Chapter 39
Two days until appeal
PHANTOM
The one upside of Crescent stealing keys (and I would maintain to the death that there was only one upside, and she had to be banned from doing it again) was that robbing the contraband room was much easier now.
There would be no trading them—not this close to our appeal, and not with them colluding with omega-stealing packs.
Of course, heisting the most heavily guarded room in Anarchy wasn’t exactly simple. Even with the key.
The contraband room was guarded by two of Dominic’s pack—or allies—around the clock.
We’d have to break in after the doors locked, when fewer people would be walking around and there wouldn’t be any backup.
Sneak up on and silence the guards so no one would know who’d stolen from the vault.
Then we’d have to make it through our entire final day and night before our appeal was called in the morning.
And hopefully not called late, like the Leo pack’s was.
It sounded easy in theory. Harder in practice. Harder still when you considered that we needed to take Crescent along with us on the heist.
Sin had told me what happened with the Leo pack’s allies.
They hadn’t done shit.
Now the Leo pack omega had a new pack that paraded him around, showing off his bite marks and bruises. They’d fucked him in the middle of the square yesterday, and I was glad Crescent hadn’t been with me to see it.
I doubted his new pack would last long—they were too cocky for a pack that weren’t dwellers—but their damage was already done. And his next? Probably wouldn’t be much better.
Seeing that, there wasn’t a soul outside our pack I trusted enough near Crescent this close to our appeal.
“You didn’t come by.” An annoyed bark broke through the chaos of the cafeteria.
We were on the outskirts of the room—our entire pack, half the Emerald pack, and a few guys from the Wakefields. Trying to stay quiet and out of trouble.
And yet, trouble always finds us.
My gaze rose to meet Jared’s, trying to gauge exactly how grumpy the Archiva pack alpha was today.
“I dropped the books in the returns slot.” I shifted closer to Crescent on the bench seat.
She was staring down at her plate, her cheeks pink. Probably not regretful—though maybe still holding onto a slight bit of worry for her pinky fingers.
“That’s not what Tyler told you to do.”
“Uh, sorry.” I exchanged a look with Vandle across the table. I thought I’d handled the key thievery, but apparently I’d missed something… somehow. “What else did you need?”
“Tyler wants to see her. You didn’t bring her around.”
Crescent sat bolt upright, head whipping around to look at Jared. “I’m sorry!” she squeaked. “Really, I am. I promise, I’ll never do it again.”
Her plea fell out in a rush, and she was hiding her hands behind her back. Keeping her fingers safe.
Jared narrowed his eyes, his wrinkles deepening. “Not about that. Come on.”
Hesitating, I assessed him one more time. If he was going to punish us for keeping the keyring, he would have done it already.
And, actually… I glanced around. The walls were closing in on us.
If there was one thing the Archiva pack could be trusted on, it was that they kept their noses out of drama. They had age-old alliances that didn’t demand anything too disruptive, and they were happy with their library.
If we wanted to keep our omega out of sight, in a territory that was about as neutral as it got down here, that might just be the perfect place.
I helped Crescent up from the bench seat, winding my fingers through hers. They were chilled, and when I stared into her trembling golden eyes accented by pale lashes, she looked unsure. Like she didn’t know whether to be scared or not.
I kissed her nose. “I’ll protect you.”
“You act like I’m going to splatter your brains all over the library books,” Jared scoffed from a few feet away.
Vandle and the others stood up, and he glared at Jared like that’s exactly what he thought the librarian might do. But he didn’t know this place like I did. He’d been feral too long.
I caught Sin’s eye and spared a pointed look around the cafeteria, where so many sets of eyes landed on us. We were losing value to our allies every second closer to leaving we got, and safe places were scarce.
Even the cell I didn’t truly trust.
Not this close.
But the library was quiet and well defended.
I couldn’t give away my reasoning out loud, but Sin got it. He grabbed Vandle’s arm, leaning in to whisper an explanation in his ear. Karma seemed happy to go wherever, as long as he could stay plastered to Crescent’s side.
“This isn’t a march to the death,” Jared added into the moment of tense silence. “It’s a friendly fucking request.”
