So strong.
Poor baby Aelyn. And where is her son? What happened to Caelyn? I dare not even ask.
“Where?” I stutter over the word.
“Pardon?” he says, laughing.
“Where are their bodies?”
He grips my jaw, turning my face so I have no choice but to stare at him. “Do you remember the room we’d take you to occasionally when I’d let the alphas knot you?”
Bile races up the back of my throat. I shudder. The flashbacks are so vivid I almost cry out.
“I remember,” I whisper.
“We stripped the flesh from their bones and hung them on the walls. To witness your downfall. You paid such a steep price for their freedom, and the whole time,” he stops to cackle madly, “they were right there with you. Every. Single. One.”
I let out a wild scream. It’s haunting and full of more pain than any physical wound he could ever give me.
He doesn’t stop me, just keeps watching until he gets bored and sticks his fingers in my wound, wiggling them around. My scream changes. I choke and seize under his hands, my eyes bulging, my heels drumming on the bench.
He pulls his fingers out and puts the digits that are slick with my blood in his mouth.
“So good, Omega. It’s like I can taste your despair and pain in your blood. Delicious. Now, I’m going to go and find a friend, and then we’re going to come back and see if we can break you.”
He vanishes, and I lay there still shaking and blinking up at the ceiling until I remember him. I turn my head to the side and stare at him until he looks up.
You did this.
You did all of this.
He drops his chin without saying a word.
I don’t know how long passes before he returns. The alpha stands at the end of the table, staring at me like he’s going to puke all over me.
“Knot her!”
The alpha trembles and shakes his head, stepping back.
“Excuse me? Are you refusing?” The Fang asks loudly, drawing eyes from everywhere.
“I…I…I can’t.”
His eyes are wide and his face pale. He’s older than I am, with dark scruff, but he’s got a kind face. He’s going to die, and we all know it.
The Beta’s Fang grabs him by the back of the neck and drags the alpha’s head close to his.
“Are you telling me you don’t want to lay with an omega this pretty?”
“That’s Kaida Keres. No one in here will touch her,” the alpha says confidently.
“Is that so?”
The alpha swallows hard and flinches before finally nodding. “We can’t. It’s Kaida. She escaped.”
“She is caught.”
“It doesn’t matter; she’s the omega who escaped. She is our hope. She is proof that you are wrong and fallible.” The alpha’s voice is getting stronger and louder with every passing moment. I want to tell him to stop, to shut up, but I can’t find the energy to speak.
