“I was thinking, I know how this guy works. What do you think I was thinking? I wanted to lead him away from my exhausted and sleeping alphas and protect the people I care about,” I snap at him, losing my temper.
“We’re a pack now; we don’t do things like that on our own. What if you needed help? Did you know we could feel you? We were going insane.Your fear, anger, and panic were like a mix inside my brain that I couldn’t switch off. If it had gone on any longer, I think I might have stormed the Path’s lair just to check to make sure you hadn’t been captured.”
I stare at him, and it finally sinks in. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “We all have to do better. We can’t have things like this happening.”
I bow my head, my fingers holding onto Cadel’s wrist. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have acted alone. It was a mistake. I apologise.”
Cadel leans forward; his lips brush over mine. My eyes close, but a sound yanks me out of it, and I turn my head, listening hard.
“What?” he hisses.
“Shhh,” I whisper, concentrating. My mouth drops open. “Hide!”
Mordecai and Jarek slam up beside us in the shadows. Cadel leans over me, his hand still locked around my throat. I look up and stare into his eyes, losing myself in him.
“What happened to the omega?” the Beta’s Claw asks the Warden.
They come into sight and just stand there. The Warden stares at the building we were in, but he doesn’t make any attempt to say anything for the longest time. Is he going to give me up? Is he going to hand me over?
He knew where we were, and he led me out and away.
My mind boggles with that information.
“She escaped.”
“How could she escape you?” The red mask is like a bloodstain. He’s too quiet, too intense. His eyes are soulless. I remember that much. He had no interest in me, not until I escaped. I think I’ve become somewhat of afascination for him because we’ve crossed paths multiple times over the years, but I’ve always managed to stay just ahead of him.
“She threw herself off a balcony and survived a fall of three flights to scuttle off into the dark like a cockroach,” Walker says in a bored voice. “Omega whore.”
He says it with such vitriol that I almost believe he means it.
The Beta’s Claw nods. “Her mother did exactly the same thing. I had her cornered on a building. Orders were to capture her alive, but she was standing at the edge, and she looked so pretty, so I kicked her in the chest and made her fly.”
Cadel wraps a hand around my mouth before I can make a sound. I don’t move. I want to, but it’s not just my life, and my mother is already gone. Long gone. This place has done nothing but hammer that truth in.
“You killed her?” Walker asks in a strangled voice.
“Oh, that’s right, you knew her, didn’t you?” The Beta’s Claw sounds like he’s smiling, but I can’t tell.
The horse stomps its foot, but Walker doesn’t push it into moving. He turns his head and looks right at me, staring into the dark. I know he can’t see me, but he knows I’m here. Does he want me to hear this? Is he giving me this because of our history? It doesn’t make sense, but then he never did do anything that did make sense.
Cadel squeezes my hand and shifts slightly, as if he’s preparing for a fight.
“She was very pretty for an omega and one of the highlights of my years. Her evasiveness was next to none; it took me almost the entire time we were here to finally corner her.”
His evil words unveil what I’d always known: the Beta’s Claw is as fucked up as the Beta’s Fang. One shows it outwardly, and one hides it, but they are both evil.
“I asked her if she had any last words. If there was anything she wanted to spit to the universe, and she nodded. Her hair was silver and floating around; she looked old and weak, but when she looked at me, I shivered. She said to me, ‘Your time will come, and they will give you no mercy’.”
He laughs long and loud; it’s chilling because, unlike the Fang, his counterpart, the executioner is charming; he sounds pleasant. He’s the true psychopath.
“It’s funny, she told me something else, too. I just remembered it,” he says and cocks his head to the side. He sounds confused and annoyed.
“What was it?” Walker asks with extreme disinterest.
“She said only love will break Walker. I never did find out who or what Walker is or what she meant, but she was old and traumatised, so maybe she was crazy already, who knows!”
