Chapter 3 #2
Behind him, far away but not far enough, more voices. Two. Three. Calling out to each other.
His legs were burning. His feet no longer hurt, which was worse. This meant the nerves stopped sending signals, and the skin tore beyond protest. Tomorrow—if there were a tomorrow—he wouldn’t be able to walk.
Number twenty-four. Twenty-six. Twenty-eight.
The address on the paper was thirty-two.
A mansion like the others. High gray stone walls, a wrought-iron gate with a geometric design that could be Art déco or simply expensive.
Behind it, a spacious front garden with trimmed hedges and a gravel path that wound its way to a front door, not visible in the shadows.
There were no lights on the facade. None.
Ren stopped in front of the gate. His left hand on the cold metal, his fingers clinging to the bars as he tried to catch his breath. His teeth were chattering, and he was shaking.
He observed the dark house. He glanced at the street behind him.
What if something worse was waiting for him behind that gate? What if Rocco worked for someone who wanted to skip the auction, get an omega without paying?
Pursuing him, closing in, was certainty.
Reznov. The casino. The stage. The hands of the man he’d just knocked down, which would multiply tenfold, twentyfold.
They’d put a permanent collar on him, not like the soft leather one he wore now.
They might even tattoo a number on the back of his neck, marking him—as long as it wasn’t permanent.
He had no phone. No money. No shoes. In this city, he didn’t know anyone who could help him. His own family had turned him in.
The gate had an intercom built into the right pillar.
Ren pressed it. The electronic beep sounded loud in the street’s silence.
He waited three seconds. Four. Five. Water was running down his face and trickling down his body.
Every drop was a reminder of how exposed he was there, standing, visible to anyone who turned the corner.
He pushed it again. He kept his finger pressed against the button.
“Go to the guardhouse. Five meters to your left.”
Ren started walking.
Beyond the gate stood a three-meter-high wall of gray stone, crowned by an almost invisible row of cameras that Ren only noticed because one of them swiveled—a minimal, mechanical movement—as he approached.
Behind the wall, the tops of several trees peered out like silent sentinels.
And embedded in the structure itself, like an organic extension of the stone, a security guardhouse.
Thick glass. Dim light inside. And a man.
Ren watched.
The guard was a beta. He knew it before he was close enough to sense his neutral scent; he knew it by the way he occupied the space: without the territorial tension of an alpha, without the instinctive wariness of an omega.
Just a large, functional body, comfortable in its own skin.
He had broad shoulders and large hands. He wore a pistol on his right hip.
The black leather holster lay unfastened.
Ren swallowed. The metallic taste of adrenaline had filled his mouth for some time, so constant that it had almost become normal.
The guardhouse had a glass window facing the street and a side door.
Inside, a chair, a panel of monitors, a thermos.
Nothing else. The guard was reading something on a tablet and occasionally looked up toward the avenue with the professional disinterest of someone who had seen no movement in hours.
Don’t go in there.
The inner voice was distinct, precise, and logical. The same voice that had told him for years to train, not to trust, that an omega who depends on others is nothing but property. The exact voice which had screamed at him to run when the lights went out in the casino.
You don’t know Rocco. You don’t know this mansion. You don’t know who lives behind that wall.
Then, cutting through the night, a shout.
Remote. Three, maybe four blocks away. But unmistakable. A man calling to another. Coordinating. Tightening the perimeter.
Ren closed his eyes. He squeezed his eyelids shut until colored spots appeared behind the darkness.
Seven hundred thousand dollars.
He’d seen the figure form on Reznov’s lips before the auctioneer repeated it.
He’d seen the man raise his hand with an almost theatrical laziness, as if the amount were a minor whim, a round of champagne for the table.
But his eyes—calculating and hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food—hadn’t stopped watching him for a second.
Despite the other bids going up. Not even when Malachi tried to provoke a bidding war.
Reznov looked at Ren the same way a collector looks at a piece he already considers his own: with the calm patience of someone who knows no one is going to outbid him.
Seven hundred thousand dollars for a blue-eyed omega with delicate bones.
Ren’s eyes widened.
In the guardhouse, the guard was still present. The street, however, remained empty. But the screams drew nearer. Maybe two blocks away.
He decided, for better or worse. With his feet numb from the pain and his right hand now clenched around the paper Rocco had given him, he stood in front of the security post. His soaked hair fell over his eyes.
The guard looked up from his tablet. His appearance did not startle him. He didn’t reach for his gun. He looked at him.
And something changed in his expression.
It was subtle. A blink slower than the previous one. A slight tension in his jaw. The guard’s eyes scanned Ren from head to toe and returned to his face with something Ren couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t pity. Wasn’t surprise either. Recognition was what it was.
As if he’d been expecting him.
Ren’s stomach clenched.
“How…?” the guard began, but Ren didn’t give him a chance. He raised his right hand, unfolding the damp paper with trembling fingers that wouldn’t quite obey him, and pressed it against the glass of the window.
The sentry looked at the paper. He looked at Ren. Then back at the paper.
Something flashed behind his eyes. A quick decision, made with the efficiency of someone following a rehearsed protocol. He stood up. The chair rolled backward and hit the back wall of the guardhouse with a thud.
“Come in.”
He opened the side door. Ren hesitated for a second—a second in which another scream tore through the night, closer, much closer, and his body decided for him—and stepped into the sentry box.
The space was tiny. It smelled of stale coffee and leather.
The heat from the heater hit his wet skin like a warm slap.
The guard didn’t touch him. He moved to one side and pointed to a door Ren hadn’t seen from the outside, built into the back wall of the guardhouse, painted the same gray as the wall.
“In here.”
He opened it. Behind it, a room. No. A cubicle. A cell. Two meters by two, maybe less. Bare concrete walls. A light-bulb in the ceiling emitted a yellow glow. A wooden bench pressed against the left wall. Nothing else. No windows. No exits.
Ren took half a step back.
“I’m not going in there.”
“Listen,” the guard lowered his voice. He spoke with an accent Ren couldn’t place. Slavic, perhaps. Or Baltic. “Stay here. Keep quiet. Don’t bang on the door. Refrain from screaming. Are you understanding?
The guard’s eyes weren’t cruel. But they weren’t kind either. They were the eyes of someone who follows orders without questioning their content.
Ren stepped into the cubicle. The concrete floor was cold beneath his battered feet, and the contrast with the heat of the guardhouse sent a shiver down his spine. He sat down on the wooden bench. His knees were shaking. Everything was shaking.
The guard looked at him one last time. Again, that slow blink, that tense jaw.
“He won’t be long.”
He closed the door.
And then Ren heard it. The oldest sound in the world. Metal sliding against metal. The bolt slid shut with a definitive click that reverberated off the concrete walls like a muffled gunshot.
Locked in.
The air changed. It thickened. The walls closed in by a centimeter, then two, ten. The yellowish light bulb flickered, and Ren could have sworn the room was shrinking with every pulse of light.
He got to his feet, sat down, stood up again. Took the two steps the cubicle allowed and pressed his palms against the door. Cold. Solid. Not a millimeter of play in the hinges.
Trap.
The word exploded in his head with the obscene clarity of a truth he’d been avoiding.
Rocco was working for someone. Someone who wanted an omega without going through the auction, without paying Reznov’s seven hundred thousand, without leaving a trace.
They’d given him an address and false hope, and he’d run straight into the cage like the frightened animal he was.
He slumped onto the bench. He clenched his hands between his knees to make them stop shaking. It didn’t work.
Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.
The silence on the other side of the door was total.