The don sent a limo.
Lights flashed, reporters yelled questions about our trials, and betas screamed and reached out as we walked down a gold silk carpet that spanned three city blocks.
The entire financial district was blocked off for the celebration.
To the casual onlookers, we were glamorous starlets walking into a large domed glass structure.
An ultraexclusive event held by the don every equinox.
The birthplace of the new alphas who would rule Serpentine City.
My knuckles were white as I pushed Aran’s floating hoverchair. It was the only thing keeping me upright.
Sweat dripped down my forehead as my vision wavered, the five brothers trailing behind me mindlessly.
It was the reason I’d forgone makeup.
But I wasn’t completely giving the middle finger to ostentatious demands of authority.
My shimmery gold dress had an open back, and it contrasted nicely with the dark circles under my eyes and the strain on my face.
Aran wore a black suit that covered her body, but the gashes across the side of her head from the bullets were bloody and uncovered.
Betas standing along the roped-off carpet winced when Aran levitated by.
She grinned and flipped them off, unruly blue hair a wild mass of curls that were stained red with blood.
Déjà vu hit me as I remembered a fancy carpet in the shifter realm.
Back then, Aran had preened and smiled at the attention, and I’d stood beside her all dolled up and pretty.
An outsider would remark how far we’d fallen.
Aran flipped off a reporter and rolled her eyes when the woman gagged at the jagged cuts across her face.
It felt like we’d risen.
We both were buzzing with the accomplishment of staring pain, fear, and endless odds in the face.
We’d survived certain death.
Adrenaline, exhaustion, and confusion warred inside me, and I felt slightly euphoric as I rode the forbidden high.
Aran sucked on her enchanted pipe, blowing electric-blue smoke into the face of the outraged reporter.
I giggled as I “accidentally” slammed the hover chair into her legs.
Aran laughed and held the pipe up to my lips so I could take another drag.
Sucking on the stick, my vision smudged from smoke and fatigue, I pushed us forward in a wobbly line.
“Sun god save us,” Cobra grumbled as he tried to take the floating chair from my hands.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I snarled as I held on to the handles like they were a lifeline.
Aran cussed him out with an impressive vocabulary, and Cobra gave up, realizing we were mentally unwell and dead serious.
“Has she always been like this?” Cobra asked Lucinda.
My sister sighed heavily. “One time after Dick beat her super bad, she suddenly had the urge to take up carpentry. She cut down an entire tree and was convinced she was going to build herself a chair.”
Cobra gaped. “No shit.”
Lucinda sparkled in her strappy white gown. She smiled sadly, clearly thinking about our awful childhood, as she rubbed at her cut-up forearm. “She didn’t make anything, just dragged the tree through the forest, shouting to the moon goddess.”
Aran pressed the pipe to my lips, and I took another long drag.
Cobra stared at me like he’d never seen me before, and I shrugged.
The closest solution I’d found to dealing with trauma was the pure elation of starting a new hobby project and not completing it.
Aran’s hoverchair slammed under the rope, into an unsuspecting beta.
Lights flashed, and people screamed as Aran launched out of her chair and tried to strangle the man.
“Shhhhh, shhhh,” I giggled as I shoved the pipe into her mouth and dragged her back into her chair. “It’s okay, sweetie. He didn’t mean to get in our way.” I patted her head as she settled back down.
The beta we’d just plowed over, and attempted to assassinate, gaped at us in outrage.
“Don’t be such a man about it.” I huffed over my shoulder as I pushed past him back onto the endless golden carpet.
Aran rolled her eyes. “Everyone is so sensitive these days. I only choked him a little. You just can’t do anything anymore. It’s ridiculous.”
I nodded in agreement. “I’m worried for the next generation. They’re too soft.”
Said generation (four girls ranging from twelve to eighteen years old) stared at us with concern as we attempted to race them down the carpet.
“You’re just afraid to lose to a woman in a hover chair!” Aran screamed as we sprinted past them in a blur of speed and agility.
