Page 63 of Seducing Selena

Nick rolled us so he was pressing me into the cushions. “I’m glad to hear that, sweetheart.”

“But I am not a slave,” I said, tone final. “And after this is over, and all the bad guys are in jail, you are never going to call me that again. I know it’s a word and a role, and if all of this had never happened, maybe I’d enjoy playing around with it. Not now.”

“Agreed.” Sebastian’s voice came from the door, and both my other Alphas appeared. “I don’t know that any of us could truly call anyone a slave after the last few years.”

Nick sat up and pulled me with him, revealing that my other Alphas had brought us breakfast. It smelled amazing. Eggs and bacon. Some kind of juice I couldn’t identify, and biscuits with honey. I would give them that. The food had been good my entire time here.

“Thank you,” I said. Both for the food and the acknowledgment that I wasn’t a slave.

Derek set my tray down beside me and kissed my hair. “You don’t even know the relief it is to treat you the way we’ve wanted to this whole time.”

I began to eat, suddenly ravenous. “Will this put you in danger? Of taking them all down?”

“So long as we only act like this here, no,” Nick said. “We will have to keep up appearances.”

“I can do that. I would have done that from the beginning if I’d known.”

Sebastian reached out and touched my knee. “We know.”

The juice was delicious. Maybe mango? Mixed with something else. “You thought I was a spy?”

“Something like that.” Nick began to eat his own food. “It’s not the first time someone’s tried to plant someone within our organization. As disgusting as it is, this market is… competitive.”

We all ate quietly after that, enjoying each other’s company in easy silence. There was so much we had to figure out, and yet, it was nice to exist in this space where we didn’t acknowledge all the difficulties we’d have to overcome.

When we finished, Sebastian took the trays and disappeared. When he came back, there was a black velvet box in his hands that looked like one that might hold a necklace.

“What’s that?”

He smiled, and it was a beautiful sight. How much had these men been able to smile in their time here? Or smile genuinely? “Something that I’m not sure you’ll like, but I still want to show you.”

I looked at the box warily.

Derek laughed and pulled me across the cushions so I was sitting between his legs. “Don’t be nervous, Selena. We’re never going to force something on you again.”

Sebastian knelt in front of me. “Do you remember what Derek said last night?”

“Which part?”

“That we wanted our cuffs on you, but real and permanent ones.”

“Oh.” I leaned back into Derek as he slipped his arms around my waist. His hands teased the soft roundness of my stomach beneath Nick’s t-shirt—something I didn’t normally like. But at the moment I just liked him touching me. “Yes, I remember.”

Placing one hand on the top of the box, Sebastian took a deep breath. “When we took your measurements that first night, we already knew we wanted you to be ours. A long time ago we had these designed, but not made, because we hoped we would find our person—our Omega—who would want to belong to us just as much as we would belong to her.”

He opened the box.

Nestled inside looked like metal concentric circles. Or almost circles. None of them were closed. The pale metal looked delicate, and I saw tiny, swirling designs across the outside of the metal. “What are they?”

Sebastian picked up one of the smallest ones and held it out on the palm of his hand. “They’re cuffs and a collar.” I reached out, and he stopped me. “Be careful. The thing about these cuffs is that once they are closed, they cannot be opened.”

My stomach swirled at the same time that my skin heated. “Ever?”

“They can be cut off,” Nick said. “But no, not ever. The way they’re designed, they are permanent.”

I picked up the cuff from Sebastian’s hand. It was just as light and delicate as it looked. I held it up beside my wrist. This wouldn’t look like anything more than a bracelet or a necklace. But to us, it would mean everything.

“You want me to wear these?”

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