Shadowed (Team Zero #4) by Rina Kent

My chest squeezes at the thought. Why the hell would I care whether or not Shadow lives? It’s stupid really. People are ought to be scared of him, not the other way around. Johnny will be six feet under before he can even put a hand on him.

I maintain my flirty tone. “It’s up to you, but killing him can make your case with his companions harder.”

“Is that so?” He runs the same thick finger down my cheek. “What do you suggest then?”

I swallow the disgust, and thousand ideas whirl in my head to make this appear like Johnny’s thought. He has lots of ego and it’s the perfect weapon to use against him.

“I don’t know.” I pretend to be dumb. “But Shadow leaves before closing hours. When he isn’t here…”

His eyes sparkle with recognition. “I'll bring President Joe behind Shadow’s back and make Mist and Ghost an offer they can’t refuse.”

Phew!

“You’re a genius!” I massage his shoulders even though nausea is threatening to take me over.

Johnny offers me a smug, condescending look. The bloke must really believe the idea is all his.

The door barges open. I flinch and then freeze when I meet those overcast eyes. They’re darkening into a storm threatening to take everyone in sight.

For someone who pretended I was invisible, he sure has his attention on me now. His threatening gaze darts from Johnny to his finger on my cheek and my hands on his shoulders.

Still keeping his punishing gaze on us, Shadow calls in a restrained voice. “Lachlan, show Johnny the exit.”

Lachlan strides towards us with purpose. Before he reaches us, Johnny leans close and whispers in my ear, “we'll be seeing a lot of each other, babe.” He makes a disgusting show of licking my neck.

I squirm from the disgust, but before I can do anything, Johnny is yanked away from me. I expected Lachlan, but somehow, Shadow beats his guard and he’s holding Johnny by the collar as if he’s a dirty, disgusting pig. He continues glaring at him with that same robotic stare he had when he held a knife to my throat at Nonna’s.

The killer version.

Lachlan takes hold of Johnny, and something tells me he saved him from whatever Shadow was planning to do to him.

Johnny wiggles free from Lachlan’s hold. “I can walk on my own.”

He strides out leisurely. I make out Nat’s curls from the threshold. She jerks to the corner when Johnny passes her by. Her view is obscured when Lachlan closes the door behind them.

My attention snaps back to the gloomy, taller-than-life presence looming over me. Shadow stares down at me with dark, poisonous energy that suffocates any air I have in my lungs.

“You fucked up big time, beautiful.”





Chapter Ten





Fear.

It’s my own type of Omega. A trigger of my dopamine haze. A bloody addiction.

And it’s loud and clear on Zoe’s pale face. She’s usually so forthcoming and brave. She’s the type who’d risk having her throat slit to protect others – fucking foolish if you ask me.

But now, she’s scared. No, she’s terrified. She keeps drawing stuttering breaths. Her round tits fall and rise heavily. The blue-green shit of her eyes widens to the brightest, most frightened colour.

I smell and taste her fear in the air surrounding us. Maybe it’s what causes me to see fucking red. Or maybe it’s because she was glued to that bastard Johnny while he licked her.

Or both.

Zoe does the smart choice of breaking eye contact. If she keeps demonstrating her fear, I’ll break her fucking neck.

I clench and unclench my fists as I fight the pull of Omega. I might have taken a bigger dose than Ghost and the others today.

And yesterday.

And the day before that.

It’s only to forget, I told myself. Omega is a bitch, but Omega takes it all away. Omega brings a numbness and forbids us from thinking about ourselves.

I need that, because whenever I look in the mirror, I see a monster. That monster disappears when I take Omega.

Zoe lowers her head and tries to sidestep me. Her reaction is a hundred times different from when I held a knife to her throat. At least then, she stared me straight in the eyeballs and actually made me feel regret. She still has a plaster on her neck as a reminder.

I clutch her arm and yank her back, harder than intended, because I have lower awareness of my power when I’m on Omega.

Her shoulder blades hit the shelves, and she winces. A box falls and I punch it away. The bottles inside crush into pieces and amber liquid soaks the box and pours onto the flooring.

“What the fuck were you doing, Zoe?”

There’s brief defiance – or foolishness – as she stares at me. Something inside me rages to life. Whenever she challenges me, I want to hurt her and fuck her senseless. At the same time.

She tips her chin. “Whatever I do is none of your business.”

The image of that scum Johnny licking her like a fucking parasite blinds my vision. “I thought we hired a waitress, not a whore.”

She swings her fist and slams it in my cheek. Hard. It barely hurts. That’s Omega. I can bleed to death, but I probably won’t feel the pain.

“You have no right to call me that!” She’s yelling, but it’s plagued with tremors and a deep, raw fear.

“Keep it up, beautiful.” I grin. “Taunt me, provoke me, and then show me that fucking fear and you’ll end up on the list of people who disappeared without a trace.”