Chapter 6
“So Elm went and got himself kidnapped?” Shiloh picked the fallen leaf apart and tossed the bits onto the floor with a huff.
“I guess it’s a running theme for Kian’s brothers.” Sloane walked over to the leather couch where he was seated and pointedly slid the glass vase housing a dozen red roses further down the end table and away from him. “Stop picking at the flowers.”
“Want to try your hand at it and make it a Kian’s sibling thing instead?”
“Not being able to keep still?”
“Getting kidnapped.” She’d known what he’d meant, but it was fun teasing her nonetheless. Shiloh grinned when Sloane’s expression remained stoic and she rested her hip against the edge of the desk.
They were in the main office space at Caelum, the host club the Eumia had opened up on Glyph.
The club catered to both alphas and omegas, and had various forms of operations.
People paid for tables, drinks, and to spend time with the workers as one form.
The other was similar to the event Shiloh had found Sarang at back on Synastry, though with a bit more class.
Caelum set alphas and omegas up for rut/heat pairings at a premium rate.
It was a safe space for strangers to find someone they were attracted to enough to spend their mating period with.
There were waivers ensuring discretion, meet and greets beforehand to ensure everyone was satisfied and on the same page, and the guarantee of safety thanks to the location and members of staff.
The business itself was strictly legal, but everyone knew it was being run by the mafia, and no one was foolish enough to try anything stupid while under the Eumia’s roof.
Thanks to Kian, sexual crimes in the city had dropped by thirty percent. Though, Shiloh imagined it was a hell of a lot easier to manage something like that on a fair planet like this one.
Glyphians were still ruled by their true nature, but they’d structured their laws more civilly than Synastry had bothered.
Quaint was one way of putting it.
Shiloh would call it straight up boring.
“This is serious.” Sloane crossed her arms. “Did you have anything to do with it?”
“I have nothing against Kian’s other brother.
” He truly didn’t. Shiloh still hadn’t even met the guy.
He’d wanted to, but Kian was overly protective and kept making excuses.
At some point, Shiloh had stopped by the ceramics studio Elm and Sky ran together unannounced, but he’d only caught a glimpse of Elm leaving.
The curiosity had honestly mostly gone away after that, and between trying to seduce Sarang and adjusting to this new life on Glyph, Shiloh hadn’t made another attempt.
Maybe he should have, since it seemed like there was a chance the guy was going to end up dead and he’d never get to meet him ever.
“Elm isn’t like us,” Sloane stated, brow furrowing.
As twins, the two of them had the same pale complexion, dark hair, and piercing blue eyes.
They were also both omega, but Sloane was known for her outspoken personality, probably because she’d never tried to mask it like Shiloh had been doing these past few years.
She’d met Elm. Only a couple of times, but still.
“Are you worried for him, sister?” Shiloh propped his elbow on the arm of the chair and then set his chin on it. “That won’t do.”
If she was bothered by his disappearance, Shiloh would have to get involved, and he had more than enough on his plate at the moment.
“He’s…kind,” she struggled to find the right word, and it was obvious she wasn’t sure she’d settled on an accurate one after she spoke it. “Elm grew up with a normal family, on a planet where he didn’t have to worry as much about presentation.”
“Yeah, well, the guy is a beta so…” They didn’t have betas on Synastry, only alphas and omegas.
Betas could be considered lucky or unlucky, depending how one looked at it.
They didn’t have to suffer through heat or rut cycles, and therefore were never slave to their urges or bodies.
However, that also meant they couldn’t smell pheromones, and didn’t have extra strength or heightened senses.
While they could technically be given a claiming bite, they didn’t have the instincts to accept or deny it, meaning the bond would never truly be formed.
To them, a bite was just a bite. They were relatively normal, not much different from many other basic species in the universe.
Kian had ended up with a beta for a brother thanks to Shiloh and Sloane’s mother. After birthing the current leader of the Eumia, she’d put him up for adoption to protect him from her enemies. He’d only found them five or so years ago, and had taken to the whole mafia royalty thing fairly quickly.
His adoptive parents had raised him from a baby, and later had Elm. Kian and Elm were apparently as close as blood brothers, which made them real brothers.
