Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
POE
I watch Maya’s slender fingers wrap around the knife handle, her knuckles whitening with the strength of her grip. The basement air hangs heavy with the metallic scent of old blood and fear. Darius shifts in his restraints, the chair creaking beneath him as sweat beads on his forehead.
Maya’s eyes flick between the knife and the captive guard. “You actually expect me to use this on him?”
Her voice is steady, but I catch the slight tremor in her hand.
I lean against the wall, arms crossed. “I don’t expect anything. Do whatever you want to do with it.”
The knife glints in the dim light as she considers her options. I’ve seen that look before, the calculation hidden behind her vulnerability. Most people only see the fragile Omega, but there is something sharper beneath her surface.
I want to see it in action.
“Whatever I want?” she repeats, testing the words.
“That’s right.”
In one fluid motion, she pivots and points the blade directly at me. The tip hovers inches from my throat, her stance surprisingly solid for someone who’s never been trained.
I don’t flinch. Don’t even blink. Just hold her gaze as Darius watches with widening eyes.
“Is this what you want to do?” I ask, my voice calm as still water.
“Maybe.” Her cherries-champagne scent spikes with adrenaline. “Why bring me here? What game are you playing?”
“No game. Just giving you a taste of your new reality.”
The knife doesn’t waver. “And what reality is that? That you’re all killers and torturers?”
“That you need to understand what you’ve bonded yourself to.” I push off from the wall but make no move to disarm her. “Logan’s world isn’t just fancy dinners and royal titles. It’s this too.”
“I didn’t choose any of this.” Her eyes flash with anger, but something else lurks there.
Curiosity.
“Yet here you stand.”
Darius clears his throat. “If you two are done with your little drama, I’d appreciate?—“
“Shut up,” Maya and I say in unison.
A smile threatens the corner of my mouth. “You still haven’t answered my question. What do you want to do with that knife?”
“I want answers.” She shifts the blade slightly, its point now directed at my chest rather than my throat. “Why did you really bring me here? You could have interrogated him yourself.”
“I have. For hours.” I glance at Darius, whose bruised face tells its own story. “But I wanted to see what you’d do when faced with the uglier side of palace life.”
The knife twitches again. “Testing me?”
I shrug. This little back and forth is more fun than I thought it would be. Maybe she’ll stab me, after all. “Let’s say I’m evaluating you. Sounds better.”
The knife lowers slightly. “And if I’d started cutting him up?”
“That would have told me something about who you are.”
Her eyes narrow. “And now?”
“Now I know you’re not a sadist. But I still don’t know if you’ll be an asset or a liability here.”
She considers this, then pivots back to Darius, knife still in hand but no longer pointed at me. “Who paid you to let the attackers in?”
Darius sneers. “Like I’d tell an Omega bitch anything.”
I remain quiet, curious to see what she’ll do next.
Maya steps closer to him, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
“You know what’s interesting about Omegas?
Everyone underestimates us. They think we’re just for fucking and breeding.
” She trails the flat of the blade along his cheek, not cutting, just threatening.
“But we notice things. Like how your right eye twitches when you’re scared. ”
She’s bluffing. If he had a tell, I’d have noticed it already, but Darius’s confidence still obviously falters.
“I’m not going to cut you,” she continues. “I don’t need to. You’re already terrified of what Prince Logan will do when he finds out you betrayed him.” She leans in closer. “But I could put in a good word. If you tell me who hired you.”
I suppress a smile. She’s more underhanded than I gave her credit for. Logan won’t give a shit about saving a traitor, no matter how prettily she asks for mercy.
Darius’s eyes dart between us. “You can’t protect me from the hangman’s noose.”
“Maybe not,” Maya agrees. “But a lot can happen between now and the end.”
He spits at her feet, just barely missing the mark as she takes a hasty step back. I surge forward, ready for a violent reaction, when she motions me back.
“If that’s how you feel, then I guess we’re done here,” she says with a sigh.
I watch Maya extend the knife toward me, her slender arm outstretched. There’s something different in her eyes now, a hardness that wasn’t there before. When I reach for the blade, she pulls back.
“Actually, I’ve changed my mind,” she murmurs.
Before I can process what’s happening, she pivots back toward the bound guard.
Her arm swings in a wide, vicious arc, the blade flashing in the dim light.
