Page 1 of Psycho Alphas: Part One

ONE

4 years before—The day of the storm.

THISTLE

Like a strike of lightning, the world changed.

I felt it before I saw him: the lightest breeze before a storm. A rustle, dragging me from endless silence, and I surfaced from a lifetime underwater.

I spotted him first from the bar, where I was getting ready for the night. No one noticed the way I froze—all attention now on the group walking through the doors and into the dim lights of the seedy club.

The room went numb, the silence stretching forever despite the music that hadn’t stopped and the people still talking around me. I couldn’t hear anything, just nothingness and the faintest beat of a heart.

He was an Alpha that shifted the foundation of everything I’d ever known. I didn’t know Alphascouldbe gods, but I didn’t know a lot of things. I was good at piecing the world togetherquickly though, dragging up the fragments of knowledge I’d scrounged to unscramble the truth of what was before me.

And today…

That’s a God, Bunny.

A real one.

I knew it.

It was beauty I wanted to keep forever.

To be caught drawing meant punishment, but tonight Ihadto dig out the only pencil I had left. The bruises from the last time still hadn’t faded, but it didn’t matter the cost because it was better to die than to risk forgetting the Alpha before me.

I ducked behind the counter, grabbing a tray and scouring the bar for absinthe. If I made Dan a Sazerac, he couldn’t complain when I brought it—and I would do anything to get closer.

My eyes kept darting toward the visitor, tracing every inch of him the best I could, determined to memorise everything.

He peered around the trashy underground club, and from here I could see that the hair that fluttered around his forehead was inky black; so dark that my heart twisted with sorrow as my fingers fumbled the cup in my hand.

Fuck…

I thought to the worn old pencils I’d stolen for sneaking sketches on scraps of paper when I didn’t think I’d get caught.

They’re not gonna cut it, Bunny.

Even if I tore the paper with all the pressure in the world, they wouldn’t reflect the lightless black framing pale skin and stealing breath from my lungs.

I hurried to grab ice, ignoring the strange look from Izzy at my side. The others would always find a reason to judge me, and I took comfort in seeing her attention on me, and not the one who’d entered.

I was lesser: strange and undesirable even for an Omega; I was good for nothing but keeping a pack from a rut, or becoming feral. I wasn’t like Izzy, who was a pack Omega with Alphas who’d claimed her properly. Dan said I wasn’t even worth the dirt on the few bills he’d handed to my father to take me off his hands.

I’d been sold a year after I’d presented, and Dan had been warned never to let me nest or get attached. Not unless they wanted to deal with the consequences—asiffalling for Alphas was a risk in this shithole. But they didn’t want possessive; they just wanted me around to get their knots wet when they were having a bad day.

I lived with it because the alternative, after what I’d done, was to be sent somewhere where everything would be suppressed. I couldn’t face that. My Omega side was the only place I’d ever found something that was mine that I liked.

Dan was introducing himself, and my beautiful god Alpha stood back, letting his colleagues do the talking.

What’s he going to think of us?

Of… me?

That was a dangerous thing to wonder.

Before today, I’d been close to quitting. The faint urges that made me want to live were becoming sparse while my self-loathing grew to a crescendo. Daydreams of what I’d do if the Alphas here were at my mercy—of the slow torture I’d exact… even those weren’t enough to give me strength anymore.

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