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His fingers fist into the chain links on either side of my hands as he stares into my soul. My heart is in my throat, and I want to beg him to lose the fight, not to get hurt anymore. But he winks and then pushes off the fence, right back into the fight.
He looks like his legs are spent, his arms are sloppy, and his punches aren’t as precise as they had been. If I can see this with an untrained eye, then the alpha he’s facing can see it. I watch in horror as the man slams his fist into the side of Dean’s face, snapping his head to the side, blood spraying from his slack mouth before he is falling in slow motion to the mat.
“No! Get up! Get up, Dean!” I rattle the fence, joining in on the chant of the crowd. Forgetting my thought of moments ago that wanted him to quit. His head lulls in my direction, and he takes a breath and blinks. He’s done. I can see it in his face. But the other man is almost done, too. “Saint, don’t quit!”
He smiles a bloody smile before the massive alpha is on him. Before the ten seconds are up, the round ends, and my heart can finally beat again.
Dean climbs to his feet. He swipes his arm over his mouth, smearing blood down his forearm and across his cheek. The purple bruise surrounding his eye is dark. He’ll be lucky if his eye socket isn’t fractured.
He moves to us, three fingers lace into the ring’s chain linked wall. As he leans his forehead against the metal.
I can feel Austin at my back. “Stop fucking around and knock him out,” he says.
Dean laughs. A tangy burst of lemon fills the space between us, weighed down with the scent of iron as it seeps from a serious-looking wound over his eyebrow.
“Don’t worry, I won’t let Felix lose his money.” He winks and presses even closer, lowering his voice. “Keep cheering for me, hellcat. I like it.”
I suck in a breath as my eyes bounce between his. “I only cheer for winners.” Really, I don’t cheer for anyone in a fight ring, but for Dean I would.
He grins. “Well then, I guess I better win.”
When he pushes away from the fence and saunters back to the middle of the ring, Austin runs his fingers up my side, sending little spikes of pleasure to mix with the anticipation that had filled me. It is a heady mix that makes me feel like I’ve been drinking.
“He’ll be fine, princess,” he whispers. The ghost of his breath dances over the shell of my ear.
I watch as Dean shakes out his arms, flexing his taped fingers. He looks like he has gained a new purpose. He throws another wink our way, and I can’t help the responding smile that spreads over my lips. The feathers of the mask brush my cheeks, making me feel secure in this crowd. Almost as good as my hoodie.
Casting my gaze around, I take in the entire space. Part of it reminds me of what happened to my brother and me, just because it is a warehouse. But the energy here isn’t the same. It is primal and bursting at the seams. The freedom to embrace a violence that is contained.
This is the kind of place that I’m sure my brother would come to. Having free rein to beat on an alpha that can’t control him would be appealing to him. I could picture him in the ring, circling one of them, just waiting for the bell. It would probably be a better outlet than what he has now. Drugs and drinking, possibly some kinky sex that includes pain of some sort. Not that I’d want to watch him get beat up.
Austin’s fingers curling into my hips in the most delicious way brings me back to the present. Each moment around these three is dangerous, because I fall a bit more without even meaning to. I soften to them. I can feel it. And it isn’t even taking much to make it happen. Touch. The one thing I avoided like the plague is actually something that I crave with them. And when I’m around them, one of them always seems to find reasons to brush their hands against me.
Like now. Felix is next to me, his arm brushing mine, not willing to push it further because of what happened earlier. While Austin is very much pressed against my ass, making it known to me at least, that he is very aware of my body. I’m sure my perfume is surrounding us in a haze, but I can’t smell anything but the three of them, since they marked me with their scents.
The bell rings, and the fight starts. And I cheer for Dean, but only with his nickname because he seems to like it best and that matters. If I can’t soothe the pain I caused earlier, I can at least bring him some kind of happiness now. Right? Is that a fucked up way of thinking about it? Possibly.
He only lets the fight go on for less than a minute. His opponent steps into him, attempting to take advantage of a fake stumble, and Saint slams his fist into the alpha’s jaw. His head snaps back before he is out cold, falling to the mat.
I’m as loud as everyone else as I cheer. Part of me is embracing the fantasy that I can never actually have. The strong alphas that will protect me from anything. The safety and security that I crave at my fingertips. All the things I know are lies or feelings encouraged by hormones. I let them in and give them free rein. Because for the next week, I would live the life I could never have.
My breath catches in my throat as I think of what it would feel like to take their knots and their bites. Because I would do both, even if it killed me to leave, for a single week I would be their omega in every sense of the word.
Am I insane? I think at this point that is a given. Either that or I’m being so driven by the scent match that I’ve lost my head. At least this way, it is on my terms. I don’t have to wait for them to turn on me or throw me away. I can enjoy them and then walk away.
Excitement surges inside of me at my thoughts.
The world moves around me, and the next opponents enter the ring, circling each other, as Austin pulls me away from the fence and moves us through the crowd. We enter a back room, and I see Saint sitting on a stool, bruised and bleeding, while a simpering omega tends to his wounds on her knees in front of him. A rumbled growl vibrates my chest. She looks over, startled, but doesn’t put up a fight before scurrying away without a word.
“Awe, princess, you scared her,” Austin says, amusement threading through his words as he holds back his laughter.
“She is a hellcat, so it is no surprise,” Saint murmurs.
Felix scoffs. “The omega knows who we belong to.” No one disagrees, and it does something to me, something warm and fuzzy, like burrowing down into a soft fluffy nest with my favorite snacks and a romance playing on the TV.
I’ve never looked at a pack in that way before. That the alphas belong to the omega and not the other way around. I like it.
Saint watches me like he can see into my soul, because he is Saint now, fully and truly–I can’t fathom calling him Dean when I know he likes his nickname. His left eye is almost swollen shut, and his eyebrow looks as if it needs stitches.
