Chapter 13
“Another game…”
Ace’s voice was the first I heard when I finally succumbed to sleep on the old mattress. I was instantly stolen by the same nightmare that was haunting my every waking moment.
A memory. And the moment, of every one I’d lived, that had truly broken me.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
The dark marble of his mansion was icy beneath my shins, a coldness that rose from the floor itself, chilling me in the thin nightdress I wore, as if the soul of this place had turned to ice long ago to match its owner.
“Last week, the trick with the maid. I was… impressed.”
I dared glance up to the Alpha lounging on the armchair before me. We were in his rooms, the place to which he had summoned me in the middle of the night.
“You almost escaped,” he said. Dark hair swept over skin as pale as Zed’s, but the only other things that they shared was the electric blue eye colour and the slight crook on their nose. His lips were rich red in contrast to his skin, stretching over his teeth in a cruel smile. “It doesn’t seem to matter how hard I try. I can’t seem to crush you. It makes me jealous, you know?” he asked. “Thistle is long broken—perfect obedience, and rather fucking dull. The universe promised her to me, yet saw fit to promise an Omega like you to my brother, instead?”
I was silent as I waited.
It had been days since I’d almost reached freedom. He hadn’t said anything after, the punishment had been exacted instantly, far more than anything he could think up in the aftermath. And then he’d joined me in my bed each night since, delighting in the nightmares that consumed me, wanting to be there each time I woke.
That was enough for him. I paid.
Or so I’d thought.
“I would be a fool to dismiss your mind,” he said. “Or your determination to be free of this place.”
I took a breath, still kneeling before him, holding his gaze with a blank expression he knew, by now, was a mask.
“Do you disagree?” he asked.
I blinked, considering that. I didn’t lie to Ace, not unless there was no choice, and certainly not when he’d know. “No.”
“I propose a game.” He smiled, something malicious dancing in his blue eyes. “Double or nothing. I think it would be amiss to assume that one day you might win—for a time. One day, you might get free, and this dance will shift from this mansion, and into the greater world.”
I felt goosebumps rise on my skin from far more than the cold air and marble.
I tried to reject what he was saying. With such ease, he moved the goalposts. He promised that, should I ever escape, this wouldn’t be over. His games would always go on, no matter how far I ran.
Still, I was silent, holding his gaze with perfect neutrality I’d trained myself for.
“So. If you do find yourself on the other side of these mansion walls, our deal holds.”
My lips parted in shock for a moment, a reaction I couldn’t contain. I saw a flash of delight on his face as he saw it.
Our deal?
The one that had landed me with this fate.
“You gave up so much that day—all in the name of their protection. I won’t waste that. Unless… I see, even once, even for a second, any Alpha in my brother’s pack protecting you. Then, I will hunt them down alongside you, and they will die like that maid this week.”
Ice-cold dread slid through my veins. Dozens of images crossed my mind. Ace was ruthless, cruel, and merciless.
How many had I watched die by his hand?
He knew how much I feared it, so he made sure I was there every time. And when it was my fault? I almost shut my eyes at the thought.
The bodyguard who’d taken pity on me. The maid who’d slipped me a key and her own clothes so that I might get free.
They hadn’t died like the others.
Instead, the gun shook in my own hands. Ace was at my back, chest crushing the scars he’d so recently opened. He held me still. The barrel aimed.
My finger was numb. I didn’t feel the trigger. With the last of my courage I’d shifted the aim. I’d shot a gun enough times to easily land the bullet right between the eyes.
Mercy.
Everything I would never have.
He could have stopped me. He always could have stopped me. But he never did. He loved watching me defy him so he had reasons to torture me more. He was far, far more obsessed with me than he ever was with his compliant scent match.
“Double or nothing. That’s the deal.” Ace said into the silence, a smile playing on his lips as he watched me work through the threat.
Those words sunk in.
For a moment, that gun was in my hands, but it wasn’t the maid before it, it was Kyan. Knight. Zed.
Double, or nothing.
Pack and freedom. Or neither. Forever.
And it would all come down to whether or not I trusted Zed and his pack could match Ace and the resources he held as leader of the Brotherhood.
I didn’t know if it was his plan, but that night he finally found the thing that would kill my fight. The last thing that gave me hope. The final lantern I followed, snuffed out at last.
Because I believed him, and after everything I’d given up to keep them safe, I would never risk it.
Ace had won.
Even if I did escape one day, somehow, the final dream waiting for me on the other side was dead.