“Look at her fancy dress,” one of them sneered, his voice carrying a mocking lilt. The one with the crooked nose. “Thinks she's something special now. Thinks she's better than us.”
“Did you like her little performance?” another added. The younger one. “All those people were clapping for her. Bet she forgot where she came from. Forgot who she belongs to.”
Their words circled me like physical blows, each one landing in places that were already vulnerable. I wanted to respond, to defend myself, to tell them I'd never thought I was better. But my throat had closed up completely. Fear had stolen my voice the same way it had stolen everything else.
“You can dress her up,” Bane said from behind me, his voice carrying an authority that made the others silence immediately. “But she's still the same worthless Omega. Still damaged goods. Still ours.”
The word "ours" hit me like ice water, triggering memories I'd tried desperately to bury. Memories of being held down,being used, being broken in ways that left no visible scars. My hands started shaking, tremors running through my entire body until my teeth chattered with more than just the cold.
One of the pack members stepped forward. The older one with graying hair. His face was set in lines of cruel satisfaction, like this moment was something he'd been looking forward to. His eyes tracked down my body in a way that made my skin crawl, then returned to my face.
“Did you really think you could escape us?” he asked, and his voice held genuine curiosity beneath the cruelty. “Did you think those Alphas would protect you? That you deserved better than what we gave you?”
I opened my mouth to try to answer, but his fist was faster. It slammed into my sternum with a dull thud that echoed through hollow bones, expelling every molecule of air from my lungs in a single, agonizing rush.
Stars burst behind my eyes. Something inside shifted wrong. My spine curved like a question mark around the place he'd hit.
The three-inch heels I'd been so proud of skidded across loose gravel. Concrete rushed up. My palms slapped against it, skin shredding on impact. The shock reverberated through wrists, up forearms, into my shoulders. Silk tore beneath my weight, like the sound of a letter being torn in half.
Something warm and sticky pooled between my fingers, mixing with a black grit that smelled of cigarettes and urine.
Inhale. Nothing happened. Inhale harder, damn it! A thin whistle of air trickled into my lungs. Not enough. Nowhere near enough. Panic bled through my eyes, wide and all-encompassing. Tears escaped my face, absorbing into the ground below me. Each breath scraped my throat raw, like trying to swallow glass shards. I clawed at the ground, nails digging into pebbled cement, staring up at the row of legs that circled me in the alley. The world had shrunk to this: the sharpgrit embedding itself in my shredded palms, the suffocating compression in my chest, the animal certainty that I was going to die, right here, in my ruined shoes and expensive dress.
Movement above me—a blur of denim and old blood. Reaper’s boot swung inward and ricocheted off my thigh. I tried to push myself upright, but my arms barely held me. The sound that came out was half retch, half howl. I rolled onto my side, curling around the emptiness where breath should be, blind to everything but the panic.
My vision pulsed at the edges; blackness threatening to fold in. Bane crouched and grabbed a handful of my hair, wrenching my head upward so my neck stretched and the world wobbled sickeningly around me.
“You see?” he hissed. “She can't even stand. Can’t sing, can’t fight.” His knuckles bruised the pale skin of my cheek as he hauled my face closer. “Told you she was nothing.”
The others closed in, drawn by the scent of Omega panic and the sick light in Bane's eyes.
He shoved my face into the pavement. My forehead cracked against the concrete, and white exploded through my eyes. For a second, I was back at their pack house, with the stench of bleach and old sweat and the wire-bristle brush scraping my arms until they bled. I'd learned then that some hurts never healed.
“Should we drag her?” Reaper asked, breathless with anticipation, already reaching for my swollen ankle. “Or maybe just rip the dress off her first?”
They seized my limbs, hauling me upward by heel and elbow, and I thought my shoulder would pop from the socket. The world tipped, nausea swirling in my gut, but I wheezed in a thin gasp of oxygen. Not enough to scream, but enough to taste the old city air, slicked with the scent of my fear.
Reaper’s fingers dug so deep into my upper arm his nails broke skin. His breath was sour with vodka. He pressed his noseto my cheek and inhaled, then spat in my face. It stung where I was bleeding.
“Pathetic,” he sneered. “You were always weak, Jaz.”
Then his hand released my chin and moved, quick as a snake, to the top of my gown. He ripped at the neckline, but when the fabric didn't give, another hand joined, tearing. The sound was appalling, like flesh tearing from bone. Cold air rushed against my skin where silk used to be.
I tried to fight. Swung desperately, dug nails into whatever part of them I touched, but there were too many hands and I was too weak. Every movement made my lungs seize, and panic spiraled quicker.
A furious slap whipped my ears. “None of that, bitch,” a voice said; not Bane’s, but his echo, his disciple. “You think you're something now, singing for scraps on a stage?” Another fist, this time into my side. I doubled over, retched, and hot bile coated my tongue.
I twisted, searching for an escape, some angle to slip through. Nothing. Just a wall of bodies, all of them waiting for their turn.
A piece of my mind, the part that survived the first time, the part that still thought in rational sentences, counted the number of feet on the ground, calculated the odds. Maybe if I bit someone's hand, maybe if I screamed loud enough for the bouncers or a random do-gooder, but—
A cold circle pressed into the bare patch of my ribs. Metal. My heart stopped altogether. There was the click of a safety.
“Try anything, and you die right here,” said a voice, low and close. Bane.
Somebody yanked my hair and smashed my head into the metal edge behind me. My scalp went numb. From somewhere far off, I heard my own teeth chattering.
“You think you can just leave?” Reaper said. “Everyone's got to know what happens to a bitch who runs from her real pack.”
