dispassionately, though my heart is pounding in my ears. So much blood and emotion is running through me that black circles appear in my vision.
Being rogue in our world is like throwing away your family, your friends, even your identity. It means no protection, contacts, home, alliances, and hell, not even a last name. And once you’re rogue, there’s no going back. No other lounge will take you. You’re destined to live life shunned, to be a pariah.
“How could you...take that back!” my mat shouts into the phone.
“No,” I say, shaking my head, because as terrifying it is to be a rogue shifter, I’m digging my heels in now. I’ve finally gotten to them. I’ve finally found the only button I can press, so I’m going to jam my finger on this motherfucker as hard as I can.
“Sinclair…” I see my pat mouth from the other side of the glass.
“If you go rogue, then Alpha Bowen will consider our deal null and void. He won’t strike our debts off his ledger,” my mat tells me, cutting off whatever my pat was about to say.
I grind my teeth. So I was sold for money. “Guess that’s your problem.”
I start to get up from my chair, but my mat’s voice stops me before I can hang up the phone. “If you do this, you will be the reason for Denali’s downfall. Our entire lounge will go bankrupt, Bowen will take us over instead of watching our backs, and your lounge, your people, will be gone forever.”
I scoff. My people? Part of the reason she did what she did was to make sure they would never become my people. I try to focus on that, but despite my efforts, guilt pricks the backs of my eyes. Aside from my shitty parents, my lounge isn’t bad. They’re my family, my friends. “Then give me another option,” I beg. “Please.”
Her green eyes twinkle with my plea. She knows her guilt hit home. As much as I try to be the emotionless hard-ass that she is, I just can’t do it.
Running away from my responsibilities? That’s easy. I’ve been doing that my whole life, although I was half running and half being chased away. I knew at a young age that even though she went through the motions of setting me up to take over, she would never let it happen. She’s not ever going to give up the reins.
After that realization, the running became more about fighting for control of my life. She wanted me to set the table, so I didn’t come home until bedtime. She wanted me to make a speech at a lounge meeting? I claimed I had laryngitis. Running away was supposed to cure this stupid mate contract too. It was par for the course she and I always played. Except this time, it’s different.
Prison was supposed to be a break from her and all the damn politics and messed up expectations. But this...this crosses a line that I might not want to cross. This is suddenly too much responsibility and I’m not sure my shoulders can carry it. I’m a sloucher, dammit. My posture isn’t meant for these kinds of decisions. I don’t want to obliterate my lounge. I just want to obliterate my mat’s hold over me.
“This is the only option,” my mat tells me coldly.
“Selling me off to a monster is the best you could come up with?” I shake my head. “Let me look over the books, maybe there’s something there that you’re just not seeing. I’ve always been good with numbers.”
My mat’s eyes turn hard as jade, and I know where this is going to go before she even opens her mouth to speak. She wants a solution to the lounge’s problem, but only the solution that she’s decided on. After all, it’s not just the debt that she wants gone, it’s me.
“Sinclair Denali, I am your matriarch, and you will do as you’re told.”
I stare at her for a beat and wonder how I could’ve ever hoped that she would someday care about me. My eyes move from my mat to my pat. I wish I saw some hint of defeat in his slumped shoulders, like he had fought for me but lost, but it’s not there. He looks...unaffected.
Clearly, my mat and pat are a dead end on the how to save the lounge issue, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other options. I just need to find out exactly what the debt situation is