THE SYNDICATE
That night…
The media day had been a shit show, and now we were all back in our room. It was past midnight, and the other three alphas slept soundly.
I couldn’t sleep.
Instead, I stared down at my phone, at my father’s message. “Disgrace our family name one more time and there will be consequences. Complete the mission.”
After reading the message for the hundredth time, I began to type out a reply, but stopped once again.
What could I even say—sorry that I’d gotten my ass handed to me by a fae and a delicate fucking princess had had to save my ass? It was beyond embarrassing.
For my father, there were only three things that mattered in life: (1) the syndicate, (2) pride, and (3) loyalty.
My knuckles, with “SPL” tattooed across them, mocked me as I held my phone.
Father had had them tattooed on me when I was eight. I had cried like a little bitch, and he’d slapped me across my face and told me I wasn’t worthy.
When I was nine years old, my father had tattooed the intricate family crest, a symbol of fire and roses, across my entire back. When I was ten, he’d tattooed more flames across my thigh.
Now I’d lost count of how many rose and flame tattoos I had. At some point, I had started getting them myself. A part of me was addicted to the pain, to the act of getting them done.
One for every person I killed.
The fire blazed in the hearth, and I stared at the curling flames as they spoke to me. My horns itched on my head as a quiet voice whispered through the flames. The whispers were soft and complex. They spoke a language I couldn’t understand.
Since as far back as I could remember, fire had always talked to me. I had never met anyone else who could hear the whispers.
My phone vibrated, and I looked down. “We all saw you on the news. He’s not happy,” my best friend Carter had texted.
When your father ran the largest weapons cartel in the shifter realm and you were his only heir, it was hard to find people you could trust.
Carter was one of the few, and I would die for him. He was nineteen and hadn’t yet been tested at the sacred lake. I hated that I was an alpha. It had taken me away from him.
After my ceremony at the sacred lake, the trajectory of my life had dramatically changed. I had been trained to run my father’s syndicate since birth.
Instead, I was now the perfect weapon for his machinations, an alpha my father could control and trust.
As I stared at the fire, the orange flames called to me, and I wondered if my father’s plan was as perfect as he thought.
Lately, I found myself doubting his orders and my allegiance. I wanted to make a name for myself as a war general. I wanted to make my own life.
I shook my head and typed to my father, “Understood, sir, it will not happen again.” I hit send.
At only twenty-one years old, I had an eternity to make my own name for myself. Alphas were immortal. We could only die if all our blood was drained from our bodies. My father was just a null shifter.
I would outlive him, and then I would take over his empire. When that day came, I wouldn’t have to listen to his commands. I would be in full control.
The fire popped and crackled in the silent room. The clock above the mantel read three in the morning, and the rest of the alphas were fast asleep. Outside, the wind howled against the glass and snowflakes fell thick and heavy.
Looking at the window and the small alpha huddled in the bed beneath it, my gut turned over uncomfortably.
A few days ago, I had taunted the princess about having to sleep in the smallest bed. It was under the window and farthest from the fire. Staring at her small form, completely obscured by blankets, I felt like a fucking ass.
What man let a small wisp of a girl sleep in the worst conditions?
Jax was such a mammoth of muscle and padding that he probably didn’t even know what the cold felt like. Cobra would never give up anything to a woman; he hated them all. And I was apparently just like my father, distrustful and a jackass.
Sluts crawled around my father’s lair in the southern province. Half-dressed women gave their bodies to cartel members twenty-four-seven. They fell all over my father and the highest syndicate members, desperate to be one of the chosen sluts who got access to the massive credit lines.
I’d thought I was different from my father, that I was better than him. I’d been wrong.
As a teen, I’d genuinely believed I had real connections with a few girls in the compound.
My spirits had been crushed time after time when I’d caught my “girlfriend” stealing my phone, trying to access
my credit line.
Now I recognized a woman’s use.
Sluts were good for fucking and passing the time, but it would never be more than that.
Sighing heavily, I dragged my hand over the stubble on my chin and stared at the lump completely obscured by the covers.
The princess was so fucking little that she barely took up any room on the small bed.
At first, I’d thought Sadie was just like the others, another woman after attention and money. Pretending to be the first female alpha, trying to use her feminine wiles to get what she wanted.
But then she had fucking transformed. The sun had cut through the clouds and glinted off her white fur. It had looked impossibly soft, and some of the strands had literally fucking sparkled.
I wanted to bury my hands in her fur. I wanted to antagonize her until she leaped at me with those fucking wicked canines.
She was physically perfect in both forms.
Her delicate, catlike features and golden skin were the stuff of fantasy. I wanted to bury my hands in her waterfall of silky white hair and shove her ridiculously lush lips up and down my cock.
I shifted my boxers uncomfortably. As if her looks weren’t enough, her deep, raspy voice made her a fucking siren. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed to not pin her against a wall and ravish her.
I tried to remind myself that sluts were just distractions to be fucked and discarded.
Like that announcer who had salivated over all of us. She had crawled over Jax and then me, and it was clear she was indiscriminate.
She would fuck any one of us if she could, just so she could brag about being with an alpha. The ultimate prize
would be dating an alpha. The fame and glory would be hers—classic slut.
The problem was, Sadie wasn’t a slut.
She turned bright red when she saw our cocks and couldn’t even maintain eye contact. Her clothes always dwarfed her slight frame, and half the time her eyes were unnaturally cold or burning with shyness and fear.
Unlike every other girl, she didn’t crawl all over us with desperation.