Shiloh wasn’t jealous. In many ways, having Elm around meant keeping Kian off his back.
But that didn’t man he considered the guy family of his own.
Kian’s brother was Kian’s, and therefore, Kian’s responsibility.
“Exactly, he’s a beta. He won’t be able to tell who to avoid and who to trust,” Sloane said, only for Shiloh to roll his eyes.
“Don’t you think you’re being a bit dramatic? Elm has managed to survive just fine all these years. He can tell the difference well enough, even if he can’t sense an alpha or an omega the same way we can.”
Most of the time, it was fairly obvious anyway.
Alphas tended to be bigger and more arrogant.
Omegas could be tall and fit, but tended to be more on the lithe side in comparison.
Prettier. Not necessarily less masculine, just less traditionally handsome on its own, and more a mix of handsome and beautiful.
Like Shiloh.
Stick a mirror on the wall and ask it who the fairest of them all was, and it would be him, no doubt.
“I just don’t understand why now,” Sloane explained. “Things have been relatively quiet since we relocated to this planet. Aside from the attack on you, there haven’t been any issues.”
“Right…about that.” He cleared his throat and straightened when her look turned accusatory.
“Tell me you didn’t.” She knew him so well. Better than Diogenes. Better than anyone.
“Okay, I won’t confess then.”
“Brother.”
“What? I needed a good enough excuse to spread word about the baby.”
“There was no baby.”
“Exactly.”
“Good Light.” She pinched her brow. “So your big plan was to stage an attack and blame it on our biggest rival?”
The White Frost, ruled by the Dominus Leviathan Morningstar, was still fully situated on Synastry. While they were still technically a threat to the branches of the Eumia who had remained, there was no reason for them to come all the way here just to stir the pot.
“We’ve only recently gained relative stability,” Shiloh told her. “Aside from sending a small team to retaliate, there was little fear Kian would do something explosive and risk starting an all-out war between us and the White Frost. It was the safest bet. Besides, I never said it was them.”
“No, but you laid the groundwork to ensure they’d be the suspected culprits.” She seemed incredibly annoyed with him. “When are you going to stop all of this? Huh?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Is he really worth it? Tell me that, at least. Your plans never go right, and the risks you’re willing to take are always too high. What if next time you aren’t lucky enough to get away with only a broken rib? What if you find yourself back in a breeding den, forced—”
“Stop.” Shiloh wasn’t as bothered by it as most people would be—as he probably should be—but he’d been raised with an understanding of the world that fell in line with all the monstrous things that were done at places like forced breeding dens.
It was an insult that he’d ended up in one, but he wasn’t ashamed or traumatized by what’d been done to him.
How he and the Leviathan now knew each other…intimately.
That had not been a part of his plan. His useless fake boyfriend, Lane, was meant to hire thugs to jump Shiloh and then go to Sarang for help. Instead, Shiloh had dropped his guard, thinking the men surrounding him were Lane’s idiots, and had gotten knocked out and kidnapped in the process.
When he’d woken next, he was already naked and locked in an empty concrete room, the throes of a heavy heat twisting his body. He’d felt feverish and completely out of it, unable to make out the features of the alpha who’d been tossed into the room with him.
The sex had been primal, completely animalistic and raw. Neither of them had spoken. The alpha had simply attacked him, held him down, and fucked him until he was sobbing and bleeding and still begging for another knot thanks to the induced heat.
The side effects had been swift too. He’d felt hung over and dizzy for days. He only vaguely recalled the alpha being rescued, and how pathetic he’d been then, reaching out to him, as though he thought for even a second he’d be saved as well.
He hadn’t known it was the Leviathan at the time, and in the alpha’s defense, Shiloh was fairly certain he’d tried.
He had a blurry memory of the Leviathan fighting against three of his people, trying to get to Shiloh.
Maybe they would have taken him after all, but the delay had given their captors enough time to respond, and they’d arrived before the White Frost men could come to a decision, thus leaving Shiloh behind in that hellhole alone.
Though, not for long.
Sarang had saved him shortly after, and Shiloh had foolishly believed what he’d endured might be worth it since the “plan” had ended in his alpha coming for him. But Sarang had only doted on him for a few weeks before everything became about the damn baby.