“What did you tell them?” Jack barks as his office door locks behind us. Light shows dance in erratic patterns across the walls when he taps the digital display. One by one, shafts of color drop down from the ceiling, and when he steps through them, they make him even more menacing. Half shadowed, half irritated scowl in a blue tint. Or red. Or green.
Nowhere near as vibrant as the glowing gemstones that Emer flung across the room. I replay the moment in my mind. Pinned beneath a male whose painfully warm body made my skin crawl, whose humid breath ghosted the worst kinds of promises against my skin. What did all that training with Ry buy me against men twice my size? Nothing. Punching a Thur in public when enforcement options are nearby to break up the fight? Yeah, I’ve done that. But alone in a room full of Thur twice my size when I’m already injured?
There was nothing I could’ve done.
It’s a mantra I’ve told myself again and again until it made me sick. It still makes me sick. Weak and helpless like always, forced to take whatever attention is given to me. What has changed in the course of twenty-three years?
As I look at a fuming Jack heading across the room, I’m convinced the answer is nothing. Except this time, I had Emer flinging his shards of Emerald into the bodies of every male in the room. He threw that awful weight off me and gave me a clear breath of air. Thur could’ve died, couldn’t they? They’re hardy but not invincible, especially not from a Thur who couldn’t conjure a defense against Onyx. So why hurt one is his own? Why risk the Truceguards coming after him?
*For me.*
It’s a ridiculous thought that I don’t let myself entertain. Sure, he told Jack *no* and decided he wouldn’t let me face whatever punishment came my way. But there had to be some hidden motivation. Some secret gain.
What would have happened if Nox hadn’t been there? Would I have been safe? Would I have gone home with him?
“Devi!” Jack barks as he crosses to the massive desk and tosses something on it. His stare is expectant. Angry. I wish I had the answers he wants. He undoes two buttons on his shirt with rough motions while he waits. It’s a useless exercise to think of what might have happened. I have to face reality instead.
“Tell who? And what would I tell them?” I whisper, staring at his bare collarbone. There’s a tiny dip just between his pecs that taunts me, reminding me I know exactly how it feels under my fingers. The knowledge burns, unlocking the emotions that have been missing all night.
No. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a physical, instinctual reaction. I’m not bad for feeling this way. Not wrong. I just *am*…
“I didn’t tell anyone anything, Jack,” I reiterate, realizing that was the wrong thing to say when he storms back around the desk and grips my hair. His shirt gaps, making me flush and swallow. “You want to act like an idiot, Devi? You want to treat *me* like one?”
Hissing as he jerks me back and forth, I try to explain. “I just don’t—*ungh*—know what you mean, Jack. Just—*ah*—help me under—*ouch*—stand please.”
He flings me into his desk, pressing in as he grips the back of my neck. “Those two males were in your room last night. You know the night you broke a carafe and disappeared during your shift? The night you then dodged all my calls and texts when I tried to figure out what the *fuck* you did to our clients that they trashed and abandoned their VIP room… Then I had you followed. Guess what I saw?”
My stomach drops. He applies enough pressure to bruise as I hold my face above the decorative blade glinting in front of me.
“I saw you at the fucking institute, Devi. THE INSTITUTE of all places. You, a fucking nobody gutter rat who I saw fit to SAVE all those years ago… you think you’re going to live some cush life catering to the elite Thur? You still think you’re going to be chosen, don’t you? Think some fucking male with a hard-on is going to whisk you away to his bond house and make a pet out of you? HA! With pussy I can’t even bother selling? When you’ve been tainted since you were ten!”
The words curdle in my gut, so similar to every other tirade he’s ever gone on. How I’m useless to everyone but him. How I’ll never be anything. How my pussy isn’t even good enough to sell. My hands go numb against the table. How I’ve been tainted since he made me that way. Broken.
“That tells me you’re a liar, Devi. A liar who deposited sakrin into her account. Too much fucking sakrin. What’d you do, get on your knees before you helped them fuck up my suite? Tell them pretty lies about your cunt before you cashed in on my costs? You think you don’t FUCKING owe me for that damage, Devi, but you do!”
I can’t speak. Can’t.
“You have me ambushed at your apartment… make me seem like some kind of criminal. And now you want me to believe it was a coincidence that those same males showed up tonight and trashed the room again? Assaulting and seizing the other Thur in the middle of MY FUCKING CLUB like a neon sign saying the *Mid can’t control its scandals*?”
I gasp as he rams my face forward, slicing my lip on the sharpened blade. “I didn’t—I don’t know what I could’ve done, Jack. They—they just—”
“How’d my cameras shatter?” He snarls, shoving my face away so he can press my hand toward the blade. “Do you know how much it costs for me to replace an entire room?”
“They just seemed to sense them, Jack. I don’t know!”
“The money?” he rasps, so deadly and unhinged I’m truly terrified. I haven’t seen him like this since he decided if I wasn’t going to listen, I didn’t need my useless ears.
“Just a tip. I swear it.”
“And the INSTITUTE, Devi?”
I open my mouth. Close it.
“That’s what I fucking thought, you ungrateful whore,” he hisses before he slams my palm against the blade, slicing it open down to the bone.
Someone’s screaming loud enough to make my ears ring, but no one comes. No gemstones. No glittering dust. No self-defense.
“Try your luck with them, then,” he grunts, letting me fall down in agony. Blood pours across the floor, down my arm, over my lap. “You’re fired.”
Those words shock the air out of me. Or maybe it’s the rapidly pouring bloody hand. This is what I wanted, isn’t it? This is what I had been working toward, right?
And then I hear his belt sliding free.
No, I decide. I never wanted this.