My eyes dart around the room, trying to find the source of the scent, and my eyes fall on an alpha chained to the wall.
Not Griffin, so it must be one of the other fighters.
He’s clad in nothing but a pair of boxers, and he seems to drip water onto the floor below him. Considering the hose that one of the other trainers is holding, it looks like he was probably recently hosed down.
His body is absolutely littered with scars and bruises. A terrifying number of them.
I barely catch sight of his close-cropped dark blonde hair, light eyes, and terrifying snarl before Jett drags my attention back to him by dragging my arms above my head.
“Wait, what’re you—what’re you doing!”
White, blinding pain hits me, and my head jerks backwards.
He backhands me across the face so hard that if it weren’t for his bruising grip on my wrists, I would’ve fallen.
A strangled whimper breaks my protests off as I taste blood on the inside of my mouth where my teeth must’ve cut the inside of my cheek. My chest heaves, rising and falling under Rowan’s t-shirt as I blink helplessly through the pain, staring at the concrete below my bare feet.
I’ve never been hit before. Let alone hit in the face like that.
It’s terrible and terrifying, and I can do nothing except let myself get manhandled so it doesn’t happen again.
Cold, thick metal cuffs clamp around my wrists, and I’m hung from the ceiling like I’m meat in a butcher’s shop.
“Need some help with her, boys,” Jett sneers. The two other trainers leave the charred sage smelling alpha to stalk across the room towards me.
I bite back a whimper as the chain I’m hanging from is hauled upwards, bringing me so I’m barely standing on my tippy toes. The bite of the metal cuffs around my wrists reminds me of Griffin and the blood that dripped down his forearms earlier.
God, I hope he’s okay right now.
If the state of this other alpha is any indication, his stay at this place isn’t going to be a vacation either.
“Look at her, already in la-la land,” Jett laughs. He digs into his pocket and flicks open a menacing, serrated pocket knife. “I’ve got a solution to that.”
“W—wait,” I whimper, inching backwards on my toes, only to run into the chest of one of the other alpha trainers.
“Ah, there she is.” Jett grabs Rowan’s shirt and hooks his knife into the collar and my eyes go wide as I realize what they’re doing.
“N—no! Please don’t,” I whisper.
“Keep on begging, it makes me hard,” Jett sneers, grabbing his crotch suggestively.
I clamp my jaw shut, my eyes darting around the room, frantically trying to land on something that isn’t a leering alpha’s expression. I settle on the peeling paint on one of the rafters. I wonder what horrors that paint has seen in this room.
I can do nothing but fight back my trembling, trying to keep myself as still as possible so he doesn’t nick me as he cuts off the clothes I’m wearing. My trembling only gets worse when I feel the chill of the night wind whipping at my skin.
This barn may have four walls, but it’s not insulated, and there’s still a draft that makes its way through as the wind howls outside.
Rowan’s t-shirt and boxers fall to thefloor in jagged scraps of fabric. Rowan is going to run out of t-shirts for me to use at this rate.
I don’t know why that’s what my brain fixates on, but it’s better than the situation at hand.
“What the fuck kind of show is this?” The alpha chained to the wall growls.
CHAPTER 10
Ash
My pulse roars through my veins.
