I caught Sin’s eye and spared a pointed look around the cafeteria, where so many sets of eyes landed on us. We were losing value to our allies every second closer to leaving we got, and safe places were scarce.
Even the cell I didn’t truly trust.
Not this close.
But the library was quiet and well defended.
I couldn’t give away my reasoning out loud, but Sin got it. He grabbed Vandle’s arm, leaning in to whisper an explanation in his ear. Karma seemed happy to go wherever, as long as he could stay plastered to Crescent’s side.
“This isn’t a march to the death,” Jared added into the moment of tense silence. “It’s a friendly fucking request.”
That made a tentative smile curve Crescent’s lips.
The grumpy librarian alpha was growing on her. And I was hesitantly believing that he wouldn’t crush that burgeoning trust.
CRESCENT
“Checkmate.”
I squished my eyebrows together, peering down at the black queen that had my white king cornered. The checkered board and its pieces barely made any sense still, but Tyler wasn’t going easy on me.
They didn’t want my fingers after all. Tyler just wanted someone to talk about books with, and then he’d offered to teach me chess.
“Is there… any way I could have won this one?” I asked.
Tyler picked up his queen and moved it back to its previous spot, then slid back the rook I’d been trying to use to trap him.
“If you’d moved your queen here—” He demonstrated the play, knocking over a pawn and flicking it off the side of the worn chessboard. “—then I would have been forced on the defensive. My best option would be to do this, but then in a few more turns you could have blocked me in again and taken the checkmate.”
I nodded along as he moved the pieces, playing through the game the way it could have gone if I was a master like him.
I loved the library for its books, but there was something thrilling about learning this new game. It took a lot of brain power.
And served as the perfect distraction.
I knew what the plan was. Steal the contacts from the vault using the key I’d been keeping safe all this time. Phantom and Vandle had slipped out with Sin once it was clear the Archiva pack wasn’t going to take revenge on me for stealing their library key, and Karma sat in the corner, sketching.
They were all preparing, but I didn’t have anything to help with, so when Tyler had set up the white chess pieces on my side and pointed out each piece to tell me what it could do for me, I’d curled into one of their lounge chairs and nodded along.
He wasn’t as scary as he’d first appeared.
He was kind of… fatherly. Gentle. Patient.
Well, not with my alphas. But with me he was really quite nice.
“Let’s play again,” I declared. “This time I’ll win.”
I was bound to eventually, right?
He chuckled, plucking a cube of cheese and a piece of bread off a plate Jared placed on the coffee table beside the chess board. Jared was less terrifying than he looked too—he might have even been amused by how overprotective I was of my fingers when we first stepped into the library again. I saw his lips quirk up when he noticed.
“Have some.” Jared pointed to the plate.
My gaze flicked up to Karma. He was just far enough away to be a little unfocused, but I caught his nod.
“Don’t suppose you’ll let me have some of those luxury snacks too?” he asked.
“Last task you did for us, you fucked up. If it were up to me, you’d still be getting over salted cafeteria meals,” Jared growled. “The snack offer extends to your omegaonly.”