For a split second, I think she’s going to attack me.
My muscles tense, mind rapidly assessing options to defend myself without hurting her, when the blade’s trajectory continues right past me.
The knife plunges down between Darius’s legs, embedding itself in the wooden chair with a solid thunk, just millimeters from his groin.
A blood-curdling scream tears from his throat, echoing off the stone walls. His entire body convulses against the restraints, chair legs scraping against the floor as he tries to escape what he clearly thought was imminent castration.
“Fuck!” he shrieks, his face drained of all color. A dark stain spreads across the front of his pants, though not the red of blood. The pathetic son-of-a-bitch pissed himself.
I remain perfectly still, calmly reassessing everything I thought I knew about Maya Tantamount.
I don’t think she has ever looked more beautiful than while pressing the edge of a knife blade against the tip of this idiot’s dick.
“You missed,” I say quietly, keeping my voice neutral despite my surprise.
“Did I?” Maya turns to me with a feral smile. “You know, I imagined doing something like this to you after you came to the rooming house.”
Cock torture has never been a particular kink of mine, but in this moment, I’m willing to let her try almost anything. “If I let you tie me up and take a knife to me, does that mean you’ll forgive me for all my sins.”
Surprise lights her eyes as she studies me with a bemused expression. “I’m surprised you’d want my forgiveness, at all.”
The impulse is just as confusing for me, if I’m being honest. Maybe it’s the faint scent of the bond that marks her as pack. Maybe it’s the sexy way she handles that knife. Maybe it’s that she doesn’t act like any other Omega I’ve ever met.
But knives and chains don’t feel like as much of a threat as a promise, where she is concerned.
“I’m still asking for it.”
She blinks once. “Okay.”
I come up behind her, just short of touching but close enough to feel the heat of her body through the rough cloth of her oversized shirt. Seeing her in men’s clothing shouldn’t do it for me either, but I think a lot of new things are awakening in me today.
Damn, she smells good.
My fingers touch the back of her hand, gently so she doesn’t startle, and angle the knife so it rests just under the weight of Darius’s likely withered ball sack.
“The penis’s major artery runs along the top.” I whisper the words of advice against her ear like they’re sexy pillow-talk. “If you’re going to cut, do it from the underside so he doesn’t bleed out too fast.”
“Like this?”
She twists the knife, so it pokes through the thick fabric of his pants.
Darius jumps like he’s been shocked, pulling at the restraints. No blood bleeds through, so she gave him a minor scrape at most. The pussy.
“What the fuck, you bitch!” he screeches. Then sees the look on her face and changes his tone to something more pleading. “Just stop this okay. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
I raise an eyebrow at that. I thought I’d gotten any actionable information out of Darius already, which is the reason it seemed like a good idea to let Maya at him as an outlet for her aggression.
If she manages to get something new, I’ll be really impressed.
“I want answers,” Maya says, leaning forward so that her backside presses hard against my front. “And as you can see, I don’t have Poe’s patience.”
Well, if I wasn’t rock hard already, then I certainly am now. I wonder if she even realizes just how much of Logan’s personality already seeps out of her through the bond.
Darius’s breathing comes in ragged gasps. Sweat pours down his face as he stares at the knife handle protruding between his thighs. “Yeah, okay. I get it.”
“The Alphas who attacked the palace. Who were they? Mercenaries?”
“I don’t know,” he protests, voice cracking. “They paid me to change the guard schedule so the south gate would be left unattended. That’s it.”
“Who paid you?” Maya asks, twisting the knife handle just enough to make him flinch.
“I never saw his face under the hood. Dark hair. Medium-build. A beta, I think. He paid in untraceable credits.”
None of this is new information for me, but I realize there is something I don’t already know. I don’t want to take the wind out of Maya’s sails, not when she’s on such a roll. I murmur a question against the shell of her ear, soft enough that Darius can’t hear it.
She repeats the words in a voice almost as commanding as my own, making my heart flutter. “How were you initially contacted?”
Darius’s eyes dart between us, clearly calculating whether Maya or I present the greater threat. “A note in my quarters. Said they knew about my gambling debts.”
Which confirms my suspicion that whoever masterminded this attack already has access to the palace.
Our real enemy is already here.
“What did they really want?” she demands.
“I’ve already said I don’t know,” he whines.