"Viktor's earned it."
The next wave hits and the conversation ends the way all our conversations end: with his hands on me and his mouth on mine and the sharp, bright anger that lives in the space between us catching fire.
11. Theo
My heat breaks on the fifth morning. I know it before I open my eyes. The pressure in my belly has gone. My skin doesn't burn.
I'm lying on my side in Dom's bed, facing the window. Gray light through glass. The sheets are damp under me, salt and musk and the sweet-sharp residue of slick that has soaked through to the mattress. The room smells like sex.
I sit up. My body aches in ways I don't want to think about. My inner thighs are raw. My hips are bruised where his hands were, the tender places where bone sits close under skin, and when I shift my weight the soreness sends a deep, slow throb up through my pelvis.
There's a bite mark on my hip, the skin raised and tight where his teeth broke the surface.
I don't remember getting it, which means it happened during one of the later rounds when the heat had burned through whatever remained of my self-control and I was justhis.
I don't want to think about that word, because I know myself well enough to know that Iwantto be his. There’s something deep and primitive inside me that knows I already am.
It’s just that Ican’tbe. Dominic Novikov is the most dangerous alpha I have ever met. I know what dangerous alphas do. Even if I survived him, what kind of life would it be? I don’t want to spend my life terrified and afraid.
I don’t want to have children who had to grow up the way I did, waiting for the sound of a key in the lock and feeling their body flood with fear whenever they hear it.
At least my father was nobody important. Here, I am surrounded by the some of the most terrifying alphas in the city, with the one who should be mine the worst of them all. Coming back here was the worst mistake of my life. I won’t make it again.
Assuming I ever manage to get out of here at all.
He's asleep behind me. I can hear the slow, even rhythm of his breathing and feel the heat of him radiating across the gap between us.
I stand up. The air hits my bare skin and I'm suddenly aware of every point of damage: the ache between my legs, the tenderness at my wrists where he held them, the bruise on my hip that twinges when I straighten. My body is a map of everything that happened in this bed.
The bathroom tiles are cold under my feet. I close the door and turn on the shower. The water is hot and it hurts against my raw, oversensitive skin. I stand under it until the steam fills my lungs and drowns out the scent of him that's baked into my skin, my hair, the inside of my nostrils.
My mind is slowly coming back online. It's been offline for days and the relief of having it back is so acute it makes my chest tight. I can think again.
I run the numbers while the water hits my shoulders.
Five days in heat with my prime match. No condom. His come inside me more times than I can count. I know the odds of pregnancy but I can't think about that now because if I do, I'll drown.
So, how the hell do I get myself out of this mess? I only have one lever that I can pull and that is my knowledge of what is happening on the gambling floors below.
And that’s not simple.
There’s a reason that Novikov hasn’t been able to pinpoint the ring. It’s not just three or four people counting cards or a couple of dealers false shuffling. I’m not surprised that they haven’t been able to find it.
It took me some time and I’m still not completely sure of who is guilty and who isn’t.
Novikov has two pit bosses who alternate their shifts. Both of them are in on it. Then there are the four dealers, a couple of security men, a woman working the cage with the chips. I am also certain there are a handful of useful idiots that the pit bosses are using to muddy the water.
Then we have a handful of regular players and finally, the expendables: the one night players who show up looking nervous, cash out and never come back.
The network is bigger than it looks.
And then there's the part that took me longest to see. They've seeded false wins across other tables.
I nearly flagged a dealer I'm now sure is clean and is being set up to take a fall. They let innocent players win on purpose, at times and amounts that mimic the pattern of the real operation. If someone starts looking at the data, those tables light up too. It muddies the picture. It's designed to stop people like me from isolating the guilty from the innocent.
The whole thing is too sophisticated and too expensive for what it's earning. The effort doesn't match the net. Whatever this is, it's not just about cheating the house.
Even so, I've watched enough from the surveillance feeds to know the losses are significant and getting worse. I don't need to understand the gang’s motivations to understand that.
