Maybe I needed to want more than just grimy streets and one off jobs that might leave me worse than before.
I needed to want more. To hold onto more. Maybe some of the moments that hadn’t been so painful, though those were harder to dig up.
Shooting hoops in the small garden, grazing my knees on rugged concrete… losing hours in the school library, reading or making bad trades on Premier League trading cards.
Those had all happened before I’d become an alpha. Before a sickness had made my life a living hell. None of them really helped me build an image of a future—but maybe they were a start.
I glanced at Sin to see he was eating absently, unable to take his gaze from her any more than the rest of us.
What if there was truly a better future just around the corner?
We only had to survive until our appeal, and then we’d be free. Especially now that Vandle was awake. A fully feral alpha had been our biggest problem to the appeal process. We had to convince the people on the other side that we could function in society. Sometimes packs had been released with feral alphas, but only if the rest of the pack were stable.
Karma was a complication none of us wanted to voice. He hadn’t been feral, but an alpha who could lose control on a dimewas even more of a risk. But if Crescent had stabilized Vandle—withtwoomegas in the pack, we had a much better shot.
With these idiots, making it to our appeal was easier said than done. Well, I wasn’t actually sure if Vandle was an idiot yet. But he was definitely more of a prick than I’d imagined—bringing up the extreme lengths me and Karma had gone to to try and get pack lead off his feral-ass.
“One of us has to stay with Crescent at all times,” I said. “And someone else needs to stay nearby, if not right beside her.”
My gaze snagged on the Redgrave pack cell. It was one that opened up into the square. They were central to everything, which made sense considering the power they wielded.
Dominic Redgrave was leaning against the doorframe, a faint plume of smoke billowing into the air around him, his gaze fixed right on our pack.
My stomach sank as he caught my eyes, even from a distance. A grin spread on his face, and he tapped a non-existent watch on his wrist.
Shit.
I glanced back to Crescent, and the beacon of a bond the whole of Anarchy had just seen my pack make.
Shit.
I caught Sin looking, too.
His stiff expression told me everything I needed to know.
Dreams of better futures had to wait.Thistimeline was about to cause us some fucking problems.
I got to my feet.
Vandle glanced up at me. “What?”
“Just gotta settle something,” I muttered.
I knew the deal Sin had made. The one that was about to come knocking.
Sin caught up to me as I began walking toward Dominic. “I can deal with them.”
I side-eyed him and my voice was low. “Like you did the last time?”
Usually Sin was the deal maker—and he was damned good at it, but now we had an omega in a bond and we’d made a trade with the most powerful pack in Anarchy, and that deal locked in place the moment Vandle had bitten her.
Now that she was bonded, the countdown had started. We needed to buy some time from the Redgrave pack so we could work out a deal that didn’t involve Sin fucking our scent match in a rut cage in front of countless near-feral alphas.
And she didn’t even know.
Sin looked bitter. “I didn’t think she’d run away, or that Vandle would go anddark bondher—he shouldn’t even be able to.”
I sighed. I still didn’t get that, but we had bigger issues. “Maybe we shouldn’t have made the trade?—”