“A-Alpha, please just—”
His hands clamped around my throat, thumbs digging into my windpipe. Nothing like the collaring of an icy vampire caress—this was a throttling, strangulation, the kidnapping of my breath and my voice. Spots danced across my eyes. My pulse drummed between my ears. I tried to suck down air—and ithurt.
“Scream for me,” Torvald urged. He then dropped right in my face, his all red and blotchy and furious. “Scream!” I flinched at his alpha bark, then died just a little faster when he laughed at my feeble attempt to comply. “Scream as no one listens because no one gives a shit about Mistletoe omegas.”
He bore down harder, something crunching in my throat. Numbness washed over me, the edges of my vision tunneling to darkness.
“Mistletoe omegas don’texist,” the alpha sneered, spitting at my face and into my open mouth while I gasped for nothing. “I know how the game works.” Torvald pressed close again, grinding his erection against the swell of my rib cage. “I could kill you and knot your corpse, and someone’ll just sweep it under the rug—Grrrck!”
One second he was there, crushing me, killing me, and the next he was gone. My whole body inflated again, and I sucked down a ragged gasp as Torvald flew across the room and slammed so hard into the wall that the stone buckled. Debris chased him when he crashed to the ground, black dust and pebbles sprinkling the marble. As the shadows cleared, I slowly looked up and found him again.
My savior.
My tormentor.
My vampire.
Ambrose.
He loomed over me, still as a statue, sculpted and smooth as all this imported marble, his dress shirt unbuttoned to the third pearl and his dirty-blond hair ruffled. Fangs bared, it was hisragethat I was most taken with. Not his beauty. Not the way his presence had relief flooding my system.
Hisfury.
Huge hands in fists, he glared down at a meekly groaning Torvald, heaving, fuming, his entire being like a blue flame—hottest of all fire, unbearable, brutal, lethal.
As desperate as I was for air, it was a struggle to actually get any down. Gasping, I pushed up on my elbows and tried to fill my lungs, blanketed in a cold sweat, shaky and hurting but very much alive.
With a sneer, Ambrose turned his back on Torvald’s crumpled body to crouch beside me. Tender fingers brushed my throat, and he swept my hair aside over each shoulder with atsk, jaw clenched as he caught the next wave of tears and brushed them away. When he pulled away, however, I chased after him, grabbing his huge hand in both of mine and yanking it back to cup my face. Relief pounded harder at the gates, turning from a trickle to an avalanche, and maybe he let me, or maybe I forced him, but I pressed his icy hand harder to my cheek as I folded over and sobbed.
“Oh,darling,” Ambrose whispered. He cradled my face in that one hand, but then the other was on my back, arm wrapped around me, tucking me into his chest as he nuzzled my hair. “It’s all right. I’m here. He’ll never touch you again—no one will.”
Shivering, I did my best to stop the soundless wails, because they just shredded my throat, and slowly steered his hand down to my neck. Sore, probably visibly bruised already, tender beyond anything, I still wantedhishand there, his touch, his caress like the sweet sigh of winter. I used him like an ice pack, adrenaline drowning out the Why? Why?Why? of it all.
While calmer when I glanced at his expression, the fury of an unstoppable wildfire still howled in his eyes. Behind him, Torvald rolled over with a groan, his forehead split, his face bloody, his nose almost crushed flat. Ambrose peered back for a moment, fangs out again, and then put just enough space between us so he could tighten up my bathrobe, pulling the sides in and looping the squishy white belt around my waist.
Then, head bowed, he let out thissighthat said nothing and everything.
“Would you like me to kill him, Hollis?”
I blinked back at him, then pushed off his chest, scooting two legs’ length back to look at this mess objectively.
I mean, as objectively as I could, anyway. With Ambrose near, my skin chilled with memories of his tender touch, his obvious care, my insides started to settle. The fear dampened and the adrenaline nosedived, leaving me weak and exhausted and maybe more than a little broken. Some of the static faded, giving me just enough mental space to process what he had asked.
Would you like me to kill him, Hollis?
“S-stop… calling me…Hollis,” I choked out, my throat on fire, my voice dead and buried. I swallowed with a wince, in need of a honey tea and TLC only alphas could provide an omega—stat.
Ambrose grinned, his whole face lighting up like a yuletide tree—like I’d said exactly what he hoped I would. “No.” He arched an eyebrow, almost begging me to argue. “Never.” Then, this gorgeous vampire alpha stood and drifted closer, spearing his hand through the longer dirty-blond hair on the top of his head, smoothing it all out so it sat neat and styled and complementary to the shaved sides. He then towered over me so I had to crane all the way back to meet his ethereal blues. “Now, answer the question.”
He motioned toward Torvald with a dismissive thrust of his chin, and I made myself look at the asshole who had just tried to strangle me—who threatened to kill me and knot my corpse.
Who reminded me that what happened tonight with Ambrose and his bonds wasn’treal. That, at the end of the day, Mistletoe alphas who would use and abuse me until I paid my debt to Jackson Misery would never make me feel likethis. Two nights from now, I could be just like Tara, hobbling into the bathroom, needing to lean on someone while I bled and burned and ached all over, a piece of my psyche fractured beyond repair.
Mistletoe omegas don’t exist.
There it was.
That fucker said it in his own words:Ididn’t exist—the ethos of this club, out in the open. Alphas mattered. Omegas didn’t. Period.