Psycho Alphas: Part Two, page 12
part #2 of An Unhinged Reverse Harem Duet Series
“I can handle him.” Had done for years.
Knox leaned close so his words were just between us. “Well, fact is, it’s my night, unless you intended to skip me?”
Uh.
Damn.
“No.”
I shivered as his hand found my neck, keeping me in place as he leaned closer, his breath brushing my ear like a feather. “I won’t tolerate being left behind, Doll.”
“You’re right. It’s your night.”
That was fine.
Rogue last night, Knox tonight, and that meant tomorrow, when I snuck in here, he didn’t have any ground to stand on.
I’d get my night with Bunny, too.
Plus…
I bit my lip, daring a glance at Ace as Knox gave my ear a nip.
He’d moved, now seated on the edge of the bed, feet on the ground as he watched us with narrowed eyes. He was silent in the bond, but there was a tremor in there somewhere, I could swear it…
I’d never managed to make Ace jealous before. I was jealous all the time. But him…? My god Alpha, getting anxious about me?
I shivered, my gaze finally ripped from Ace as Knox’s teeth nipped my neck.
“Did you get him takeout?” I asked, suddenly curious.
That didn’t sound like Knox.
“No,” Knox said. “But at least he hasn’t figured out how to get the collar and muzzle off,” he said as he drew back. The words seemed to be for Ace, but he didn’t look away from me.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Ace said, quiet enough that I barely heard it as he forced himself back onto the bed, grabbing the laptop. He tapped the muzzle absently, the curve of a smile on his face. “You’ll be taking this off by the end of the week.”
Knox snorted like that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.
“I think I’ll even get to see you putting it on—or maybe Rogue will have to pin you down.”
A faint snarl rolled up Knox’s throat at those words.
I… “Uh…” The word slipped out before I could stop it, and Knox’s fury cut off, his gaze darted to me.
“What?” he asked.
“All I’m saying is Rogue’s had a turn. And Ace…”
“You want me in the muzzle?”
“Well…” I wrung Bunny out. “Would be pretty…” I poked him in the cheek, grinning. “That’s all I’m saying.”
When Knox took my hand and led me away, I thought I truly did feel Ace in the bond—a building pressure in the air before a storm.
Definitely jealous.
Win-win, after all.
NINETEEN
KNOX
“We’re having a meeting. Get up.”
I sat down on the end of the bed Ace was passed out in. I was in the spare room he’d claimed, and it was just down the hallway from Thistle’s nest.
It was late afternoon the next day, and he hadn’t woken yet.
I was getting impatient, especially when Thistle refused to go over any plans until he was present. I felt a slight bit of satisfaction watching him drag himself upright, bleary-eyed, a low growl rumbling in his chest as he shoved his hair from his face.
“Fuck off.”
Oh, he was spoiled.
“This is my house.”
It took him a second to steady himself as he focused on me. I could see why Rogue had knocked him out during Thistle’s heat. I think he was trying to make sure he didn’t drop dead—which wasn’t my preferred outcome.
Thistle, unfortunately, needed him around.
I’d managed to reset the security he’d broken into and locked his device out—it was an old laptop that he’d stolen from my office. He’d located the camera, too, and ripped it out. Thistle had been curled up next to me in bed, watching with fascination as I’d activated a second camera in his room. Each bedroom had a few. I was chronically paranoid. Came from being bought by the Ring and spending years trying to take them down.
She’d watched Ace with me for a while.
His injuries had been clear as he’d stepped back out into the bedroom after a shower, with nothing but a towel around his waist. He hadn’t complained in any interaction I’d had with him, or given any sign of discomfort, but even with the shitty camera quality, I could see the peeling skin of late-stage sunburn and marks along his back like he’d been scratched by a monster.
He’d pulled on a bathrobe, grabbed another snack, and poked about the room, opening a few drawers. Then he’d swayed where he stood, enough to have to grab the bookcase. He seemed to call it a night at that point, collapsing into the bed and passing out.
