My brother grunts under the force of it and his head automatically lowers.
“You didwhat?” Dad hisses, stalking up toJett and fisting the collar of his wrinkled button-up shirt in his hands. “You know how valuable that omega is now that we can’t just go back and buy another one if she’s torn apart? What if you sent one of the dogs into a rut!”
“I didn’t know?—“
“Well, you should’ve fucking thought!” Dad growls, slamming Jett into the neighboring wall. “Your stupidity is going to ruin all my plans.”
“What fucking plans were this important that you didn’t think to tell me?” Jett snaps, shoving against Dad’s chest.
Bad move.
Real bad move.
My dad’s lips curl back into a snarl, and he cocks his fist back. Jett’s head jerks so hard at the blow that it bangs against the wall behind him.
The parallels to some beat downs I’d received from Jett aren’t lost on me.
My dad never really beat me all that often. I think he thought I wasn’t worth the effort. In his mind, beatings are supposed to teach you something.
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little cathartic to see Jett be on the receiving end, this time around. It makes the way my ribs ache with each breath hurt a little less.
“You think you deserve to know what’s going on when you pull this emotional bullshit?” Dad snaps, punching Jett again. “What, your little brother finally pulls his head out of his ass and makes himself useful and you’rethreatened? Byhim?”
I don’t know whether to be offended at my dad’s tone or whether I should nod along. It’s honestly ridiculous how threatened Jett got from my supposed success training Griffin.
Sure, it was an incredibly fast, unheard-of turnaround time, but maybe that says more about the default training methods than it does about anything else.
I sit there silently, my eyes never straying from the two menwho are supposed to be my family. Some family we are, beating the shit out of each other like this.
Dad pauses the beating he’s giving Jett to turn his gaze to me. Jett takes that opportunity to wipe some of the blood from what looks to be a broken nose onto the back of his sleeve, even though my dad still has him pinned to the wall.
“That omega’s blood is worth more than its weight in gold,” he grits out with a frustrated sigh.
“What—what do you mean?”
He rolls his eyes as if he thinks I’m stupid.
“We sell the alpha’s blood to make suppressants. That omega’s blood can make the enhancement drugs. Now that our supply of enhancement drugs has blown up in our faces, we need to keep the one golden goose we’ve got alive.”
I’m sure I grow even more pale than I appear right now, at his words.
The enhancement drugs are made fromomega blood?
My hands clench into fists as I remember the almost euphoric high of the doses I’d take. They feel an awful lot like the hits I get just being in Mirabelle’s presence.
I’m sure extracting and processing their blood wasn’t a pleasant one.
Guilt gnaws away at me. How could one of the few things that made life somewhat bearable be built upon the foundation of the pain of omegas like Mirabelle? Omegas who’ve been locked away underground for god knows how long, who’re excited about seeing clouds and eating pasta?
I should tell her. I don’t think she knows. She deserves to know this.
But how?
How do I tell her that something from her body, something that’s been stolen from her, is being used to basically ruin people’s lives?
“That facility that was raided, did they take the omegas there?” I ask. Did they help the omegas escape that hellish facility?
“Yeah,” Dad growls. “We’ve gotta figure out how to make it ourselves. I’ve heard it has something to do with denying them during heat.”
