Page 92 of Big Knot Energy (Shadowverse)

“Uh,” I glanced back at the clock hanging over the bar. “In about twenty minutes.”

“Have you seen the show yet?”

“The new one or the guys in general?” I asked.

“All of it. Are they…” She glanced toward her friends. “Are any of them single?”

Even that question didn’t send the green fog of jealousy slithering through my stomach. For the first time in my life, I felt secure of my place in someone’s life and their heart.

“I think a few of them are, but I’m not sure.”

The bride lifted her phone and turned it toward me, pointing out Ax. I tried to hide my grin but failed miserably.

“This one. Alpha Ax.”

“Sorry, ladies,” I said, lifting my chin and pointing to the mark he’d left to cover Antonio’s.

“OMG, girl! You are lucky as hell,” the bride said to nods from every woman at the table.

“He’s one of three. They own this place. And that sexy omega there,” I said, pointing toward Amir, who winked when he caught us all staring, “is mine, too.”

“Damn, girl. Youmustteach us your ways,” one of the women said before raising her hand for a high five.

Which, of course, I returned because yeah…I was definitely lucky as hell.

“Since when does a beta claim an omega?”

That voice. It was the same one from my nightmares.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t turn to look. I could hardly fucking breathe.

A hand gently wrapped around my bicep and turned me until I was staring into a man’s chest.

An alpha’s chest.

Antonio’s chest.

I didn’t have to look into his face to know. I would recognize his voice and his wet newspaper smell anywhere.

Fingers dipped under my chin and gently raised my face until I was forced to either look up at him or make a scene. And being as I’d already been the cause of one fight that resulted in the police showing up at my alphas’ club, I didn’t want to have a repeat performance.

“You look amazing,” he said, his voice deceivingly tender, as though he gave a single shit about me.

Why was he here?

I had zero to offer him now that my parents were dead and any amount of money or power was gone with them. Not that I would have ever been a cash cow.

Cora had been the golden ticket, the one alphas fell over themselves to claim, the one my fathers had made a deal with another powerful family in exchange for her place in their pack.

“Excuse me,” I said, pulling my face away from his hand and turning my back on him, hurrying through the crowd while struggling not to return to the old Issa, the one who would curl in on herself, lower her eyes to the ground in submission, and allow a fucker like Antonio to make me feel inferior.

Inhaling deeply, I blew the breath through pursed lips, then smiled at Amir when he frowned and tilted his head in his little silent way of asking if I was okay.

No way would I tell him who had found me, who was currently in the middle of the club. He wouldn’t waste a second to confront him and that was the last thing I wanted.

I would simply finish up the night, ignore him as much as possible,and hope he got the message that he wasn’t welcome here and I had a new pack, one that didn’t involve him. The asshole had held a knife to my sister’s throat when she’d allowed her alphas to claim her.

No matter how nice he tried to pretend he was in front of that table of betas, I knew the real Antonio.

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