Page 71 of Filthy Royal

Darvish had stolen Maddox’s twin sister too, but Damien had no idea what he’d done with her. Yet.

“Yes! Kill ’em!” The crowds’ screams rose to a fever pitch.

On the surface, the dome appeared to be all glitz and fun and bright lights. But it was controlled by a secretive, profit-focused corporation known as the Consortium and built on the blood, sweat, and tears of fighters and omega prizes who were treated as property.

Not that most spectators in attendance gave a damned. They just wanted to be entertained, get their dicks wet, and win big. Preferably all at once.

Those standing ringside rattled the outside bars of the cage as the two fighters inside clobbered the shit out of each other. It wasn’t an Elite 100 tournament, but it was still brutal. One snapped his opponent’s horn and jabbed the point toward his heart, while the other countered by raking his claws across his rival’s face.

Crex’s empty eyes flashed through Damien’s mind.

“So being back here doesn’t bother you?” Maddox’s question slapped Damien straight back into the present.

“Nope. You were there for my chat with Darvish’s driver.” He refused to take the bait. “You heard what I did.”

Maddox snorted. “Chat. Right.”

A valid reaction. Damien’schatsoften involved his fists, but this interrogation had been especially bloody. And justified.

He and his brothers had recently gotten a bead on their notoriously slippery half brother and triangulated his location to the dome. That in itself was a massive victory since the male had eluded them for some time now.

Learning of his half brother’s connection to the dome had come as a major shock.

But Damien had kept his cool. Only tearing apart four workout rooms while his brothers weren’t paying attention.

Then he’d pulled his shit together and gotten down to business—capturing an employee of their half brother’s that had provided them with more intel.

“All I’m saying,” Maddox skirted another brawl, “is that sneaking into the Golden Dome was a breeze. But finding this fucker Darvish is proving much harder.”

“Truth.” Folks were terrified, and no one was talking. Even Darvish’s Consortium shuttle driver, Henel Brock, had been reluctant to talk.

Still, with some “encouragement,” he’d spilled what little he knew.

Brock seemed far from sharp, his sole responsibility ferrying his boss and a handful of others to and from Consortium headquarters. He knew nothing about his boss’s activities. Even less about what his boss did once he returned to his shuttle. Brock’s denseness and lack of curiosity were likely why Darvish kept the driver around.

But Brock was also a horny Alpha, which meant he remembered one passenger very well. In fact, he could describeherin great, pervy detail.

Mostly because, unlike the others, she was a regular. And hot. And known to be a close business associate of the boss.

Brock uttering the name of that individual had been Damien’s final shock.

And he’d taken it about as well as he had the rest of the surprises, only this time, he’d torn Brock apart rather than some workout rooms.

But now he was back to fine. As chill as an ice comet.

“This is the best lead we’ve had yet,” he told Maddox. “So we follow it. Simple as that.”

Yup. Simple as that. Because the past was the past, and he was fucking fine.

“Assimpleas you deciding to let Anya come on this mission?” Maddox didn’t sound convinced. “’Cause I suspect your uptight older brothers will like giving her that kind of freedom about as much as they’ll applaud this new plan of yours. Which means not at all.”

“Freedom?”Anya’s outraged screech pinged through their comms.“You locked me in the shuttle, outside the dome limits, here in the middle of a nowhere desert. How is that freedom?”

She’d snuck on board his shuttle, concealed herself in an air duct, and waited until they entered the planet’s airspace to reveal herself.

Of course, he’d already known she was there. He knew all her tricks.

But he also knew what it was like to be young and restless.

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