The Hand

A hand fists in my hair.

Hard. Violent. Yanking my head back so sharply that I choke on river water.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

The voice is a snarl, low and furious and terrifyingly familiar. I thrash, trying to pull free, but the grip on my hair is unbreakable, an iron chain dragging me backward, dragging me toward the shore.

"Let me go!" I scream. "Let me go, let me—"

Another set of hands—different hands, larger hands—pries Emery from my arms. She shrieks, a high, terrified sound that cuts through me like a blade, and I fight harder, clawing at the arm that holds me, kicking at the mud.

"No! Give her back! Give me back my sister!"

"Shut up." The voice is right against my ear now, hot breath and cold fury. "Shut your mouth before I shut it for you."

I am dragged out of the water and thrown onto the muddy bank. I land hard on my side, my bruised ribs screaming, river water streaming from my clothes and hair. I gasp for breath, coughing up water, my whole body shaking from cold and shock and the sudden, violent return to a world I was ready to leave.

I look up.

Kael Draven stands over me.

He is drenched, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, his expensive charcoal suit ruined with river water and mud. But it is not the ruined suit that makes my blood freeze. It is his face. His expression. It is not the cold, controlled mask I saw in the bar. It is something else entirely—something raw and furious and terrifyingly alive.

His eyes burn. They are not the pale, distant eyes of a man calculating a business deal. They are the eyes of a predator who has just found someone trying to steal what belongs to him.

"Do you have any idea," he says, his voice low and shaking with rage, "what you almost did?"

I push myself up onto my elbows, searching wildly for Emery. I find her a few feet away, wrapped in the arms of a large Beta man in a dark suit. She is sobbing, her small face contorted with terror, but she is alive. She is alive. She is alive.

"She's six years old," Kael continues, his voice barely above a whisper. "Six years old, and you were going to drown her in a river because you're too much of a coward to face your problems."

"I'm not a coward." The words tear out of me, raw and broken. "You don't know anything. You don't know what they were going to do to her."

"I know exactly what they were going to do." He crouches down, bringing his face level with mine. Up close, I can see the muscle ticking in his jaw, the vein pulsing at his temple. "I know about the debt. I know about your father. I know about the men who put their hands on you in that hallway." His voice drops even lower, dangerous as a blade pressed to a throat. "And I know you would rather murder your own sister than let anyone help you."

The word hits me like a physical blow. Murder. I flinch backward, shaking my head, but he follows, his hand shooting out to grab my chin. His grip is bruising, forcing me to look at him.

"It wasn't murder," I choke. "It was mercy. You don't understand—"

"Mercy?" He laughs, and the sound is ugly, jagged, completely without humor. "Drowning a child in a river because you're scared? That's not mercy. That's pathetic. That's the kind of weakness I'd expect from an Omega who let some stranger mark her in a bar and then ran away before she even learned his name."

"Let me go." I try to pull my chin free, but his grip only tightens. "You're hurting me."

"Good." His eyes bore into mine, and I see something flicker in them—something that is not just fury. Something possessive. Something that claims me even now, even here, covered in mud and river water and my own shame. "You deserve to hurt. You deserve worse than hurt. You almost took something that belongs to me."

"I don't belong to you!"

"You do." His thumb presses against the bite mark on my neck, and a jolt of sensation shoots through me—pain and something else, something warm and unwelcome. "This mark says you belong to me. And I don't let anyone damage my property. Not even you."

I spit at him.

The saliva hits his cheek, and for a moment, everything stops. The bodyguards freeze. Emery's sobbing falls silent. The river itself seems to pause in its flow.

Kael Draven wipes his cheek slowly, deliberately, with the back of his hand. When he looks at me again, there is something new in his expression. Something almost like respect. Almost like hunger.

"You've got some fight in you after all," he murmurs. "Good. I'd hate to think I'd marked a completely broken thing."

He straightens up, releasing my chin with a shove that sends me back onto the mud. Then he turns to the Beta holding Emery.

"Take the girl to the car. Wrap her in something warm. If she catches a cold, I'm holding you personally responsible."

"Yes, sir." The Beta carries Emery away, and she screams for me, reaching her small arms back, and I try to crawl after her, but Kael plants a foot on my ankle, pinning me in place.

"Your sister is safe," he says, looking down at me. "For now. Whether she stays that way depends entirely on you."

"What do you want?" I sob. The fight is draining out of me, replaced by a vast, hollow exhaustion. "What do you want from me?"

He crouches down again, but this time, his touch is almost gentle. He brushes a strand of wet hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. The gesture is so incongruous, so unexpectedly tender, that I flinch harder than I did from the blow.

"I want you to understand something," he says quietly. "You tried to end your life tonight. You tried to end your sister's life. And I stopped you. Not because I'm kind. Not because I care about you. But because you are mine now, and I do not lose what is mine. Ever."

He stands and gestures to another of his men. "Get her to the car."

"Don't touch me," I snarl, but the guard grabs my arm anyway, hauling me to my feet. My legs barely hold me. The world spins.

Kael watches me struggle, and something flickers across his face again—that strange, unpredictable shift between cruelty and something softer. He steps forward, and before I can react, he shrugs off his ruined jacket and drapes it over my shoulders. The fabric is wet, but it is warm from his body, and it smells like him—cedar and steel and that electric charge.

"Walk," he says. "Or I'll carry you. And I don't think you want that."

I walk.