Chapter 2: The Red Necklace

The iron door flew off its hinges.

Not an exaggeration. The sheet metal door was ripped clean from the frame and hurled across the laundry room, bouncing twice before skidding to a stop. The impact shattered two washbasins by the water trough, dirty water sloshing up three walls. The remaining hinges on the doorframe kept swinging, screeching out a metallic wail.

The cold wind knifed in, and with it came a wave of Alpha pheromones so potent it could trigger every Omega on the premises into a forced heat. Cedarwood. Gunpowder smoke. The sharp, sweet tang of fresh human blood. This wasn't diluted pheromone residue. This was the raw, dominant presence of a male fresh off the battlefield, adrenaline still surging, his scent gland still pumping at full capacity. The instant that pheromone flood hit the laundry room, the back of my neck ignited, my gland bulging outward so violently I nearly let a muffled moan slip from my throat.

Cain stood in the doorway.

His black combat uniform was drenched in blood. The chest area was half-dried, but the sleeves were still dripping, rivulets running down the seams of his tactical gloves and dripping onto the floor. His collar was ripped open to the sternum, exposing a blade wound that slashed diagonally from his left shoulder to his right ribs. Flesh peeled back, the edges a vivid, glistening red like a freshly cracked pomegranate. In the deepest section, you could see the muscle fascia underneath. His face was also covered in blood, unwashed, sprayed from his left cheekbone all the way down to his jaw. The blood had dried into a dark crimson crust, making his ice-blue eyes look like two rivets hammered into a screen of gore.

His gaze swept the room.

When it passed over Long Chin, she dropped straight into a crouch. When it hit Narrow Forehead, she plastered her back against the wall, fingers clawing into the plaster. When it reached the head guard at the door, he held his spear horizontally in front of his body as if a piece of wood could block anything.

Then his gaze landed on me. And stopped.

Those ice-blue irises took me in. The red necklace around my throat. The soaked dress plastered to my thighs. The two trails of blood still sliding down my shins. His gaze paused on my lips. They were purple from the cold, slightly parted now because of the violent reaction in my scent gland, wisps of white breath leaking through. His pupils contracted sharply. The color of his irises began deepening, sinking from ice blue into gunmetal gray, and a ring of the finest dark red bled into the edges. Not burst blood vessels. Something else entirely. Something that had been suppressed for far too long and was finally starting to slip its leash.

"Who did it."

Not a question. A statement. The volume was low, but the temperature in the laundry room dropped another several degrees.

Vivian lunged at him. Her momentum was too violent, her knee crashing into an overturned washbasin, nearly sending her sprawling. She steadied herself and grabbed Cain's forearm, her fingers clinging to the blood-stiffened fabric of his sleeve.

"Cain!" Her voice spiked to a piercing frequency. "This lowly Omega stole your necklace! I saw it with my own—"

"Let go."

Vivian's fingers fell away from his sleeve as if they'd been scalded.

Cain walked up to me. He towered over me. When he looked down, the wound on his neck pulled open a fraction, and fresh blood welled from the tear, sliding down the line of his collarbone. A single drop fell onto my bare foot. The temperature of his blood was so much higher than my skin after hours in ice water that my toes jerked on contact.

He took the blue necklace from my hand. He didn't even look at it. His fingers twisted once, and the chain snapped into three pieces. The moonstone hit the floor, rolled twice, and came to a stop right in front of Vivian's knees.

Vivian's knees buckled, and her whole body slammed into the ground. Not kneeling. Crashing. Her kneecaps cracked against the concrete with a dull thud. Her cashmere coat spread out in the dirty water. Her hair came undone, strands clinging to her face. Her eye makeup was ruined, the mascara from her lower lashes bleeding down with her tears, carving two black gullies across her cheekbones. Her mouth opened to speak, but only a leaky, hissing sound came out.

Cain took the red necklace from my palm.

His fingers were thick, the pads of them hard with layer upon layer of calluses crusted with dried blood. The clasp was tiny. He fumbled with it a few times before it finally caught. When his knuckle grazed my collarbone, the rough calluses scraped across skin that was frozen nearly numb, and a sharp, electric shudder shot through me. The shiver started at my collarbone and climbed straight up my neck, crashing into that hollow, frantic throbbing deep inside my gland. Heat surged at the back of my throat, and my lips parted involuntarily, letting out a half-breath of a gasp so soft it was almost inaudible.

Bite me.

The thought wasn't mine. It belonged to the Omega I kept locked in a cage at the base of my skull, the one I'd spent years starving into silence. But right now, with his knuckle still resting against my collarbone, she was clawing at the bars, screaming through the gaps.

He didn't hear the gasp. But his thumb paused for a fraction of a second.

The clasp was secure. His fingers didn't leave. Instead, they traced the path of the necklace, a slow drag from the center of my collarbone downward. The pads of his index and middle fingers pressed against the cold edges of the moonstone. The back of his ring finger brushed against my throat. His fingertips were rough as sandpaper, and my skin, after hours of freezing, was so sensitive it was nearly translucent. Every groove of his fingerprints felt magnified, scraping from my throat down to the hollow of my collarbone. A small bead of ice water had pooled there. When his fingertip touched it, both the water droplet and my skin started burning at the exact same moment.

His gaze locked onto my lips. Staring. Fixated. My lips were purple, slightly parted, trembling uncontrollably because his fingers were still resting on my collarbone. The gunmetal gray in his irises expanded outward another ring. The dark crimson edge deepened.

"Both of them." He turned, facing the crowd at the door, his voice a low drumbeat. "I gave them both to her."

He seized my wrist and yanked me forward. My back slammed into his chest. The half-dried blood on his combat uniform smeared all over my dress.

"This one." He hooked a finger under the red necklace around my throat and tugged it outward just enough for everyone to see that blood-red gleam. "My mother shoved this into my hand with her dying breath. I gave it to her."

Then his palm covered my entire nape.

Five fingers spread wide. His index finger and pinky locked onto the sides of my neck. The middle three fingers pressed directly over my scent gland. The pressure was far heavier this time. His palm was scorching hot, branding-iron hot pressing directly against bare skin. My gland lurched violently under his palm, then went completely wild. Not the hollow itch from before. A devastating tremor of being filled, gripped, pinned at the most vital point by a power too overwhelming to resist. His fingertips slowly tightened over the surface of my gland, testing the give of the soft tissue, searching for the exact spot to sink his teeth in.

My knees went weak.

Not a metaphor. My kneecaps physically dropped. A sound I had never heard myself make slipped from the deepest part of my throat. Not a grunt. A crushed, wet whimper, squeezed from the very bottom of my windpipe, thin and fragile as a newborn cub's first cry.

Cain's fingers went rigid for a split second.

His palm was still anchored on my nape, my entire center of gravity held in his hand. My body was pressed against his chest, my soaked dress plastered tightly to his combat uniform. I felt his abdominal muscles snap tight at that sound, hardening into a slab of scorching granite.

No one in the laundry room dared breathe.

That old Omega washerwoman had her face buried in her hands, two rheumy eyes peeking through the gaps in her fingers. The head guard had his spear planted upright on the ground, both hands stacked on the shaft, knuckles bone-white. Long Chin was still crouched on the floor. Narrow Forehead's back had scraped a layer of plaster dust off the wall.

Vivian was on her knees crying. The corners of her mouth had drooped into an angle no cosmetic surgeon would approve of. Her nasolabial folds were swollen from tears. The foundation on either side of her nose had smeared, exposing the large pores underneath. Her fingers clawed at the concrete floor, her nails going white from the pressure, then one of them flipped back entirely, blood gushing from the nail bed and mixing into the filthy water.