Chapter 7 In which I get turned on by an elevator

I’m in a shitty mood.

It’s not normal.

Typically, I get giddy at the thought of spilling blood. Of making someone who’s hurt my pack, my family, hurt too. But tonight, I can’t seem to get myself to enjoy it.

“P-please,” Duane stutters out, sweat beading his pale brow and blood dotting his mouth and chin from his broken nose. “Please, I didn’t mean anything by it. I just needed the cash.”

I frown and tsk, my eyes sliding to the clock on the wall. It’s there more for their benefit than mine. I like them to know just how quickly I break them. But tonight it’s taking too fucking long. I’m wondering if my sexy little beta with the bright red lips is still at The Market. If she’s waiting for me or if she’s found someone else to spend the night with.

The thought of her with someone else makes my stomach twist almost painfully and my mouth twists in response. It must be terrifying because Duane whimpers and starts pulling at his bound hands, like he’s going to escape me.

Newsflash, fuckface, no one escapes me. Not even pretty little betas. If I can’t find her tonight, I’ll find her tomorrow. Go back to the cafe and look through all the credit card receipts from yesterday. Track down every person until I find her. Ethan can help with his badass tech wizardry. If he does, maybe I’ll let him play with her, too. We can punish her for fucking someone else tonight when she should have waited for me.

Yeah, I nod resolutely to myself. That’s what I’ll do.

With that settled in my mind, I can focus more fully on the situation at hand, sink into finding out just how much Duane spilled to our enemies. We don’t have a lot anymore, not now that Maddox is the head of the Falcone family. When he took over from his father—and by ‘took over’ I mean slaughter him in front of most of the organization—he cleaned house and made nice with a lot of the assholes who had been after the Falcone family for years.

It’s all part of what he’s hoping to become, completely legit. No more criminal enterprises, just very wealthy with lots of businesses. We’re already well on our way, seeing as how we own a third of the city. The Werth pack owns another third. The last third? Well, that’s separated into little chunks for everyone else.

I’d been worried at first, because I’d thought going legit would mean less of this. Less blood and pain and the calm that comes from it. Maddox assured me that even if our businesses are all legitimate, we’ll still have plenty of blood to spill.

I’m pretty sure even if all our enemies dry up and turn to dust, he’ll still find someone for me to cut, to bleed.

Like Duane here.

Sure, he fucked with us, but there are plenty of trustworthy lackeys who could have done this. But Maddox gave him to me to deal with. Like a gift.

Normally, it would be a gift.

But today, I just want this over with.

“Duane,” I tsk, shaking my head and picking up a knife, a little thing, not big enough to kill with one strike, unless I dig it deep into his neck. “Are you familiar with the concept of death by a thousand cuts?”

There’s a flash of hope in his eyes as he eyes the little knife. He thinks he might survive this. He won’t, even if he doesn’t die by the time I get to the thousandth cut on his skin. We can’t have rats scurrying around, nibbling on our cheese.

He licks his meaty lips and nods. “I am.”

“Good. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going to answer it. Everything you refuse, I’m going to cut you twenty-five times. Every time I have to repeat a question, I will cut you twenty-five times. Any time you give me an answer I don’t like? You guessed it, twenty-five cuts. And you’re going to count them, every single slice. If you lose count, we start all over again.” I lean closer, until his head tips back to keep me in his sights, until I can smell his rancid fear tinged scent, even through the scent blockers I pump into this room. “Do I make myself clear, Duane?”

He swallows thickly and nods. A little jerk of his head. “Yes.”

I beam at him and slap his cheek lightly. He screams in response, a quick yip of fear that makes my dick swell. Fuck. I love this so fucking much.

“Good. Because I gotta be honest, Duane. You being a fuck up tonight is keeping me from the other half of my soul. So I got a lot of things to work through with you. It’ll be better if you just tell me what I want to know.” I push away from him, stretching my arms over my head languidly, releasing the muscles in my back. As my hand comes down, I slice into his forearm. So quick I don’t think he realizes he’s been cut. It takes a beat for the pain to register and then he jerks, eyes wide.

“Why’d you do that? You haven’t even asked me a question!”

I shrug. “I told you I have some things to work through.” He deserves it and more from keeping me from my pretty little beta. I flip the knife in my hand, grinning. “Now then, shall we get started?”

The moment I step into the elevator that leads to the pack penthouse, my dick gets hard. Now, my dick gets hard for a lot of things. Warm blood, grunts of pain, a wet pussy. But it’s never gotten hard from an elevator.

I tilt my head back and take a deep inhale, pinpointing the reason for my dick’s sudden insistent throbbing. My mouth waters when I catch the scent a few hours old, but delicious all the same. Cherry pie and vanilla ice cream. Mine.

My alpha rumbles his pleasure. I’m inclined to agree. This scent, whoever it belongs to, is definitely a match. A fucking scent match in our elevator.

