Chapter 311: Dog-eat-dog

This Chapter contains disturbing content. Readers’ discretion is advised.

By the time Alicia pulled into the driveway of the house, the tears had already started. They streamed down her cheeks, and she did not bother to wipe them away. What was the point? What was the point in pretending any of this was fine?

Valerie was standing on the porch. She had cut her beach holiday short and returned immediately. She stood there with her arms folded, still in travelling clothes, watching her daughter get out of the car with her face swollen and her mascara halfway down it.

Alicia crossed the gravel on unsteady legs, and the tears fell faster with every step. She wanted her mother to hold her. She wanted someone, anyone, to tell her this wasn’t as bad as it seemed.

"Mum—"

Valerie did not open her arms or say anything soft. She simply looked at her daughter’s ruined face for a few seconds, then turned her head and gestured at the open door with her chin.

"Go inside," Valerie said, her voice calm and cool. "We’ll talk in the sitting room. You can tell me everything there."

Alicia walked past her mother into the house, and the tears kept falling.

When they were both inside, with the door closed, Alicia began to talk. The words tumbled out in fragments, disjointed and desperate, like water finding cracks in a dam.

"He went down to the restaurant without me knowing," she said, her voice thick with tears. "I didn’t find out until a staff member mentioned it in passing..."

Valerie listened in silence, her foot tapping an impatient rhythm against the floor. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound seemed to match the pounding of Alicia’s heart.

"And then what?" Valerie asked, when Alicia paused to catch her breath.

"By the time I got there, it was too late. He’d already seen her. He pulled her into his arms, Mum. In front of everyone. He called her Jessica."

Valerie’s tapping stopped. She studied her daughter for a long moment, calculating. Then she spoke.

"What about last night?"

Alicia went still.

"Last night," Valerie repeated. "I gave you one very simple instruction. Did you get him into bed or did you not?"

Alicia wiped her face with the heel of her hand and sniffed, and did not answer.

"Alicia."

Nothing.

"I am asking you a question."

Alicia shook her head slowly, and everything about the night came back at once.

***

Flashback

Dennis straightened, breathing hard, and looked over at Alicia, who stood near the foot of the bed with her arms wrapped around herself.

"Will you be all right, Miss Westwood?"

"I’ll manage. Thank you, Dennis."

Dennis gave a short nod and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

The corridor was silent. Dennis did not turn toward his own quarters. He walked past the stairs without a glance and continued down the hall.

Tan’s room was at the far end of the corridor, positioned so that its balcony faced the forest. The door was slightly ajar when Dennis arrived. He knocked twice, pushed it open, and stepped inside.

Tan sat in his wheelchair by the open balcony doors, a tablet balanced on his lap, his back to the room. He did not look up when Dennis entered, but a slight tilt of his head told Dennis he had been noticed.

Dennis walked toward the balcony and stopped a respectful distance behind the wheelchair. "Alpha," he said, bowing even though Tan could not see the gesture.

Tan did not turn. "I’ve told you before, Dennis. I’m not your Alpha anymore." His voice was calm, but there was an edge beneath it. "That title belongs to Kai now."

Dennis straightened. "I apologise. But you were my Alpha for a very long time. It’s still difficult to call you anything else."

Tan said nothing to that. His fingers moved across the tablet screen with the same slowness that had marked his movements since the injury. The silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft rustle of the night wind outside.

Dennis took a step closer. "Alpha Kai is drunk again, sir," he said quietly.

Tan’s fingers stopped moving. He turned then, slowly, rotating the wheelchair with one hand, and the expression on his face made Dennis’s stomach tighten. It was not the calm, measured look he usually wore. It was anger. Hot and alive and barely contained.

"Is he still claiming he saw Jessica?" Tan asked, each word dropping like a stone.

Dennis nodded solemnly.

For a long moment, Tan said nothing. Then he handed Dennis the tablet, reached for the wheels of his chair with both hands, already propelling himself toward the door.

"Take me to his bedroom," Tan said. "Now."

Dennis hesitated. "Sir, he’s probably passed out by now. He might not even be awake enough to hear you."

"Then we’ll wake him." Tan did not slow. "If he is well enough to drink himself into a stupor and keep chasing ghosts, he is well enough to listen to what I have to say."

Dennis recognised the tone. It was the same one Tan had used in battle, in negotiations, in every moment when he expected to be obeyed without question. There was no point arguing.

He fell into step behind the wheelchair, and together they made their way down the corridor toward Kai’s room.

Meanwhile, in Kai’s bedroom, Alicia had already stripped out of her dress. It lay in a crumpled heap on the floor.

The room was dark except for the faint glow of the bedside lamp, and the man on the bed was still and quiet, his breathing heavy with sleep and drink.

She was still straddling him, and her hands were shaking, but she forced herself to take a breath. She kissed the hollow of his throat and let her fingers trail down his stomach, and closed around his flaccid length.

