“Not even curious?”
He glanced at me, then back at the road. “Should I be?”
“Maybe not you. Blights in your world are hidden behind thick, dark curtains.”
“What’s that mean?” He grabbed another donut hole as if the conversation was nothing more than small talk.
I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts in much order to explain it. “I’ll bet when you were little if you wanted more icing on your cake you got the whole bowl.”
Silence.
Finally, he spoke. “Have another donut hole.”
They really were great. I popped one into my mouth, then sipped more of my drink. It might be shallow of me to state, but the taste and smell were strangely comforting.
We drove a long way. I kept checking the digital time readout on his dash. The minutes were ticking down.
Finally, we pulled into the long, single lane road that led to the ranch. More countryside, only this area was far less lush and beautiful than where Malin lived.
I directed him to pull up to the front of the largest building. It was four minutes to eight. I tried to open the door but it was locked.
Malin pressed a button and the wing opened. I set my drink in the now empty donut box and swung my legs out. Before I stood, Malin spoke.
“So, you’re saying I get all the icing and you’re left with the crumbs?”
I turned to look at him but he wasn’t focused on me. Instead, he was looking all around at the complex. We’d come through a gate attached to a tall chain link fence topped with razor wire. The area around the main building was okay as far as landscaping, done to appeal to visiting alphas. But beyond that, toward the outbuildings, was old yellow grass filled with burs and nettles to deter runaways.
It was most definitely a prison.
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I got out and headed for the front without looking back. The doors were already opening, I saw Klonis just inside, arms folded across his chest, eyebrows narrowed.
I walked in and said to him, “Duty performed.”
“We’ll see. That alpha has yet to leave a review.”
“Isn’t all that matters is that he paid?”
“Feedback is good for business and if you fucked anything up, you little shit, you’ll pay.”
Couldn’t anyone see? I’d already paid. And was still paying. With my life.
9
Malin
Money and alpha status didn’t keep the crumbs off my plate. But that little omega lived very differently from me. He had no consolation. At least I had freedom and nice things. A part of me wanted to explain that to him. Show it to him. Maybe there could still be some consolation for him if I took him on. Like a mentor.
A bitter and dark feeling swept over me as I watched Cassius walk through the front of Brimstone. This emotion wasn’t like me. I didn’t form attachments. I had had best friends, but not in what I would call an attached manner. If they pissed with me, I could walk away and forget them forever. It wasn’t difficult.
My therapist called it my armor. It was different from Malinekan’s armor. It was internal, like endless walls too high to climb.
But I’d been educated. I called it sociopathy and accepted it.
My therapist argued the point. “Sociopaths don’t usually have hoards. Sociopaths’ inner beasts never speak to them andwhen they shift they aren’t out for long enough to roam. The conceit of the human won’t allow it.”
But I had other traits that had me still questioning. I was a loner. I didn’t want to work. I did what I could to distract myself from my feelings.
“There you go, then,” he had said the last time we spoke. “You just admitted to feelings. Sociopaths don’t have them… or at least not often. And what feelings they do have they want to hang onto with tight fists because it’s so rare.”
