Masquerade

by Nora Ash

  Giving me one final, dark look, he walks to the hallway and out the front door. Closing it behind him without another word.

  * * *

  It’s not until after I’ve had a shower that my anger has dissipated enough to let the flood of other, more complex emotions make my furious resolve whither and die, leaving me feeling hollow inside.

  Even in my fury with Leod’s hypocrisy, I never truly expected him to leave. Deep down, I thought he meant the things he said while we were intimate. That I belonged to him, that he’d never let me out of his sight…

  And now, in the harsh light of morning, it’s abundantly obvious that that’s not the case. After all that alpha posturing, it turns out his words were nothing but just that—empty promises spoken in the heat of the moment.

  And why do I even care? Angrily, I finish drying my hair and pull my clothes on. It’s not like I want a boyfriend, and especially not an overbearing alpha who thinks he can boss me around like he pleases.

  So why does the knowledge that the man who’s little more than a stranger to me didn’t stick around make me feel so empty?

  A firm knock on my front door makes my thoughts come to an abrupt halt, and I silently curse the way my heart leaps with anticipation.

  Even if he’s come back to apologize, it doesn’t change the fact of who and what he is. I tell myself this as I make my way to the front door, but it does nothing to quell the idiotic hope blooming in my chest. Stupid alpha.

  I open the door with an irritated huff, mouth open and ready to give my unplanned lover another piece of my mind.

  But the two men outside aren’t Leod.

  I have a vague flicker of recognition before one of them steps through the door and presses a moist cloth to my mouth, grabbing my hair with his free hand so I can’t draw back.

  A pungent stench fills my lungs as I try to scream, and then darkness takes me.

  * * *

  Next Book

  Leigh’s story concludes in

  ALPHA: MATED

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  The first thing I notice as my consciousness returns is that I can’t move.

  My vision takes forever to focus when I finally manage to drag my eyelids open, so all I can see for the first few minutes are blurred outlines of what looks like dark wood furniture and walls in a hideous peach tone.

  I pull on my arms again, harder this time, only to wince as a sharp pain in my wrists shoots up through my biceps.

  “No need to struggle just yet, girl,” a deep voice rumbles from somewhere behind me.

  I squeak at the unexpected speech and try to jerk around to see who’s there with me, but all I manage to do is cause myself more pain. I blink rapidly, desperate to regain my sight when a dark figure walks into my field of vision, and finally my eyesight slowly returns. The blurred shape turns sharper, and I recognize one of the two men who were outside my apartment when…

  Sonuvabitch! They kidnapped me!

  “Where am I?” I demand in a tone that’s more raspy and frightened-sounding than I was aiming for.

  “Doesn’t matter,” the alpha says. He leans against the bureau in front of me, folding his arms across his wide chest as he looks down at me.

  “Why did you kidnap me?” I try to fight back the panic swelling in my chest as I stare up at him. I know him from somewhere, but I just can’t put my finger on it. “I don’t have any money.”

  An amused noise escapes his throat. “Don’t care about your money, bitch. You’re here as bait. And you best start praying that the beast we’re trying to capture cares enough about you to come running, or you’ll end up as fish food.”

  What? This makes no sense. I don’t have any powerful frien—

  I gape up at him when who he means hits me like a brick. “Leod? You think Leod will come for me?”

  My kidnapper smirks. “We can hope, eh?”

  “That’s insane,” I protest. “I’m no one to him!”

  “Really, now?” He grabs a folded-up newspaper from the bureau and throws it on my lap. “’’Cause he spent an awful long time in your apartment last night. And then this hit the streets this morning. This is the newspaper you work for, isn’t it? Seems to me he cares enough about you to sell out all his colleagues for some time between your thighs, so I’m gonna wager he also cares enough to try and stop you from getting murdered.”

  I stare mutely at the paper in my lap. It’s folded in half, but I can easily read the headline:

  Masquerade Orgy: Mattenburg’s Elite Hides Sex Auction

  Underneath is a picture that looks like a still from the video I shot. Even though no genitals are on display, it’s unmistakably a masked alpha balls-deep inside a screaming woman. In the background you can make out the naked and chained men and women waiting on the auction block, and the backdrop is very clearly from inside Town Hall.

  “I… I don’t have anything to do with that,” I say, and despite the terror making my gut clench, I’m proud of how steady my voice sounds. “And Leod… it was just a one-night stand. Do you kidnap all the women he spends a night with?”

  “You better hope you were more than a one-night stand to him.” He says it with a casual shrug, as if he’s not bothered one way or the other, and that one movement finally makes the seriousness of my situation set in. This man really, truly does not value my life as anything more than a bargaining chip. If I prove to be a bad gamble, he’ll kill me without a second thought.

  If Leod doesn’t show up, I’m as good as dead.

  “What do you want from him?” I rasp. “To kill him?”

  “Don’t be silly,” the alpha says, sparing me a contemptuous look. “His death would cause a public outcry.”

  “Then what?”

  Another cold smirk. “His reputation, of course. If he wants to save your life, come tonight, there won’t be a single person left in this city who’ll still believe in his Liberal bullshit.”

