“Just in case of days like this,” she smiles sweetly. She frowns at his lack of movement. “Pick up these chains and return to your endless wait, or I will kill the omega. Run her through with a pretty sword!”
Cadel glances at me, his eyes burning so red that they look like fire. I reach for his hand but just miss him as he steps sideways.
“I can’t see you die, Keres.”
“No!” I moan. “No, please.”
He walks to the chains and kicks them lightly. “You won’t harm her?”
“I promise you I won’t harm her. No one will lay a finger on her. She is the safest person here,” she says impatiently, rolling her eyes.
Cadel bends down and picks up the chains. I hear gasps behind me, calls of people screaming, asking where he’s gone. They can’t see him. But I can.
We stare at each other.
His knees give way, and he hits the ground, bowing under the weight of them.
“Cadel,” I whisper.
He looks away from me.
I want to tell him to look at me. Shout that it changes nothing. Don’t hide. Just look at me.
But she is looking between us with growing happiness.
“This, this is exactly what I was talking about.”
She reaches out, grabbing my chin. I tear my face free and hiss at her. She grabs me again, her nails digging into my cheek. When she breathes on me, I can smell the body rotting from the inside out.
“You love him. You would die for him, and he walked into a trap for you. No one but a god can free him of those chains.”
I don’t say anything. I can free him. She doesn’t know that, and I have no intention of telling her.
“What is it? This emotion, why do you crave it so much when it makes you so weak.” She looks so baffled that I almost feel sorry for her. If she weren’t a homicidal maniac.
“You will never know how strong it makes us.”
She looks between us. “From here, you don’t look strong at all.”
I stare at her, refusing to look away.
“I thought omegas were supposed to be meek, mild, and weak?”
“Omegas are the heart, the fire of a pack. We can be whoever we want to be. Even if I wanted to look away from you, I wouldn’t. You are the person who killed my mother, my family, my friends. You are a threat to everything that lives. A rot that poisons everything it touches. High Beta?” I spit. “You are nothing but a parasite.”
She throws me away. I’m in the air for seconds, but then I hit the doors of the walls of Foreen. They rattle and clang as I collapse on the floor, breathing hard.
“Oops, broke my promise.”
I roll to my knees, breathing hard, looking at Cadel. He struggles, straining against the chains, but they hold him there.
“The end of days is upon us,” the Beta sings and turns, stopping abruptly when she sees Legion and the impassive Walker.
“Will you kiss him back?”
“Never!” Walker hisses.
“Do you love him?”
