Chapter 9 Elias
Elias
Isaac’s palm is warm and smooth in his. No matter how often Elias touches him, it still sends a tingle up his arm.
He wants to pull him back, away from the door.
Because on the other side is Connall O’Daire—mafia overlord, underworld kingpin, and criminal, and the object of his most recent fascination.
One that he’d been feeding with his other guilty pleasure: Were Is Nashville Now. The video podcast had run an in-depth exposé on the gorgeous alpha just last week.
Tall, muscular, with those sharp, deep-blue eyes that cut through low-res video clips like they could read Elias’s mind. He rarely smiled in the covert, paparazzi-style footage, but when he did, it made Elias’s heart pound a little harder than he’d like to admit.
And those hands. Long-fingered and strong—the kind of hands that looked like they’d seen work.
Like they knew how to break things, and maybe even how to put them back together again.
There’d been something about the way he moved, too.
Not cocky, but sure. Like the kind of man who didn’t waste time second-guessing himself.
Who never had to ask permission to take up space.
Goddess, how Elias loved a confident man.
Isaac is a case in point.
He’d not told Isaac about it and hadn’t seen the point. It was just an attraction—the same harmless crush Isaac had on his K-pop idols. They’re over there. We’re over here. Never the twain shall meet.
Besides, O’Daire might live in Nashville instead of Seoul, South Korea, but he moved in a different world.
One built on wealth, private memberships, and black-tinted SUVs.
A world Elias only glimpsed through the pass-through window on Saturday nights, when Maureen came back with compliments for the chef, and the tip was a crisp bill folded into his palm.
It was easier to think crime lords didn’t eat at Elias’s restaurant—that they didn’t finish their steak and head downtown for a drug deal. Or worse.
Yet here he was, laughing on the other side of the door with Isaac’s boss’s mate like they were lifelong friends. Like he hadn’t committed a hundred felonies that week. Crimes that included extortion, assault, illegal fight clubs, theft, and even murder. Crimes that marked a person’s soul.
And now, Elias is going to have to do what he always does—keep his butterfly from throwing himself straight into the flame.
“Ready?” Gideon asks, but doesn’t wait for them to answer, pushing the door wide.
O’Daire’s security is standing, larger than life, with his back to the long bank of glass windows. He’s speaking to his boss, but O’Daire isn’t listening.
He’s looking at Isaac.
At Elias.
As with most things, Isaac figures it out a full second before Elias does. His fingers slip from Elias’s without hesitation, the absence a physical ache as he darts forward with a sound caught between a gasp and a sob.
Alpha.
But not just any alpha.
This is their Pack Alpha.
Elias can only watch as his mate launches himself into O’Daire’s arms with a moan. Plush lips meet their alpha’s in a hungry kiss born of instinct.
He tangles his fingers in their alpha’s hair, with a breathless, “Alpha. Kiss me.”
Their alpha doesn’t hesitate—who could ever resist Isaac?
But his eyes find Elias’s over Isaac’s shoulder, the look sending heat curling low in his belly, dark and unexpected.
O’Daire’s hands are on Isaac’s ass, kneading him like he already knows every soft curve by heart.
His long fingers disappear under the sheer tulle of Isaac’s half-skirt, finding the place where Isaac is probably already wet, his slick soaking through the fabric.
Elias wants so badly to join them. Wants to blanket Isaac’s back and press his familiar heat to his chest while O’Daire takes them both apart.
Needs the bigger man to press his fingers into Elias’s darkest place to prepare him.
So he can fill him with his alpha cock, and Elias can finally experience a knot that isn’t cold silicone.
But then he sees it.
The knuckles on those hands are bruised and swollen. Not from sparring in a gym, but from fighting…from hurting people.
Fear burns hot and fast, roiling in his stomach, ramped up by his adrenaline. His instincts are screaming for him to protect his mate, because Isaac may not be built to be cautious—but Elias is.
Even if it means denying himself everything he’s ever wanted.
“Stop.” Elias can barely recognize his own voice. “Stop. Izzy, come away.”
Broad chest heaving, O’Daire is taking deep breaths through his nose. Inhaling Isaac’s lush, aroused key lime scent and musky slick.
The heat of it reaches every corner of the dining room, thick enough that Gideon is already pulling Luca back toward the kitchen. Even the bodyguard lifts a napkin to his face.
“Eli, this is our alpha,” Izzy whines, nose deep in O’Daire’s neck, finally pulling back and spitting a large scent-blocker patch on the floor.
