Lilia’s POV
No help was coming.
I could only watch Tina’s back disappear toward the main hall.
The pool room glittered the way only new money could.
Steam curled off the heated water and drifted past marble columns toward a painted ceiling; along the far wall, young heirs in open-collared shirts sprawled across the loungers, gold at their wrists, laughter pitched careless and loose.
Nobody in this room had ever counted the cost of anything.
I sat very still where Jace had put me and did what I had always done best: watched.
Exits, faces, who deferred to whom.
The debt on my shoulder was five million dollars heavy, and a girl carrying that much weight learns quickly that patience is cheaper than panic.
If Jace wanted a show, I would give him one , just enough to keep his hands idle while I looked for the door.
Jace carried me back to the lounger he’d been on and set me down.
A man surfaced from the water nearby, folded his arms on the pool’s edge, and grinned up at him.
“Alpha Jace doesn’t like forcing himself on anyone, does he? This girl doesn’t look willing.”
Jace glared at him.
“Nonsense. This is a treasure I picked out specially. She saw me getting friendly with someone else and got jealous, that’s all.”
The man burst out laughing.
“Now that’s new. Never seen you coax anyone before.”
Jace leaned in close, voice dropping.
“I’ve said it in front of everyone now. You wouldn’t embarrass me, would you?”
He was too near.
His breath grazed my ear, and my whole body shrank in on itself.
I forced my breathing level and probed carefully.
“What do you want me to do?”
”Can you drink?”
”Yes.” I nodded , honestly.
That wasn’t bravado.
My tolerance was genuinely frightening, an accident of all my years at the tavern.
Jace’s eyes lit up.
“When everyone’s here, we play a game. The men put up the money. The women race to drink , every second on the clock converts to cash, winners split the pot, and the loser,”
“has to… take off her clothes.”
He dragged the last three words out on purpose.
My stomach dropped , and then, under the fear, the arithmetic started running on its own, and the fear drained out of the calculation almost as fast as it had come in.
Five million dollars hung over my head.
Any pot in this room would barely dent it , but a dent was a dent, and shame didn’t figure anywhere in that math.
I lifted my chin and met his eyes.
“If I win, how much of the pot is mine?”
”Haha.” He laughed and ruffled my hair.
“I forgot , my baby’s a money-grubber.
You win, you take all of it.”
”Really?” I pressed, seizing the opening.
“All of it?”
”Mm.” His eyes never left mine.
“All of it. But , you spend one night with me.”
There it was.
My interest went cold on the spot.
I pushed at his chest to get up, and his hands shot out and clamped my wrists fast.
The wound on my left hand hadn’t healed , the glove only covered the marks.
His grip squeezed, and the pain jolted through me so hard I jerked, and my forehead cracked straight into his chin.
Jace’s brow furrowed.
He never got the chance to yelp , the poolside around us had already broken into jeering laughter.
“Jace, are you even capable? A wild one like this needs handling.”
The words had barely landed when the poolside went abruptly silent.
I followed everyone’s gaze to the doorway.
A man stood there, tall and straight.
Of every person who might have walked through that door, it was him , and the fear in my chest turned strange, heavier and lighter at once.
Those near-gold eyes swept the room once, unhurried, saying nothing at all , but the weight of an Alpha’s presence pressed the air in the whole room down by degrees, until even the steam off the water seemed to stop moving. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
Kael’s gaze crossed the loungers and landed on the picture in front of him: Jace’s fists locked around my wrists, his body bent toward my throbbing forehead.
The color in Kael’s eyes dropped dark, and he stepped across the threshold.
Around the pool, the idle young heirs climbed to their feet one after another, greeting him , some carefully, some carelessly , as “Alpha Kael.”
Jace called out, trying to ease the tension.
“Kael. Weren’t you upstairs with the Elders? What brings you to my corner of the party?”
Kael’s voice was flat.
“The Moonveil formula.
How is the search going?”
”A trifle like that hardly needs your personal attention.” Jace laughed, awkward.
“I’ll report to you myself after the game. How’s that?”
Kael didn’t answer.
He stripped off his trench coat and handed it back to Derek behind him , and his eyes never once left me, pressing on me until I didn’t dare lift mine.
Then he laughed, once, and turned to Jace.
“What’s the game? I’ll play too.”
Jace scratched his head.
Before he could explain, the man still soaking in the water had already rushed through the rules, eager to please, and finished with a fawning question.
“Well, Alpha Kael? Quite the thrill Jace runs here, isn’t it?”
Kael’s brow sharpened.
He said nothing.
I watched Derek and Marcus step back, both of them, without thinking.
Years at this man’s side had taught them exactly what that silence meant.
But Kael didn’t detonate.
He only walked to the poolside and settled at the head of the long table, sprawled and lazy, looking down the length of it at a room full of people who had forgotten how to breathe.
“Deal me in,” he said evenly.
“Bring the liquor.”