Page 46 of Slashed Bonds

A tattoo addiction, or a sex addiction.

Niko has both.

Which tells you how far off the hinges he’d be without either. He’d be in a cell. Or, if the government got a vote, in one of those facilities they build for Alphas who’ve stopped responding to reason, with the white walls and the quiet-voiced doctors and the meds that turn a man into weather.

This woman, and whatever magic lives in the depths of her, has kept him manageable.

Focused.

Determined, even.

I’ve pretended not to notice for two years. That’s a skill too. As the leader of this lethal pack of three, I hold the reins on my men, and holding reins means knowing when to let them go slack.

The world is cruel otherwise. And I am the only one who will pull every stop to protect my two brothers.

Who are also fucking each other.

I turn a blind eye to that foolishness. It isn’t blindness, precisely. It’s arithmetic. If it keeps Niko sane, and it keeps Killian off the meds that turn him into something that walks, talks, and isn’t Killian, then I don’t give a single fuck what they do with the door closed.

I won’t be joining them.

That’s the one clause in the arrangement.

I fuck pussy. Only. Watching, when I’m in the mood for it, and I’ve been in the mood for it precisely twice in three years, and both times we came away with the same conclusion, which is that we hadn’t found an Omega worth all that extra foreplay bullshit.

Until now, apparently.

Because here she is.

A powerhouse in female form, standing in my lobby smelling like something I don’t have a category for, with a dog that has an X carved through one eye panting happily in my goalie’s grip.

And this same Omega told me, four minutes ago, that if she didn’t meet the standard, I should throw her out the way I’d thrown the last piece of trash.

I like her for that.

I liked her before that.

Can you like someone before you knew of their pure existence?

The man on the concrete deserved it, for the record. Three years I’ve been dealing with his type. Sponsorship representatives with fifteen-page decks and a fiduciary interest in our faces. This one had a supplement line, a betting app, and a pitch that involved putting Niko in a campaign with, and I’m quoting, some light coverage on the skin for a cleaner look.

He said it in front of Niko.

Niko laughed. Niko always laughs.

I don’t.

So the man went out the door, and his paperwork went out after him, and Roz will bill me for the glass if I broke any, and I’d do it again with a photographer present.

Here’s what he didn’t understand, and what none of them understand when they walk in with a deck.

We don’t need money.

We need a center.

Last April. Conference semifinal against Ashford, the game that decides whether the committee has an excuse to keep us out for a fourth straight year. Second overtime. Killian has played thirty-one minutes and is skating on nothing but spite. Niko has faced fifty-three shots and stopped fifty-two, and the one that got through went off our own defenseman’s skate.

And I lose a draw.