Page 31 of Untamed

Dante, my right-hand man, the shadow watching my back falls in step beside me as I move down the hall.

“Ares,” he says, keeping his voice low, “Matteo’s here. Brought a group with him.” I barely react. I was expecting Matteo to show. It's his birthday, and Oscura is family territory. I nodonce, signalling him to continue. “And...” A hesitation, almost imperceptible.

I stop walking and turn my head slowly.

“And?” I press, voice low enough to cut glass. He swallows thickly before he answers.

“The girl is with them. Bianca’s little sister.”

For a second, nothing moves inside me. No thought. No breath. Just a cold flash of something I can’t put a name to.

“Upstairs,” he adds quickly. “VIP floor. With Matteo’s friends.”

I don't answer. Just turn and take the stairs two at a time, ignoring the pounding bass, the flickering lights, the sweat-thick air.

The private office sits above the main floor of the club, hidden behind one-way glass. A perfect view of the chaos below. I step inside, shutting the door behind me with a solid click and cross the room in three long strides. I look down. At first, the mass of bodies blurs together. Dancers, drinkers, shadows.

Then I see her.

A shock of pale gold hair under the strobe lights. A slim figure in a black dress that’s too damn short, too damn tight.

Jordyn’s surrounded by Matteo’s friends. She’s laughing. Sipping from a glass she probably didn’t even pour herself.

Silly girl.

Looking like she belongs, but feeling, to me, like a fucking target painted in neon.

A muscle ticks in my jaw as I watch her toss her head back and laugh at something Matteo says, the sound lost in the bass vibrating the floor under my boots. They’re standing close, a little too close for my liking.

She has no idea where she is, who’s watching, what this world can take from her if she’s not careful.

Annoyance burns low and hard in my chest.

Matteo’s an idiot if he thinks he can keep her safe in a place like this. A fucking club crawling with snakes who’d eat a girl like her alive.

My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. She’s not supposed to be here. She’s not supposed to be in my world, not where monsters like me walk freely among the sheep.

And yet...there she fucking is.

Smiling beautifully, drinking, sliding closer and closer to danger without even realising it.

I watch her from behind the glass, my heart pounding deafeningly in my ears. And deep in my gut, I know, like a shot fired straight through my ribs that if someone so much aslooksat her wrong, I’ll grind their bones and flesh into dust and lay them in the foundation of this fucking building.

But it’s not some random bastard that tightens the noose around my chest.

It’s Matteo.

I watch as he says something in her ear, something low and teasing, and Jordyn laughs, tilting her head back, eyes sparkling under the lights.

Then he grabs her hand and pulls her toward the dancefloor.

I tense, my hands curling into fists at my sides.

The crowd swallows them up, swaying bodies, pulsing bass, flashing strobes, and for a second, I lose her. My chest seizes, something dark snarling awake inside me.

Then I find her again. Findthem.

Matteo’s hands settle on her hips, easy, casual, like he’s done it a thousand times before. Jordyn grins up at him, a little unsteady from the champagne, her body swaying to the rhythm of the music, too close, too fucking trusting.

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