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We’d met at seventeen, two kids who liked knives a little too much. Twelve years later, tehre were more of us. Different masks. Same rules.

I could still smell her. Her scent lived in my lungs. Honey and cherry with every breath. And I had to sit next to the man who’d put that fear in her.

Rhett sniffed, frowned, and squinted at me like he was two brain cells from figuring out who I was.

Then he took another drink and forgot.

“She’s been such a fucking tease,” he groaned as he grabbed his crotch. Hollis nodded along like any bartender would, but his eyes cut to me.

“What would you do,” Rhett slurred, turning to me, “if a bitch who spread her legs for you started avoiding you?”

“I’d think that meant she wasn’t interested.” My eye twitched as I swirled my drink around in my glass.

“You don’t know her. She’s always playing hard to get,” he chuckled.

Hollis set down the glass he was drying. Slowly.

“You’ve fucked her?” I asked.

“Hell yeah. Movie night.” He grinned. “She didn’t even make it through the opening credits. She was moaning like a bitch in heat.”

He’d known what she was. And he’d used it.

Everyone in Noelle knew the rule, even the Betas. You didn’t touch an Omega who wasn’t yours. If you did, the law was the least of your problems. The cops would take a report. A judge might give you a few years.

But her mate would kill you.

Rhett had forgotten the most important thing.

She had an Alpha.

I gripped my glass until it creaked. My knife was in my side pocket, and it was calling to me.

Hollis leaned in to wipe the counter in front of me. “Not in here, K,” he murmured.

I turned and leaned into his space. “How did you get into her pants?” I asked. The fucker was oblivious to the danger he was in. He just chuckled like an idiot.

“Omegas are easy. Slip a heat inducer in their drink and they comply. I always get what I’m owed,” he scoffed.

“And what were you owed?” I asked.

“Pussy. I held her down and fucked her the way I wanted. She was a greedy whore though. Wouldn’t come. My knotless cock wasn’t enough for her. Ever since, she’s been teasing me, flaunting that ass of hers for weeks,” he groaned.

“Did she tell you to stop?” I asked, dead quiet.

Hollis knew Rhett’s time had run out. He’d stopped pretending to work, both hands flat on the bar, watching me the way you’d watch a lit fuse. We were both sick fucks. But even monsters had rules, and ours were simple. You didn’t touch an Omega who didn’t want it. If you did, the Masked Alphas made sure you disappeared.

Noelle had a name for us, whispered over drinks like a ghost story. The Masked Alphas.

Most people didn’t think we were real.

“She pretended. Lying to herself about what she wanted. Her sweet cunt clenched my cock greedily. She wanted it and I gave it to her, but who would have thought she was a virgin?” He roared with laughter.

Stop. Please. Stop.

My glass broke.

A growl tore out of me before I could stop it, low and lethal. The couple beside us scrambled off their stools. Rhett blinked at me, too drunk to understand what he’d just heard.