Of course we won.
We were the best.
“Pussies!” I flipped them off as I came to a screeching halt in front of the golden doors of the venue.
Two Mafia betas stood in tailored suits and sunglasses, blocking the door with their muscles and glowing guns.
“Loyalty” was scrawled across both their foreheads.
I stated the obvious. “Tacky tattoo placement.”
The corner of one of their mouths twitched, and I took that as my signal to unload my grievances.
“What is with the endless carpet? Are you trying to kill us all from cardiac arrest before we arrive? Is that secretly the third trial?”
They didn’t respond, and Aran generously handed me the pipe for another long drag.
After a deep inhale, I got up into the face of one of the betas and blew out smoke slowly, enjoying how he tried not to cough.
It really was a very powerful show of dominance.
“Have you ever used that gun, buddy?”
His eyebrow twitched.
We both lunged for it at the same time, but before I could disarm him and shoot him in the face for refusing to answer me, large hands that smelled like chestnuts wrapped around my neck and dragged me away.
“Jax, Sadie, Cobra, Ascher, and Xerxes. We’re on the list. Also, we brought our family with us.” Jax growled.
The betas didn’t argue, just opened the doors for us.
“You better open that door for me, buddy,” I snarled at the beta I’d wrestled with.
“All right, you’ve officially lost your privileges,” Jax said as he pushed me into the venue. “You need to release the brothers now. You’re not acting well.”
Ascher grabbed the hoverchair.
Aran screamed, “I’m being kidnapped!”
Ascher rolled his eyes.
Cobra and Xerxes pulled the brothers forward (for show, we’d put handcuffs and chains on them), and I narrowed my eyes at Jax. “Is this your way of saying I’m not pretty?”
Jax narrowed his eyes back. “What?”
“Don’t answer that,” Jess said as she walked up beside him. Her green-black hair was plated in a braid and matched her velvet dress.
“I think they should stop smoking that pipe,” Jala said with wide pink eyes, her hand clutched in Lucinda’s.
Jinx rolled her eyes. “What, you don’t enjoy two women acting like complete lunatics?”
“Don’t test me,” I hissed at her.
Jax closed his eyes and tilted his head back like he was praying to the sun god.
A full-blown smile transformed Cobra’s face. “Kitten, did you just hiss?”
“Sadie, release your control of the brothers,” Xerxes snapped as he tugged at my hair and omega-whined with displeasure. “Do it now.”
Alpha instincts reared inside of me, and I obeyed.
Instantly, the crushing weight that had been driving me into a mindless state dissipated.
My legs buckled with relief, and Jax caught me.
I gasped slowly, suddenly aware that we were standing on the edge of a massive dance floor, and that I’d been acting crazy.
A few dozen shifters were present, and they twirled expertly as a live band played a classical tune.
The entire ceiling was glass, and the gray skies above were bleeding into the darkness of night.
It was like walking into a storybook.
Elegance, refinement, and decadence were the words that popped into my mind.
Aran’s hoverchair wobbled as she lunged at Ascher.
Behind me, the Ortega brothers were face-planted onto the floor—I’d been right about leaving them brain-dead.
Xerxes and Cobra looked unconcerned, dragging them by chains across the floor.
“Aran,” I hissed as my friend weakly mimicked stabbing Ascher in the kidney with a knife, as I wrestled her back into her chair. “Just pretend to be okay for a few hours,” I whispered as I held her.
Aran’s body was sweaty, her crystal eyes clouded with pain.
She wasn’t present, lost in a pain-and drug-induced delirium.
Xerxes had stabbed her with at least thirty different needles.
“We can kill them all later,” I promised, and she stopped struggling against me. “You just have to be a spy for tonight. You have to be discreet.”
Aran’s blue eyes twinkled, and she grinned like a maniac. “We’ll take them out later?”
I nodded conspiratorially. “On my cue. Just wait for it.”
