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Everything hurt.

“He’s in pain,” Georgia insisted, and her voice, as always, helped soothe me. “And I know you think he’s not because he should be screaming, but I can promise you, he is.”

“Mrs. Davenport, we can’t give him any more medicine or he could⁠—”

“He’s a lupine!” she roared, and because she was an alpha, as was I, her power blew through me and made my whole body spasm.

I screamed then.

I would have shifted, but something—a blanket, the sheet, my own shirt, I didn’t know—but material of some kind was pressed to my nose and mouth and pheromones, his pheromones, soothed me. I could breathe for a moment, and then there was blessed nothing once more.

Heat prickled over my skin, and that smallest bit of wakefulness brought me up from the deep darkness to nearly complete consciousness, but most importantly, there was now light behind my closed lids.

“I think he’s awake.”

“He needs to be so I can murder him.”

No mistaking that voice. That was Graeme Davenport, who was not at all crazy about me.

“Don’t say that,” a gentle male voice stated. Probably his mate, Avery. “He saved six omegas from being trafficked, and because of that, we now know all about Theo Rossellini’s real business.”

Avery was a police detective, so it made sense that he knew about the crime I had been caught up in.

“Which is great. Saving lives is paramount,” a female voice said; not my cousin Gigi, someone else. “But what we really would have liked was Matteo Rossellini along with his father. Thanks to him jumping the gun, we have one, not the other.”

“He should be in jail,” another man said, backing up the woman. “He’s been nothing but in our goddamn way this entire time.”

“Oh, open your eyes,” Gigi ordered me then, tired of waiting. And because I didn’t immediately follow direction, she pinched the side of my right thigh really hard. What most people didn’t know who had never been accosted in that manner, was that it hurt like a sonofabitch when she did that, each and every time. And I could remember every incidence of being abused that way since I was five and she was seven.

She was a monster.

Sometimes.

“Owww,” I snarled, opening my eyes and glaring up at her.

As always, she was a vision, with her flame of red hair and alabaster skin, and her eyes, in that moment, deep sapphire, the long, thick crimson lashes making them appear darker than usual. Or that could have been because she was both worried and furious at the same time. She also appeared tired, which I was certain was my fault as well. I’d been told on more than one occasion that I took years off her life.

But her sigh was loud as she bent and hugged me. That hurt as well, but she was relieved, and since she was the only person who loved me, I endured it. When I turned my head and kissed her cheek, she let go, straightening up to stare down at me in that way she had that always let me know that, come hell or high water, I was one of her favorite people on the planet.

When I looked away from her, I saw Wade Massey, Avery Davenport’s partner, then Avery himself and, as I had suspected, his alpha, Graeme Whitaker Davenport the Fifth. He was also an earl, of all the ridiculous things, and the estate was somewhere in England. He had dual citizenship so he could have a title. As though I cared. What was important was that he was a cyne. That meant he wasn’t an alpha like me and Gigi, who might or might not head a large family. Neither of us did, as Gigi had married Stone, Graeme’s younger brother, and been absorbed into the Davenport family. I wasn’t either, as my father had chosen to disinherit me and make his new son, from his second marriage, his heir.

When Franklin Houghton-Crowne had left, he’d made certain there was money for my mother so no one in the jarl could say that he had not done right by her. I don’t know if it hurt her; she didn’t tell me one way or the other, as we’d never been particularly close. But the fact that he’d made sure she didn’t end up on the street had not been done out of love, but rather for the sake of appearances. My parents’ marriage had been merely a bonding, him an alpha, her an omega, and when he fell madly in love with a gamma, he left without looking back. He could have simply discarded her as alphas often did to omegas, but again, appearances, and she had done her duty, after all, by giving him a son.

His leaving had been done in days, my life changing seemingly overnight. He’d dissolved his attachment with my mother, disinherited me after finding out his gamma was carrying a son, and left, moving to Dallas, having placed our family home on the market as the last item on his list. I was fifteen at the time.

My mother, Siobahn, had not remained in Chicago, instead returning to her family in Dublin, finding peace and solace there. She’d never been in love with the idea of being my mother, had only been enamored of me when my father was. When his interest dried up, hers quickly followed. She bought me an enormous home in River North, seven bedrooms, ten bathrooms, and hired me a housekeeper before she left. I was sure she thought I was all set.

I’d turned to my uncle, Gigi’s father, Sebastian, who had sold the home quickly for me—everyone wanted to live in the Kingsbury Estates, after all—paid the housekeeper six months’ severance for doing nothing, and sent her on her way. Gigi and her whole family had come over that evening and helped move me into their house. I hadn’t wanted to be a burden, but my uncle Bash, as I called him, had said that his singular burden was being related to a horse’s ass, otherwise known as his brother. His wife, Gigi’s mother, Maeve, thought that was particularly good. I’d given all the money from the sale of the house to my aunt and uncle, as they had to feed me for three years, but later found that it had been put in a savings account for me that I received when I graduated from high school.

As Gigi and I were the last kids in the house, once we all left for college, her parents decided to sell their family home and travel the world. I thought that terribly selfish, loving the idea of a family residence everyone returned to. When we were younger, though, her parents flew us all to wherever it was in the world they were. It was actually quite fun, with destination holidays every year. And later, Gigi had assured me that they could see everyone now, visit them in their own homes, whenever they wanted, and it was true. When she’d had her daughter, Lauren, her parents had come and stayed for three months. I understood then the freedom of being able to pick up and go whenever one so desired. The issue for me was that I craved a home. Not that anyone knew that. I’d rather gargle glass than come clean.

Even though being in the house was exhausting with all the questions about my future continually hurled at me, I did enjoy visiting Gigi at her home, the one she shared with her daughter and husband, as well as Graeme and his family. The sprawling mansion in Lincoln Park was full of warmth and laughter.

When Gigi first found her true mate in Stone, suddenly I too was expected at the Davenport home at certain times, like all holidays and every birthday, including, horror of horrors, my own. In the past, I’d managed to get out of many mandatory social engagements, but since the birth of my favorite cousin’s child, I’d found myself accepting more invitations than I declined. While I was there, I’d watch Graeme deal with a million pulls on his time until he would call an end to everything that took his attention from his family.

As a cyne, there were always duties to attend to. He had many, many alphas under him, and an extensive amount of property and wealth. He was a billionaire, and even though he didn’t advertise that, everyone knew regardless. He held a lot of power, and one of the many things he did with it was to protect certain people in his life. For instance, I had broken into Theo Rossellini’s house in Highland Park, and I probably should have been in jail for that, as in cuffed to the bed awaiting booking while I convalesced, but instead, I was only looking at two police detectives and not being read my rights now that I was awake.

There were two other people in the room, a woman and a man, and after a moment, when my eyes focused a bit more and I could see the badges, I realized they were both FBI.