That made a tentative smile curve Crescent’s lips.
The grumpy librarian alpha was growing on her. And I was hesitantly believing that he wouldn’t crush that burgeoning trust.
CRESCENT
“Checkmate.”
I squished my eyebrows together, peering down at the black queen that had my white king cornered. The checkered board and its pieces barely made any sense still, but Tyler wasn’t going easy on me.
They didn’t want my fingers after all. Tyler just wanted someone to talk about books with, and then he’d offered to teach me chess.
“Is there… any way I could have won this one?” I asked.
Tyler picked up his queen and moved it back to its previous spot, then slid back the rook I’d been trying to use to trap him.
“If you’d moved your queen here—” He demonstrated the play, knocking over a pawn and flicking it off the side of the worn chessboard.
“—then I would have been forced on the defensive. My best option would be to do this, but then in a few more turns you could have blocked me in again and taken the checkmate.”
I nodded along as he moved the pieces, playing through the game the way it could have gone if I was a master like him.
I loved the library for its books, but there was something thrilling about learning this new game. It took a lot of brain power.
And served as the perfect distraction.
I knew what the plan was. Steal the contacts from the vault using the key I’d been keeping safe all this time. Phantom and Vandle had slipped out with Sin once it was clear the Archiva pack wasn’t going to take revenge on me for stealing their library key, and Karma sat in the corner, sketching.
They were all preparing, but I didn’t have anything to help with, so when Tyler had set up the white chess pieces on my side and pointed out each piece to tell me what it could do for me, I’d curled into one of their lounge chairs and nodded along.
He wasn’t as scary as he’d first appeared.
He was kind of… fatherly. Gentle. Patient.
Well, not with my alphas. But with me he was really quite nice.
“Let’s play again,” I declared. “This time I’ll win.”
I was bound to eventually, right?
He chuckled, plucking a cube of cheese and a piece of bread off a plate Jared placed on the coffee table beside the chess board.
Jared was less terrifying than he looked too—he might have even been amused by how overprotective I was of my fingers when we first stepped into the library again.
I saw his lips quirk up when he noticed.
“Have some.” Jared pointed to the plate.
My gaze flicked up to Karma. He was just far enough away to be a little unfocused, but I caught his nod.
“Don’t suppose you’ll let me have some of those luxury snacks too?” he asked.
“Last task you did for us, you fucked up. If it were up to me, you’d still be getting over salted cafeteria meals,” Jared growled. “The snack offer extends to your omega only.”
Karma’s sketchbook smacked against the stone floor, his coloured pencil clattering beside it. “That was you? Fucking assholes.”
I stared between them as Tyler reset the chess board. Over salted… meals? That must’ve been before I was sent down.
“You didn’t know?” Jared snorted.
“I never fucked up a task for you!”
Jared held up his hand, showing off five calloused fingers. “Which one is the ring finger?”
Karma snarled, nails digging into the arms of his chair like he was barely restraining himself from throwing himself across the room. His frustration pulsed through the bond. “You didn’t. Fucking. Specify.”
“You really thought we wanted his pinky removed? That’s barely a punishment.” Tyler tossed the words over his shoulder.
I looked down at my hands. It… felt like a punishment to me. The Archiva pack really was super mean to everyone else.
My hand darted out to grab a cube of cheese before they could take back the offer and tossed it straight into my mouth.
The cheddar tasted old, like the block had already had mold shaved off it a few times, and the edges were a bit dry, but Karma was right about it being luxury. The cafeteria didn’t get any cheese.
I immediately felt a little guilty.
Karma had been down here way longer without cheese.
I cleared my throat, interrupting the bickering. “Um, can I give Karma some of my portion? I’ll eat less so he can have a piece or two.”
My alpha’s gaze darted to me, the negative energy in the bond melting away in seconds. “You don’t need to do that, Moonlight.”
“I want to.”
I took another cheese cube and two of the small, torn-off pieces of bread, and pushed up from the chair. Jared and Tyler weren’t stopping me. I crossed the room to Karma and sat on his thigh, pushing the cube to his lips.
