Page 59 of Roulette Rodeo
An omega who shouldn't exist in our lives, looking at me with eyes that see too much.
And me, standing in the doorway like a coward, trying to convince myself that she's just another problem to be solved.
The truth is harder:she's the match that might burn everything down.
And part of me—the part I've kept locked away since Sophia's funeral—wants to let her.
But I can't.
Won't.
Because I know how this story ends. I've lived it before, buried it before, mourned it before.
This omega might survive the poison, might survive the night, might even survive us.
But she won't survive what we are.
What I am.
No one does.
“Thank you,” she whispers quietly, her eyes drooping as if its taking everything for her to keep them open. She loses the battle though, as they finally close and she’s unconscious again, leaving me to feel this odd hollowness while her word of appreciation echoes in my head, again and again.
Like an answer prayer…all because she thanked…me.
I know right there and then, this can’t go on.
This can’t be allowed to thrive…
So when she wakes up fully, when the drugs clear and she realizes what she's gotten herself into, I'll be the one to tell her the truth.That this was all a mistake. That hundred million dollars or not, she needs to go.
The Lucky Ace pack doesn't need an omega.
Sophia died with that dream, was buried with my heart, taking with her any possibility of trying again.
There would be no other.
GHOSTS IN THE SMOKE
~RED~
The darkness isn't really darkness—it's smoke.
Thick and sweet, curling through my consciousness like fingers through hair, pulling me deeper into something that isn't quite sleep but isn't quite waking either. My body feels heavy, weighted down by invisible chains or maybe just exhaustion so complete that gravity has tripled its hold on me.
But my mind...my mind is floating.
The first scent hits like a memory made manifest: cherries, leather and gun oil, rain on hot concrete.
Shiloh.
The smoke shifts, solidifies, and suddenly I'm standing in what looks like a military barracks. Everything is precise, ordered, beds made with corners sharp enough to cut. But there's dust on everything, like this place has been abandoned for years. Or maybe it's just a memory of a place that no longer exists.
I can feel him here, even though I can't see him. His presence fills the space like atmospheric pressure before a storm. There's a photograph on one of the footlockers—four men in tactical gear, faces obscured by shadow and distance, but I know he'sone of them. The one standing slightly apart, watching the perimeter even in a photo meant for memories.
This is loneliness, I realize.
This scent, this space—it's what isolation smells like when you've chosen it as armor.
