She is beautiful, but the goddess only chooses the best bodies to inhabit.
She is hideously happy and so skinny almost all her bones can be seen due to channeling the ravenous Beta Goddess’s energy. But it’s the frenzy she stirs in her people, murderous bloodlust, that makes this goddess really dangerous. I’ve seen her encourage groups of people to stomp children to death, and she just watches, calling out encouragement and licking her lips like it’s a delicious sport.
She looks at me, then the two alphas. There’s something in her face that makes me nervous, almost like she’s trying to recall a piece of information she has forgotten. I panic and react before I think. I step forward and spit at her.
The marquess backhands me straight away, but it was worth it. She forgets the alphas and focuses all her beady rage on me.
Her head twitches at a strange angle, and she jerks her limbs in a creepy and alien way as she moves towards me. She reaches out, pointing one long finger with a gold-tipped claw directed right at me.
Thunder cracks across the sky, the rumble eerily in time with her funneled hatred. I have to resist stepping back, but I want to, I want so badly to run.
“Death. This one, the Grounds. The Culling Grounds. Kill her, burn her. Death. Send my Dog, the Fang, and Claw. Hunt her. Kill her. Bleed her.”
The words echo in my head. Foreen. I’m going to Foreen. For one bizarre second, all I can feel is fierce satisfaction, but then it’s drowned by fear, and I think I must have imagined it.
I pull the shreds of myself together and roll my eyes, even though I’m wondering if my jaw is broken. It doesn’t matter; I need her not to look at the alphas. She can’t find out who Bear is, or they will torture him for the information that will destroy all omegas and alphas in hiding. I can’t let that happen.
Omegas and alphas have this uncanny ability to heal fast, so in a couple of hours, I will be fine.
“So unnecessarily dramatic,” I hiss. “Do you practice these moves?”
The marquess raises his fist again. I flinch and force a laugh. The black-haired alpha moves, but I reach out, gripping his sleeve, stopping him. He looks at me, and I minutely shake my head.
Please don’t react.
“Kill them all,” the creature of the gods hisses malevolently. “Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Death to the omega. Make her suffer. Make her bleed. Foreen! Bleed her in Foreen!”
She whips around, the long sleeves of her dress fanning out behind her, and wobbles away, looking like she’s exhausted.
“Transport is arranged, Warden. You’re to accompany them to the Culling Grounds and stay there. Your work here is done,” the High King says dismissively. “We will join you in a few days.”
The Warden puts his fists together in front of him and bows slightly.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Off with you. Get her out of here before the pledges and guards start getting nervous. You’ll be taking three other alphas with you.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Good. Happy hunting, Warden.”
I feel sick. How can someone talk so easily about snuffing our lives out? His smile looks warm, friendly, he could be anyone, but he’s got more blood on his hands than most people experience in a lifetime!
I glance sideways at the Warden. He’s standing and staring with no emotion on his face; it’s perfectly blank. He could be a statue, but no, he’s the infamous tracker, the hunting wolf himself. The Beta’s Dog, and no amount of memory can change what he is.
I turn away so I don’t have to look at him. More guards and pledges in black robes have come out and are watching us with hungry eyes. Their conversation gets louder the longer we stand there, but then the doors to the prison open, and three prisoners are pushed out.
I dismiss two of them instantly, but the third has me holding my breath. He’s the biggest man I’ve ever seen, tall, broad, with a mane of black hair and arctic eyes.
He looks us over, and his eyes fall on me and hold. I’ve never seen him before in my life. I know I haven’t.
But I know this alpha.
When I look at him, I think of warmth, and I can almost taste him. This alpha is mine. That truth whispers into my mind and threatens to shatter my control.
To find him now, how can life be so cruel? What am I supposed to do? I avert my eyes, refusing to look at him, refusing to make him or myself weak by admitting a connection.
No one pays any attention to my internal meltdown.