“I don’t need—”
He had to open his mouth to speak, and I pushed the cheese in.
His only choices were to spit it out or chew. Karma opted to chew, his eyelids fluttering shut for a moment. This was a special thing for him. I knew it.
The Convent meals weren’t luxurious or anything, but they were better than here. Once a week we’d get something with cheese, like a baked potato or pasta. Here, they kind of only served… slop.
I took a bite of the bread while he enjoyed his cheese.
It was sourdough. Or maybe just… stale?
I was going with sourdough, and I wasn’t going to look too closely.
When his eyes had reopened and he peered down at me with pure adoration, his arm wrapped around my waist, I pressed the bread to his lips. This time he took it between his teeth without complaint.
I beamed, eating the rest of my piece and sliding off his lap.
He caught me before I could head back over to chess. His lips landed on mine in a searing kiss, and I swallowed down the moan I wanted to let out. He broke the kiss as quickly as he started it, smirking at me.
“Go back and keep playing.” He tipped his head. “You’ll beat him, I bet.”
There was slick already pooling between my thighs in the aftermath of the kiss, but I nodded.
Chess.
Yes.
He’d definitely kissed me knowing what it would do.
My mean alpha.
But I rushed back to sit across from Tyler, who didn’t chastise me for stealing his cheese and giving it to my alpha. He even pushed the platter toward me so I could have more.
This time I happily took it, pouting at Karma.
If he could deny me relief from the arousal he’d built up, I could most certainly deny him any more cheese.
VANDLE
Well, this isn’t going to work.
Our plan to steal from the Redgraves tonight had officially been shot to shit. The poor schmuck on corpse cleanup would be working until well after the doors had locked for the night.
What with the dead body torn to pieces in the hallway that led to the contraband room.
‘Course it was our allies, too, that started this mess—and of course it was the Wakefields.
Sterling clearly hadn’t been doing his part to stay stable, because one second he’s talking shit with some guy in the square and the next? Gone on a total rampage. This wasn’t even the only body. Just the worst one.
And the one that landed right in our way.
Phantom was wrestling Sterling back to the Wakefield pack’s cell with the help of two of their packmates. They’d toss him in their rut vault until he cooled down.
Sin stood beside me, scrubbing his hand down his face as he looked out over the carnage.
Lots of blood, lots of guts.
It was all in shades of grey to me, but I imagined it would be more gruesome if I could see the blood as smears of red instead of just a darker grey than the walls and floor.
It was a good thing Crescent was with Karma and the Archiva pack. They were insulated from the chaos this brawl started. Once the scent of blood was in the air, the alphas who rode that edge between feral and sane tended to tip over, and I still heard the sounds of fighting from back in the square.
“I wonder who’s going to clean up these bodies.” Sin scowled after Sterling. “They definitely won’t get it all sorted before the doors lock.”
“Isn’t there like… a crew? For the bodies?” Phantom mentioned it once, right after I’d claimed Crescent.
Sin pointed at the lump of human flesh that only vaguely resembled a body. “He’s corpse cleanup.”
I squinted down at the man’s face, covered in dark blood, his head only still attached to his body by the grace of his spine. His throat had been ripped clean out.
“Don’t recognize him.”
“Robert Ferguson. There’s a couple other guys, but he was the main one right now. A punishment, obviously, handed down by the Archiva pack. He’d been doing it awhile. Now they’ll need to find someone new to punish.”
Well, as long as it wasn’t us. We were going to get the fuck out of this place.
Unless… being the one on cleanup duty would mean that we could still rob the Redgraves tonight.
I glanced at Robert’s body—one of several—and wrinkled my nose when my next inhale brought a series of smells I did not want to get any closer to.
Nope.
Not worth it.
And I didn’t want Crescent anywhere near this.
“Let’s make ourselves scarce, yeah? I don’t want to be around when they’re handing out the biohazard suits.”
Did our corpse cleanup crew even get that luxury? Best not to consider it for too long.
They’d spend the night dealing with this, and we would spend another night and day keeping to ourselves, planning out every minute of our robbery—which we now had no choice but to do on the night before our appeal.
Fuck.