Their alpha’s scent hits Elias like a snowstorm through an open door. Winter. Ice and something electric underneath it. Elias can’t help it, he whines.
He wants that scent on his tongue, so he can feel it tingle through his teeth. He wants to open his mouth and breathe it in until it coats his lungs.
“Fuck, yes. So good. He smells like Christmas, Eli. Come smell,” Izzy calls.
He has never resisted Isaac’s call, and never when he smelled so good. Not when Elias’s whole body wants to fall into place—knees on tile, mouth open, offering pleasure and submission.
It would be so easy to let it happen. To crawl across the floor. To taste the slick on Isaac’s thighs while O’Daire presses into him from behind. To let their alpha knot him right there, over the edge of a dining table.
To be a pack.
To belong.
To feel safe.
But that last thought—the one about safety—is what stops him. O’Daire can’t keep them safe.
He’ll bring danger to Isaac’s door. He’ll bring blood and bruises and worse.
Elias made a promise when he mated Isaac: he would always put him first.
He reaches blindly for the rolled napkins near the door, presses one to his nose to block the scent before it can pull him under. The burn in his sinuses has nothing to do with pheromones. His nose stings as he holds back tears of loss.
“He’s dangerous, Izzy,” he pleads, his words torn from somewhere deep inside. “He can’t keep you safe. Please.”
“I don’t care, Elias Durand,” he says, voice trembling. “He’s our alpha. We’ve been waiting.”
And Goddess, the way those words land—it’s like being gutted from the inside out.
It hurts because Isaac always gets what he wants. Elias has made sure of it. Always. But this isn’t about what Isaac wants.
This is about what he needs, and what he needs—what he deserves—is to be safe.
Holding out his hand, he begs. “I won’t risk you, Isaac. Come to me, please.”
O’Daire’s eyes widen, even as he sucks Isaac’s sweetness from his tongue, even as he grips Isaac closer to his chest, as if he could absorb their omega into his skin. But he meets Elias’s gaze head-on, and there’s an acknowledgment there.
Connall O’Daire has heard him, and that truth hits like ice water poured over an open flame. With unexpected care, he gently peels Isaac’s arms from his neck.
Offering Elias a small nod, he stares into Isaac’s eyes, running a soft thumb over their mate’s cheek. His expression is broken as if he is already grieving something Elias knows from personal experience is a soft, warm welcome.
It’s loneliness—and for a moment of clarity, beyond his own lingering arousal and sadness, Elias feels Connall’s grief like a punch to his solar plexus.
With a growl, their Pack Alpha bolts through the door without a backward glance. The sound of the bell ringing heralds the end of what Elias had dared dream about since he discovered Isaac hiding in their building’s laundry room.
Elias wants to scream. To drop to his knees and wail into the floorboards. To hurl a glass across the bar and let it shatter the way something inside him just has. Wants to chase after O’Daire and beg to take it back.
To beg to belong. He stays frozen, only holding himself together by sheer force of will.
The big security guard moves finally, quiet as snowfall. He gives Isaac a wide berth—like he knows something delicate is about to shatter—and snatches a set of papers from the table with a heavy hand. The sorrow clings to him like smoke.
“Fuck. He—” He shakes his bald head, running a hand across his five o’clock shadow, cutting short whatever apologies or promises he’d been about to make.
Without another word, he follows O’Daire out the door.
Elias breathes out, trying to ease the persistent pressure in his chest. It doesn’t work, and he realizes he might never be free from it again.
“Iz,” Elias whispers.
Isaac is still frozen where O’Daire left him, spine curved inward like someone bracing for impact.
When Elias finally sees his face, it nearly takes him to his knees.
Mouth kissed raw, and chin abraded with O’Daire’s stubble, he has his hand pressed to his face where he’d last felt their alpha’s touch.
He’s trembling so hard his pink hair is moving, and there’s a high-pitched whine that hurts Elias’s ears as much as it does his heart.
“Izzy,” Elias says again, risking a gentle touch to the hand pressed into the front of his t-shirt over his heart. “Come on now, breathe.”
He doesn’t know where they’re supposed to go from here. Doesn’t even know if they can. His own tears are already flowing, hot and thick, making his nose run as he tries to breathe around the sharp sting of O’Daire’s fading scent.
He can still smell him. That cold, sharp winter that somehow still smells like home. Elias drags in another breath. He knows it’s the last he’ll ever take of it, and he wants every last taste.
“Why?” Isaac breathes out, eyes flitting away from the door and then back again, as if he’s expecting O’Daire to change his mind.