was completely at her mercy …
“You’re mine…” Her whisper echoed in my ear, a cold horror coiling in the air with a thrill I’d never claimed.
Somewhere distant, Bella Morgan was screaming something, but I couldn’t look away as Thistle made the first cut.