With Ties That Bind: Book 3 (The Broken Bonds 6)

How will you be able to pursue your career now? Every day, that one action hovering over your head like a storm cloud waiting to burst. Why should you spend the rest of your life riddled with guilt for a brave decision that, considering the subject, needed to be put down like the dog he was?

Price Alexander Wells didn’t deserve a trial. We both know that any infraction or mistake in the justice system would’ve set the deviant free.

So I ask you which is worse: living a life plagued by guilt, or a life fearing your tormenter?

Between us, Avery, you made the right choice. The only choice. And if this justice system wasn’t so…pardon my frankness…fucked up, then you’d be honored as a hero rather than crucified as a criminal.

What you have to ask yourself is this: would you do it again?

When you find the answer to that question, seek me out. I have a most interesting proposition for you, sweet Avery. One that I feel confident you’ll accept.

-Alpha

My stomach lurches. Nausea constricts my throat, and saliva thickens my tongue. My hand hovers over the letter, ready to ball the paper. Tear it to shreds. I’m not in danger of the Alpha killing me.

No. He’s decided I’m worthy.

I’m in danger of being recruited.

Before I’m able to do anything rash, I turn and hunker over the wastebasket. My nerves purge every vile thing from my being.

4

One

Alpha

There can only ever be one.

Forgive me for quoting something so trite and cliché as Highlander, but the concept of one is, above all else, the most brilliantly forged rule in the universe.

Passion, dedication, commitment to your goals—nothing great can be obtained without the key element that is the singular drive to ignore all else that does not matter, that does not propel oneself toward their ultimate purpose.

It’s a cruel and callous creature that embraces this concept. Shun all others in the name of progress. For your ambition. But how else do you think revolutionary technologies and civilizations were born? Realized? Made absolute?

Einstein didn’t barter his time with others. Alexander the Great didn’t sit at a dinner table and hang his head in shame that he was spending too much time away from his family.

They conquered.

They sacrificed the little and insignificant people and stamped out thieves of their time and died victorious in their efforts.

When we stare into the future far enough, all the little, annoying irritants become but a background noise.

When you learn to recognize those pesky noises in the present, they’re more easily snuffed out.

I tighten my hold on the wailing girl and crush a cloth over her mouth, covering her nostrils, feeling her lungs strain for one last breath.

One. We only get one in the end.

There’s no such thing as returned goods in my business. My girls know this, and if they fail to please my clients, then their deaths are of their own design. Simply, they have the power to choose to live or die.

That’s more of a choice than any of us are given.

I guess little Kayla chose death over a life of servitude.

What angers me, is that she chose to make this known after the auction, after she’d been sold to one of my wealthiest clients. Anger is the wrong emotion: I’m furious. Enraged. Maddened.

Fucking cunt.