Go back and get Zenevieve. Kiss her. Claim her. Another man is going to steal her from you if you don’t do something.It will happen any day now. Do you want that, you foolish fucking Alpha? They’re all watching her, coveting her, sniffing her. Once she’s yours, no one will dare touch her. No one will dare look at her again.
She’ll take your cock beautifully even if she’s not your mate.
I slide down to the floor and let my head hang between my knees. Why am I being tested so cruelly? Why must happiness be something that happens only to other people?
My eyes open. Slowly I lift my head.
What is that sweet scent I can smell in the building?
14
Zenevieve
Idon’t care that people in the street can see me crying, sitting in the dirt in the lavish district. No one stops to ask if I’m all right as I wrap my arms around my knees and sob.
I said go home.
The way Stesha roared at me with a ferocious expression was frighteningly final. I offered myself up to him completely, unambiguously, and he made it clear he doesn’t want me and never will. The pain of his rejection hurts so much.
“Did you hear that white-haired Alpha is rutting in the exhibition room?”
“How many lavishes do you think he’ll go through this time?”
I look up at the sound of two women talking outside the ruthouse.
“Twenty. Maybe more,” the first woman says.
“I heard that last time he rutted thirty of them.”
“Thirty?I have to see this.”
The women enter the ruthouse and close the door behind them.
I get slowly to my feet. A white-haired Alpha. They have to be talking about Stesha, but he promised over and over he doesn’t sleep with lavishes during his rut. And what is an exhibition room?
The man I adore isn’t a liar.
Is he?
I wipe the last of the tears from my face. The women went into that ruthouse, and no one stopped them. Stesha wants me to go home, but Stesha might be lying to me. I should know if he’s lying to me and sleeping with not one butthirtylavishes. I want the truth, even though I think I might throw up.
I get to my feet and enter the ruthouse. Inside, no one pays much attention to me. I receive bored glances from half a dozen men and women lounging on sofas in various states of undress. All of them look like Betas, so as a fellow Beta, I hold no interest to them. They’re here for the Alphas, and there aren’t that many Alphas to go around. Betas probably line up and compete to be chosen to spend a rut with an Alpha.
A man standing at the side of the room looks as if he works here, and so I approach him nervously, twisting my fingers together. “Where’s, um, the exhibition room, please?”
He nods at the door he’s standing next to. “You found it. Nine silvers.”
“What happens in there?” I ask in a tremulous voice.
The man gives me a strange look. “What do you think happens in there? This is a ruthouse.”
I dig around in my pocket and count out the coins, and my back breaks out in a cold sweat. I’m disobeying Stesha. I’m paying to see someone I think might be Stesha having sex with other Betas.
The man opens the door for me. “Stay as long as you want, but keep your hands on this side of the wall. Those are eye holes, not arm holes.”
When I enter the exhibition room, a woman’s throaty cries, a man’s irregular moans, and a rhythmic, wet slapping sound reaches my ears. An Alpha’s rich, lust-filled scent fills my nose, and I almost sob with relief. It’s not Stesha’s.
The door closes behind me, and I’m in a darkened room. There’s a wall in front of me with dozens of holes cut into it, and many people stand or sit at the holes, watching what’s going on inside a lamplit room. Whatever is happening in here has nothing to do with me or Stesha, and I turn to leave.
