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I crossed my arms, which only had the effect of squeezing my small breasts together.

His eyes went straight there.He licked his lips before his face smoothed out to that deadly stillness I’d come to associate with the man, and he met my gaze.

“Coming to the alpha zone and banging on the fucking gates like a crazy woman.You’re lucky I spotted you.Well, Art saw you and notified Dane.Anybody could have come down there.They’re not all like me, you know?”he said.

“Like you?You mean they wouldn’t take me to a room, strip me, and threaten to punish me?”

“It’s not a threat, baby.”

Damn, my pussy clenched at that.Stupid traitorous thing.

“They’re not all like me.Most of the alphas here will take you back to their home and rape you repeatedly, then they’ll give you to their buddies.Then they’d rape you some more and keep doing so until you were nothing but a shell.”

It was like a cold splash of water.Fuck!I started shivering.I hadn’t thought through what I was doing.I hadn’t thought through anything at all.

He was right—I did understand what it was like here.I understood that Inked was different from much of the strip, and even so, when the gates opened on designated access days, it likely had a different feel.But when the gates clicked shut again, anything could happen.

He gathered me up into his arms, heaved me to the back of the bed, and settled me on his lap.He purred, his big hands smoothing over me, but not in a sexual way.Instead, his caresses were comforting, as his hands moved over my back, my hips.He drew my face close, so that my cheek was pressed to his chest, where that deep rumble emanated and his beautiful scent was so rich.

“Breathe,” he said.“Just breathe.You’re here, you’re safe.”

But I wasn’t thinking about being here and being safe.I was thinking about the image of that riot when we came to collect Sloane.The gate had slammed shut as feral alphas charged against the fence.What on earth had I been thinking by coming back to the gate, to do what?What madness had taken over me?

“You’re safe,” he said.

Was I?Was I really safe?

Yet I felt safe here in his arms, surrounded by his scent, and concluded that this was the safest place in the world.

“Is Sloane really here?Is she really mated?Promise me.Promise me everything you said is true.”

“I promise, baby,” he said.“But alphas and omegas are different from everything you know.She needs to be with Jace as much as he needs to be with her.They need to strengthen their bond, and the heat…it’s a strange thing.You’re not in control of yourself.I hate to say this because I know you love her and she’s your sister, but we’re not rational at such times.”

I swallowed.“Are you mated?”

“No,” he said.“I wouldn’t be with you if I were mated, would I?”

“You’re not exactly with me,” I said, and that thought cut far deeper than it should’ve.I didn’t know him.We’d shared one night together, and not even all of that.We hadn’t even had sex.He’d helped his friend save my sister because they were an alpha and omega and because they needed each other, but he didn’t owe me anything.

“If I had an omega, if I bonded to her,” Ryder started, “I couldn’t be around another woman.Not like this.Not a naked woman on my lap.I wouldn’t be able to stand it myself, for a start.Also, omegas are possessive of their mates.She would rip you to pieces.Me too, if she found out.So, no.There’s no omega that I’m bound to.”

“But you’ve been with omegas, right?”I didn’t want to ask that question or acknowledge this rage that had started to consume me at the mere thought of him being with somebody else.Yet I didn’t imagine the man had existed in a bubble before I crash-landed into his life.He was mature.I’d been with other men, so it stood to reason that he’d been with other women and, given he lived here in the alpha zone, omegas.Plus, the way he’d spoken about the experience of heat and rut wasn’t clinical.It was personal.“And you’ve rutted one through her heat.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“I have,” he said.

Something cold and dead settled in the center of my chest.Did Ryder care for them, I wondered?

“We have omegas here,” he said.“We look after them.It’s not a good way for omegas to come into the world.Often, they get passed off to unscrupulous alphas.Where we can, we get to them.They have a choice here to decide who they invite into their bed.We don’t force ourselves on them, and when the heat comes, we help them through it.”

“You rut them,” I say, feeling sick to my core.“You fuck them and knot them?”

“Yes,” he said.“And we mark them too, so that everybody else knows that they belong to us.”

Feeling nauseous, I pushed at him.He didn’t let go.I shook my head.“I need the bathroom!”

He released me instantly.I’d never been in his bathroom, but I guessed where it was.My feet made a patter against the wooden floor as I ran straight to the toilet, where I lifted the seat and emptied my stomach of bile and water.