Page 32 of Queen of Diamonds

“All of your spikes?”

“Yes.”

“Say it for me, Little Devil. ‘That’s every weapon I have on me.”

“Get fucked you piece of Maverick trash.”

He sneered. “Glade. If I go searching and you’re a filthy liar, you’ll sleep chained to the foot of my bed.”

I clenched my jaw. “You wouldn’t.”

He raised his eyebrows with such an incredulous look that I cracked. “Fucking—fine. Just let me—” I tried to pull away to the bathroom, but he pressed me against the wall by my neck harder.

“Right. Here. Little Devil.”

I hated him.

I fucking hated him.

It was a task, with him pinning me against the wall by my neck, but at least he didn’t get a view. The last weapon was slim with a soft case, and roughly the size of a tampon.

There was a nasty smirk spreading on his face the whole time.

“Better,” he said, when I had it clutched in my fist. He plucked it from my grip. Then he collected the rest of them up and opened the door, tossing them out before he turned back to me. “Now. Get in the shower.”

“What?”

“You smell like blood and sex, sweetheart. Get in the fucking shower.”

“Sex?”

I hadn’t perfumed that badly, had I?

“You want to get horny for the Alphas you rejected, you’ll have a cold shower every time.”

His pack might have saved my ass today, but Zed was out of mercy. He dragged me to the bathroom and forced me to my knees in the shower. When he turned the water on I gasped. It was frigid. When I tried to scramble out, he shoved me back with his foot.

“Fight me again, I’ll take the dress myself.”

That stilled me, terror made of colder ice than the water running through my hair. That terror seeped to my marrow, a secret I could never give up.

So I remained, shivering on my knees as he sprayed me with the shower like I was an animal.

“Does this get you off?” I asked. “Seeing me like this?”

He barked a laugh like it was a stupid question. “You took our entire life and crumpled it in your self-serving, spoiled Omega fist—and for what?” He looked truly disgusted as he stared down at me. “Status? Pride? Or did you just want to feel powerful?” He crouched, the shower head still in his fist. The jet caught me in the face and I was forced to look away. “I don’t just want you on your knees, I want you to suffer, and I want you to know it’s because of me. You asked why I came tonight? I wanted to find a way to see this.”

I couldn’t answer that, trying to control my breathing. This cold, it was nothing. Not really. I’d faced worse.

His fury was absolute. He was an Alpha who put his pack first no matter what, and I had betrayed him. Them. I had betrayed him the same moment he had been about to extend that protection to me. I didn’t have the strength to contemplate, again, how my life would have looked if I’d said yes to that offer. My chance stolen. I hadn’t known that day how much more could be ripped away.

Hearing his fury, borne of the protection for the very pack I’d damned, though, it was hard not to let those time worn dreams creep back.

“Nothing to say?” he asked.

I remained silent.

I’d endured worse.

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