Now before me in the flesh, rubbing sleep from his eyes, Ace fixed me with a glare I could only describe as bratty. “I need a phone.”
Oh.
I was so right in how similar they were. The difference was, Thistle was cute enough to get away with it.
“How about you earn it?” I asked with a fake smile. “Cook dinner tonight.”
He sneered. “You are very cocky for a random Alpha interested in my mate.”
“Let me be clear again. Thistle is mine. You’re alive because you belong to her. That’s it.”
“Yet, I’m awake to save you so you can tag along with my pack.”
I grinned. “It’s very cute that you think the pack belongs to you.”
“I’m pack lead. You have no stake.”
I chuckled before I could stop myself. “How’s that working out for you?”
Ace cocked his head, looking at me more intently for a moment. Before he could open his mouth to reply—or ask the question—the door was ripped open.
“Bunny!”
Thistle shot across the room and flung her arms around his waist before either of us could stop her.
“I didn’t let them talk about revenge until you were up,” she said.
“It is, after all, the only reason you’re here,” I added.
Ace let out a breath and lay back on the bed. “Phone.”
“You’ve already got way more than you deserve, you filthy rat.” If he wasn’t going to help, she had no reason not to send him back to hell.
I scooped my arm around her waist and picked her up. She tried to crawl over my shoulder back to him, but I gave her ass a slap, then pressed the button I’d affixed to my necklace.
There was a sharp crackle, and Ace’s growl of pain followed me like a melody out of the room.
“Daddy!” Thistle let out a squeak of shock as she propped herself up over my shoulder by grabbing my hair. “What did you do…?”
“He’ll come,” I said, turning back just in time to see Ace recover from the jolt from the electric collar, “or he’ll die from a heart arrhythmia.”
We sat down in the lounge area of the ballroom.
Ace had slunk in like the weasel he was, and had taken a seat on the far end of the couch. I noticed Thistle pick a spot right beside him, leaving just enough space so as not to touch, as if she wasn’t sure how far she could push her luck.
Rogue was seated on the other side of the couch, while I claimed the armchair, resting my feet on the ottoman.
“Right. Plans,” Rogue grunted.
“First, I’d like to know how you got caught up in this mess.” Ace asked, glancing down at Thistle. “How did you get us out?”
“An Alpha came in while you were still paralyzed, tried to kill you, but I got him first. Wasn’t really planned… but I cut him into so many little strips that after we ran away, everyone thought he must have been you.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
She hadn’t planned the decoy body?
I rubbed my face, catching Rogue’s eye. He was just as stunned.
“When I was waiting for the antidote to work on you, I got the chains from your basement, and the mask was from that stupid statue in the old lounge… Then I found us a run-down warehouse in the city after the Brotherhood fell apart,” she said.
“You just… walked through the streets with a chained-up Alpha, and no one stopped you?”
“Oh, they did. A couple of people asked for pictures.”
My lips parted in shock as Rogue barked a laugh. “They thought you were performers?”
“That’s Vegas, Baby.” Thistle looked rather pleased with herself. “But then we ran out of Poptarts, and all the people who hated you knew what I looked like…” She scrunched her expression up bitterly. “Bastards nabbed me.”
Ace rolled his eyes. “Perhaps it would have been prudent to have brought me back sooner.”
“I couldn’t!” She crossed her arms. “You’d just gone feral. I think it needed to settle for a bit before I could undo it—between me and Glade—” She cut off as Ace went deathly still, a menacing shadow crossing his expression. “Anyway, you didn’t deserve it.”
“So what then?” Ace asked.
“The Ring got her,” I said. “Sold her as ‘scent match and killer of Ace Maverick.’”
I watched him intently. He barely shifted, his expression remaining as impassive as ever, but his middle finger began tapping absently on the armrest. It stopped the moment my eyes drifted to it.
