“Grab her,” a drawling voice orders. At face value, most would probably assume he sounds bored, but I’ve known Mr. Sebastian for a very long time. There’s a dangerous undercurrent of fury in his clipped statement that has me biting back a terrified whine.
I don’t turn my head as I hear the heavy footsteps of a handler’s boots get closer to me. Instead, I watch as Gwen’s hands clench into fists on the table in front of her as she stares at me, her eyes wide with a hopeless sort of despair.
That look isn’t uncommon here. I’ve seen that expression on a lot of the girls, but normally, I’m in a position to comfort them. Totell them that everything will be alright and that even if they messed up, the punishments won’t last forever.
But as the handler, a sour-looking beta man with weathered skin, grabs my arm in a punishing grip, no one has any words of comfort for me.
When he spins me to face Mr. Sebastian, I see why.
If looks could kill, I’d be dead on the floor right now.
Mr. Sebastian is also a beta, but he’s the sort of beta that has a strong bitter aftertaste to his scent. There’s something about him that just makes the skin on the back of my neck stand on end. It always has. Something about him is unnatural.
Standing in his presence like this, locked in place by the handler that has my arms pinned to my side, makes my chest hurt.
“You stupid, stupid girl,” he growls, taking a menacing step forward until he’s staring down at me. His slicked back hair is as shiny as his shoes. “Are you going to tell me how you did it?”
If I thought it was hard to breathe earlier, then I’m actively suffocating now. My pulse roars through my ears.
“Did—did what, Mr. Sebastian?” I ask, my gaze darting away from him.
“You know what,” he hisses.
My entire body trembles under the force of his gaze.
I know exactly what I did.
“I thought I could trust you, Mirabelle,” he says with a mocking lilt. “You’re normally such a good girl, I thought I could trust you to take care of the new girl. Instead, you let her fool you with whatever psychotic drivel she fed you and youbroke the rules.”
I flinch at his words. At the reminder of what I’ve done.
We don’t get new girls very often here. Reyna was the first one in a while, and I was sent in to feed and help her adjust. But she wasn’t like the other girls that’ve been brought in.
She hadmates. A whole pack of them. And she loved them enough to show me her bondmarks with pride.
She was different than all the girls here. Angry and a little loud and so… brave? It’s such a foreign thing here. There’s no need to be brave. We’re clothed and fed and as long as we follow the rules, we don’t get punished.
She must’ve done something big to break the rules, because the handlers kept her in the restraints I hate with every fiber in my body.
But I didn’t see the defeat in Reyna’s stone grey eyes I see in the eyes of other girls here when they’re punished.
“Tell me,” he says, pitching his voice down so only I can hear him. “How the fuck did you help her contact those pesky mates of hers? They’ve been starting to sniff around the facility and something tells me you were a part of it.”
My gaze jerks up to him, and my brows draw down in confusion.
“What?”
That’s the last thing I thought he’d ask.
His hand whips out as he grabs my face in a painful grip.
“Are you denying that you did it?”
My body trembles in his hold. If it weren’t for the handler behind me, I probably would’ve collapsed to a puddle on the floor.
“I—I didn’t do that,” I gasp out. “I—I promise.”
I’m telling the truth, too. All I did was unlock one of Reyna’s restraints. I don’t even know who her mates are, how would I have tried to contact them? The only thing I know is this facility. I remember nothing from before here.
