36. Sadie #2
How we should interact with the people in the club to convince them we belonged there.
Xerxes warned about how dark the beast realm could be and how people expected violence.
Ascher gave tips. Apparently, he had his own experience with BDSM.
Cobra and Jax strategized the quickest way to kill the wolves.
The room spun around me.
“I’m scared,” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
My face burned with embarrassment as I picked at the threads of the blanket draped across my lap.
No one laughed.
Callused, tattooed fingers twined around mine.
Ascher leaned over the edge of the couch and held my hand, his amber eyes burning with sincerity. “Me too, Princess.”
His openness made me want to be honest.
My voice cracked. “It still scares me, but I wish I would have been allowed to form a pack with you guys.”
The only sound was the cracking of logs in the fire.
The silence was heavy.
Ascher’s hand tightened around mine. “Every day, I feel like shit for turning everyone over to the fae queen. Everything is my fault. Now Aran’s falling apart, and we can’t be with you without risking your life. I ruin everything.”
I squeezed his hand back as I struggled to find the appropriate words.
“But then I wouldn’t be your omega,” Xerxes said quietly from across the room, “and I’d still be hiding from myself and following the orders of a madwoman.”
Ascher stared across the room at Xerxes, like he’d just taken a weight off his shoulders.
Intensity swirled among us.
Secrets begetting more secrets, as if they longed for company.
Jax spoke quietly, “I’m scared every day that I’m going to fail my sisters and all of you.
I’ve been alone for so many years, and now I have so much to lose.
It feels like I’m just waiting for everything to be taken from me.
Now that there’re so many reasons to fight, I don’t think I’m as strong as I thought I was. ”
A log popped in the fire.
The crystal chandelier above our head tinkled as the girls sprinted down the hall. It swayed back and forth.
Their laughter was far away.
“I know I can be an unhinged bastard most of the time, and I don’t handle things well,” Cobra said softly as he looked over at me.
Memories of him being so sweet sometimes and so cruel other times drifted between us like a live wire.
I gave him a sad smile and a small shrug.
With my eyes, I told him— I understand you don’t shift into a beast form, that you’re always a beast.
I get it.
His behavior wasn’t always appropriate, but who was I to judge anyone, when half the time I was a hot mess?
Did I wish Cobra was an easy, nice man like the ones in the romance books I’d grown up reading? Yes.
Did I understand Cobra would never be like everyone else and would probably drive me up a wall with his mood swings for the rest of his life? Also, yes.
Emerald eyes darkened as he understood what I was saying.
There was a long pause as Cobra breathed shakily, like my silent acceptance had given him courage.
“I wasn’t always covered in jewels,” he said quietly. “I don’t remember anything before the fae queen took me, but as a child, I always had a black snake around my neck. Like how the don wears his.”
The chandelier rocked quicker, crystals clacking.
Cobra gripped the arm of the couch. “The fae queen never hid that I’d been kidnapped.
She told me that her informants had taken me because they had it on good authority that I would be an alpha shifter, and since the half warriors were such a hit, she wanted to try a beast gladiator. ” He breathed deeply.
“She thought my snake was a pet, so she would set it on fire, cut it, and hurt it to get me to obey her. Not knowing she was really just torturing me.”
Coffee burned my tongue.
“She wouldn’t stop hurting it, and I was so young and scared. One day, she wanted me to stab another child during training, but I refused because at the time, I hated violence. I’d lost control of my snake a few times, and it was awful. I was terrified of hurting others.”
He shuddered.
“She cut the tail off the end of my snake to make me obey.” Cobra’s voice changed, like he’d lost himself in the past. “I was only eight, and I thought I was going to die. It hurt so bad.”
Logs cracked.
“Barely conscious, I stabbed the other child through the heart. They died as I vomited and lay limp on the ground, feeling my snake bleed out as my life slowly drained from my body.”
My fingers shook, and liquid scalded my hand.
“The queen left. She’d gotten what she wanted and didn’t care about my fate.
But a soldier picked me up and carried me into an empty room.
He laid the bloody snake on my chest and tipped a glowing liquid down my throat, and he told me this was the only thing he could think of that would protect me from harm. ”
He shivered.
“I begged him to take me away from the queen, but he said that I had to stay in this realm and learn to survive. That bigger things were at stake.”
I bit down on my tongue until I tasted blood.
