Page 271 of Slashed Bonds

Because my eyes have found Naomi.

Across the room. In white, which is a choice, with a ring on her hand that catches the chandelier from forty feet, and she’s seen us. Seen her father standing with the Vanes. And she does a beeline, straight across the floor with her heels going, and in tow behind her⁠—

There they are.

My ex-pack. In a line. Theo first, in black, with his jaw set. Rhys. Dorian. Silas, at the back, the way Silas has always been at the back. Four men I used to know the inside of walking across a ballroom behind a woman in a white dress toward the Omega they threw out of a window.

It’s a scenic moment. I’ll give it that.

And at the edges of it, the way a sheet of ice has edges, I catch the rest. Greenie, moving Maddie behind him without seeming to. The twins, arriving from two directions at once. Viper, in a floor-length gown of a green so dark it reads as black until the light hits it, which is to say she’s wearing the truth, and behind Viper⁠—

Three men.

In suits of colors men don’t wear. One in a deep oxblood. One in a blue like a bruise. One in a charcoal that’s got a green thread in it under the chandeliers. Standing a step behind her the way Nikolai and Killian are standing behind me, and I’ve never seen any of them in my life, and my brain says who the hell are they and my body says not now, you’re tired.

I am tired. That’s the strange part. I’ve got my ex-pack walking at me across a ballroom and what I’d like is a nap.

Theo’s looking at the three men behind Viper. Not at me. For a second, crossing the floor, his eyes go to the oxblood suit and stay there, and something in his walk changes, a hitch, the way a man’s stride changes when he’s recognized someone he owes money to.

He knows them. Whoever they are. And he’s more afraid of the one in oxblood than he is of the three behind me.

I file it. I’m going to need a bigger cabinet.

I fight off a yawn. I sip.

“Father.”

Naomi, arriving, in a voice pitched for the room.

“We don’t need to be collaborating with these lowlifes. Especially when they’re obviously our rivals.” A hand flip. “Our collaborative finances and our success across multi-tier companies are on another level in comparison to this lot.”

Vance clears his throat. Looks at his daughter, then at Cassian, then at the ring on his daughter’s hand like it’s a bill he hasn’t read, and I watch him try to find a way to intervene and not find one.

Theo finds one.

“I’d have to agree.”

Grinning. The grin from the dance floor, the one he’d had on before his boys went up the stairs. He’s looking at me.

“Wouldn’t want the Ross name associated with a doping athlete.”

I say nothing.

I’m not even offended. I’d like that noted somewhere. I’m standing in a dress an Omega built for me with a mocktail in my hand and a monarch on it, listening to a man call me a druggie for the second time in two weeks, and the thing in my chest isn’t rage. It’s a yawn I’m fighting.

It can’t be the drink. There’s nothing in the drink. It’s the ink. Val said side effects and I’d assumed she meant nausea, and instead I’m standing across from the four men who ruined my life wanting a pillow.

I sip. I let the yawn happen behind the glass.

“We’re firm in our decision,” Cassian says. To Vance, not to Theo, which is its own kind of answer. “And we need to go. Our Omega’s tired. She needs her beauty sleep.” A beat. “So that when we kick your asses tomorrow night, she’s full of adrenaline and slays on the ice.”

He turns.

Starts to. His hand’s on my back guiding me, and I’ve taken a step, and Nikolai and Killian have shifted to make a lane the way they’d open one on a sheet.

“A charity case for an Omega,” Vance says, to our backs, “isn’t a thing I’d flaunt, son.”

Cassian stops.