He was not responding. His body was heavy, uncooperative, sullen with alcohol. But she would not stop. She moved her hand up and down his shaft. She could not stop. If she stopped, the moment would be lost, and she would have to think about what she was doing and why.

Kai groaned, and for one bright second, she thought it was working. She thought she had finally found a way through.

Then his body convulsed.

Alicia had just enough time to register the movement—the sudden heave of his chest, the way his mouth opened—before the vomit came. Hot and foul, it sprayed across her bare skin, her hair, her face. The stench of alcohol hit her nostrils like a physical blow, and she yelped, scrambling backward so fast she nearly fell off the bed.

"No, no, no—" She was on her feet now, gagging, wiping frantically at her face with the back of her hand. The smell was everywhere. It soaked into her skin, her hair, the sheets. She had never been more disgusted in her entire life.

And then she heard the footsteps. They were coming down the corridor. Multiple sets. They were heading straight for the door.

"Please, no," she whispered, and moved with a speed born of pure panic.

She grabbed her discarded dress from the floor and used it to wipe furiously at the worst of the mess on her chest and arms. The fabric did almost nothing. The smell clung to her like a punishment, but she had no time.

She snatched a fresh sheet from the storage chest at the foot of the bed and wrapped it around herself, with her hair sticking to her neck and her eyes streaming, just as the door swung open.

Dennis wheeled Tan into the doorway, and the two men stopped dead.

The room was a disaster. Kai lay sprawled across the bed, still mumbling something faint and incoherent, his chest bare and the sheet covering his lower body. The air reeked of alcohol and sour sickness. And in the middle of it all stood Alicia, wrapped in a bedsheet, her face streaked with mascara and her hair wet with vomit.

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

Then Alicia decided, in that moment, that the only way through this was straight ahead.

"Oh, thank goodness you’re here," she said, in a voice pitched high with pure frustration. "Dennis, will you please help me get him into the shower? He has been sick all over me."

Tan blinked, then recovered with a leader’s grace. "Of course, Miss Westwood." His voice was smooth, but his eyes were sharp, and they did not linger on her state. "Thank you for taking care of Kai. I apologise for what he’s put you through tonight."

He paused, his gaze travelling to the bed and then back to her.

"Would you give us some time with him? I’d like to speak with my brother."

Alicia did not need to be told twice. She fled the room, the sheet pulled around her like armour, and did not look back.

End of Flashback

***

Valerie listened to the whole thing without interruption. Her expression did not change once, not even when Alicia described the vomit, the panic, the arrival of Tan in the doorway. She simply sat there, waiting, tapping her foot in that same impatient rhythm.

"And after that?" she asked when Alicia fell silent. "Surely that wasn’t the end of the night."

Alicia stared at her mother, then swallowed. "After that... I...I fell asleep in the guest room." Her voice was small, defeated. "Tan spoke with him for a long time. So, I fell asleep."

Valerie’s face went hard. "So let me be sure I understand you correctly." Her voice was soft, but it cut like a blade. "You had one job. One simple task. Get Kai into bed, make sure he slept with you, and secure your position as Luna." She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. "And instead, you ended up in the guest room, covered in his sick, while his brother lectured him in the next room."

"Mum, I tried—"

"Don’t." Valerie held up a hand, and the single word landed like a slap. "Don’t tell me you tried. Tried is what people say when they’ve failed and want to pretend otherwise. You have disappointed me, Alicia. Deeply."

The tears started again, hot and fast. "I didn’t know what to do! I panicked. He was so drunk, and then Tan showed up, and I just—"

"You just did nothing." Valerie rose from her seat and paced toward the window, her back to her daughter. "This entire arrangement is hanging by a thread, and you’re wasting time crying. "

Alicia flinched. "I feel guilty, Mum," she whispered. "I touched him when he was too drunk to know what was happening. If Kai ever finds out what I did—if he remembers—he’ll hate me forever. The guilt is already eating at me."

Valerie turned around. The expression on her face was not soft or kind.

"Listen to me carefully," Valerie said, walking back toward her daughter. "You are not a child anymore. You are a woman fighting for her future, and in this world, the people who survive are the ones who do what needs to be done. Not the ones who sit around feeling guilty about it."

Alicia sniffed, looking up at her mother with red-rimmed eyes.

"It’s a dog-eat-dog world," Valerie continued coldly. "And the dogs that hesitate get eaten. Is that what you want? To end up as nothing? To watch Jessica walk back into his life and take everything you’ve been working for since you were a girl?"

Alicia said nothing. She couldn’t. The words were lodged in her throat, tangled with tears and shame and the memory of Kai’s arms around that girl.

"Exactly." Valerie nodded once, as if Alicia’s silence confirmed everything. "Now clean yourself up. You look like a woman who’s been crying in a bush."

She turned toward the door, then paused with her hand on the handle. "And don’t come out until you’re ready to fight. Because I will not permit you to lose this, do you understand me? You will not lose."