Page 156 of Roulette Rodeo
Red: I'm FINE. Seriously. Got coffee, a book, and a locked door. Living my best life.
Talon: Your best life is being stuck alone in a coffee shop during a storm?
Red: My best life is making my own choices about who I trust. Even if that means waiting alone. Besides, I can fight.
There's a pause, then Shiloh again:
Shiloh: That’s our Omega.
Those words that warm me more than the coffee I'm nursing.
The book draws me back in, the omega protagonist now executing her revenge with careful precision. She's not violent about it—she's smart. Uses the alpha's own arrogance against him, lets him think he's in control right until the moment she destroys everything he values.
It's satisfying in a way that makes me think about Marnay, about all the alphas who'd tried to buy me over the years. About how they'd never seen me as a threat because omegas aren't supposed to be dangerous.
We're supposed to be soft, delicate, helpless…
Like those three omegas who'd rather insult me than see me as someone who might understand their frustrations.
Like Sophia, who everyone seems to think was too perfect to have had any agency in her own fate.
Like whoever that poor omega was at the medical center tonight, pushed so far she'd tried to escape the only way she could imagine.
But we're not all soft. Some of us are sharp enough to cut anyone who tries to grab us wrong.
The storm continues its assault on the building, and somewhere out there, Luca is probably still watching. Waiting. Planning whatever game he thinks he's playing with my pack, or with me.
He thinks I'm isolated, vulnerable, an easy piece to move on whatever board he's constructed in his mind.
He's wrong to underestimate someone like me.
I may be alone in this coffee shop, surrounded by storm and darkness, but I'm not vulnerable.
I'm not a pawn in his game or anyone else's.
I think about Rafe's fear that history will repeat itself, that I'll end up like Sophia—broken by them or by the life they lead. About Corwin's gentle warnings, Talon's protective hovering, Shiloh's fierce need to keep me safe.
They all think they need to protect me. From Luca, from their past, from the darkness that follows men like them.
An opportunity will come where maybe those threats will need protection from me.
A woman who's already been broken and reformed herself with her own hands.
Who knows what real predators look like and how to avoid their teeth.
Who can sit alone in a coffee shop during a storm, doors locked and back to the wall, and feel more free than she ever did in a casino full of people and a world that enjoyed benefitting from using her.
Luca can circle all he wants. He can play his games, drop his hints about Sophia, try to use me as leverage against Rafe.
But I'm not playing around, at least to the tune of the game he’s trying to brew.
I'm creating my own, with my own rules and my own objectives.
And the first rule?
Trust no one who smiles while they're hunting.
The second?
