Chapter 1 The Chapel Smells Like Rain and Rot
The Chapel Smells Like Rain and Rot
St. Augustine in October is just wet. Not the romantic kind. It’s the kind of rain that seeps into your bones and stays there, rotting you from the inside out.
I’m counting the cracks in the marble floor of the abandoned sanctuary, waiting for the phantom fire in my spine to die down.
The oxycodone is late.
Usually, twenty minutes. Tonight, it’s been thirty. My knuckles are white against the armrests of my chair. My legs are dead weight, useless meat and bone, but the nerve endings in my brain are screaming like they’re being flayed.
*One. Two. Three.*
I try to breathe through the pain.
Then, the heavy oak doors blast open.
It’s not the wind. The air pressure in the room drops instantly, sucked out by the sheer force of the three men standing in the threshold.
The smell hits me before I even see their faces.
**Petrichor. Burnt cedar. Gunpowder.**
It’s so strong, so aggressively *Alpha*, that my breath hitches in my throat. My stomach drops—not just from fear, but from a sick, biological jolt that makes my skin prickle. My useless legs twitch, a phantom reflex to run.
The Crimson Triplets.
They don’t walk in; they prowl.
**Cassian** is first. The brute. He’s soaking wet, his black trench coat heavy with rain, looking less like a man and more like a wall of muscle looking for something to break. **Rowan** is behind him, adjusting his leather gloves, eyes cold and clinical. And **Silas**... Silas is smiling. It’s the kind of smile you give a dog before you put it down.
"f**k," Cassian grunts. His voice is deep, a vibration that I feel in the metal frame of my wheelchair. "He looks worse than the file said."
Silas steps around him, his footsteps silent on the marble. He circles me, sniffing the air. "Fitting, isn't it? A ruin hiding inside a ruin."
"Shut up, Silas," Rowan says, bored. He stops in front of me, looking down. He doesn't look at my face; he looks at my legs. "Elias Whitlock. The heir."
"The cripple," I correct him. My voice is wrecked, dry as sandpaper. "If you're here to kill me, just do it. I’ve got half a bottle of whiskey left and I'd hate to waste it."
Cassian laughs. It’s a dark, wet sound. He closes the distance in two strides, looming over me, blocking out the dim light. He’s huge. The heat radiating off him is suffocating.
"Kill you?" Cassian crouches down.
He’s face-to-face with me now. His eyes are black, dilated. He reaches out—not to hit me, but to grab the armrest of my chair. His hand is massive, covering the metal, inches from my own trembling fingers.
"You smell like antiseptic and cheap booze, Omega," he murmurs, invading my personal space.
The word *Omega* makes me flinch. I haven’t been called that since the accident. Since I became a defect.
"I don't smell like anything," I grit out, trying to lean back, away from his overwhelming scent. "My glands are scarred. I'm useless."
"Scarred," Silas whispers, appearing suddenly right behind my left ear. I freeze. He leans down, his nose brushing the sensitive skin of my neck, inhaling deeply. I shudder, a confusing mix of terror and heat pooling low in my belly. "But not dead. I can smell you, Elias. Under the whiskey... you smell like fear. It's delicious."
"Get off me," I snap, swatting at him.
Silas catches my wrist. His grip is gentle but immovable. "Feisty for someone who can't stand up."
"Enough," Rowan commands. "We aren't here to play with the food." He looks at me. "Your father left a mess, Elias. Debts. Big ones. And since he blew himself to pieces, you’re the collateral."
"I don't have money," I spit out. "Look at me. I live in a church basement. My assets are this chair and a tremor in my right hand."
"We don't want money," Cassian says, standing up. His shadow engulfs me again. "We want a witness."
My blood runs cold. "I didn't see anything at the docks."
"Liar," Cassian growls. He leans in, his hand slamming onto the back of my chair, jarring my spine. "You saw everything. That's why they blew up your car. That's why you're sitting in this chair."
"I saw nothing!" I yell, though the lie tastes like ash.
"You have two choices," Rowan says, checking his watch. "Stay here and rot. Wait for the rats to finish what the explosion started. Or come with us."
"Come with you?" I scoff, gripping the wheels. "To be your pet witness? Your prisoner?"
"To be ours," Silas corrects softly. He runs a finger down the side of my neck, tracing the jugular. "Property."
The air in the church feels too thin. The scent of them—three Prime Alphas—is making my head spin. My body is betraying me, reacting to their presence with a pathetic need to submit, even as my mind screams to fight.
"If I go," I managed to whisper, the pain in my back flaring up again, "I need my meds. The oxy. I can't... I can't move without it."
Cassian looks at me with something unreadable. Disgust? Pity? Hunger?
"You sell yourself cheap, Omega," he rumbles.
"I sell myself for survival," I shoot back. "Do we have a deal?"
Cassian doesn't answer. He just reaches down.
I brace myself, expecting him to grab the handles of the chair and shove me toward the door.
He doesn't.
He slides his arms under me—one behind my knees, one around my back.
"What are you—"
He lifts me.
Effortlessly. Like I’m made of paper.
"No! Put me down!" I panicked, shoving at his chest. It’s like shoving a brick wall. My legs dangle uselessly, dead weight swinging in the air. It’s humiliating. It’s intimate.
"The chair," I gasped, gripping his wet coat to keep from falling. "My chair!"
"Leave it," Cassian growls, his chest vibrating against my ribs. "It's garbage."
"I need it to walk!"
"You don't need to walk," Silas says, opening the church doors to the storm outside. The wind howls, but Cassian’s body heat is a furnace protecting me from the cold.
Cassian looks down at me, his face inches from mine. I can see the rain droplets caught in his eyelashes. I can smell the dark, heavy musk of an aroused Alpha.
"You don't need wheels, Elias," he says, stepping out into the rain. "Where you're going, your feet will never touch the ground."
