10. Chapter 10
Leo
Ibeeline for the stairs, the bar area empty save for the omegas I’m used to seeing down here.
I wouldn’t be able to identify many of them—my attention is all about Addie—but the room has the same muted buzz it’s had for the last three nights.
A collective in a holding pen, waiting for the deluge to part them, move them, drown their space.
A hand grabs me by the bicep. Glancing over my shoulder, I recognise the surly omega from my second night here. His expression is grim, but his voice is almost kind when he says, “Follow me. Don’t ask questions.”
“What? But I need to—”
“What did I just say?” He gives me a deadpan look, and tugs on my arm.
I want to rip out of his hold. A pleading quality enters his eyes, and I’m struck by how young he is. I let him pull me away from the stairs and follow him around the edge of the dance floor, down a corridor adjacent to the entrance.
He drops his hand and walks ahead of me, his back straight and head high as he leads us deeper into the building.
The hallway is a lot like a hotel—doors evenly spread down a corridor with the same plush red carpet as in Addie’s room, the same sconces and electrical candles from the front hall that give the place a dim, depressing feel.
The omega opens a door and steps back, waving me in with a hand.
I step inside the small room. A double bed sits against one wall, a bedside table next to it with a sole book on top of it—The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
A painting hangs on the wall opposite the bed, a crane in the shallows of a river, snowy banks behind him.
It feels barely lived in, but it smells like the omega in front of me. Like anger and sadness.
I turn to face him and his expression makes me suck in a sharp breath. He looks pitying.
“Adrian has the night off,” he says.
I don’t know what to say. Is he lying? I don’t believe Addie doesn’t want to see me, but if he needs a night off, I can respect that. But why does this omega, who’d been so aggressive before, now appear so sympathetic?
I swallow and try to say the right thing. “Okay, that’s good. Addie, Adrian, should rest if he needs to, but … maybe I could just check in?”
He scowls at me. I raise my hands and take a step back. “I’m not going to hurt him, I promise. I just need to make sure he’s okay and then I’ll go.”
I won’t go. I’ll sit at the bar all night and make sure no one else enters his room.
“You’ll go? Just like that?” he says, like it’s a challenge. “You want him so badly, but you’ll flee at the first roadblock?”
“What? No! You just said he’s got the night off. Wait.” I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re lying to me.”
“I’m not lying,” he says, but he looks over my shoulder. “He does have the night off.”
He’s studiously avoiding my gaze. It’s like he wants me to ask him something. I don’t know why he won’t just tell me. He doesn’t seem like the type of omega who respects dynamics protocol.
“What do you mean by roadblock? A night off isn’t a roadblock,” I say, a thin line of anger threading through my voice.
Instead of being intimidated, he returns his gaze to mine, and a ghost of a smile touches his lips.
He’s attractive, nothing on my Addie, but still handsome with his olive skin, dark brown eyes, and thick black hair.
He’s way too fucking young—eighteen at most, and a young looking eighteen at that—but he’s got more attitude than half the alphas in my squadron.
“Not just a pretty face. Good,” he says. “Adrian deserves more than good looks and a nice ass.”
My eyebrows fly up. I don’t think anyone, never mind an omega, has ever commented on my ass.
As if it were a part of me that was up for action.
I’ve heard alphas talking about omega’s asses and kept my disgust to myself—an omega should be cherished as the calm centre of an alpha’s universe, not be talked about like a piece of meat to be used.
But an alpha’s ass was firmly off limits.
“I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going on,” the omega says. “And I hope …” He looks away again, his voice softer when he continues. “I hope you have the balls to do something about it.”
I straighten, and clench my fists at my sides, the alpha in me roaring to the surface with the challenge. If it involves my Addie, I’ll have the balls to burn this whole fucking place to the ground if that’s what it takes.
“Tell me what’s going on.”