Mollified, Aran relaxed back in her seat and promptly started snoring.
“Should we be worried?” Ascher stared down at her with concern.
“Probably,” I said.
Suddenly, the doors opened behind us, and Warren entered. “You need to bring the brothers to the don immediately. He’s at the high table directly across the dance floor.”
“Don’t tell us what to do,” Cobra snapped at him, and Jax growled with agreement.
“Why did you have to come with us?” I asked as I glared at him. “I thought your role was to be a perverted ferret.”
Warren sighed heavily and dragged his hands through his hair. “I told you, I was assigned by the don to protect the girls. It’s my first mission.” His annoyingly sparkly skin glistened as he sent a boyishly pitiful glance at the girls.
“How old did you say you were?” I asked.
“Eighteen,” he mumbled as he focused on his shoes. “I just shifted.”
“Oh cool, I’m also eighteen. I’m going to get tested soon.” Jess beamed at him like she’d just made a friend.
“And I’m sixteen, Jala’s fourteen, and Jinx is twelve,” Lucinda supplied helpfully as she also smiled at the boy like she was smitten.
I shared a glance with the men. None of us liked how much the girls were fawning over him.
We had to kill him.
Warren had the decency to look embarrassed as he said, “I know. The don was worried about your safety.”
Lucinda had the audacity to giggle and bat her eyelashes at him.
I opened my mouth to give my sister the sex talk, and the all-men-are-trash talk, when a beta with a gun in his waistband and sunglasses cleared his throat. “The don will see you now.”
Cobra and Xerxes charged ahead, dragging the brothers across the dance floor as shifters continued to twirl around us, completely unconcerned by the violence.
My skin prickled.
The beast realm was a terrifying place.
We came to a stop in front of a raised dais, where the don lounged casually in a golden chair.
He had a cigarette in his lips, betas with guns surrounding him for protection, and a bored expression on his face.
‘The Ortega brothers,” Cobra sneered as he kicked one of the limp bodies on the ground. “They’re still alive. Mostly.”
The don kept smoking his cigarette but didn’t say anything.
Clarissa walked up to stand beside us, a bloodied man limping behind her in cuffs.
She fluttered her eyes coyly at the men and gave me a death glare before turning to the don. “Here’s Carle Fruya, the beta weapons dealer from the wanted list.”
The don said nothing.
Suddenly, six betas walked forward from seemingly out of nowhere.
“Please, I have contacts. I have an entire network I can give you,” Carle begged the don, his dark eyes frantic.
The betas pointed their guns at our prisoners.
Six pops rang out in synchrony.
They killed them all.
The music kept playing; the shifters kept twirling in their sparkly dresses, and the don didn’t even blink as he slowly smoked his cigarette.
Blood splattered across the glistening white floor.
The now-familiar stench of gunpowder and burning steel filled my senses.
A shiver rolled up my spine.
The shifter realm had been terrifyingly cold and the fae realm savagely bloodthirsty, but the guns in the beast realm were downright sinister.
Everyone stood in front of the dais, waiting.
Finally, the don waved his hand, and five stunning women in blush-colored dresses floated in front of us.
Divine sugary scents wafted off them, and their features were doll-like in their perfection.
They were omegas.
The girls blushed prettily and smiled up at my alphas as innocence radiated around them, their scents and demeanors begging an alpha to wrap them up and protect them.
Indescribable pain twisted in my chest.
I took a step back.
My heartbeat was loud in my ears, and I knew what the don was going to say before he said it.
“You will pick a female omega to complete your pack and bear the next heir. You will choose tonight or—” the don arched his eyebrow, not needing to finish his sentence.
The threat was apparent.
I didn’t wait to see what they said, just discreetly grabbed Aran’s floating chair and dragged us away.
Aran passed me the pipe, and I took it with shaking fingers.
It was amazing how when you’d thought you’d hit rock bottom, there was still farther to fall.
