ries, those of protest, but that wasn’t what kept me pinned to the spot. Tristan moved closer, wrapping his arms around me, holding me tight, even as his own fingers dug into my flesh.
We’d been schooled in kink, had to be if we wanted to play at Apothecary, but any omega worth their salt was taught the intricacies of establishing and negotiating consent. I wanted this to stop, for someone to rush in and rescue my brother and start performing deep and satisfying aftercare, stat.
I wanted.
But this wasn’t about me and my predilections, it was about Theo’s, so I focussed on that.
“Is this what Theo agreed to in his contract?” I asked, trying to drag my eyes away from where someone had scrawled ‘omega slut’ all down my brother’s back. I knew he had…preoccupations, but this, this was hard to take. He might pretend to be a good little omega for the alphas he decided to play with, but he knew fucking nothing about the reality.
“He didn’t put any provisos on his contract,” Marcus replied.
“What? And you let him?” I saw everything on the screen in a brand-new light, and it felt like someone dropped a bucket of ice-cold water over my entire body. “Get him out. Get him out now!”
“On it,” Brendan said, jumping on his phone, and the view on the security footage changed. Men moved from the doorway of the play area, pushing past those in the corridors, which alerted me to the problem Marcus wanted to raise.
He watched me closely, the owner of Apothecary, as I followed the men right up until they reached my brother’s playroom. There, several men deep, were many of the alphas I was supposed to be meeting tonight. The Schubert twins, their father owned one of the largest shipping companies in the state. Henry Astley, the senator’s son. Several scions of the prominent banking families. Boys I went to school with, and so did Theo, at the achingly expensive private school Dad paid for. I scanned their blurry faces, saw the masks of vicious lust, and pushed back into Tris’ arms.
“You gonna let us in?” Astley said to Marcus’ men with a slur. “I hear there’s a little slut in there that needs servicing. No limits. My friends and I are here to see to that.”
“You need to move away from the door, sir,” one of the staff members said in a low flat voice many authority figures use. It allowed for no argument, yet that was what it got.
“And who do you think you are, telling us what to do?”
Fuck. Every single one of these overbred fucks was an alpha. I knew because their fathers seemed to revel in that fact, their sons’ alpha-ness somehow a reflection of their own.
Something that ate at my own father.
Marcus hissed something under his breath, walking over to a console on his desk and pressing a button. His voice echoed through the speakers set into the ceiling of the corridor.
“They are my staff and are doing as I instructed them. Everyone congregating around the room will need to move on by the time I count to five, or I will send my entire security team into the area, as set out in the terms and conditions of entry into the playrooms of Apothecary.”
“Stay where you are, you snotty little fucks. I’d love to crack some heads,” Rhys rumbled, rubbing his hands together before pushing away from the desk. “I’m heading down to security HQ to give the team a heads up.”
“Of course, my love.”
My eyes jerked sideways at the softening of Marcus’ usual crisp tone, his eyes flaring hot as Rhys strode towards him and stopped to press their lips together for just a second. There was so much repressed heat there, I immediately looked away.
“Katherine, I’m Cyn…”
Marcus’ omega mate moved closer to me tentatively, angling her head down so she could meet my eyes. She was tall for an omega.
“Kit, please,” I replied.
“Kit, are you OK?” Her eyes flicked to the screen and back again. “You must be…”
She stopped when Tristan’s arms tightened around me, his hands stroking through my hair.
“Resigned,” I said, labelling my feelings, and wouldn’t my therapist be pleased? I smiled tightly, hoping to stem the flood of empathy in her eyes. I just couldn’t bear that on top of everything, especially not from a stranger. “Marcus and I have had similar conversations before.” I watched half the eligible alphas of our social set get driven away from my brother’s door by increasing numbers of Marcus’ team. “How did this happen?”
“Anyone can choose to leave off conditions on their contracts. The basic in-house one usually stops serious harm. I’m not sure how good a time your brother was having, and perhaps that was the point.” Marcus’ lips thinned down. “None of my staff would have tipped those alphas off to what was going down, and all of those he chose to play with have their phones and other devices removed before going in.”
The view changed to show the security guards moving in and unbuckling Theo, restoring him to himself, while Rhys swept in with a robe and wrapped it around my brother. When he was dressed, the big man carried Theo from the room, through a staff only door, and into what I assumed was a room set up for aftercare.
“He let people know,” I said, little more than a whisper. “He set himself up. He was going to out himself to everyone we know.” My gaze locked with Marcus, Greyson self-preservation rushing to the fore. “We need the recordings, every piece of evidence eradicated, and the participants need to be paid off. How trustworthy are your staff?”
“No one gets near the playrooms without having been in my employ for many years. I know each one of them personally, having completed their quarterly evaluations and read through their psych evals. My shit is locked down tight.”
“Marcus, it’s a fair question,” Cyn said before turning back to me. “You’re concerned about this getting out, about it affecting your family’s reputation.”