Page 41 of Our Deceptive Heat

“I’m a songwriter,” I snarl.

“You’re a performer,” Envy snaps.

I shake my head. “I’m trying to make enough money to disappear.”

Those words don’t go down well, I can see the protests rising in all four of them. Tyr storms around the room. Mako shakes his head in immediate denial. Digs protests loudly, but it’s Envy who stares at me, silently challenging me, and it’s that challenge that hits me hardest.

“If you need money, we can just give it to you,” Digs shouts.

“And then it will dry up, but if I have a reputation as a songwriter, I can earn money wherever I am,” I growl back. It’s not like I haven’t thought this through.

“You owe us a song,” Tyr says in a growl; clearly, he’s figured out what my plan is.

“Yes, the best song I’ve ever written. It will be fantastic, and you’ll tell everyone I wrote it, and I will be set for life. My father won’t be able to sell me. I’ll be a valuable asset to Alpha records. You get rich and famous, and I disappear.”

The four of them stare at me like they think I’ve lost my mind. I probably have. I’m desperate and twitchy, and I feel a frantic need to start working.

“That’s a really risky plan, Ryn,” Mako says hesitantly.

I shrug. “It’s not my only plan, but this one allows me the most freedom.”

Tyr leans back in his chair and looks at the ceiling. “Well, have you thought about-”

“I’ve thought about running away. My father’s money makes that option null and void unless I want to live in a forest or a mountain. Or a pack, I mean if I could find one that wanted me, I just have to make sure they won’t rape me, hit me, take my money, or any other of a million other things that I might be able to find out with time but can’t right now.”

“Why haven’t you met any packs?” Envy asks instead, ignoring the charged silence that has filled the hotel room.

I stand up and start pacing. “Did you really think my father was going to allow me to court a pack? I’m a commodity. I can be bought, and I can be sold. How do I explain it better? I know, I am a thing.”

“Locke-”

“Is dealing with his own issues.”

“Lia-”

“Has a new pack and has just survived her own hell.”

Tyr opens his mouth. I hold up a hand.

“If you say Raider or Kelly, I will thump you until your brains return. Who the hell do you think sponsors their sports? My father controls everything,” I say bitterly. “It took all my negotiating to get Dad to drop Locke from the label and not press charges against Mirakill for kidnapping an out of her mind omega. Oh, he wanted to.”

Envy puts his head in his hands and stares at the table. The defeat in him makes me wonder just how much influence my father has had over their lives.

“You’re fucked.”

I bob my head. “Pretty much.”

“What makes you think, even if you produce this song, that your father will allow you to keep writing songs instead of selling you to-” he chokes off and lifts his head. “How do you know it will work?”

I stare at Envy, at the anger in his eyes, and I feel suddenly foolish and like a child.

“I don’t, Envy, but I have to try. I don’t want to be a thing, and I don’t want to live every day as what you guys saved me from last night. Further, I really don’t want to live in hiding and watching over my shoulder for the rest of my life, either.”

Envy stands up, the chair flying backwards. “We need time. No decisions until we all decide. I’ll be back,” he snaps and storms out of the hotel room.

Tyr glances between us and takes off after him.

Hurt and defeat, two twin emotions I’m extremely familiar with, fill me, and I sit back down, resting my head on my arms.

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