Chapter 4
Time warped inside the cubicle.
With no windows, no clock, and no sounds coming from beyond the door, Ren lost track of the minutes he’d been there.
Could have been five, could have been forty.
The yellowish light bulb kept flickering at irregular intervals, like an arrhythmic pulse, and every time the light faltered, the cubicle plunged for half a second into a total darkness that squeezed his chest like a fist.
He forced himself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
It didn’t work.
The air tasted of concrete and his own fear.
A metallic taste at the back of his throat that reminded him of that first night, when his father’s men dragged him out of bed and shoved him into the trunk of a car without telling him where they were going.
That time, too, he had tried to breathe. That time, too, he had failed.
He looked at his hands. The knuckles on his right hand had swollen, and the skin had split over the bones in a constellation of superficial cuts that had already stopped bleeding.
The man he’d knocked down in the street weighed twice as much as he did.
Ren remembered the crunch of nasal cartilage under his hand, the surprise in the guy’s eyes—pure disbelief, as if a kitten had bitten off his finger—and then the sharp thud of his back against the asphalt.
He could hit. Knew how. He’d been training for years for this, for when his body—too delicate, too blond, too omega—would have to prove it wasn’t what it seemed.
Ren stood up. The soles of his feet protested on the cold concrete. The wounds from the run stung.
Think.
The door swung inward. He’d seen it when the guard opened it.
Hinges on the left. The cubicle’s space didn’t allow for much of a running start, but he didn’t need distance.
He needed speed and a point of impact. Throat.
Solar plexus if the guy was shorter. The groin if he were bigger.
First strike to destabilize, second to create space, and then run.
Always run. A sixty-three-kilo omega doesn’t win prolonged fights against trained alphas or betas.
Hit and run. That’s what the instructor had taught him—the one he secretly paid with money he stole from his father’s wallet.
Strike and escape.
He positioned himself to the right of the door, pressed against the wall. From there, when the door opened, the doorframe would hide him. Half a second’s advantage. Enough.
He clenched his fists. The pain from his shattered knuckles shot up his forearm like an electric current. He welcomed it with relief. The pain was useful. The pain sharpened him.
They’re coming. They’re going to open that door. Another man will want to possess me. Someone else will try to break me. A man similar to Reznov.
Reznov.
The seven hundred thousand dollars echoed in his head with the obscene weight of a sentence.
He remembered the auction hall. The overhead lights that blinded him.
The dark silhouettes of the buyers beyond the spotlight, moving, raising hands or cards with the same nonchalance with which they would have ordered another glass of champagne.
And Reznov in the front row. Not as a silhouette.
As a presence. His eyes fixed on Ren with a hungry clarity that cut through the glare of the spotlights.
Seven hundred thousand dollars.
No one pays that much to lose the merchandise.
Ren took a deep breath. The air scratched his throat.
He flexed his fingers, then clenched them again.
He tested his stance. Left leg forward, weight on the right, low center of gravity.
If the guy coming in was big—and they’d be big, they were always big—he’d go straight for the throat.
A strike with the heel of his hand to the Adam’s apple.
Dirty, brutal, effective. Ren didn’t have the luxury of fighting clean.
When that door opens, you go. You don’t think. You go.
The light bulb flickered.
He fell silent. He listened. The blood pounded in his ears so hard he had to open his mouth so the sound of his own breathing wouldn’t drown out the sounds from outside.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
And then.
A step. Heavy. Then another. The faint creak of a sole on the floor of the guardhouse. Ren stopped breathing. The muscles in his legs tensed like steel cables, and every nerve ending in his body ignited at once, flooding him with a fierce, almost painful clarity.
The bolt slid open.
Metal against metal. The same sound as before but reversed, like a sentence being retracted, and the door moved.
Ren saw the sliver of light widen centimeter by centimeter.
The door swung open toward him and covered him for a fraction of a second—his half-second head start—and then he saw the shadow of the body on the other side and stopped thinking.
He burst out.
The full weight of his body thrust forward, his right fist already raised, his eyes searching for the throat of the man blocking the door, and he found it.
