Forget Me Knot (PoisonVerse #2), page 9
I grabbed my pillow, turned on my front and got settled, watching with satisfaction as she realised her next problem.
“What kind of savage only has two pillows?” she demanded.
“Night, Duchess.” I watched her search the room for a substitute before closing my eyes. It would be a long time before I was asleep, but darkness calmed me. It was more necessary than usual, with her omega scent heavy in the room. And she wasn’t in soothing omega mode, either. My heart sank as I felt the faint stirrings of my aura’s agitation.
A rut was coming.
Two irritable omegas was enough to draw it out sooner.
I shoved down the nauseating turn of my stomach and the flutter of dread. Would have happened sooner or later, anyway.
There weren’t many things that could shake me these days, but enduring my ruts would shake anyone.
My aura had broken upon surfacing.
I had never regretted the murder that sent me to juvie. The act hadn’t just wiped that violent piece of scum from the face of the earth, it had also led me to my brothers. But deep in the throes of dark, agonising ruts was the closest I ever got to regret.
I was ripped from my thoughts as I felt her touch on my arm. My eyes snapped open to find sapphire blue irises much closer than I’d expected. All my senses went on high alert.
“What?”
“About my job,” she whispered.
“What about it?”
“I can’t miss my appointments or my clients will leave.”
“And what appointments would those be?” I focused on her, razor sharp, not daring to even draw my hand from her touch. It would give away how much she was getting to me.
“I’m a duchess.”
Right, we all knew what that meant. She was hired out to hang from the arms of rich alphas so they could feel powerful. I certainly understood it, though. They said duchess auras were different than normal omega auras, and it was a war not to tumble into that trap. I could only imagine that for alphas less on guard than my pack, she could make them feel like the centre of the world. I was warring with that right now.
“You can go with a bodyguard.”
“He died—”
“I told you. We aren’t letting you out of our sight.”
“You want to be my bodyguard so you can watch me spend the night with another alpha pack?”
The growl rose in my throat before I caught it, and she flinched back. I cut it off instantly, settling my expression.
“We will do what is necessary,” I said through gritted teeth. “If that means bodyguards, it means bodyguards.”
There was a pause. “It will have to be Malakai or King,” she whispered.
“Why?” My voice came out harsher than I meant it to.
“They look less…” She trailed off, and suddenly she wasn’t meeting my eyes.
“Like criminals?” I asked.
She chewed her lip again, guilt in her expression.
“Does it scare you, Onyx? How I look?”
She stared at me, and all the hazing of her scent fell away. “I don’t… feel unsafe around you.”
Huh. Well. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but that wasn’t it.
Right.
“Good.”
“It’s just… to my clients… You’ll stick out.”
“I stick out everywhere.”
Her hand was still against my skin.
There were more problems with inviting Onyx into our home than just the asshole stalker tailing her. I was unbalanced and a touch from Onyx was stirring up embarrassing shit within me. The edges of my aura were just the faintest bit fuzzy, like I got when I started to spiral.
“A bit friendly,” I said, eyes tracing where her hand touched my arm. “For a woman trying to run out of here a minute ago.”
Her expression tightened. “I said it was inappropriate—which it is.” She emphasised the last word. “Not that I couldn’t handle it.”
“Good night, Duchess.”
Very deliberately, I took her hand and drew it away. “You’ll have to convince them yourself. I’m not ordering them on a pro-bono bodyguard trip.”
“I would never expect them to do it for free.”
I paused, hating how my brain snagged on that. How much did Onyx pay her bodyguards? How much could my brothers make by going with her? How many dangerous jobs would it make up for?
Everything always came back to money. I hated it just as much as we were bound to it. And she was free of those laws entirely.
I said nothing else, flipping onto my other side and staring bitterly at the wall. Before I closed my eyes this time, I texted our pack chat.
Me: do we know how old she is?
Ice: asking after you climb into bed with her?
Ice: what if she’s not of age and you just kidnapped her?
Me: go fuck yourself. She’s a duchess, she has to be, idiot.
Malakai: she’s Ice’s age, according to the articles I’m reading.
I’d been right, then.
Fuck.
Me: christ
Twenty-two? That four year age gap felt a lot larger now she was tossing and turning in my bed.
King: Damn. I thought for sure she was older than us.
That, I could agree with. I sighed, refusing to turn, even when she was clearly shifting around behind me just to be annoying. But it would still be hours before I went to sleep. Sleep and me, we were old enemies.
Onyx
The problem wasn’t the hulking alpha murderer who’d decided making me sleep in his bed was in my own best interest. The problem was that, despite the insanity of it, my foolish omega brain felt absolutely safe. Enough that I fought burning tears as I reconciled how fear had been hounding every second and every breath, now I felt its absence. It was a fist slowly releasing my chest.
And its absence was dark and warmth and silence, but for the slow breaths of his slumber.
TWELVE
King
“Bless her lying, little omega heart,” I murmured, leaning against the door frame of Arsenal’s pad in the morning.
