Chapter 139
JESSICA
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“I’m fucking sure…we’re in some dungeon,” Riot spits, or maybe swallows–it’s hard to tell with how wet his throat sounds, how it catches around every word like he’s choking on the ghost of his own packmates, on blood he hasn’t tasted yet but is already dreaming of.
I crawl closer, jaw aching from grinding boiled tendon between my teeth, the last scrap of cooked meat I’d hoarded from the tray Theo’s thing shoved under the bars.
I don’t bother chewing anymore, I just press the half–soft lump between his lips with two fingers and say, “Eat,” like a command but quieter, guiltier, because I know I’m feeding him to keep him alive.
His lips tear the meat, but they graze my knuckles first, and it’s not reverent—it’s desperate, wolf–starved.
We’ve been kept locked in here for many days now.
“Don’t you fucking waste that,” I mutter, and his eyes slit open, as if he’s still not over himself from being the one in command.
“You got a plan, omega?” he croaks, sarcastic, the O like a leash tightening around my throat.
“Yeah.” I lie.
“Liar.”
“Still better than dying in a cell like an unfucked bitch.”
“Who says I haven’t been?” he grins, blood between his teeth.
I grin back. It feels wrong talking to him with these things when weeks later I would’ve slashed his throat with my own claws.
We sit like that for a second–me kneeling, him crumpled, the meat gone, the air thick with mold and skin, and even the torches flicker like they’re too tired to burn properly. His chains drag when he shifts. I catch the sound and store it, memorize it.
“He watches us,” I say, Riot doesn’t respond. Just chews the meat again in his cheek, long since cold. “He wants me obedient. Wants me small.”
“You are.”
“I could be smaller.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing.”
I crawl back toward the bars. The tray’s still there. Scraps of gristle. I look at my reflection in the dull metal
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Chapter 139
and don’t recognize the bitch staring back. Hollow eyes. Pupil blown. Mouth wet with rot.
“We give him what he wants,” I whisper, so quiet it doesn’t even echo.
Riot stares, one brow twitching like a spasm.
“We give him a show. Omega and her ruined alpha. Submissive. Broken. Breedable.”
He chokes–not a cough, a laugh, or a gasp. Something in between.
“He’ll never buy that.”
“He already has.”
I reach back, smear the meat–grease and my own spit down my neck, collarbone, breasts.
Riot stops whatever he’s doing and stares at me. “What are you doing?”
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I crawl, then. To him. Over to where the rot is strongest, where the stone reeks of old piss and blood and the place his knees have worn raw patches in the floor.
I touch his chest. The skin there is hot. Boiling. Wrong. He hisses but doesn’t pull away. “Kiss me…”
“What?” he croaks.
I tilt my head like a wolf scenting something worth the kill. Let my thumb drag down his sternum, through sweat and blood and the sick–sweet shine of healing too slow to matter. I find the ruined dark ring around his nipple and circle it–slow–until he jerks.
“You want to break him, Riot?”
He blinks. I feel his cock twitch against the inside of his thigh, feel the rot–coiled tension in his gut. I slide my knee between his legs and lean in, chest to chest, lips brushing his ear like a sin.
“You want him to watch me fall in love with your rot?” I grind against him—once, hard, slow–my breath stuttering with real need. “You want him to smell your knot on me when he comes to drag my body out of this place?”
“Jessica-”
I swallow the name from his mouth with mine. Tongue first. Deep. Filthy, I kiss him like it’s a vow. Like it’s betrayal. Like I’m spitting in Theo’s open palm with every slow drag of my hips.
“Let’s play his game,” I whisper against Riot’s jaw, before I feel the cell cracking open and then hands, fists, steel–wrapped grip around my hair, my throat, my spine. I’m yanked backward so violently I think my knees leave the floor.
Riot growls like something animal but too broken to stand, his chain screaming against stone as I’m ripped from his lap like I’m meat.
“Get your filthy little tongue off him.”
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Chapter 139
Theo.
Got you.
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I wink to Riot before a palm cracks across my mouth. “You’re disgusting,” he snarls, yanking me upright by the jaw now, making me stand for him, making a spectacle of the wet clinging between my thighs. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
Riot is going to interrupt but I made him cower with my gaze. I don’t need saving because this is the plan all along. I need Theo to get mad, very mad, so we can get out of this place.
“Do you think this wins?” Theo hisses, his mouth so close I can smell the clean rot of his coat, his holiness, that sanctified reek that clings to him like he’s never sinned. “That touching him would punish me?”
I blink slow. Drunk on it.
“It did.”
His other hand lashes out–down, across my breast, a slap open–fingered and fast enough to sting through cloth. My head jerks again. My body lurches with it. My thighs twitch.
Yes.
“You want punishment?” he growls.
I breathe in his breath. His closeness. His authority.
“No,” I whisper, barely parting my lips, sweet as an omega who’s never been bred like a beast in chains.
“Please no.”
But I spread my knees just a little wider when I say it. I tuck my chin and look up. I keep my shoulders soft. Obedient. I’m holding a goddamn knife behind my smile, but he only sees the throat I leave exposed, the blood licking down like wine.
He steps closer.
That’s it.
That’s right.
Come closer, Theo. Come see what Alpha looks like when it’s rotted out of your reach.
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Chapter 140