Or rather, he crashed into him.
It was like hitting a wall. The fellow was enormous.
He was not fat or bloated, but huge, possessing the solidity of an old oak tree and a body mass imprinted in his bones, not built in a gym.
The impact shook Ren’s teeth and stopped him in his tracks, his fist trapped between his own chest and the stranger’s torso, useless, absurd, without even having unfolded.
And then he smelled it.
The blow had smashed his nose against the fabric of the man’s coat, and the first inhalation was involuntary, a reflex action of the diaphragm as it recovered from the impact, and the scent washed over him like a river.
Raisins. Nuts. Golden butter. Cinnamon. Warm dough.
Cookies.
Ren blinked. The fragrance wasn’t perfume.
It wasn’t cologne, or soap, or any product designed to mask or seduce.
It was the scent of that body itself, the chemical signature every alpha exuded and every omega read like a language without words, and this scent said things Ren’s mind couldn’t process while his body understood them instantly.
Warmth. Shelter. Safety.
Home.
His legs gave way. It wasn’t a decision.
It was a muscular betrayal, a mass desertion of every fiber that had kept him standing for the past few hours.
His tendons slackened, his muscles stopped responding, and Ren collapsed.
His knees hit the floor of the guardhouse with a sharp thud that sent two identical jabs of pain up his thighs, and he stayed there, on his knees, his forehead almost touching the man’s shoes, his lungs filled with that scent that was tearing him apart inside.
He knew that smell.
Not that one. Not that body, not that precise combination of raisins and walnuts and baked dough.
But the category. The olfactory family. His grandmother smelled like that.
His granny, who died when Ren was seven and was the last person to hug him, wanting nothing in return, smelled of butter cookies and winter afternoons and thick blankets and a world where being an omega wasn’t a sentence.
A sound escaped his throat. It wasn’t a sob. It was something older, more animal. The involuntary groan of a body that has borne too much weight for too long and that, upon encountering a scent its nervous system associates with safety, gives in.
Ren remained on his knees, oblivious to passing time, his fingers clenched against the cold floor of the guardhouse, breathing in that scent of cookies and lies, because it had to be a lie.
There was nowhere to take refuge. No alpha smelled like that for no reason.
His body was playing tricks on him. Exhaustion was taking its toll.
He was at his absolute limit, ready to collapse.
Get up. Get the hell up.
“You’re safe.”
The voice came from above, deep, with a raspy texture like someone who hadn’t slept. Ren didn’t lift his head. He saw the shoes: black boots made of worn, unpolished leather, planted on the ground.
“I’m Brody Kovac. This is my property. You have nothing to fear here.”
Kovac. The surname ran down his spine like ice-cold water and almost laughed at the irony. He was running from one Kovac, only to fall into the hands of another.
He forced himself to look up.
The man was large. Larger than the impact had suggested. Pale skin, almost translucent in the dim light of the small room, straight black hair combed back, and clear gray eyes looking down at him with an expression Ren couldn’t decipher.
Brody Kovac was on edge. His jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out on his skin, his shoulders stiff beneath his dark coat. Every line of his body screamed control, the kind you exercise when what you want to do and what you must do are pulling in opposite directions.
Ren perceived this with the absurd clarity that exhaustion sometimes grants. That man was holding himself back.
“Can you get up?”
“Can you tell me why your last name is the same as the pig who auctioned me off?” Ren muttered.
“We’re distant relatives, but we don’t do the same thing, as you’ll soon see. Can you get up?” he repeated.
He didn’t wait for an answer. Brody crouched down and offered him his hand as if he were approaching a wounded animal.
Open. Fingers spread, palm facing up. Ren stared at that hand for three full heartbeats.
Large, broad knuckles, short nails. A whitish scar ran across the back of it from his index finger to his wrist.
Get up. On your own. You don’t need his hand.
He took it.
Brody’s fingers closed around his with measured firmness, enough to pull him up but not to immobilize him, and Ren stood before his pride had time to protest. His knees trembled. The ground swayed beneath his bare feet, and he staggered forward.
And then Brody slipped an arm over his shoulders.