“And you bought her?” Ace asked, fixing his gaze on me. “Why?”
“I scent matched Rogue at the auction,” Thistle said. “He figured it out.”
“You’re lucky I did,” I said. “Ace has a lot of enemies.”
For the first time, I saw something catch Ace off guard. He went still, gaze fixed on me as if working through that.
This was what I’d spent the last few years becoming an expert at: reading monsters right down to the slightest tell. Again, his finger tapped the armrest, then stopped. He took a breath, the only sound in the utter silence.
“How much?” he asked, finally.
Rogue laughed, but I frowned. “How much what?”
“How much did you pay for my mate?” he said the words slowly, and I knew it was more than just a curiosity.
I shrugged. “Twenty-five,” I lied.
Thistle’s eyebrows shot up, her gaze snapping to mine. But instead of blurting out the five-million-dollar answer, she kept her mouth shut. I noticed she squeezed Bunny tighter to her chest as she peered back at Ace curiously. Rogue was fighting a smile as he picked at his nail.
Ace had gone rigid.
“Twenty-five thousand?” he confirmed, the words rolling from his mouth like each syllable stabbed his tongue on their way out.
“That was the starting bid.”
Ace’s fist balled, knuckles going deathly white. “You were the only bidder?”
I nodded, finally catching the slightest tick to his jaw as his expression began to give him away.
Rogue, who had the worst poker face of anyone I’d ever met, became even more fixated on his nail as he wrestled with his expression.
“And they knew who she was?” Ace demanded.
“Made a whole show of it!” Thistle declared. “Dragged me out in chains, said I was the one who killed you and everything.” She’d tuned in to how tense he was, too, and her eyes sparkled with delight. “How much do you think… would have been right?” she prodded, shuffling closer to him, lip caught in her teeth.
Ace Maverick’s killer and scent match? Never before had the cogs in his brain been so very visible, and even Rogue broke his fixation with his nail to get a glimpse of the spectacle. I could practically see his pride eroding every wall he erected to keep his reactions unreadable.
It was hard not to smile at how delighted Thistle was by this gift I was teasing out of him.
“I would expect, what…?” Rogue glanced at me. “Thirty, forty, maybe? Twenty-five did seem a bit low…”
“Forty…?” Ace looked like he was about to launch at Rogue.
Rogue frowned. “That’s not uncommon,” he said. “You’re not mainstream in those circles, right?” He shrugged. I almost wished it was true, but unfortunately, it wasn’t. “I paid fifty for Knox,” Rogue added. “Well. To join the hunt—fifty was the entry price.”
My gaze darted to him in an instant.
He had remembered.
The number I’d chosen for Thistle hadn’t been arbitrary. It was a detail I’d thought slipped by him, but perhaps I was wrong.
“She’s worth more than Knox,” Ace snarled. I swear he was going to crack a tooth with the restraint. It was a pleasant sight.
Thistle broke at last, giggling. “He’s pranking you.”
Ace swallowed, eyes snapping to her. “It was more?”
“‘Course it was more, you muppet!” she said.
He was rigid, eyes darting between us. His hand dropped to her waist, instinctively pulling her close as he glared at us.
Something unwound in my chest as I watched them. I could almost feel it from Rogue, too. It was hard to gauge exactly how much of a psychopath Ace was. Whether or not Thistle was truly in his sphere of protection, or if she was as disposable as he’d made her feel.
She might have trouble reading him at times, and I got it, but from Alpha to Alpha this signal was a beacon. Not exactly the kind of soft and squishy love most soul matches might be able to offer, but he cared.
He cared a lot.
Even if only because it affected his ego. I doubted, however, that there was another currency for him.
“He paid five million,” Rogue grunted into the silence.
“Five… million?” Ace looked entirely torn between shock and relief.
“Yeh.”
“A… bidding war?” he asked.
“There was, but he overshot by a whole mountain,” Thistle put in.
“Why?” Ace asked.
