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Prologue
Ionly have onesingle, shining memory from my life before Dreamland.
A chessboard…and a teacher.
She leans over the board, long grey curls spilling over her shoulders, and she looks down at the predicament I've put her in. I know I've almost got her, that my pieces are all in place.
"Check," I whisper.
"Hmm...you've almost got my king, haven't you?" she says.
I give her a satisfied smile. "Sure have."
"But you forgot about the queen, Aisling."
Her deft hand moves across the board, pulling her queen out of danger and using it to knock down one of my knights. I can do nothing but watch as she takes control of the board using the queen alone, her eyes--clear blue eyes that look an awful lot like mine--flickering up to smirk at me.
"Sometimes, it's best to let the queen lurk at the fringes of the board," she says. "Use your other pieces to do a lot of the grunt work--let the queen strike. And never forget that she's the most powerful piece in the game."
"Why wouldn't you just target her, then?" I ask, frowning. "If you took out the queen..."
"That's always the question, isn't it?" my teacher says. "And the answer is to use the rest of the army as a shield...becausesheis your greatest asset."
"It applies in real life too, my little star," another woman says. I don't see her, but I feel her arms around me, and I know intuitively that she, too, looks like me. "Never forget that."
And I didn't.
Not even after the wreck.
Not after the ocean, the beach, coughing up saltwater and waking up on the neon streets of Pacific City.
There are things a queen doesn't forget.
And most important is how to play the game.
Chapter one
Aisling
Dreamland is pulsing withthe lifeblood of Pacific City.
This is where I live--in the place where alphas and betas trade drugs and sex, at the heart of Echo Beach. This is our tower in the clouds, my stage...a sick, twisted perversion of a kingdom.
This is my prison.
A seedy club they've decked out to look like heaven.
The stage is lit in blue and pink neon light as I take the stage, walking out on holographic seven-inch heels, reaching out to take the pole in my hand.
Because in this place where the city's heart beats, I drive the pulse. Me and the other omegas, princesses locked away.
I can only forget myself when I'm dancing, my fingers locked around the cool steel of the pole, my knee hooked around to twirl like a ballerina in a music box. My hair whirls in a pastel fan of lavender strands, my skimpy dress glittering.
The dress comes off, revealing shimmering white lingerie.
The alphas in the crowd simmer.
I can feel their eyes on me, tracing the curves of my body as I move. They ache for me, just as I ache for the freedom that lies beyond this stage. But I have to push those thoughts aside, have to focus on the dance, on the beat, on the pulse.