I thought about how Cobra and Jax had pinned her between them, her pupils blown and breath shallow.
When the announcer had fondled me, I’d fought the urge to throw her across the room with a roar. I’d wanted to be pressed against the princess, completely boxing her in among all three of us.
Fuck, we were the sluts throwing ourselves at her.
I nodded. Sadie was definitely a princess and not a slut.
She reminded me of a girl I had read about in a bootleg fae book my father had in his study. In the book, a colorful princess defied her evil queen mother and escaped from the fae realm. Sadie’s red eyes reminded me of the flames that called to me. She was a colorful, defiant princess.
Mesmerized by the whispers of flames in the hearth, I almost didn’t hear the soft mewls.
I turned back to the princess, and I watched as the covers began to shake back and forth and the soft cries became different.
The sound was harsh and terrified, but it was barely audible. As if someone was trying to scream, but it was muffled.
Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself leaning over the princess’s bed and gently pulling back the covers.
My heart rate sped up at what I uncovered.
Her red eyes were wide, nose scrunched, and mouth wide open. With her body locked in the fetal position, the princess screamed, or tried to scream.
A soft whooshing noise exhaled through her mouth, like her voice couldn’t make the sound. It was the same raspy noise I’d heard the day she was attacked by the fucking scumbag beta.
I’d wanted to be the one to kill the bastard. Cobra had taken it from me.
“Princess,” I whispered, and shook her shoulder back and forth. My hand engulfed her entire shoulder, and I was struck by how delicate she was.
Her body stayed tense as she silently screamed. It was fucking horrifying.
I shook her desperately, my mind flashing to the interview. Before I’d been embarrassed in front of all the realm and my father, the interviewer had asked the princess how she’d hurt her voice, and Sadie had lied.
A sick sensation spread from my gut through my chest as I thought about the implications of her lie.
The background check on the princess had said she had zero combat experience, which was obviously not true.
Now the flames whispered louder. My chest burned with discomfort, and my horns itched. What if she really didn’t have combat experience? What if something else had happened to her?
“Princess, wake up,” I spoke louder and jostled her harder, desperate to make the heartbreaking screams stop.
“Don’t hurt Lucinda,” she whispered softly and punched me in the gut. Her fist was so tiny I barely felt a sting.
“Princess, it is Ascher. No one is going to hurt you. Wake the fuck up.” I shoved her harder into the bed. Her sightless eyes looked back and forth like she was watching something.
“Fuck you!” Her voice cracked mid word as she pummeled and started kicking me.
“What’s going on?” Jax growled from his bed. “Why do you have her pinned?”
Before I could explain, the princess shrieked, “Let her go!”
Jax slammed me against the brick wall.
Unlike Cobra, I didn’t appreciate being fucking pinned. My horns lengthened on my head, and the fire whispered louder.
“She’s having a fucking nightmare. I’ve been trying to wake her.”
Jax was growling at me like a wild animal.
He let me go, and we both turned toward the princess. Cobra was standing over her and just watching as she shrieked and kicked.
“Do something!” I yelled at Cobra.
Cobra stepped in front of us so we couldn’t get to her. His large pale frame blocked us, and he leaned down toward her.
“Violence won’t help the nightmares go away.” Cobra’s voice had the slight lisp that occurred when he was close to shifting. I had a feeling he was talking from personal experience.
Jax looked torn, like he didn’t know what to do with Cobra blocking his way and Sadie shrieking on the bed.
My own desperation peaked, and I got ready to fight with Cobra. She needed to be woken up. She was clearly in pain.
What happened next I wouldn’t have predicted in a million years.
Cobra climbed into the small bed and wrapped his large frame around the princess.
She kicked and shrieked, but gradually calmed down as he held her. Cobra wrapped his long pale arms around her stomach and held her flush against himself.
He didn’t say anything. Slowly, her eyes closed and her breathing returned to normal.
My gut pinched with jealousy. I should be the one holding the princess, not Cobra, who hated women.
Jax ran his hands through his hair and looked at the bed longingly. Just like myself, he was fighting the urge to crawl in and surround her completely. The bed was too small. There was barely any room.
The princess was bundled in sweatpants and a massive sweatshirt, so there was nothing sexual about the way Cobra held her. Still, the pit in my stomach expanded as Cobra closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Jax gently grabbed the blankets and tucked them around the two alphas.
He checked the window and pushed it down to make sure it was fully shut and then stoked the fire so it burned hotter.
The flames whispered to me louder, and I crawled back into my lonely bed and shoved my head under my pillow.
“Sorry for pinning you,” Jax said quietly. I waved my hand to let him know I was over it.
I tossed and turned and finally settled into sleep, staring at Cobra’s perfect face tucked above the princess’s delicate features. His pale skin and dark hair contrasted with her gold skin and white hair.
They looked like a perfect match: the small princess and her dark prince. I rubbed at the tightness in my chest.
Before I fell asleep, I texted Carter back, “Remind him that the mission is still on track. It will be completed.”
Carter instantly replied with a thumbs-up.
In my messages, I replied, “Sure,” to the twin betas, Sara and Sora, who’d texted asking if I wanted to fuck. They kept making sexual passes at me during training.
For syndicate men, there were sluts and the cartel.
Nothing else was allowed.
I needed to stop dreaming about the princess, when the tattoos covering every inch of my skin proved I was the opposite of a prince.
It didn’t matter anyway. She couldn’t handle what I wanted to do to her.
Cobra and Jax could have her.
