Chapter 2
“Rose Royale.” Tallow’s voice snapped me to the present.
“What?” My voice was dry as I spun on him, almost knocking over a row of flutes.
It was the next evening, and I was thoroughly wrecked. I’d been haunted by nightmares and, once more, barely got a wink of sleep. I usually loved when my shift came around—especially on days I worked with Tallow, but today, the goal was to survive to the next caffeine infusion.
Tallow frowned. “Guy at the end wants a Rose Royale, Kir Royale with a?—”
“I know what it is.” We’d done them far too much last Valentine’s.
But I was getting whiplash.
Roses—again?
I stared at the Alpha at the end of the bar. He looked normal enough, I supposed. Neat suit, buzzed hair. There was a tattoo creeping just up above his collar, but that wasn’t unusual. The bar’s mahogany surface reflected the soft, ambient lighting, upon which he was quietly playing a game of solitaire, laying his cards out before him one by one.
He wasn’t looking at me as he waited.
Right.
It meant nothing.
“You don’t want him?” I asked.
“He’s your type, Ice Queen,” Tallow said with a grin. We played a bit of a good cop, bad cop scenario, covering the bases of clients who liked the fun-loving male Omega energy Tallow brought to the table, or the much cooler energy I gave out. “Besides, I’ve got gossip to hear from over there.” He nodded his head toward a pack in the corner. They were regulars, and very up in the know with High Roller politics. “Apparently, a mob guy… Forbes? I think, commandeered Spades for the night, brought his full security team and all. Bet Travis is fuming.”
I raised my eyebrows, the news catching me off guard a little. Private security wasn’t usually allowed in the club. It explained why there were less of the guys up here—they were probably making it a pissing match.
“It’s Spades. Don’t care if he’s mob, no way he stands a chance against Annika,” Tallow scoffed.
I snorted. He wasn’t wrong. Annika was one of the Omegas who worked here, and Spades—one of the private card rooms—was hers. She was a no bullshit type—spotting card counters a mile off, and I was also convinced she had secrets just like I did. I couldn’t be sure, but something about the way she held herself felt like looking at a reflection. Especially if she’d been recruited just like I had. I had a suspicion the manager, Travis, was a little more in the know of the city’s underbelly than he let on. I don’t think I was the only Omega who had found refuge in this place.
I tried to pull myself together and not think too hard about the Rose Royale order, even as I made it, then took a breath, steadying my nerves as I glanced back at the Alpha and his solitaire game.
None of it meant anything. I had gossip waiting for me when Tallow returned from that pack—that was much more worth focusing on.
I forced a smile on my face as I reached him, the clink of the crystal glass sliding across the bar was nearly drowned out by the music and hum of conversation around us. “No petals right now,” I told him. “Come back in February, I’ll do you up a proper one.” Thank God my voice was steady.
There was a curve at the edge of his lips as he took it, and I didn’t like the way his eyes lingered on me, dark as charcoal and far too intense.
Alarm bells were going off like sirens, and goosebumps pricked my skin. “Here with a pack?” I asked, swallowing back panic. I was paranoid—that was all. But the sounds of the club were distant, as if muffled through water. I couldn’t help glancing down at his wrist, but it was covered by a white cuff.
His gaze followed mine to his wrist for a moment, then flicked to the balcony that overlooked the main casino below. “At the tables.”
“Not for you?” Bartenders weren’t the primary entertainment of patrons, but packs sometimes had an Alpha or two who felt ‘dragged along’, and they sometimes enjoyed their time at the bar.
Was that all this was?
He let out an amused breath. “I don’t have a poker face good enough to salvage luck that bad.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Doesn’t look to have turned up quite yet,” he mused, peering at his cards. I could see he’d only revealed three of the four starting suits in the game, missing a stack for diamonds. “Soon, perhaps.” Still, his eyes held mine curiously.
I nodded, stepping back and forcing myself to turn from his unnerving smile to replace the Glenmorangie to the mirrored shelf it came from. When I drew my hand away, I could see my fingers trembling.
But I was tired.
Seeing things.
The drink meant nothing.
When we’d caught up enough behind the bar, I gave Tallow a heads up and took my break.
