The sedan's engine cuts. For a long moment, nothing happens.
Then the driver's door opens.
A man steps out. Big—really big, the kind of bulk that comes from steroids or prison or both. Shaved head. Dark clothes. He doesn't move toward me, just stands there, one hand resting on the roof of his car, watching.
Something about this feels wrong.
I ignore the feeling. Get out of my car.
The night air hits me like a slap—cold, damp, carrying the smell of salt water and rotting garbage. My scent must be pouring off me, that honey-vanilla-smoke that's been driving everyone crazy. If this guy is an alpha, he'll smell it. Everyone smells it.
"You the one looking for suppressants?"
His voice is flat. Bored. Like this is routine for him.
"Yeah." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "You said three hundred. I've got two-eighty. That's all I have."
He doesn't respond. Just tilts his head slightly, like he's listening to something I can't hear.
That's when I notice the earpiece.
Small. Nearly invisible against the shadow of his jaw. But it's there—a tiny curl of plastic tucked into his ear canal.
Who wears an earpiece to sell black market suppressants?
"That's fine," he says after a pause. "Two-eighty works."
Wait. He should be negotiating. Complaining. Demanding I make up the difference somehow. That's what dealers do—I've seen enough movies, read enough news articles. They don't just shrug and accept twenty dollars less.
Unless the money isn't the point.
"Cool." I take a step forward, then stop. "Do you have the pills on you, or...?"
"In the car." He jerks his chin toward the sedan. "Come take a look. Make sure it's what you need."
Every instinct I have screams at me to get back in my car and drive away. This is wrong. This is so obviously wrong that even my heat-addled brain can see it.
But what's my alternative? Go back to the Graves house? Face Atlas and Zero and Bane across the breakfast table,knowing what I said, what I begged for, how pathetic and desperate I was?
Not tonight.
The memory hits like a fist to the gut. Atlas's voice. Calm. Final. Rejecting me even when I was spread open and begging for it.
I can't go back there.
I can't.
I walk toward the sedan.
The man watches me approach. His expression doesn't change, but something in his posture shifts—a subtle tension, like a predator preparing to strike. I'm three feet away when the back door of the sedan opens.
A second man steps out.
Smaller than the first, but there's something about him that's worse. Something in the way he looks at me—not like a customer, not even like prey. Like merchandise. Like an object being appraised.
"Well." He smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes. "The pictures don't do you justice."
Pictures?