Arsenal slept terribly but woke like a raging beast if prodded, so I usually just left his coffee by his bed and let it stir him. I’d made two this morning, as it only seemed polite, but the sight I found halted me in my tracks.
Arsenal was curled up right at the very edge of the bed, as much as was possible without him falling out, and facing the wall, his back toward Onyx. Strangely, on her side of the bed was her purse, as if present for comfort. She, on the other hand, had left most of the remaining space untouched. She was curled up against him, arm over his side. More than that, though, I could hear the faintest light rumble, rising and falling across the space.
She was purring.
Fucking purring. While asleep.
The moment I set the mug down, Arsenal’s eyes flew open. His expression was tight as he glared at me, as if I’d kicked his cat or something.
I grinned. “She’s purring?” I mouthed.
“All goddamned night,” his voice was a low whisper.
“Oh, poor you.”
“Can you just…” He mimed at her hand, which was balled into a fist at his shirt. I reached out, carefully tugging her grip free and lifting her arm gently. Arsenal ducked out of the bed. I reached out, grabbed a pillow and tucked it beneath her arm where Arsenal had just been. She clutched it to her chest, her brow coming down in a little bunch.
I left her coffee on the other side table, then went to hand him the other, only to catch him adjusting the duvet over her properly. He didn’t look the type to be gentle—especially not right now: a canvas of black tattoo upon corded muscle—but people got him wrong all the time. He was maybe a little over protective, impatient and not at all happy about his role as pack lead, but he was a good person. If he wasn’t, he’d never have ended up in juvie with the rest of us.
Onyx’s response to him told me that maybe she sensed that, too. I stifled my smile as he straightened and took the coffee from me, a scowl on his face.
We were just leaving the room when I realised something.
“What?” Arsenal asked.
I looked back at her, listening intently. The room was quiet. “She stopped.”
Arsenal’s scowl deepened.
To my surprise, Malakai was in the kitchen when we returned. He went to bed late, which meant he hadn’t slept much. Not that I’d be able to tell by looking; he was just one of those guys who was always well put together. His bun of thick dark hair was still the perfect amount of messy he preferred, and his morning complexion was like smooth russet clay—while I was still blinking sleep from my eyes, my hair sticking in a dozen directions.
“We should talk,” I said, taking a barstool. The missing mug beside the sink meant that Ice was up, but probably on the roof where he drank his morning coffee.
“Yeh. Right. Okay, I did a lot of digging last night—” Malakai began.
“Hold up. Digging?” Last I checked he was pissed—and I’d felt his anger until he’d shut the bond down last night. “We should be on the same page.”
“We are on the same page,” Arsenal said. “She’s staying, we sort the fucker out—nothing below board, not until we’ve done Riot’s job—and then she’s gone.”
Malakai nodded curtly, even if his expression was tight. I rolled my eyes. “How many grunts did it take the two of you to sort that out?”
Malakai snorted.
“Seven,” Arsenal replied, downing the rest of his coffee. “Now, spill. What do you have?”
“It’s not what I do have. It’s what I don’t fucking have. I don’t have any info on the pack she rejected. I don’t have any info on what ended her up in the hospital—”
“Hospital?”
“Right. Four years ago Onyx Madison turned up at a hospital on the westside with injuries across her whole body and—so she claims—no memory of what happened. It was during the assessment that one of the seers noted her aura had shifted. Soon after, she was designated a duchess.”
Arsenal scratched his chin. “Wait. She doesn’t remember how she became a duchess?”
“Not the pack. Not the rejection. Nothing,” Mal said. “Which is a problem.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because she matched with us.”
“And?” But I knew the answer as the question came from my mouth.
“And so she couldn’t have matched with us if her old pack was still… intact.”
“So…” I winced. “Either they fell apart, or they died.” Most likely the latter. The full breakdown of established packs was rare—even having one member cleave was rare. The complete breakdown of a pack—enough to collapse its scent (and associated scent matches)—was unlikely without death. By causation or repercussion.
“You see the problem?” Mal asked, glancing between us as if it were obvious.
“I mean… I see a problem for her old pack.” I said.
Malakai rolled his eyes. “She’s got a stalker, missing memories, and a pack she rejected.”
“You think it’s connected?” Arsenal asked.
“Only thing Onyx woke up with in that hospital was a tattoo and a scar, both on her arm. And the tattoo was of—”
“The same flower.” I’d seen it. A delicate piece across her forearm, and not a flower I’d recognised until I’d seen the dead ones left scattered across her bathroom. I’d just assumed it was the stalker taunting that he knew more about her.
“How do you know about the tattoo and scar?” I asked.
“Pieced it together. She doesn’t talk about it publically much, but Ice got hold of hospital records a fan leaked last year. They were all but wiped from the internet, but there are a few copies still hanging around.”
“Ice?” Arsenal sounded surprised.
“He was going manic last night,” Malakai said. “Came up after she went to bed and started grilling me on everything I’d checked already—” He cut off as Malakai’s phone pinged and he snorted flashing it at us. “Keeps sending me anything he can find.”
“Right. Well, anything else?” Arsenal asked. “Otherwise we can just, you know, ask her when she wakes up?”