“When I woke up, jewels covered my body, and when I thought about my snake, the jewels changed into shadows. Melded into my flesh, where no one could touch them. The queen was ecstatic when she saw me, convinced that the jewels were a rare beast trait and that she’d killed my snake. ” Cobra’s voice deepened.
“She had me fight other children, then adults for sport, all with the end goal being the gladiator games. But they don’t have a sacred lake in the fae realm, and when I never shifted forms, she assumed I was a beta and only good for small fighting rings, and…other things.”
My stomach dropped.
“When I was in my twenties, the fae male I fought offered to pay for my services after the match. The queen saw my potential, and I slowly transitioned from full-time fighter and part-time prostitute to vice versa.”
Cobra shrugged casually. “So that’s why I have these.” He held up his arms, and the jewels twinkled in the light. “A fucking curse.”
Suddenly, he sat up straight and turned to Jax. “My snake never became tangible, no matter how hard I tried, until that day in the shifter realm. That’s why it was so hard to transition it back to jewels. I was so scared I’d never see it again.”
Cobra turned to me, a sheepish look on his face. “Also, I never severed the connection to your snake, just made it feel like it was dying, because I wanted to hurt you back.”
His pale cheeks became tinged pink as he mumbled, “I’d never actually leave you.”
My heart pounded harder in my chest as I thought about how much comfort the shadow snake had still given me.
Even when Cobra had been furious.
“I think a part of me knew you didn’t. It was always way too happy around you.”
I smiled at him and shook my head, the shadow snake twining around my fingers, offering images of support.
Cobra smiled back, and the expression made his gorgeous features unimaginably perfect.
I forgot how to breathe.
Jax wrapped his arm around Cobra and pulled him close, and Xerxes was staring at the man in awe.
“Fucking hell, that was bleak. How did you escape?” Ascher asked.
Cobra shrugged. “The soldier returned one day and told me to tell the queen I didn’t have a shifted form, but I always had control over my snakes.
That I should threaten to tell the whole realm unless she released me.
I thought he was crazy, but weirdly it worked.
She must have known it would get back to the don and was scared. ”
Cobra rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Now that I think about it, it’s weird that the soldier escorted me to the shifter realm and not the beast realm. He had me immediately tested at the sacred lake.”
My vision blurred.
I tipped forward out of my chair.
The coffee mug slammed into the hardwood floor and shattered into a million pieces.
Voices shouted from far away.
“What the fuck, Sadie?” Ascher slapped my face lightly as Cobra shook my shoulders, and Jax and Xerxes crowded beside them.
All four men stared down at me in concern.
Aran had escaped the fae realm with the help of a strange man.
A similar man had randomly shown up and brought me to get tested at the sacred lake.
My voice cracked as I asked, “Did the soldier have bright-blue eyes and wear a long black cloak?”
Cobra took a step back. “Yes.”
“Fuck us.” I groaned.
The truth crashed over me, and my limbs went weak.
At that moment, the massive clock on the wall chimed, signaling midnight.
We had one night to pass this test—one night to survive.
Time kept mercilessly moving forward, and we were running out of it.
I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing.
Everything was a blur as Ascher pushed me forward up the stairs, and Jax reminded me to get dressed for the club.
They said we’d talk about it later, and I nodded like everything wasn’t crumbling around me.
My mind was elsewhere.
In the room, I told Aran what Cobra had said.
The truth. That the same cloaked man had forced all of us to get tested. Positioned all of us so we would meet in the training compound in the shifter realm.
I watched Aran pale and hunch lower, like if she made herself small enough, the truth couldn’t hurt her.
I barely remembered walking down the stairs, the men complimenting me on my outfit.
Barely noticed the rain soaking me on the way to the car.
Was barely cognizant of the neon skyscrapers and the way Cobra clenched my hand in the back seat.
How Jax looked at me with worry. Ascher smoothing his hands across my head. Xerxes giving me a soft kiss on the cheek.
The world was nebulous and indistinct.
In the future, I’d come to think of this day as the dividing line in my life.
The distinction between the before and the after.
The after characterized by a singular realization that changed the fundamental nature of existence.
It had been everywhere, in small signs we’d all become experts at avoiding.
Averting our eyes when it was right before our faces.
But there was no more running from the truth.
We were pawns.
And always had been.