Page 180 of Psycho Alphas: Part One

Tears blurred the room, and I tried to focus on anything else other than the Alpha above me, pinning me by the neck as heseized the lace beneath the gown. I should reach for Bunny, to try to fight, but I was so weak, my body collapsing beneath me, wanting the touch that was being offered even if it made me a traitor.

Somewhere in my consciousness, Knox begged Bella to leave me, and my heart cracked again.

I could hear the storm, even from this room. The rain and howling wind, and distant rolling thunder.

Storms were the most beautiful thing in the world, but mine was shredded from my sketchbook and crumpled on the marble before me.

This storm wasrealthough—so close, even if we were still inside. But for a moment, it was like it was here. In this room, the static in the air, the cool wind, and rolling thunder.

FORTY-EIGHT

A SOUL MATCH

A connection stronger than a scent match. Soul matches are destined for each other, feeling the others’ pull like a magnet. The scent of a soul match is a fresh lightning storm.

It is a physical impossibility for soul matches to kill one another.

ROGUE

I thought this had to be true madness.

Seeing someone else with their hands on my Omega, unable to do anything. My mind had reached a cracking point, and I thought it might be best to die, killing a few of them rather than suffer this.

Maybe, if I made a big enough scene, she could flee…

Flee where, though?

If they caught her, would they torture her as punishment?

But as the Alpha in the ballroom pinned her down, pushing away her robe with one last chance to beg, I felt myself coming apart, logic failing to make sense.

But the decision was never made, as a distraction in its own right manifested by itself.

The front door of the ballroom flew from the hinges so violently that splintered wood exploded through the air.

Someone, or something,crashed through the main entrance of the room, bringing with it the sound of clinking metal and a low, rolling growl that echoed through the room.

It was a person—of sorts—one that drew every eye and stilled every hand.

With it came a scent I might once have recognised, only it was redwood and roses in a firestorm: unhinged, unadulterated fury. Even with the familiarity of the scent, my brain scrambled to catch up.

Ace Maverick was alive.

And he wasutterlyferal.

A mask covered his face from his eyes down, a metal skull like something out of a horror movie. Around his wrist were cuffs attached to chains, both of which had snapped, each a few feet in length. By the blood drying down the metal links, there was no trick to that. Pure, relentless madness, it seemed, was to blame for his freedom from wherever he’d been bound, and nothing less.

He wore torn, dark jeans, and no top. His feet were bare, and across his torso, was dust and blood, skin that looked burned from the sun, and a mess of scars across his arms and back.

Ace was nothing like the Alpha I’d last seen, adjusting his cufflinks and delivering death sentences as he sat in this very room.

Thiscreature belonged to nature.

No…

Notnature, I realised.

Those scars were familiar—Thistle’s marks.

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