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Chapter1
Holly
“Do you think the bow is too much?”
Yes. I gritted my teeth, tensing as Adeline and her minions scuttled closer for a more thorough examination of tonight’s costume.Goddess above,yes, the fucking bow is too much.
“She needs to look like a present though.”
Wildfire ripped across my face as all six women looked me up and down, assessing every inch. Honestly, I had no idea what else they could do to make me look more like a gift. After two hours of hair and makeup, my black waves perfectly beachy and my eyes tinted with glitter, my lips the same red as my nails, I was morepreppedthan I’d ever been in my whole miserable life. Add in the holly-berry-red sheer chemise, the hem of whichjustghosted the bottom of my buttcheeks, plus the teeny white thong and the painfully structured push-up bra to match, then a pair of chunky high heels—red, of course—with satin straps that wrapped around my calves and knotted in neat little bows…
And then the stupid big bow itself, crinkly and gold, the sort to crown a yuletide present on the darkest night of December, just slapped on my throat above the diamond necklace on loan from the club jewelry department, its tassels dangling down my neck like icicles on aperfectwinter’s morning…
Yeah. I looked suitably gift wrapped.
“The bow stays.” As always, Adeline had the final say. As GM of Sweet Maple Bay’s most prestigious alpha club, her word was law—even if she was just a beta. Heck, even the alpha patrons respected her.
Well, maybe notrespected, but inside these four walls, they listened to her.
Queen Bee of the betas who ran this place, she stood in the center of this judgmental little huddle, looking sleek and chic as ever with her slicked auburn ponytail, her features elegant and feline-esque, her skin a deliciously warm caramel and her winged eyelinersharp. While the rest of us adhered to club dress code, sporting an array of yuletide hues, from red to green, white to silver, gold as far as the eye could see even on the rare male omegas behind the bar, Adeline got away with black, her pantsuits customed tailored in the village and costing more than I had made here in six months.
With a dismissive littlesniff, she finally shooed her assistants away, then gotrightin my face, ducking down despite the added height from these heels, and grabbed my chin. Makeup be damned, those kitty-claw talons gritted into my skin, their razor-sharp tips each topped with a single diamond.
“Aldo Graves is a very important client, omega,” she told me, her mouth smiling but her emerald greens violently cold. “Club Mistletoe is the only spot he patronizes when he’s on the island. He spends big and values loyalty, and he wants his employees to have a great time.” She squeezed me harder, on the cusp of bruising my jawbone. The omega in me rebelled at that, at some beta bossing me around, making me feel small and pathetic—but that was the way of the world in Adeline’s festive kink kingdom. “Not agoodtime, agreattime. After scenting all the girls in the brochure, he choseyou. If you impress his vampire pets, we can see about keeping you out of the cages on a more permanent basis.”
She said that like she was doing me a favor, like kneeling for bloodthirsty alphas—the literal kind, not just the assholes who craved war and conquest like the ones back home—was the opportunity of a lifetime. All new Mistletoe omegas worked in big gilded cages until they were deemed fit to mingle freely with the alpha patrons. For the better part of six months now, I’d stood in a fucking cage, night after night, adjusting to the overwhelming and, admittedly, intoxicating environment of so many alpha males in one place. Their scents. Their auras. Their purrs and growls and commands—easy for a frightened omega to succumb to it all.
At first, I was grateful for the cage, for the few feet of safe space it provided from leering gazes and groping hands.
Now, almost a hundred and eighty miserable nights later, I wanted out.
But Mistletoe alphas made my stomach turn, both the tourists and the locals, almost to the point that I was forcing a smile while I swallowed my own vomit. They hunted you while you were in the cage, waiting until the lock opened and the door sprang free, omegas let onto the floor for a feeding frenzy.
This was my first night out.
And I had been sold to three vampire alphas until dawn. I’d never met a shifter, never mind any of the other supernatural species in our world, their kind rare, their communities secretive, and their populations falling after the wars stopped and the global treaties were signed.
But I’d heard stories.
Creatures of the night—monstersin human form.
At this point, I wasn’t sure what was worse: the cage or the fangs.
“Do you understand, omega?”
I sucked in my cheeks, biting back a laugh when this beta narrowed her gaze, attempting an alpha stare-down that worked on some girls but made me want to roll my eyes. Still, she was the boss. She made the schedule. She had the power to assign me to some very nasty patrons if she thought I needed to be knocked down a few pegs.
So, I nodded. Shit, I even fluttered my lashes and attempted a smile.
“I want to hear yousay it.”
But that wasn’t good enough. Nothing we omegas ever did was good enough here.
And I traded my life savings, meager as they were, forthis—for a dynamic in my personal and professional life that made me feel about two inches tall. Eight months ago, I thought anything was better than the Bog, a gritty little island in the deep tropics where it was hot and steamy and horrible all year long. Where omegas were treated like animals, our lives regimented and restricted from the second we awakened. At twenty-two, I had finished my formal education and was waiting for some scummy alpha pack to claim me and pay all my debts to the government that privately educated me after my awakening at eleven.
Like all the other Bog omegas, I was headed for a lifetime of being collared, both literally in leather and figuratively with bond bites from all my mates.
A lifetime of breeding, of having my heats tracked, of no rights or freedoms of my own.
