SIN
Thatfuckingkey… was with her thewhole time?
The only reason we’d ended up in the cage had been because of the missing contraband room key.
Our bargaining chip had vanished into thin air.
And yet, we would have found it if we’d thought to pat down Crescent’s pockets.
She looked up at me with such a sweet expression on her face, the key still clutched in her fist.
I closed my eyes, locking down the pack bond so she couldn’t feel my roiling emotions. I wasn’t mad at her—it was impossible to be mad at her.
Just… damn.
And I felt guilty. She hadn’t needed to go through the cage experience after all, and even though she was pleased every time the claim was brought up, I still felt bad.
“Thank you, firefly,” I said roughly.
Crescent’s teeth sank into her bottom lip, searching my face as if she could see every hint of frustration.
“I-I’m sorry I took it without telling you. But I thought… I was worried Holden might take it, and you seemed so attached.”
In the heat of that tense moment, I hadn’t noticed her little hand slipping into my pocket and taking out the all-important piece of metal.
At least I wasn’t the only one to fall victim to her. She’d snatched quite a few.
“Uh, Iwasattached to it,” I reassured her. Well, because of what it would buy us, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “You did good.”
“Everyone is frustrated with me.”
This damn bond—she kept her end so open that shutting her out felt like a grave sin. I glared around the room at my packmates who couldn’t keep their emotions in check properly.
They were all as stunned as I was.
Did we explain to her the series of events that the loss of the key had caused? She didn’t seem to be putting it together yet, even though we’d been frantically searching for the key right before being grabbed by the Redgrave pack to put on our show.
But then… Well, she hadn’t been nearly as scared as I’d expected.
“Did you choose to keep it from me when you knew the cost was the cage?”
“No.” She shook her head. “The first few I took… I think my hormones were really bad with the missed heat, and then the drugs…”
I frowned. There had been a lot of drugs.
“What does that mean?” Phantom asked. I noticed her pretty golden eyes narrow a bit at his voice, and I prayed for Phantom’s sake that she wasn’t good at holding grudges.
“I don’t remember the first few times I took them. I know it sounds stupid, but I just… lost myself. I just needed them so badly. I remembernow, but I didn’t at the time.”
I’d never heard of an omega blacking out from nesting instincts, but I was somehow unsurprised.
She was touch starved, had been banned from nesting and alphas for years, had suffered five agonizing heats, never had a knot, been given a heat drug, and then a heat blocker to stop it. Then she’d been dark bonded, and allowed to feel her instincts for the first time.
Jesus.
And it all started because she wanted to keep this key safe for me? There was only one upside to this.
Breaking into the contraband room wasn’t going to be a challenge anymore.