I folded my arms, my eyes meeting Rogue’s. I’d never said it out loud, though I always assumed he knew.
“Because of me,” Rogue said with a shrug.
“You?” Thistle asked.
“Was exactly a hundred times what I paid for him.”
Okay. So he had noticed.
“It was?” Thistle perked up.
“He was being facetious,” he snorted. “Trying to make me sweat.”
Well.
Not the word I would have chosen, but not terribly inaccurate. I had wanted him to sweat. I’d wanted him to lose sleep wondering what kind of value—to me—translated to five million dollars.
Turns out I had been just as unsure about that as anyone else.
Made it a great wild card, I suppose. He couldn’t have worked it out if I hadn’t.
Ace finally relaxed, and it looked like work for him to remove his hand from Thistle’s waist.
“Trust you to rope in some pets in my absence,” he muttered, glancing down at her. “Perhaps I underestimated your ability to keep yourself safe.”
Thistle was glowing with the compliment, and she shifted closer, patting Bunny happily on the head. “We always figure things out.”
Ace sighed, looking around. “Catch me up, then. What do I need to know?”
I filled in the rest of the details: Thistle getting in Bella’s crosshairs because I was her match, and the fallout.
“So, you’re a mole for the authorities?” Ace asked.
“Yup,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “Of course you are. For how long?”
“Since the moment you turned up here and put him in charge over me,” Rogue replied. “Didn’t give him many options, did you?”
He was right. Rogue had been tied to the Ring, even if not actively. They knew who he was. He’d bought me so he could distance himself, but that had been a peace offering—and the opposite of cutting ties. It made him as culpable as they were, which was the point.
I could have killed him and vanished, but they might have come after me if they didn’t know why.
“Well, there was the most obvious one,” Ace mused.
“I wasn’t participating.”
It had been my best bet.
Rogue had done a decent job of keeping to himself, and I think most of the Ring assumed he’d killed me—or the nameless Alpha he’d bought years ago. Not that anyone cared, or remembered.
Bella hadn’t even known we were mates.
So all I had to do was turn up with him leashed and I’d become a new player in the game—with the instant gravity of having chained one of their own.
Rogue was a Manzo, and his family had endless enemies in other parts of the country, so no one had questioned it.
“So. You’re a double agent for the Nevada trafficking ring. Your scent match just outed you to Carrion—or if she hasn’t, she will soon, and you dragged my mate into the middle of this disaster. Have I missed anything?”
“Nope.” Thistle popped the ‘p’. “But uh, I really need to emphasize the Bella issue.”
“Bella issue?”
“Scent matched bitch who made Knox bite her…” She lifted Bunny up to Ace. “See what she did to Bunny? Tried to fucking kill him.” She shuffled closer to him on the couch, clearly hoping for a reaction. Ace did, to his credit, take a longer look at Bunny than I expected.
If he felt anything, though, he’d returned to hiding it well.
It was hard to keep my face straight as Thistle found the courage to scoot a bit closer to him. I was clearly not built right for a pack, every hint of honied bourbon when she was in the room sent me into daydreams of digging up that goddamned knuckleduster again.
But Ace was like that on steroids.
He belongs to her, not the other way around.
I had to keep that in my brain—and he wouldn’t let her die. But it didn’t feel like enough.
I didn’t just want safety for her. I wanted her happy. I wanted her drawing more than just storms in that sketchbook. The only reason I didn’t lose it every time I caught Rogue’s gaze wandering to her ass was because the prick did make her happy.
But Ace?
There was no promise of that at all.
In fact, the idea that he couldn’t let her die only left me more on edge, because her dependency on him could be born of something similar. If he showed, even once, that he was capable of hurting her, I would lock him back up in that cage without a second thought.
He had one fucking chance.
And if she hated me for that… Well, she’d loved me through muzzling Rogue.
She’d get over it… eventually.
“Okay,” Ace said after what I realised was a long silence.
