Wordlessly, I unplug my microphone. The others take my lead and do the same. I can see the producers glaring at us and know I only have so much time before they force the issue. “Ren’s knee… she had some kind of an accident. It's all scarred and… I think it was broken somehow.”
All of my pack mates' heads jerk up, gazes focusing on Florence, who is blissfully unaware of our worried regard.
“She didn’t fail at being a dancer,” Forsythe mutters. “She simply couldn’t do it anymore.”
Forsythe’s eyes sweep over all the other omegas wearing the skimpiest bikinis they can squeeze into, then looks back at Florence. “That’s why she always wears pants. She doesn't want anyone to see it.”
I nod.
Court’s hands are fisted on his knees. “She… She told me she had a bad experience with an alpha. Didn’t go into specifics, but I wonder if he had something to do with what happened to her knee.”
The thought has all of us growling. As soon as we get out of here, I’m running a full background check on Florence and figuring out who the fuck hurt her. Then I’m going to plot ways to wipe them off the planet.
“Isadora went after her in capture the flag,” Grieves snarls, drawing me back to the present. “Tried to take her out at the knees.”
“What?” Forsythe’s voice has never sounded like this. Low and dangerous, pulsing with violence. It feeds my own.
Grieves shakes his head. “I thought at the time it was just her being a bitch, but what if she… what if she knew Florence had an existing injury? What if she was really trying to hurt her?”
Oh, no. My alpha doesn’t like that at all. And it appears that none of my packmates do either if the low rumbling growls emitting from them again are any indication.
“Your Highness.”
Forsythe whips his head around to snarl at a pale, trembling beta. “What?”
“If you… the microphones?” he questions hesitantly.
Our prime doesn’t often use his dominance. He’s been taught to be polished and smooth, a delicate instrument rather than a blunt object, a scalpel as opposed to a hammer. But rightnow? He’s all alpha instinct, and he’s struggling to keep it under control.
His head tilts as he cracks his neck, his eyes closing in a bid for control. It doesn’t help. “Leave,” he commands every inch the royal alpha.
Forsythe’s command snaps through the air like a whip, and the beta flees, nearly tripping over a cable as he goes. The moment he’s out of earshot, the five of us just… breathe, trying to calm the inferno raging in our chests. Even Piers looks on the verge of ripping something apart with his bare hands.
My own pulse is still pounding.
Florence’s knee.
The scars.
The pain she never told us about, never even hinted at.
And fucking Isadora, aiming straight for that weakness like sheknew.
How could she know though? Unless someone told her.
We don’t have access to our normal network here. If we were out in the real world, Grieves would have done a background check on her, on all the omegas, more thorough than the one done by the show, and we would have known about her injury.
It would be just as easy for someone in the real world to find out, to feed the information to Isadora and for Isadora to decide to take out the competition in the most brutal way possible.
“We should’ve seen it,” Court spits, dragging a hand through his hair. “We should’ve- Fuck! We should’ve protected her.”
“We didn’t know,” Piers says quietly. He’s close enough now that his arm brushes the side of my lounger, but not close enough to look like he belongs here. That little distance makesmy teeth grind. “She didn’t want anyone to know. Not even the crew. That says… something.”
It says she’s been hiding her pain for a long time. That she’s used to it. And that she somehow feels we’d think less of her if we knew her weakness. Or maybe she thinks we’d exploit it. If not us, maybe production.
God, I can just imagine the questions they’d ask her in the confessionals, trying to probe about her sad story, to add even more drama.
“Why wouldn’t she tell us?” Court sounds hurt. Like he thought she should have trusted us enough with this secret of hers.
