Page 197 of Slashed Bonds

“You’re okay with being associated with me?”

They go quiet.

“I mean it. There’s a note somewhere with the words should we hurt those fuckers next on it. I don’t want to bring trouble to either of your doors. You’ve both had enough trouble.”

“Obviously, BITCH.”

Maddie. Instant. Arms crossed. “You ain’t getting rid of us. We’re your ride-or-dies. That’s not a thing you get to opt out of.”

I look at Viper.

She uncrosses her arms. Recrosses them. Fixes one leather leg over the other, slow, the way she does before she says anything that matters, and when she speaks it’s four words.

“They can fuck around and find out.”

That’s all.

Typical. And I know what it means, because I’ve known her for four years. It means she’s in. It means being associated with me is a thing she’s already decided and the deciding happened a long time ago, probably on a bench, and anyone who takes issue with it can take it up with her venom.

Two women who don’t flinch. God help Halbrook.

“Now.” Viper, standing. “They’ve got a promo at Vicious Ink next week. We should go.”

“Vicious Ink?”

“OH.” Maddie, lit up. “It’s this insanely cool hidden tattoo place. Like, basement-under-a-laundromat hidden. Greenie told me about it. I think all your hottie patottie Alphas got their work done there, the whole team, it’s where you go. Exclusive as hell. Expensive as hell.” Her eyes go sly. “But Omegas who have a pack get their tattoos free.”

“Meaning…”

“They charge the Alphas,” Viper says.

I smirk.

“How generous.”

A pack tax. Somebody in a basement understood the economy before the rest of us did.

“I wouldn’t mind checking it out.”

And I wouldn’t. For the monarch, for the crown, for whatever Viper’s got in the tin and the look she gave me when I said free that tells me she knows more about that basement than Maddie does. There’s a thing about that place she isn’t saying. There always is.

“What we need to check out first,” Viper says, “is outside.”

She’s at the door. Hand on the frame. The rain’s stopped, I notice. The window over the lounge has gone from a sheet of water to a sheet of gray, and somewhere behind the gray there’s a thing that might be light.

“Ready for some fresh air, Malice?”

I look between them.

At the pink one with her hands on her hips and the green one in the door. At the room they’ve gestured at, that I’ve been lying in for three days under a comforter somebody bought me. At the cheque in my lap with a comma in it and a black card on top of it that could buy a car.

I sigh.

It’s a long one. The kind Viper does. A whole sentence.

“Why the fuck not?”

CHAPTER 28