I hum a little tune as I hit the button for the penthouse, then let the scanner do its thing. Only it doesn’t work right, because I have too much blood on my palm. Cursing, I rub it on my jeans and then try again.

This time it accepts the scan, and the elevator rises.

I go back to humming. It’s the song that was playing in the cafe this morning when I saw the pretty beta and gave her the card to get into The Market. I’ve had it stuck in my head all fucking day, and that’s okay, because it reminds me of her silvery gray eyes and red painted lips. I wanted her then, and I want her now. But that was before I caught a whiff of my scent match— our scent match.

Maybe I can have both?

I frown as the doors open. Silence greets me, which isn’t uncommon after I’ve been working, but I’d thought for sure if they’d found our scent match, they would be up fucking the shit out of our omega. Why wouldn’t they?

It’s what I’m going to do as soon as I see them.

Maybe they already got on with the fucking and now they’re all cuddled up in the nest?

Shit.

I’ve lingered too long wrapped up in my thoughts and the elevator doors are sliding shut. I jerk forward, hissing at the doors as they try to close on me, just barely avoiding the metal. Logically, I know the elevator won’t eat me, but I’m rarely logical.

I open my pack bonds and tug gently, feeling all of them upstairs, together in the main bedroom that is Maddox’s, but more often than not, we all share. What can I say? We all like a puppy pile.

But as I move toward the stairs, the scent of cherry pie fades. I pause in the center of the living room, not understanding why our omega’s scent wouldn’t follow the same path as my packs.

But it definitely doesn’t.

Frowning, I turn on my heel and follow the faint whiff of my scent match to the downstairs hallway. Just about as far as you can get from the room where my pack is cuddled up together.

Maybe this isn’t a scent match. Maybe they know something I don’t. But I even as I have the thought, I reject it. There’s no denying the alpha instincts. When you know, you know. And I know that whoever bears this mouthwatering scent is my fucking match.

I follow the trail to the third door on the left. An interior room we thought about using for storage, but then put a bed in it instead. Frowning—what the hell were they thinking of putting her in here when we have much nicer rooms upstairs? Hell, she could sleep in my room—I reach for the handle and silently push inside.

There’s no light.

It’s pitch black in the room.

No windows mean no ambient glow from the city.

I pause on the other side of the door, taking a deep inhale of the scent that somehow makes my alpha instincts spike and calms me down all at once. Mine. Mine. Mine.

It’s a steady thrum in my heart as I move closer to the bed, tugging my phone out of my pocket and turning on the flashlight to see the omega that is ours. Mine.

I’m careful to keep from shining it right at the bed, instead pointing it up at the ceiling, to let it bounce around the room, making it glow gently.

I look at the bed.

And my heart fucking stops.

In a good way.

The best way.

Because there, tangled up in sheets owned by my pack, on a bed in my pack’s home, is the girl from the cafe. The beta I gave a VIP pass to.

Only now she definitely doesn’t smell like a beta. Cherry pie and vanilla ice cream hang heavy in the air, intermingled with the brandied pear scent of Luca and Ethan’s much gentler scent of spring rain, making my dick throb.

She’s on her back, light brown hair in a thick braid draped over her shoulder. One arm is bent and stretched over her head on the pillow, making her tits press up, while the other hand rests on her bare stomach. She’s wearing the tiniest little scrap of black fabric over her chest, and I can’t see if she’s wearing anything on her bottom half, because it’s covered by a blanket.

Her lips are no longer red, but pink and parted, soft breaths puffing through them.

She looks like an angel. Like the most delicious thing I’ll ever eat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely going to be eating this little… omega.

My lips curl into a broad smile. Our omega. What a delightful thought.

Something happens to me, as I’m standing there. Something I honestly never thought would happen, but now I can see is inevitable. My universe tilts, shifts on its axis, and then settles with her as the center.

Perfect. Fucking perfect.

She’s it.

My entire reason for being.

If Maddox was here and he could read my mind, he’d warn me away from my obsessive thoughts. He’d tell me to take a step back, breathe and think before I do something stupid like climb onto this bed and fuck and bite and claim this little slice of cherry pie heaven.

But then… It looks like someone already beat me to it.

My lip pulls back in a snarl at the fresh bite mark on her neck.

I swear to fuck if that bite isn’t from one of my pack mates I’m going to hunt down whoever pierced my omega’s skin with their teeth and rip their spleen from their body with my bare hands.

No… No. She smells like Luca and Ethan.

One of them bit her. Probably Luca, since I’m pretty sure his alpha instincts would have been impossible to ignore while he was fucking her.

Though usually he has more control than this.

Biting an omega the first time you fuck her sounds like something I would do, if I’m honest. Not any of my other members of my pack.

Stupid fucking Duane, keeping me from meeting my cherrybomb at the club. If I had been there, it would be my bite mark on her pretty pale neck. Not Luca’s.

My teeth ache and my mouth waters at the thought.

Well, it’s easy enough to remedy this, isn’t it?

I’ll just have to bite her now.