The air leaves the room.
"Three bonded alphas and one omega under the same roof for—what, nine months now? More?" He shakes his head. A small, pitying gesture. "My buyers prefer their acquisitions unclaimed. Unbonded.Unspoiled." He looks directly at me. "Ruined goods bring a lower price, Zero. But they still bring a price."
I run it all through in my mind.
The ankle guy first. He's three steps to my right. I'm out of the chair and on him before his hand reaches his calf—one strike to the throat, crush the trachea, he's down choking on his own cartilage in under two seconds. The shoulder holster sees me move, reaches for the piece, but he's behind Talbot and Talbot is between us like a wall, and by the time the holster clears the jacket I've already grabbed the water glass off the table and shattered it against the edge and the stem is in his neck before the gun is level. Three seconds. Four. The associate doesn't move because the associate isn't a fighter—I can see it in his soft hands, his open mouth, the pen dropping—so I take hiswrist and snap it sideways on my way past him because I can and because fuck him and his leather notebook.
Then Talbot.
Talbot I take by the jaw. Both hands. I hold his face the way he held that remote when he showed us Max on the cross. I make him look at me. I make him see the thing he's been poking at all afternoon—the thing behind the chair and the clenched hands and the half-inch scrape on the concrete floor. I let him see it for exactly one second. Long enough to understand. Then I put my thumbs on his windpipe and I watch the warm smile disappear into the color his face turns when I press down. Purple first. Then darker. Then nothing at all.
The whole sequence takes eleven seconds. Maybe twelve. I've done worse in longer rooms with more men and walked out without a scratch.
I can feel it in my hands. The sequence. The weight of his throat. The glass breaking. The wet sound the stem makes going into—
Bane squeezes my arm.
Hard. A second pulse of pressure on top of the grip that's already there, his fingers digging into the bruise he's making, and the room comes back. The brick walls. The table. The water glasses. Talbot's face, intact, still wearing the warm smile, still watching me from four feet away with the satisfied patience of a man who knows exactly what I just did behind my eyes and isn't afraid of it.
My ass is in the chair. My hands are on my thighs. I am shaking. Actually shaking. The kind of full-body tremor I haven't felt since the night we found Max's car empty in that parking lot. My jaw is locked so tight I can feel the enamel grinding. A sound is trying to get out of my chest—low, guttural, the sound an alpha makes before it kills something—and I am holding it behind my teeth with everything I have.
Half an inch. Bane's hand. The scrape of the chair.
That's it. That's the margin.
"That sounds," Atlas says—and his voice is level, how his voice is level is a mystery I will take to my grave—"like you're threatening to kidnap and traffic a twenty-year-old civilian. Again."
"I'm telling you what the alternative looks like." Talbot picks up his water. "The deal is generous. The alternative is not. I'd like you to make your decision with the full picture in front of you."
He looks at me one more time. The warm smile. The talk-show-host eyes.
"You can let go of the table now, Zero."
I look down.
My right hand has left my thigh. It's gripping the edge of the table so hard the wood is bending under my fingers. I don't remember putting it there. Bane's hand is still on my other arm. My knuckles are white. Both sets.
I let go of the table. Put my hand back on my thigh. It takes me two tries.
Atlas looks at the paper in his hand. Looks at Talbot. Folds the paper once. Twice. Puts it in his breast pocket. The motion is precise. Mechanical. Atlas on autopilot because the human being behind the machine has gone somewhere I can't reach.
That’s probably a good thing.
"We'll need time."
"A week. My office will send the terms." Talbot stands. Buttons his jacket with one hand. "Gentlemen."
He doesn't tell us to finish anything. There's nothing on the table to finish. No wine, no bread, no folded napkins. Just water glasses and a piece of paper and the faint pulse ofpheromones in the brick and a silence so total I can hear my own blood in my ears.
He leaves with his associate and his security men and the back room goes quiet.
Nobody speaks.
Bane's hand is still on my arm. He hasn't let go. His fingers have loosened but they haven't left, and I can feel the tremor he was hiding from Talbot running through his grip now. His breathing is wrong—too measured, too controlled, the breathing of a man keeping himself together by counting inhales.
I look at Atlas.
He's staring at the place where Talbot sat. Not at the chair. Through it. His hand is at his jaw—thumb and forefinger bracketing his chin—the gesture he makes when he's computing. But the gesture is wrong. The thumb isn't moving. He's holding his own face like he's afraid it'll come apart.
