He didn’t specify who, leaving it up to us to decide, so we unfolded ourselves from where we sat, forced to do the prosaic dance of finding our forgotten belongings. He smirked when two devices were handed over, sending himself a text from each, then shoving his phone back in his pocket and getting to his feet.
I fought the urge to take a step back as he towered over us, filling the space, the room, making everything way more intimate, which, considering he’d just given me his knot, was ridiculous. My eyes slid down and saw his hand shift, like he wanted to reach out and touch me, but he stopped himself.
“This place and all the places like it, you’re just trading one cage for another,” Len said, his voice deep and resonant. “Gimme a call if you want to go beyond that, omega pussy or not.”
And with that, he swung on out the door, shutting it with a definite click.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked as silence fell back over the room, but Tristan? He stared at the door like somehow, the answers could be found there.
Chapter 7
What goes up, must come down.
After Len had left, Tris and I showered, dressed, and went out to party. Usually, it took longer for us to work off an alpha’s effect on us, but what had happened was so intense, both of us were loose and drained. I loved these moments, as the two of us danced together on the dancefloor—not omegas, not alphas, just Tris and Kit.
Then Marcus interrupted it all.
“Apologies, Miss Greyson,” he said, waiting on the edge of the dancefloor until we came stumbling over. “We have a bit of a situation.”
Marcus was different to most alphas—no leering or posturing. His bearing, his suit, all made him look like he would be perfectly comfortable at one of Dad’s boardroom meetings. He wouldn’t be invited though, the fact he was born into the wrong family making that impossible, not that he ever let that stop him. Marcus was a force to be reckoned with, so if he was bringing me a problem, I needed to see to it immediately.
“What’s happened?” I asked, suddenly feeling colder, harder.
“If we could go into my office?”
We followed him upstairs, the raucous soundtrack of Apothecary muffled once we got inside. A huge man with sandy coloured hair leaned with his butt parked on the edge of Marcus’ desk, his impressive arms crossing his chest.
Rhys, one of Marcus’ mates.
He nodded to me, then pushed away from the desk and grabbed a remote from its surface.
“You remember my head of security?” Marcus asked.
“Your mate is what you meant to say,” another man said with a shake of his head. Brendan. Marcus was, in some ways, everything my brother wished to be but didn’t dare. Living outside the realms of polite society, he walked in and out of it as he pleased with his three alpha mates at his back.
“Kit, you look lovely as ever.”
Orion Ratcliffe, heir to the disgraced Ratcliffe name, stepped forward, taking my hand and brushing the barest of kisses across my knuckles.
“And the just as lovely Tristan.”
Orion thrust a hand out, one which Tris eyed suspiciously before giving it a firm if brief squeeze.
“What’s going on?” I asked, cutting through the niceties, especially when Cyn, their omega, stepped inside, her face pale.
“Your brother,” Marcus replied.
“What’s happened to Theo? What has he done?”
The guys all looked at each other, clearing their throats, prevaricating, until Cyn shook her head with a hiss, walked over, snatched the remote from Rhys, and turned the monitor on behind Marcus’ desk. The screen revealed the grainy footage of a security camera, but that didn’t soften the blow. It might not be in 4k resolution, but there he was, my brother, debased, defiled, ruined.
“You gonna take my knot, little omega bitch?” the man fucking his arse rumbled, my brother bound to a black leather pommel horse, his mouth forced into an artificial O by a metal device tied to his head.
OK, this was fairly standard BDSM fare, as long as he’d signed up for all of this. A riffle of paper told me that Brendan was handing Marcus Theo’s contract.
“You’ll take it, or I’ll split you in two forcing it in.”
Theo’s muffled groans, sharp, short, and desperate, had me stiffening, my muscles tightening, my heart rate escalating. It sounded like he was hurting, the stifled c