Still, she didn’t break down.
She didn’t even flinch when Kyle set a hand on her shoulder, as though she couldn’t feel it.
The emptiness in her eyes was terrifying, reminding him far too much of her father’s eyes.
She’d just lost the reason she’d done so much, and for the first time ever, Daniel really did worry she might be broken beyond repair.
Alison stared at Anne’s unmoving body. It was hard to recognize her, honestly. If she’d shown up unconscious, or dead, Alison wasn’t sure she’d have been able to identify her.
Her bright blue eyes were swollen shut, and her lips—usually pulled into a smile—were pale and split.
She’d lost weight over the past months that she’d been gone, and her skin had lost the pretty glow it usually had, since she’d always been a sun lover.
She’d gone from being a bright, sweet girl to being a corpse, and after all Alison’s promises to keep her safe, she’d failed.
Someone placed a hand on her back, but Alison ignored it. Suddenly all her stupid internal nonsense didn’t seem like it mattered, not compared to this.
“I’m sorry, pet,” Trent told her.
Alison shook her head, swallowing hard. She almost wished she could cry, that she could show the sort of sorrow Anne deserved. “I should have done more. Maybe if I’d been faster, better, I could have found her before they didthisto her.”
“You can’t put this on yourself,” Daniel said. “I’ve worked enough cases to know that. This? The people who took her did it, and we’ll nail them to the wall for it, but you can’t blame yourself for it.”
“Why not?” She stared down at the girl, who’d been too young and too sweet for the things that had happened to her. “You know how I met her? She got my number from Claire, and when she called, I expected to have to break some alpha’s nose. Instead, she called me hysterical because she was hiding outside someone’s house. It turned out she’d watched some drunk asshole kick his dog, repeatedly, and wanted to rescue the dog, but she had no idea how to get past the locked gate.”
Alison thought back to how worried she’d been on the phone, but how sure she’d been when Alison had arrived. No matter the danger, that girl was going to rescue the dog. She’d been optimistic and ready to take on anything. It had been a strange combination that Alison hadn’t known quite how to deal with, being around someone who could honestly believe the world was a good place no matter what she saw, who could rush into a situation even though she knew the risks and knew she didn’t have the skills for it.
“What happened?” Kyle prompted her.
“I went and we got the dog—and I made sure the owner understood the error of his ways with a few well-placed kicks of my own. She took the dog in, the largest, ugliest dog you have ever seen. It would have torn off the face of anyone who looked at her wrong, but it was entirely devoted to her.” She sighed as she thought about how she’d placed the dog with another omega after Anne had disappeared, about how she’d have to tell that omega Anne wouldn’t be coming back, that the dog was now hers.
Another part of my failure.
“You did everything you could.” Kyle set his hand on her nape, rubbing along the collar. That usuallyrelaxed her, but right then? Right then she couldn’t think of anything except all the ways she could have done things differently.
Instead of waiting around and playing house with the alphas, she could have been working. She could have been off her ass and doing something.
Anne would have done more for her, but Alison? She’d failed.
Her stomach gave up the good fight of keeping anything down. It made her curse the pregnancy again, because now instead of focusing on Anne, she was again thinking about herself.
She gagged, and Kyle tugged her toward the door. Across the hallway sat a restroom with a woman’s sign on it, and she bolted away from the alphas.
After hunching over the toilet, thankful to be alone for a minute, even if it did mean she’d vomited up what little she’d eaten, she flushed and stood.
Everything inside her had gone numb, heavy, as if she was dragging around a body that was nothing more than a collection of useless appendages she couldn’t even feel.
She splashed water on her face, hoping the cold would shock her system, would help her wake up and get on with it.
That was what she was supposed to do, right? No time to mourn. Mourning was for better people, for friends and family. The most she could offer was revenge.
She stared at herself in the mirror, frustrated by the lack of tears, by her reflection, by everything. No matter how hard she tried, she was always falling short. Always failing when it really mattered.Somany years of training, and for what?
She still couldn’t even protect one little omega.
The temptation to smash the mirror to pieces hit her, and she curled her hand into a fist. She wanted to shatter her reflection, to break something, as if that might snap the impotent anger inside her.
Instead, a face appeared behind her, the man having moved so quietly she hadn’t noticed him at all.Galen.
