1
BETRAYAL
MOSCOW. NIGHT.
Snow fell like ash, silent and suffocating. The sky was the color of a bruised throat blacked with storm clouds, lit only by the flicker of dying neon and the glow of burning car wreckage on the street below.
Sergei Volkov stood at the edge of the penthouse balcony, shirtless despite the cold, a cigarette burning between his fingers like the last ember of restraint. The mark on his shoulder the one he had never asked for throbbed.
A mating bite. Still raw. Still aching. Still Ji-won.
He inhaled smoke but tasted memory: silk sheets tangled in chaos, Ji-won beneath him, biting his own lip bloody, refusing to beg. The heat had made him delirious. But not weak. Never weak.
Ji-won had disappeared two weeks ago.
Vanished like a ghost in the snow, along with classified intel, three Bratva lieutenants, and half a million in coded crypto. His name hadn’t been spoken since only spat.
The Omega had betrayed him.
Everyone said it. His uncle. His soldiers. Even the scent trail the one only Sergei could follow ended at a Korean airstrip soaked in someone else’s blood.
But none of it explained why the bond still burned.
Sergei crushed the cigarette into the steel railing.
Behind him, the door opened.
“Boss.” It was Luka. Scarred. Faithful. And afraid.
“What.”
“There’s been an incident. Seoul. Ji-won’s younger brother… found dead. Executed. Knife to the throat. Same pattern as Ji-won’s signature kills.”
Sergei didn’t move. His pulse slowed. Thoughts sharpened.
“What else?”
“A message. Carved into the floor with a hanja blade.”
Luka held up a tablet. One image: a blood-smeared word etched into polished wood.
“Врагам смерть.”
To enemies death.
Sergei’s jaw tightened.
Ji-won hadn’t run.
He had hunted.
And now, Sergei didn’t know what terrified him more
The betrayal that never happened.
Or the loyalty that might still exist.
