Taking a deep breath, I reach for the lever, and push it down and open.
Yellow, flickering lights that are all too familiar to me light the space, and my eyes are immediately drawn to the bed.
And the motionless form laying in it.
The only thing about the ghostly pale figure laying on the bed that’s similar to my Mabel-cakes is the shock of white-blonde hair.
“Mabel?” I choke out, but she doesn’t move.
She’s wearing a muzzle, just like the one they put on me when I was in the Cathedral, and her eyes are closed, her breathing coming in shallow breaths. Her hair is in greasy tendrils splayed out on her pillow, and her face is shallow and sunken, like she hasn’t had a proper meal in years. She has scars—the telltale crescent shape of bite marks on her arms. Two on her left arm, three on her right. They don’t look like my bondmark though. They look like the alphas were trying to take a bite out of her.
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m dropping to my knees next to her bed, and burying my face in the sheets. It’s too much. Seeing her like this, cold and near lifeless, makes my heart feel like it’s being ripped out of my chest. All the pain and helplessness I’ve felt the last three weeks bubbles to the realization that even before I got here, I was toolate. “Mabel!” The sob rips out of me as I drop my knife and bang my fist on the mattress with an unsatisfying thump. “What did they do to you?!”
“Her chart says she’s feral,” West says quietly. “She has five bondmarks—which based on the scarring and jaggedness—look forced. When all five bonds were destroyed…it drove her insane. That they’ve been using the same concoction they gave to Jo to try to temper it, but she’s reacting poorly, growing even more erratic. There’s a log for a heavy-duty tranquilizer for earlier today.”
I lift my head, blinking at my beta who is holding my sister’s chart in his hands. “So she’s just…she’s just tranqed? That’s why she’s like this?”
“It’s hard to tell—” Everything freezes as a cold hand grasps mine. My head whips towards my sister, and I almost start bawling when I meet her baby blue eyes.
“J…Jojo? Is that really you?” The croak has my heart ripping itself in two as she weakly pushes herself up. She doesn’tlookferal.
Just gaunt. Malnourished. Sick. But not feral.
“Mabel!” I crawl onto the bed and pull her into my arms. Her body is weak, her form nearly skeletal. She has no scent—but that’s probably just the instinct inhibitor working on me. “Mabel, oh my gods, I missed you so much! I can’t believe it! I knew you’d never hurt a fly—not that they didn’t deserve it, but I know they pinned it on you!”
“Jo, wait—” West is cut off by Mabel’s rattling cough.
“I…I killed ‘em, Jojo. Every…single one of ’em. They were comin’ for you next.” My blood turns to ice at her words, and then she goes limp in my arms.
“Mabel?!” I cry, shaking her. “Mabel, wake up! What do you mean?”
Before I can look at her closely, Hayden is calling from the hallway, “We got company!”
Then, I’m crying out as I’m being thrown over a shoulder.
“Time’s up, Trouble,” Sam says gruffly as I half-heartedly hit my fist against his back.
“Be careful with her!” I fuss as I spot Kole scoop her up. He holds her carefully, and Sam sets me down outside her room. I gently pat my pocket with Turnip to make sure she’s okay.
“I need you to walk. I hear the guards coming back.” He hands me the knife I dropped on the floor, and I sniffle, nodding once.
Let’s fucking go.
My ears perk up at the voices coming from around the corner, and I take off at a run, needing to make the bastards pay for what they’ve done to my sister. My sweet, perfect sister.
Since she’s already murdered her whole pack, the only thing left to do is go after the orderlies who put a muzzle on her.
The two guards round the corner, the one on the right sporting a giant scar that looks like it was caused by a bite on his left cheek. Did…did Mabel do that?
Guess I know which one is dying first. There’s only one reason a man would get close enough that she could bite him like that.
They are so engrossed in their conversation, they don’t even notice us.
Idiots.
With a scream of rage, I launch myself at the asshole, plunging my blade into his chest and use it as leverage to swing myself around and onto his back.
His howl of pain is cut off when I take the knife out of his chest and slit his throat. His body falls to the floor, and I use the momentum to roll onto the ground. The other guard scrambles for his gun, butbefore he can grab it, I adjust my grip on my knife and swing upwards, effectively gutting him.
