The bassist and the blond are no longer in the kitchen. They surely moved to one of the bunk beds since the curtain is drawn, and it’s doing nothing to muffle the loud moans. Huh, either she is faking it, or he is really good because I‘ve only heard those kinds of sounds in porn movies.
We enter the bedroom at the end of the bus. A round double bed with crimson satin sheets sits in the middle, and there’s another bathroom through the open door at my right. Jude closes the door behind him and prowls toward me. He doesn’t waste any time as he closes the space between us and presses his body to mine, a hand gripping my ass and the other at the nape of my neck. He dips and crashes his lips to mine, his tongue licking at my mouth with languid strokes. As he brushes his finger over my nipple, making it pebble, my heart speeds dangerously in my chest. Honestly, I don’t know if it is because of him or because of my defective heart at this point.
Jude pulls back and licks his lips. “Damn, you taste good, gorgeous. Let’s have some fun.” He winks and smoothly takes out a small transparent bag of white powder from the back pocket of his jeans. He swings it in the air like a pendulum as iftrying to hypnotize me before he saunters to the small wooden desk near the bed and pours the bag’s contents onto a small mirror-like tray.
It brings me back to those moments in law school, sprawled on the couch while taking a break from the mountain of textbooks on my desk. Instead of dancing on tables alongside Chloe, I would watch movies to pass my time. As if following the script in my head, Jude starts cutting the cocaine into tiny lines, using a card he fished out of his wallet. Predictably, he takes out a hundred-dollar bill and rolls it until it resembles a straw.
I swallow hard. How many times did I wish I played the main character? Only to feel something…anything other than suffocating apathy.
A loud, nasally sound snaps me out of it, and I realize Jude just snorted all three lines. He rubs at his powdered nostrils before sniffing sharply. “Want a bump?” he asks as he blatantly eyes my boobs, his pupils increasing in size as we speak.
“Um…I don’t know,” I reply. My mother’s horrified expression flashes through my mind, followed by a deep disappointment that sets her mouth in a tight line. I brush her haunting apparition off my shouldersand think about it without the heavy cloud of her judgment hanging over me. As far as drugs go, since finding out I’m going to die, I’ve only smoked weed a couple of times—which my weak lungs didn’t like all that much—and done half a Molly once. I was afraid, with it being an upper, that it would affect my heart. I was right; I nearly passed out.
Snorting cocaine feels like playing a game of Russian roulette, though.
“C’mon,” he pauses as if searching for my name in his head. He must have already forgotten it because he says “gorgeous” after a few awkward beats of silence. “You’re only going to be this young once, right?” He smiles sheepishly and extends the hundred-dollar straw toward me.
He’s dangling in my face the starring role I’ve been craving for years. All I have to do to escape the numbness is go on a wild ride with him. What else could go wrong? I’m dying already. I stride toward the desk and take the makeshift straw. Bending over, I start snorting the first line. The powder tickles the inside of my nose before it slightly stings. I weirdly feel it between my eyes.
“I can’t wait to fuck you,” Jude says gravelly as one of his hands smacks my left ass cheek, and the other sneaks under my dress and palms my pussy over my panties. “C’mon, snort another. One is not enough.”
As soon as I finish snorting the second line, a rush of euphoria hits me. My insides pitch as my heart starts thudding at the speed of light. Straightening, I blink a few times, trying to clear the dancing white spots in my vision, but the room moves with me like I’m in one of those spinning roller coasters and my knees buckle while my arm begins to throb. I go down hard as a heavy weight presses on top of my lungs, like a building has collapsed on top of my chest.
“Fuck, you okay?” Jude asks, alarmed.
I try to answer, but my tongue is filled with lead, and my vision blackens at the edges. I hear Jude screaming.
Then nothing.
5
Logan
Ipinch the bridge of my nose in an attempt to calm my throbbing temples as my eyes skitter over the endless pages in front of me. I’ve been at this for hours. I wish someone would have told me before becoming an Alpha that I would spend most of my time chained to this fucking office chair by my responsibilities.
“You don’t look too good, little bro,” Emily’s voice travels through the room, pulling my attention toward the door.
“You were born thirty seconds before me,” I shoot back, throwing the documents I’m holding onto the desk in frustration and running a hand over my face. For a whole month, I’ve been trying to find a cure for the weakness affecting the children of the pack. Two more kids have fallen into the deep sleep andwon’t wake up. Endless hours of research have amounted to nothing. Needless to say, I am beyond desperate.
“That still makes me the bigger sister,” she teases. A wry grin pulls at her lips as she enters my office, her high heels clicking against the hardwood floor. She is wearing a long, light blue dress that floats at her back with every step. The sigil of Baphomet etched on her right bicep, marking her as an Obsidian Conclave member, stands out against the deep amber hue of her skin, enhanced by the color of the dress. Everyone in the pack wears the same sigil tattooed on their wrists, but only my family wears it on their biceps.
All dark creatures are under the jurisdiction of the Obsidian Conclave. We all have to abide by the rules of not killing humans and, in the case of wolf shifters, not transforming anyone by biting them. It’s pretty easy if you ask me, but some rogue wolf shifters don’t believe in following the rules.
“Aren’t you going to start getting ready? Mom’s gonna be pissed if you’re late to your own ball.” She takes a seat on one of the chairs in front of my desk.
I run my hand over the back of my neck and snap my eyes shut. I’m sure wrinkles form at the corners with the pressure.God, I just want a minute to fucking breathe.“I’ll go take a shower,” I say as I stand and push the swivel chair backward.
“Wait, have you seen this?” Emily looks above my head, where a flat-screen TV is perched on the black-painted wall behind me. I turned the volume down earlier because it made me lose my focus. “Where’s the remote?” she asks as she starts searching under the mountain of paper covering the top of my desk.
I open the top drawer, take out the remote control, and pass it to her. She turns the volume up while I spin to face the TV. The voice of the news anchor announces a brutal animal attack two towns over.
My phone starts vibrating in my jeans pocket. I take it out andtap on the screen. It’s Kaiden Black, the head of the Obsidian Conclave and one of my closest friends. I accept the call.
“Have you seen the news?” he asks.
“I’m watching it right now. Another animal attack. Do you think it’s a rogue?”
“Yeah, I sent Dominic to investigate. I got wind of it yesterday before it hit the news. He said it’s a wolf shifter for sure; there were no signs of fang marks on the victim.”
