One.
I tense, waiting, and then something truly unexpected happens. The alphas and omegas kneel, all that can. The ones who are standing bow their heads or close their eyes. Their mouths move, whispering. No, praying. I don’t close my eyes, and I don’t pray. I’m not sure who I would pray to, but I watch the unity, the organised hope. They can’t do anything else here but pray and die.
So, they do.
Chapter 36
Are you refusing?
He’s watching me. I can feel it. It’s funny how you can become so attuned to something, so hyper-aware of it that even years after, as soon as you feel it again, it’s like you are right back there in that situation.
The Beta’s Fang ruined me so completely that I can feel his gaze on me like a malevolent, heavy weight that is pushing me down, whispering threats in my ear, reminding me with ghostly pain what is awaiting me.
I’m so scared I’ve stopped thinking, so scared that my body is on autopilot, that I’m back in that cell, buried hundreds of feet beneath the earth in the dark, with no way out.
He comes into view, and I almost exhale in relief. Even though I’m scared of him, it’s the anticipation and build-up in my own mind that I hate the most. The pain is bad, but it ends. Eventually.
“I’m very mad that you got away,” he murmurs and runs his hand up between my breasts to my throat where he squeezes until I’m unable to breathe. “You got away and evaded me for years, so we have so much to catch up on.”
The knife comes out, gleaming in the light. He brings it down, cutting through my skin. One long cut above my breasts, not where it will do any damage, but where it will hurt and burn.
He hums as he grabs a bandage.
I squirm, watching it warily.
Heslaps it down over the wound. Nothing much happens, and then it erupts in fire. I writhe and finally open my mouth, screaming.
All I can hear are my screams; everything else is silent.
“Salt, so simple and easy to find and so, so painful,” he says, laughing at me.
He pulls it off, but it doesn’t help; the salt is still in the wound, and my body is still afire.
He picks up his knife and slices again on my stomach. I listen to the silence and my breathing and turn my head to the side. The Warden is watching me with an impassive face.
“Walker,” I mouth his name, remembering him in a different time.
His jaw clenches, and he closes his eyes.
Another bandage is slapped over the wound. I howl, my toes curling, back arching off the table. He leans over me, laughing. A nightmare that I thought I’d escaped.
Jarek is dead.
I spit at him.
He recoils and stills, staring at me.
“Did you…did you get some fight while you were out there?”
I turn my head away, but he grabs my jaw painfully, digging his fingers in, grinding my cheeks into my teeth. I taste blood.
“Have you found yourself, snow? I really hope you have because I’m going to take it all away before I kill you.”
“You can try!” I hiss.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I don’t care anymore. If I’m to die here, I’ll die here. I don’t want to crawl, and I don’t have anything else to lose. Jarek is dead, and it’s my fault. Mordecai betrayed me. Cadel…he’ll get out. They are beyond my help now. So, to hell with fear. I choose not to have it.
“Beg me,” he murmurs.
