He grips his utensil tight, flexing his hands. “Roxy was removed for that.”
“You let her have your dirty clothes,” I state, because honestly, I don’t think I can move forward until I know what he thinks about this.
“She’s an omega like the rest, and we didn’t know what to do with her. She won’t be getting them anymore.”
The old Diana within me is screaming that this is a waste of conversation, because why the fuck am I talking to Judge like any of this matters? But I’m honestly mad that he seems so unfazed by her.
His scent makes it easier, like it always does. It persuades me more than anything else ever has. And in a way, it makes me more territorial. Because whether I like it or not, he’s the onlyalpha to have touched me in a heat. That means something to my instincts.
“There’s something we need to discuss,” he says, and my heart drops. I don’t like his tone. “The reason you’re here, Diana, is because Titan once threatened to do horrible things to any omega I ever showed interest in.”
My hot chocolate is slowly placed onto the table, my hunger fading. He drinks more of his coffee and then leans back in his seat. He’s so broad I’m shocked the chair holds him.
“Why?” I ask.
“I pissed him off once,” he clarifies, moving his mug on the table, his broad lips sucking in against his teeth before he grinds his jaw. “I have debated what all to share with you, but I also understand that if something were to ever happen, you need to be armed with information.” He flashes that pale gaze at me, the lines next to his eyes more noticeable in the light. Especially since his hair and face have a closer shave. “Which means you need the full story. Do you want to know what my real name is?”
I nearly jump out of my seat to exclaim that I sure fucking do, but I can’t seem eager. “You can share it if you want,” I cordially say, while internally I’m a ravenous monster for this.
“I don’t have one.”
My shoulders droop, and I throw him a glare. “What?”
He moves his jaw around like he’s regretting telling me to ask him questions, looking around with a clear internal battle on his face. “I wasn’t given a name when I was born. It was the number twenty-seven.”
Looking him over, I can’t tell if this is a true story or not, but either way, he clearly wants me to know it. There has to be some power in that somewhere. “Is it because you’re an echo?”
He looks even more annoyed now, but not reallyatme. “My mother was a breeder for a collective called the Manglers. These markings,” he points to raised ridges from his traps, pulling hiscollar down to show it extending to his biceps, “are called Trial Marks. I covered them with tattoos because of their meaning. You get a scar for every man you kill, and a quarter of them were children becauseIwas a child when they started making us kill each other.”
My eyes dry out from hardly blinking, staring into his eyes as they’re clearly overcome with past horrors. Oh my god, is he serious? “Echoes like me have mothers that live in the blight. They’re bred like bitches, ripping the babies right off their umbilical cord as soon as they’re born, and leaving the omega to never hold her child,” he says, stopping to inhale deeply. Something incredibly dangerous crosses his eyes, and he blinks it away when he catches on that it’s starting to scare me. “They then raised us among others our age, and we’d have to kill them to live. They told me if I survived, I’d get to set my mother free, and any sisters that I had that would otherwise be subjected to that life. It’s when I got this wound,” he lifts his shirt to show me one of the deeper, uglier scars on his stomach, “and almost died, that I felt like I betrayed her for not fighting for her.” His languid blink raises that stolid gaze to me.
“I eventually learned they told us all that, and also forbade us from telling each other. They’d tell us all the time that our family begged for us to save them. We were shown the rare omega that was freed, and how thankful she was. Sometimes, she’d even be the mother of one of us—that was pure fuel to the fucking within me. We’d also see them locked away, beaten, and raped. Never told us if they were family or not, so we always wondered. We were conditioned to kill by having that manipulated in us. And because we were so young, it waseasy.
“By the time I graduated as an official Mangler, I learned my mother died a long time before I ever reached manhood from complications from birth, and my liberations meant jackshit. All thosemurderscommitted bymyhands were for someone else’s gain.” He inhales deeply once more, his lips sneering. “I thenkilled the man who inherited and expanded the operation. Ripped his lungs out, hung them to the side in a blood eagle, and then, to myself, I begged for my mother’s mercy for not saving her. Titan, shocking no one, thought the bastard was a genius. I broke Titan’s heart by killing the man he revered. Which is when he told me he’d do to my omega what was done to my mother.”
I stare at the table for a while. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
“I didn’t want to share this with you because it’s a part of the world you shouldnevercome across. But I share it now because it’s out there as long as Titan is alive. He wants to bring back the Mangler program to create his own legion of fucked up killers. When he steals omegas, he turns them into what my mother was.That’swhy Dominion collects them as soon as we find them, because I don’t know what else to fucking do in the wastes where everyone is a fucked up bastard.”
His nostrils flare as he inhales, like he’s controlling himself. “It haunts me more than I’d like that I sometimes see those faces that I killed when they didn’t deserve it. If I didn’t need to have a clear head to lead Dominion, I’d be on so many fucking chemicals I’d have brain rot. I keep going because I know there are omegas out there right now who need to be freed. So while I’m alive, I won’t waste myself.” He then connects his gaze to mine, and I’m honestly frozen in my seat. “You are my scent match, and there are too many eyes and ears out there that I don’t have control over. Which means youhaveto be hidden.”
The fight in me dwindles because I feel like I’m going crazy at this point. Maybe even a little claustrophobic? That desire to hide and burrow is back, but where in the hell am I going to go? If we’re scent matches, that means I need to get far away from here or else Titan might try to turn me intothat?—
“Diana, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to be turned into that,” I mutter, feeling like I’m back in the trees and on the run fromhome.
He scoots out of his chair, nears me, and squats down to where his heat is against me. I can smell him like he’s a bouquet of alpha musk, and it helps me feel like I’ve got a corner covered.
The alpha starts topurr. “You don’t need to fear anything, Diana. That willnothappen to you.” He looks off like he’s trying to find the words. He breathes in slowly. “You are my scent match when I’m currently not supposed to have one. Right now, many think that you’ve been moved to a town over to be with an alpha. It will remain that way for some time.”
I hesitate to reply, aware that someone so fucking powerful and dangerous is right next to me. “What if we’re not even scent matches? How do we know for sure?”
He growls, and there’s that damn effect on my body where my stomach cramps like it decides it needs to be fucked again. “If that came from any other alpha,thatwouldn’t happen,” he replies, a tightness in his gaze that I don’t understand.
My knees weaken before I can stop them. My pulse flares. My whole body goes still, like my nerves can’t tell if this is fear or desire or both.“Why does that—” My voice catches. “Why does thatwork?”
“Because you’remine,” he says softly, not like a threat, but like it’s simply the truth of the world.
