I wet my dry lips. “You… you lied to me.”
Conversation around the table dies down, all eyes landing on me.
He frowns. “I’m sorry… have we met before?”
I turn my gaze to the blue-eyed alpha behind him. “And you. You lied to me too.” My voice breaks, and I hate it.
Rogue’s eyes widen as he glances behind him and back to me. He pushes his seat back, half rising as I take a step back, my pad dangling uselessly from my shaking fingers.
“Gabrielle?” he tests. “Are you… Gabrielle?”
Any trace of laughter disappears from the blue-eyed alphas face, and he rises too, his mouth opening as he looks me up and down.
Rogue’s hand reaches out, and I flinch. The omega sets her hand on his arm. “Rogue.”
He covers her hand with his, giving her a reassuring look.
It makes me want to vomit.
Does she know that he used to hand over omegas to the OC? Hand us over like cattle, to be bruised and starved and broken?
To be locked in the dark likeanimals?
He looks at me, pushing his hand back through his hair. “I… we’ve been looking for you for a long time. I wanted to make sure you were okay, but you disappeared after the OC closed down.”
His words bounce around my head. He wanted to make sure I wasokay?
My words are wooden. “Did you know, I was found a day after everyone else was released?”
Rogue’s brows draw down. Next to him, the omega watches me, her eyes huge and sympathetic.
I don’t want her pity.
He shakes his head slowly, his hand reaching out to rub at his chest.
“I was locked in a hole in the ground,” I whisper. “They left me there. The guards left, and then the cavalry arrived, but nobody looked for me.”
Nails scrabbling, whining, crying, screaming. Begging.
Nothing.
Nobody was coming.
And when I finally saw the sun again, hands lifting me out of the hole I’d spent days in, asking me questions, promising me things, I ran. Shaky on my feet, but I ran straight through the gates of the Omega Compound. And I didn’t look back.
I’d learned my lesson about promises, andsafety.
The omega gasps, and someone else gets to their feet.
Rogue’s actions have defined my entire adult life. I begged him not to take us to the OC. Ibeggedhim.
And I was right.
Numbness steals the feeling from my hands, my heart, my entire body as I stand there and look him in the eye. “You… you promised me I would besafe.”
Rogue looks as though he’s been punched in the stomach. “Gabrielle… shit, I don’t know what to say. I’m so—,"
I hold up a shaking hand. “I don’t want your apology.”
