CHAPTER 1
Mirabelle
I’m a good girl. I know the rules, and I don’t break them. I know what happens to girls who do.
Well, I don’tnormallybreak them.
My feet shuffle forward, the gray fabric slippers—issued to all the girls at the facility—sliding along the shiny linoleum before I take a seat with my tray of food.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end when I feel eyes on me. Some of the handlers, who are always watching the common areas, murmur to each other.
My sandwich is even more tasteless than usual.
“What did you do, Mira?” One of the other omega girls, Gwen, hisses through her teeth as she sets her tray down across from mine. She’s swallowed by the gray t-shirt and sweatpants we’re all issued. Her mousy blonde hair looks darker than it normally does since it seems like she just came from her scheduled shower.
“Wh—what?” I squeak, my eyes darting around the room. The dry bread from the sandwich seems to have lodged itself in my throat.
“What did you do?” She whispers, her brows drawn down in concern. Her lemon meringue perfume sours, mixing with my own increasingly bitter strawberry shortcake. We probably smell like a bakery’s rejects that were left out for too long.
But I can’t help it. My scent isn’t its normal sugary sweet right now. Not when I know exactly what I’ve done.
I’ve broken the rules.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumble, shoving another tasteless bite of food into my mouth.
Gwen’s russet brown eyes soften as she reaches out and squeezes my hand, but she still purses her lips as she looks at me.
“You never do anything that would get Mr. Sebastian asking questions about you,” Gwen murmurs, leaning down and pitching her voice low. “But he’s asking questions now.”
My blood runs cold, and I immediately regret my second bite of food. The sandwich falls onto the tray, almost in slow motion, dramatically falling apart like I want to do right now.
“You did do something,” she gasps, her eyes going wide. “I don’t believe it, youneverdo anything bad!”
I wipe my clammy hands on my gray sweatpants before reaching for my water and taking a small sip. It does nothing to get rid of the lump in my throat.
Gwen purses her already thin lips and narrows her eyes at me.
“Tell me what you did, Mira,” she says, her voice a surprisingly intense growl for another omega. “I can’t figure out a way to help you unless you tell me what you did!”
I open and close my mouth, trying my absolute hardest to just tell her, but the only sound that comes out is a strangled wheeze.
I’ve known Gwen for a very long time. My memory is terrible. All our memories are terrible because of the procedures we go through. But I know, according to the scientists and handlers, that I was one of the first girls brought to the facility. Gwen came a couple of years later, and she was older, so she’s sort of become like a big sister to all of us.
“I—I’ll handle this myself,” I whisper, my gaze dropping to the table between us. It’s a hard, sterile metal, similar to a lot of the furniture anywhere in the facility.
“Mira, I don’t think that’s a?—“
“No,” I shake my head. “I broke the rules. So I’ll face the punishment. No need to involve anyone else.” I force my expression to twist into my best attempt at a smile, but the muscles in my face feel stiff.
Smiling is almost like breathing to me. I guess it makes sense that I’m having trouble breathing right now, too.
Normally, I love finding things to be happy about. There’s nothing to be happy about right now, not when I feel this terrible pit in my stomach. A soul-deep foreboding that things are going to change.
The doors to the cafeteria slam open behind me, and Gwen goes pale, which is a surprising feat considering how collectively pale all of us are. The quiet chatter from the other girls scattered around the room stops instantly.
Every single muscle in my body locks up. I don’t want to turn around. I don’t have to, to know exactly who just walked in.
Collectively, the general sweetness of all our perfumes sours to the point that some of the beta handlers let out quiet coughs, despite hanging around the outskirts of the room.