Two sleepless nights in a row had put my paranoia through the roof.
On my next break, I sat alone in silence. No coffee—not when I was jumping at shadows. It had been over an hour, and the Alpha at the bar never left. It was like I could feel his eyes on me with everything I did.
“Get a grip,” I breathed to myself again as I pulled out my deck of cards. It wasn’t like the cards on the tables below, with fresh packs for every game. These were mine.
Broken and beaten up, shuffled to oblivion. Bent and faded.
A deck of forty-eight.
“There are no roses,” I whispered again. The soft sound of my cards sliding together mixed with the distant clatter of cocktail glasses being stacked—just not enough to ground me.
“Why don’t we play a game?”
Ace’s taunt echoed in memory. “A rose for every night you try to escape, and for every event in which you think you can undermine me.”
And with that promise, I would step into my room to find a rose on my pillow, and a card that read, ‘A rose for a queen’.
I shivered, shoving the memory away.
It was a stupid drink.
I began shuffling my deck quicker as I watched the dancer below.
I had taken time to scent these cards. A perfect blend, so painfully faint in the air as I shifted them between my fingers. They were the only scents in the universe that brought me absolute calm—or as close to them as I could get.
Pear grove ... Like being drawn into the arms of a bear, he held me close, his crisp and comforting scent whispering me to sleep…
The rain and wind in a lightning storm… Static in the air, crackling between us as his fingers tangled in mine, squeezing as if he would never let go…
Snow santal … A cool winter forest, reminding of a time when I knew if I stumbled, he would catch me. Every time. No matter what it cost…
Forbidden. A million miles out of reach. But… once mine.
It was working. My nerves were settling. A million flashes of what should have been a sad song shoving away my nightmares.
There was no sign at all that anything was truly?—
“Glade?” I jumped violently when Leisha poked her head through the break room door. “Travis says there’s a pack in Bluff asking for you.”
“What?” I froze, my blood turning to ice, cards freezing in my hands. I didn’t do private sessions with clients. “By name?”
“Nope. Asked for the hot bartender on floor two.”
My panic mellowed as I gathered myself. “Tallow’s… hot,” I said stupidly.
“With ‘big hair to the waist’.”
Ah.
Okay. Well. “I don’t take clients.”
Bluff was one of the penthouse rooms on the top floor reserved for private meetings. Anyone who came to the High Roller had to be a member, but frequent fliers knew the Ice Queen absolutely did not do private showings.
“That’s what Travis told them. They paid a premium to sit up there on the off chance.”
“Well. They can enjoy the evening alone—and tell Travis I won’t be taking drinks up there, either.” Tallow could. I did deliver up there sometimes, but if some pack had it in their head they could buy my evening, I’d steer clear.
Leisha added. “They’re really good looking.”
“Travis said that?” I laughed.
“I did. And he said they were very respectful,” Leisha added, shooting me a side eye.
“If they weren’t, they’d be out on their ass.”
She snorted, but left me to my cards, alone in the small break room.
I checked my phone. I had what? Another fifteen before Tallow would get pissed.
I needed every second to still my frayed nerves.
Shuffling my deck, I tried to focus on the dancer below. She was mesmerising and beautiful. I wanted to pretend that today, my biggest fear was never having that much confidence in myself.
I paused, glancing down.
Something felt wrong with my deck. The cards’ edges were rough, softer than average, but…
I frowned, turning the cards and sifting through them.
A perfect 48.
But that wasn’t true.
My blood chilled.
There was one that didn’t belong. It had a black back instead of the faded red, and it was brand new.
I reached for it, blood roaring in my ears. For every small clue of paranoia, the Rose Royale, the headless bundle of thorns on the side of the road, I’d convinced myself over and over that I was seeing ghosts.
Overreacting.
Paranoid.
And in one heart-stopping moment, I felt an incongruous, chilling relief as I looked at the black card. I hadn’t been seeing things at all.
Until the truth of what that meant hit me like a freight train. Until the tremor in my hands left half the deck spilling from my grip. Before I turned the card and saw what was on the other side.
One of the four that I’d removed from my perfect 48.
That I’d ripped to pieces and burned.
Because on the other side was an ace of diamonds.