Page 15 of Rest In Knotty Pieces

“I’m keeping him!” I whisper shout. “He’s mine. Shotgun. I want him. All of him.”

Sage just lets out one of his irritatingly mocking laughs and glides out of the room, leaving me, the omega, and the detective I am now half sure I’m in love with alone.

King

The repetition of beating the ever-loving fuck out of the punching bag normally takes the edge off my temper, but seeing those bruises on that tiny omega has me seeing red, black, and a powerful wave of murderous white. Not even Rolly’s threads of violence and glee through the bond has been able to soothe me.

On the other hand…

I stop and catch the bag, looking down at the ground. I lean into it, smiling, wrapping my arms around it in a loopy display of affection.

Omegas.

Two.

Plural.

Multiple.

I just won the omega lottery. The jackpot. No one ever gets two. And they are both so perfect. He’s lean and dangerous, a perfect foil, and she’s so tiny and so very pretty with her pale skin and black hair with its orange tips. Like a little tiger.

I step back and swing, trying to get out some of the happy tension that is burning through me. But as soon as I think of them, I remember her broken and bruised body lying in that bed, and the rage returns.

Fuck this. I stalk out of the room and walk quickly around the house and back to the kitchen. The house is a giant square built underground. It’s actually massive and really well-designed. Rolly and I have been playing a secret game to try to uncover all the secrets it has to offer. So far, I’ve found a panic room, three hidden corridors, and Rolly found the hidden pantry and the exit back up to the pretend cabin. I know there’s a security room around somewhere. It’s just a matter of time before I locate it. Some rooms are built deeper down, some are behind walls, and some are down passageways away from the main building.

I don’t even want to speculate what it cost.

I’m sure Sage and Blaze know what we’re up to, though neither is saying a word about it. They are the most annoying babysitters I’ve ever had. There is nothing I’ve been able to do to make them angry enough to really fight me. And I have tried, really hard.

Did Rolly and I almost run the business into the ground? Perhaps, but in our defense, the opposition we got from the board set us up to fail. After one too many arguments about refusing to do as we asked, I’d told them all to get fucked. Punched the idiot who tried to set Rolly up with drugs and walked out.

Rolly had casually flipped them the bird, following me without a second of hesitation. What did surprise me was Blaze and Sage. I thought they would stay, but instead Sage bundled us up and brought us out here, with one very clipped conversation with Vale that had me smirking as he ripped into his cousin.

We’re the undesirables. The black sheep of our respective families. The ones they like to forget. Vale, Kota, Cyn, and Rory are the poster children, the ones trained for business. This arrangement for us to take over was supposed to be temporary. They tried to trap us in this miserable life.

It never ends well when you try to trap me.

My thoughts twist and turn bleakly. My purpose was to die. To vanish. To cease to exist.

I couldn’t even do that properly. The last time I spoke to my mother, she told me she should have aborted me. Then she forgot I was there. I was invisible, even to Cyn. He wasn’t allowed to see me in case I infected him with my deficiencies.

My plans were all there and then…Rolly came along, and he needed me, and boy, did I need him. Turns out, I’m happy to live in this shit hole world as long as I have a soulmate to fight it with.

Sage looks up when I enter. It’s still a little weird to me that I always capture his attention. He frowns a little like he’s seeing something about me that he doesn’t like.

“They are staying.”

I don’t ask, I tell him.

He sighs heavily and picks up a butter knife. I picture shoving it through his throat if he tells me no.

“Yes, they are staying.”

His easy capitulation has me shifting to the side, putting my back to the wall and not the doorway, watching him, waiting for when he’s going to attack. The problem with Sage is that he doesn’t fight the way I do. He fights with charm and understanding. When we got here, I’d stormed out, threatening him, promising he couldn’t keep us. He’d thrown me a set of keys and opened a hidden garage where a black Kawasaki Ninja sat waiting for me.

“What’s this?” I’d asked.

“You don’t have to stay here. I’m just offering a respite from the world.”