  My heart sinks, and it’s not until complete hopelessness takes me that I realize some small, hidden part of me was still hoping he’d come for me. But not now—not when it’s his reputation on the line. Wasn’t that why he left me in the first place? Because he didn’t want to risk his precious reputation just by being seen with me? Whatever this guy has planned, it’s bound to be much, much worse than that.

  No, when it comes to choosing between me and his career, he’s already made his choice. And I didn’t come out on top.

  I’ve just allowed myself to sink into complete misery when muted commotion draws both mine and my kidnapper’s attention. He looks above my shoulder where the sounds are coming from, a faint smile pulling on his lips. I strain to look as well, but can’t twist my neck far enough.

  The sound of a door being unlocked makes me realize what the alpha is looking for even before an angry voice rings through the room.

  “I swear, if you’ve so much as touched her, I’ll rip your dick off!”

  Leod.

  He’s come!

  “Relax, no one’s put their knot in your little girlfriend. Look, there she is, safe and sound. Just waiting to be rescued.” The other, new voice is dripping with sarcasm, but the furious snarl that rips through the room doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to Leod, and the threat of absolute murder vibrating through it makes even my hair stand on end. Oh, boy. He’s pissed.

  A large figure comes into my field of vision, followed by big hands wrapping gently around my face. Leod stares down at me, concern and fury etched into his prominent features.

  “Leigh? Are you all right?”

  “Y-yeah, I’m okay,” I croak. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I can’t fight the ridiculous bubbles of happiness threatening to explode out of my chest at the sight of him.

  He really came for me.

  Quick
ly, he bends to untie first my wrists from behind the chair I’m seated on, and then my ankles. But when he offers his hand to lift me to my feet, my kidnapper by the bureau pulls a gun out and points it at me.

  “You just leave the girl right where she is, Leod. It’s time for us to have a grown-up chat.”

  Leod bares his teeth in a growl. “You better move that fucking thing away from her before I shove it up your ass and pull the trigger.”

  The other alpha gives him a small smile and points the weapon toward the floor instead.

  Leod’s posture relaxes a fraction of an inch, but I don’t miss how he takes a half-step to the side, shielding me from the man still holding the gun. “Right. Let’s talk. What does Bremen want, then? Let me guess—for me to withdraw myself from the election?”

  I stare at his back. Bremen? The Lord Mayor’s behind this? I don’t know why I didn’t figure that out from the start—he’s Leod’s fiercest competitor, and he’s got a reputation as being completely merciless. It suddenly dawns on me where I’ve seen my kidnapper before—he was the alpha who checked my ticket when I arrived at the masquerade. Yeah, they work for Bremen, all right.

  “He’s predictable, the old goat, isn’t he?” the other kidnapper, who’s still somewhere behind me, says in an easy tone. “You should have seen his face when we told him about the girl you snuck off to see. Practically lit up like a Christmas tree.”

  “I’m not entirely sure why he thinks kidnapping a random booty call will help him in any way,” Leod says coolly, and even though I know he’s being crass to gain the upper hand, it still stings to hear him call me that.

  Angry with myself, I bite my lip to get my head back on straight. Now is so not the time to start acting like I’m starring in a stereotypical chick flick. There’s not exactly time to wallow in self-pity and emotions-that-have-no-business-being-there-in-the-first-place when two men with a gun have you locked up and at their mercy.

  “A booty call?” the gun-wielding alpha snorts. “Apparently she’s a bit more than that, or you wouldn’t have showed in the first place. Don’t even try and pretend you’re any kind of hero—if she was truly just a knot-warmer, you’d have let her die without a second thought.”

  “And look at that interesting mark the little twat has on the back of her neck,” the man behind me drawls, letting a single finger brush along my nape so the hair is pushed aside. I flinch when he touches the bruise Leod gave me just before he knotted me.

  Leod snarls and spins around with absolute fury in his eyes. “Get your hand off her!”

  The two kidnappers might be the ones in charge, but the guy behind me quickly removes his fingers from my skin at the unmistakable promise of pain ringing through Leod’s command.

  “Looks an awful lot like someone was contemplating on claiming himself a mate,” the alpha with the gun says, his tone almost a singsong taunt.

  Leod’s face is still contorted in anger as he glares at the man behind me, and I expect for him to deny it. But then his expression falls and his shoulders slump.

  “Fine. Bremen gets his way. If you let us go now, we should be able to make the six o'clock news. I’ll announce my withdrawal then.”

  “Not so fast,” the alpha behind me says, and I can hear the smirk in his voice. It sends goosebumps of uneasiness down my back. “You don’t really think he’s letting you off the hook that easy?”

  “I’m sure you can understand he’ll want an insurance policy,” the man with the gun says. “We can’t have you popping back up in the political picture come the next election. No, we need to be absolutely sure that when you leave this room, your reputation is so wrecked you’ll never be able to come back from it.”

  “Spit it out,” Leod grits between clenched teeth as he looks from one kidnapper to the other. “What does he want me to do?”

  The alpha in front of us pulls out his cell phone and holds it up in front of Leod with a wry smirk. “You. In front of the camera. Fucking the ever living shit out of this poor girl.”

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