Malakai snorted. “I want to know she’s telling the truth. Though—Ice’s been sending me pages of duchess and duke fan magazines shipping her with the rich alphas she's seen out with, alpha’s she's not seen out with, and other dukes—but, this one, you might be interested in.”
Malakai pulled up something on his phone and tossed it to me. I read through the bright article, Arsenal peering at it too.
It was a mix and match voting game for famous duchesses titled ‘Build Them the Perfect Pack’. And there, along with a number of famous alphas, was my face with the tag ‘King Hansen—Voted sexiest bad boy! Our readers think Onyx is up for a challenge’.
Arsenal snorted.
“It’s the rich boys I wouldn’t play nice with,” I said, eyeing the rest of the votes for Onyx’s perfect pack. All well known last names. A Lincoln, Oxford, Rife, and a Kingsman.
Huh.
I had hated the attention that stupid magazine had given me, but right now it was hard not to feel a little puffed up.
“There’s something else, too,” Arsenal said.
“Yeh?” Malakai asked.
Arsenal rubbed the back of his neck. “I told her she could go to work, but only if one of us was with her.”
“To… work?” I asked.
Malakai choked on his coffee. “You want to watch her go on dates with another pack?”
A spike of heat hit my veins at those words, and I had to slam the bond shut real quick. I lifted my coffee to my lips as Malakai shot me a funny look.
“Actually…” Arsenal wrinkled his nose. “She said I wasn’t an option.”
He made it sound like they’d chatted last night. I tried to shove down a little flare of jealousy. Ice had bonded—just barely—with Malakai, leaving me and Arsenal out of it entirely. What if Onyx connected with Arsenal? Would she have room for me?
“Not an… option?” I asked, shoving the thought away. It was hard though, now I’d closed the pack bond down. Knowing they couldn’t sense anything I was feeling, I let all my insecurities run rampant.
Arsenal waved at his tattooed face, expression impassive. “It’ll have to be one of you two.”
Malakai opened his mouth, an incredulous look on his face, when a silken voice sounded behind us. “I would pay you, of course. I could have my lawyer draw up a last-minute contract.”
I turned in my chair, and Malakai spun where he stood. She was wearing that plush cream coloured dressing gown and matching fluffy slippers. The golden tan skin of her legs was smooth and perfect, and instantly drew my eye. Her hair was bundled on top of her head in a bun, and her face was bare of makeup and glowing. The mug of coffee I’d left for her was clutched in her hands. The aroma of lavender and brownies drifted into the room with her.
“But,” Onyx went on, stepping closer. “I would need my phone for that.” Something had changed about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it yet.
Malakai glared down at her. “I wouldn’t be caught dead tailing around after my scent match on a date with another pack.”
“I didn’t get the impression you cared much about the scent match designation.”
“Apparently, we cared enough to fucking save you,” Malakai grumbled.
She slid into the chair around the table’s corner from mine. “You insisted on saving me against my will, because you think I’m a damsel, and you three…” She slid her forearms forward along the counter so that her dressing gown popped open just enough that I got a glimpse of the smooth skin almost to her— “…Are primates,” she finished.
I scowled, snapping back to her sapphire gaze, but the raised eyebrow look she was giving us all said that I wasn’t the only one who’d just felt an obscene gravitational pull on my eyeballs.
“It’s just a job,” she said, holding my gaze. “Will you do it?” She paused. “Since Arsenal—”There was a bitter slant to her tone at his name.“—says I can’t go without, and it’s my work. I can’t just stop turning up.”
“Work,” Malakai huffed, stomping away.
I barely heard, though, swallowed up in her gaze. She rocked back and forth where she leaned on the table, and that gravitational weight shifted with her. “I… uh,” I cupped the back of my neck as the golden skin of her cleavage flashed once again. “Yeh, I mean… I wasn't doing anything tonight, anyway. How hard can it be?”
A dazzling smile appeared on her face, and she leaned back in her chair, gripping my forearm and sending goosebumps across my skin. “Thank you.” She sounded so earnest.
Feeling his sourness, I couldn’t help but glance at Arsenal. He was resting his chin on his fist, absolute disgust in his gaze as he watched me.
“About the pay,” Onyx drew my attention back to her. “I consider it more dangerous after Devin. I’ll make sure we’re in and out quickly… I usually do fifteen percent, but if we called it twenty, would that be fair?”
“Yes. Sure, if you really need to.” It felt weird, getting her to pay me, to be honest. I’d do it anyway. I got why Arsenal insisted she stay, but stopping her from working wasn’t fair. “Uh… What does that mean?”
“Twenty percent of what I make. I know it’s not the way everyone does it, but I always felt better with a fair cut.”
“What’s twenty percent of a duchess’ wage?” Arsenal asked.
“For the night…” She thought on that. “About eight?”
“Eight what?” I asked.
“Grand.”
My mouth fell open at the same time I heard a loud crack behind me. Dazed, I glanced behind to see Malakai, frozen halfway down to his computer chair, shattered coffee mug in his fist.
