"You—" Marcus's voice cracked, his eyes going wide with dawning horror, his whole body trembling. A dark stain was spreading down the front of his expensive trousers. "You're the omega. The one from the Ashford contract. You're supposed to be?—"
"Yours?" Lily smiled, and there was nothing warm in it, nothing human. Six months of living with sirens had taught her how to bare her teeth like a predator. Her dark eyes glittered with ancient, cold satisfaction. "I was never yours. I was never anyone's property. And now you're going to answer for every omega you ever bought. Every life you’ve ever destroyed. Every family you ever tore apart for profit."
"Please," the word came out as a whimper, all pretense of power stripped away. Marcus fell to his knees, his expensive clothes soaking up wine and blood from the floor, his hands raised in supplication, tears streaming down his face. "Please, I'll give you anything. Money, information, whatever you want. Just let me live."
Lily looked down at him for a long moment, and I felt her emotions churning through the bond—rage and disgust and a terrible, righteous satisfaction. Her expression didn't waver, didn't soften, didn't show a single crack of mercy.
"You know what I wanted?" her voice was soft now, almost gentle, which made it somehow more terrifying. She crouched down, bringing her face level with his, close enough that he could see every detail of her expression. "I wanted my parents to love me. I wanted to present as a beta and live a normal life. I wanted to never know what it felt like to be sold like livestock." Her hand came up to rest against his cheek, almost gentle, and Marcus whimpered at the touch, flinching away from her fingers. "You took that from me. You and my parents and everyone else who looked at me and saw property instead of a person."
She stood, stepping back, her expression cold and final, her eyes empty of anything but judgment. "Now I'm taking everything from you." She turned to look at Riven, at Vale, at me. Her dark eyes met each of ours in turn, and I saw the fire burning there, the hunger for justice that matched our own. "Make it last. Make him feel every second of it. I want him to understand exactly what he's done before he dies."
Riven's scarred face split into a savage grin, his golden eyes blazing with anticipation, his whole body practically vibrating with barely contained violence.
"With pleasure, little flower." His voice was a low rumble of satisfaction, dark and eager. We dragged Marcus through the chaos of the ballroom, past the bodies of his guards and his wealthy guests, past the overturned tables and the shattered champagne glasses, into a back room that had clearly been used for less savory purposes than entertaining. Chains hung from the ceiling. Dark stains marked the floor. The smell of old fear permeated everything.
"How fitting." Vale murmured, his silver eyes taking in the details with cold appreciation, his beautiful features twisted with disgust. He ran one finger along a chain, watching it sway. "He can die in the same room where he broke so many others."
We chained Marcus to the wall, his arms stretched above his head, his expensive clothes already torn and stained with the blood of his fallen associates. He was crying now—great heaving sobs that shook his whole body, snot and tears running down his face in undignified streaks. His chest heaved with each ragged breath, his whole body trembling against the cold stone.
"Please," he blubbered, his voice cracking and breaking, barely intelligible through his sobs. "Please, I have money. I have so much money. I can give you anything you want. Names—I can give you names of everyone in the network. Buyers, suppliers, everyone. Just please, please don't?—"
"We don't want your names." I stepped forward, letting him see the predator beneath the human skin, letting my eyes go cold and ancient and utterly without mercy. I tilted my head, studying him the way I would study prey, and I saw him flinch from whatever he saw in my expression. "We don't want your money. We want you to understand something, Marcus. We want you to truly comprehend, in these last hours of your miserable life, exactly what you've done."
"Hours?" The word came out as a squeak, his face going grey with terror, his eyes rolling like a frightened animal's.
"Hours," Riven confirmed, moving to stand beside me, his golden eyes burning with anticipation. His voice was almost cheerful, which made it somehow more terrifying. He cracked his knuckles, the sound loud in the stone room. "Did you think this would be quick? Did you think we'd just kill you and be done with it?" He laughed, a low, dangerous sound that echoed off the stone walls. "You bought our mate like she was cattle. You were going to use her, breed her, sell her offspring to the highest bidder. And you've done the same thing to dozens of others—hundreds, maybe. All those lives destroyed, all those families torn apart, all that suffering..." He leaned in close, his scarred face inches from Marcus's terrified eyes, close enough thathis breath ghosted across the merchant's tear-streaked cheek. "You're going to feel every bit of it. Every ounce of pain you've ever caused is going to be repaid tonight."
