Page 203 of Psycho Pack

"Isn't it obvious?" she asks in a bored tone. "I'm his omega."

I frown. "He's a beta. There aren't enough of us to go around for every powerful pack of alphas that wants one. So why would they give you to him?"

"Please. Money and power can buy anything. Anyone," she adds bitterly, looking around at my alphas. "You should know that better than anyone."

I bristle at the implication, even if it's not far from the original truth. Iwasjust a prize given to the Ghosts.

Although I was really a ticking time bomb meant to tear them apart.

That realization still hasn't fully sunk in.

But no matter how it started, that's not what it's become.

Seeing myself through another omega's eyes, though, is a reminder of just how much has changed.

"We're not the same," I say firmly. "For one thing, my alphas would never leave me the way Monty left you. Are you really willing to risk your life to protect that coward?"

Something flashes in her eyes.

Pain, maybe.

Or anger.

It's gone before I can be sure.

"The only person I'm protecting is myself," she answers. "And you're all idiots if you think my useless mate is the key to getting the Council to call off the hounds."

"Oh, we're a long way past that," Thane says soberly. "Right now, we're at the 'burn everything to the ground and see what happens' stage."

Cosima swallows audibly, but her expression remains stoic and unchanged, like a porcelain doll. She looks back at me. "Yousaid it yourself, Monty is a coward. If you're planning on using me as leverage, you're wasting your time."

"Monty might not," Plague muses, studying her like a mouse in a cage. "But I'm willing to bet your father has a bit more steel in his spine. A man who managed to turn nuclear winter into an empire is many things, but a coward isn't one of them."

"Damn, bro," Whiskey says in a reverent whisper. "That went harder than it needed to."

Plague's gaze flickers over to him in irritation. "Not the timeorthe place."

The look on Cosima's face suggests Plague isn't wrong.

"You're a Council member's omega," Plague continues. "You must see and hear plenty of things—especially when Monty is showing you off at his sex parties."

"That depends," she says flatly.

"On what?" he asks.

She smirks. "On whatever 'things' it is you're referring to."

I see the tension in Plague's lean frame, the only sign he's growing irritated with her deflections and playing innocent. "A man named Zeran. He would have been a prisoner. Captured four, maybe five months ago."

My heart quickens as I realize what he's getting at.

His brother.

Zeran must be an alias for Azarel.

"Zeran?" Cosima echoes. "Doesn't ring any bells. What does he look like?"

Either she's an actress who'd put Mila Molotova to shame, or she's telling the truth.

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