The ballroom was a sea of black suits and shimmering gowns. The moment they entered, the music didn't stop, but the atmosphere shifted. A hundred pairs of eyes landed on them—or rather, on the Ren.
"Cilian! You finally brought him out."
A tall man with silver hair and a sharp, hawkish nose stepped forward.
He was an Alpha from the Greco family, one of the neutral houses that had watched the Pierce district burn without lifting a finger. He looked at Ren with a sickening mixture of pity and hunger.
"He looks... well-preserved," the man remarked.
"Doesn't he?" Cilian replied, his smile wide and effortless. He didn't shake the man's hand. Instead, he reached up and ran a thumb over the ruby on Ren's collar. "He's a bit stubborn, but I've always enjoyed a challenge. Aren't you going to say hello, Ren?"
Ren looked at the Greco patriarch. He remembered this man sitting at his father's table, drinking their wine and promising loyalty. The spite rose in his throat, hot and thick.
"Hello, Marcus," Ren said, his voice cold like ice. "I see you're still wearing the watch my father gave you. I'm surprised it hasn't stained your wrist yet."
The man's face flushed in embarrassment right away. Cilian's grip on Ren's waist tightened, his fingers digging into Ren's hip bone. It felt like a warning, but when Ren looked up, Cilian's fox eyes were dancing with genuine delight. He loved the friction. He loved the venom.
He loved that Ren wasn't being friendly with anyone aside from him. Not like Ren was ever friendly towards him since he bought him from the auction house.
"He has such a bite, doesn't he?" Cilian chuckled, leading Ren further into the room. "Careful, Marcus. He's mine, and I don't plan to have him declawed."
They moved past the embarrassed Marcus, through the crowd of people looking to please Vane, but Cilian did not stop, walking ahead like a king and a captive.
But even as he treated Ren like a captive, he treated him like something precious, never letting any of the old vultures lay their hands on him.
Cilian also never stopped touching him. If it wasn't a hand on his waist, it was a palm on his back or a finger hooked into the silver buckle of his collar. He acted like a man who had found a rare drug and was afraid someone would steal a puff.
He kept leaning in to sniff Ren's hair, his face flushing with that disturbing, and commented how Ren looked nice, beautiful, or was the prettiest even in the collar.
It was disturbing to Ren, but he acted stiff, acted like it didn't matter, like his words were just water in a basket.
That was the only way he felt he could go through this night without swinging his fist about.
Then, the crowd finally parted, and Julian Mordecai showed up.
The vampire Alpha looked different in a tuxedo. His skin was so pale it looked translucent under the chandeliers.
He stood with one hand in his pocket, the other holding a glass of red, dark liquid of something that definitely wasn't wine. One side of his long black hair was tucked behind his pointy pale ear to show his side profile perfectly, and he had his attention on the ladies who wouldn't stop singing his praises.
Then, he felt the air shift and caught the whiff of a familiar scent. His red eyes rolled to the corner, and then he saw Cilian and Ren.
But he didn't look at Cilian. His eyes were fixed on Ren with a terrifying intensity.
"Vane," Julian drawled. "I see the 'pet' survived the morning."
Cilian's smile didn't falter, but his pheromones shifted—a sharp, aggressive coldness that pushed back the warmth of the room. "He's very resilient. A Pierce trait, I suppose."
Julian stepped closer, his gaze dropping to the leather collar. "So he was a Pierce," he said, as if just finding out that the slave he tried to dig his fangs in that morning was someone who was once important.
Someone whose family once held a similar position to his own.
"It's no wonder he had that grit for someone so weak," he said, sipping from his glass. "It's a nice leash, Vane. But leather can be cut. Blood, however... blood is a permanent bond."
Ren felt a chill run down his spine. He remembered the fangs, the cold breath. He moved half an inch closer to Cilian—an instinctive move for safety that he immediately hated himself for.
Cilian noticed and pulled Ren closer, his hand moving to Ren's neck, his fingers spread across the pulse point.
"You're making him uncomfortable, Julian. And when Ren is uncomfortable, I get irritable. You wouldn't like me when I'm irritable."
"I've seen you irritable, Vane," Julian countered, though he looked like he didn't like the encounter at all as he shuddered. "I still get nightmares from it."
The mere thought of making Cilian irritated gave him goosebumps. That crazy psycho could put a silver bullet in his head and say he was just having a fit with a smile on his face.
He looked at Ren, his voice dropping.
"Anyway, if you ever get tired of the cage, little Omega, remember that some predators prefer to hunt, not to own." He grinned, his red eyes flickering with want.
"That's enough," Cilian snapped, his voice losing its airy quality. "Ren is mine," he declared.
He didn't wait for a rebuttal. He turned Ren around and marched him toward the balcony, away from the prying eyes and the crimson-eyed Alpha.
The moment they were in the cool night air, Cilian shoved Ren against the stone railing. He didn't hit him, but he caged him in with his arms, his face flushed and his eyes glassy.
"You were looking at him," Cilian hissed, his voice trembling with a strange, frantic energy, though he tried not to lose his creepy smile.
"He was talking to me! What did you expect?" Ren shouted back, his own temper breaking. "You dragged me here to show me off, and now you're mad that people are looking? You're insane!"
It was as if Cilian was scared someone would snatch Ren away when he wasn't looking. But he was confident he had Ren on a leech, confident no one could cut that leech, so then why…? Why wouldn't his hands stop trembling?