"The omegas you bought," Vale said softly, circling around to Marcus's other side, his beautiful face serene and terrible. His voice was musical even in human form, and somehow that made his words more chilling. "Did you ever wonder what happened to them? Did you ever think about the fear they felt, chained in your cages, waiting to be sold? Did you ever hear them crying at night and feel even a moment of guilt?"
"I—I—" Marcus's teeth were chattering so hard he could barely speak, his whole body convulsing with terror. "I was just—it was just business—I didn't?—"
"Just business." Thane's gentle voice had gone hard as iron, his amber eyes burning with uncharacteristic fury. He stepped forward, and even he—the softest of us, the healer, the nurturer—looked at Marcus with nothing but cold disgust. His gentle features had transformed into something fierce and unforgiving. "You reduced human beings to business transactions. You bought and sold people like they were bolts of cloth. And now you want us to believe you didn't understand what you were doing?"
"You knew," Lily's voice cut through the room, quiet but absolute. She stepped into Marcus's line of sight, and I saw him flinch, saw the terror in his eyes multiply at the sight of her. She moved with the predatory grace of someone who had learned to hunt, her eyes cold and ancient in her young face. "You knew exactly what you were doing. You just didn't care, because you were making money. Because the people you were hurting didn't matter to you."
She moved closer, close enough to touch, and Marcus pressed himself back against the wall as if he could somehow escape through the stone. His chains rattled with his trembling.
"When my father signed that contract," Lily continued, her voice soft and conversational, almost pleasant, which made it somehow more terrifying, "I was standing right there. I watched him take your gold. I watched him shake your hand. I watched you look at me—look through me, really, like I wasn't even a person. Like I was just another item on your inventory list." Her hand came up to rest against his cheek, almost gentle, and Marcus whimpered at the touch, tears streaming fresh down his face. "I've had nightmares about that moment. About the look in your eyes when you realized you'd gotten a good deal. About the way you smiled."
She stepped back, and her hand fell away from his face. Her expression hardened into something cold and final.
"Tonight, I'm going to watch you die. And I'm going to smile too." She turned to us—to Riven and Vale and me—and nodded once, her dark eyes steady and certain.
"Make it slow," she said, her voice carrying the weight of absolute command. "Make it hurt. Make sure he feels every second."
Riven started with his fingers.
One by one, he broke them—not quickly, not cleanly, but slowly, methodically, letting each bone snap with a wet crack that echoed through the chamber. He held each finger between his own, applying pressure gradually, letting Marcus feel the building agony before the bone finally gave way. Marcus screamed, his voice going hoarse and ragged, his body convulsing against the chains that held him in place.
"That's for every omega you chained in your cages," Riven said, his voice calm, almost meditative, as he moved to the next finger. His golden eyes never left Marcus's face, drinking in every expression of agony. "Every person you treated like property. Every life you destroyed for profit."
When he finished with the fingers, he moved to the hands, crushing the small bones one by one, taking his time, savoring each cry of agony. The sounds of snapping bone mixed with Marcus's screams in a terrible symphony. I watched Marcus's face contort with pain, watched the tears stream down his cheeks, watched the snot bubble from his nose as he sobbed and begged and pleaded for mercy that would never come.
Vale took over next.
His approach was different—more precise, more surgical. He had a knife, taken from one of the fallen guards, and he used it with terrible expertise, cutting thin lines across Marcus's chest and arms and legs. Not deep enough to kill, not even deep enough to cause serious damage. Just deep enough to hurt. Just deep enough to bleed. His silver eyes were focused, intent, an artist at work.
"This is for every moment of fear," Vale murmured, his voice soft as silk, his silver eyes fixed on his work with concentration. The knife moved with delicate precision, opening red lines across pale skin. "Every night an omega spent in your cages, wondering what would happen to them. Every time they heard your footsteps and felt their hearts stop with terror." Another cut, another scream, another thin ribbon of blood running down Marcus's trembling body. "Every tear they shed, every prayer they whispered, every hope that died inside them."
