“Come on,” Nemo said, grabbing my arm and pulling me off the ground.
“You’re getting too comfortable manhandling me,” I commented.
Nemo was an Alpha; it wasn’t natural for him to listen to me. His defiance would bubble up into fights that always ended the same—me on top. Metaphorically and literally. I recalled what had happened before Bree’s bloody smorgasbord. For the first time, I wasn’t going to win a fight. It had finally happened; Nemo was immune to my venom.
While we’d wrestled on the floor, I’d pressed him with venom, and he was still fighting. Hurting, but fine. I was so fucked. Metaphorically … and literally.
I ripped my arm from his grip and took a step back. Maybe I’d lied about not caring about hierarchy. I wanted control. Ineededit. Especially right now. No Verfallen. No Hazel. No control, no walls, no guarantee I wouldn’t end up back where this all started. Alone in a cold mansion.
“I can hear Supra outside,” Nemo said. “They have a whole unit armed to the teeth. We need to go.” I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Our dynamic was shifting at the worst possible time. As I stood there voiceless, contemplating loss of control and the state of my ass, his eyebrows crawled together in suspicion.
“What about Andy?” I asked, voice breaking slightly. I coughed while waving at the dead grocery store employee. Nemo’s nostrils flared, his deep brown eyes reading me through the mask. My tension was probably as strong a scent to himas rotting garbage. Perhaps because I’d become some little boy looking at his feet and asking permission for his friend to tag along for the family outing.
“Nemo, can you grab her,” Orson yelled. Bree was hissing at him while she hovered over one of the many bleeding bodies. Not a single person had been left alive.
Nemo leaned so close our foreheads nearly touched.
“We’re talking about this later,” he promised.Great. It was finally time to admit I actually liked being in charge the very moment I probably wasn’t. That epiphany snowballed into an entire plethora of increasingly uncomfortable thoughts. If I wasn’t in charge, that meant I was no longer the deadliest of the bunch. My whole identity was wrapped up in being the thing people feared to evenlookat. The monster whose parents couldn’t even survive it.
Now, I was surrounded by a group who were mostly immune to me. Who looked me right in the eye without flinching. Who eyed my mouth like they wanted to swallow my tongue for dinner. Who could probablyactuallyeat me. I was a goddamn human with a parlor trick at this point. The cute little weakling they kept around as a fuckable pet.
Oh my god, I was having an identity crisis in the middle of a massacred grocery store.
My safe space had burned to the ground, my sister wiped her memory of me, and Orson wanted to leave me on the side of the road like an abandoned puppy.
“Shit,” I rasped, grabbing the sides of my head. I didn’t like feelings. “Go away,” I groaned to them.
“Baz!” Nemo growled. I snapped to attention, anger coming in to save me from more uncomfortable emotions.
“Coming,” I sneered, dragging my hands down my face. “Want to throw in any more requests,Alpha?” Nemo’s eyes bugged, and Orson looked between the two of us knowingly. Iwanted to punch him in the face. I didn’t like whatever thoughts he was having. He knew too much about all of us. Fucking therapists.
I stomped over the dead bodies, my boots losing traction on all the blood. I’d rather die than ruin my tantrum with something embarrassing, like falling on my ass in a puddle of Bree’s leftovers. That alone kept me upright.
“I wasn’t ordering you around,” Nemo tentatively lied. Bree frowned in his arms. I was acting out of character, but I couldn’t stop myself. Ugly feelings were trying to be felt, and what kind of psycho would I be if I couldn’t bury that shit back down?
“Yes, you were,” I hissed.
“Can we delay this argument until after we evade capture?” Orson asked.
“Oh, now you want to boss me around, too?” I asked, wheeling on him. He gave me an apathetic look.
“Basil, we can talk about your feelings later.” His pedantic tone made me snap. I launched at him. His mouth popped open in surprise as I tackled him to the ground and peeled up my mask, collecting enough saliva in my mouth to spit into his. He twisted his head, and my spit landed on his cheek.
“What the fuck?” He rubbed his cheek clean.
“Next one has blood in it,” I said with sadistic joy, biting my lip hard enough to bleed. Killing Orson would make all these unwanted thoughts disappear. I’d reestablish my deadly powers, I’d take back some control, and my therapist could never leave me if he was a corpse. Hell, if I thought I was still capable of it, then I could kill each one of them. Then, just like Bree wanted, we could be together forever. My little corpse harem.
The glass walls at the front of the store shattered, and something sailed through the air. A sharp pain exploded below my ribs. I looked down and saw a dart sticking out.
“A sedative,really?” I scoffed, wrapping my fingers around it and pulling it out. Something black dripped from the tip.
“That’s not a sedative,” Orson said. Bree sucked in a breath of shock. I turned around and looked at her. She’d never once given me that look. It was a cross between terror and anguish.
“What—” Searing pain ran through my veins. I crumpled over, falling on the floor, and dropping the dart. I saw a paper wrapped around the vial and quickly grabbed it back up, shoving it in my pocket. The others moved around me as whooshing and pounding filled in my ears. Someone lifted me off the ground—Nemo.
“What’s happening?” I asked him before grinding my teeth against a fresh wave of pain.
“It was theserum—-Zero’s blood.” Nemo carried me out of the back of the building, and the sky opened up above us. I stared at the black expanse as my body coiled in agony.
