Everything from when I first came down to Anarchy was a blur.
Nights of empty hallways, bloody fights, echoes of pain and rage and need.
And above all… an emptiness. No one to talk to in the rare gaps of time when I was sane. I roamed the halls as one of the hopeless ones—a strong aura, but so unstable none of the packs thought I was worth the effort. I’d be a risk to the stability of the whole pack if they brought me in, so I had… no one.
Until Phantom, anyway.
He’d helped me, and then Sin—Sin was my real saviour.
If I lost them all, and somehow survived, I was destined to be that broken alpha again. Feral and alone. No mind or memories. They’d all be gone as if they’d never existed.
My heart twisted at the thought of it—what would Crescent think if that happened?
She’d never trust me again.
I shook off the spiral as we reached the cafeteria. I needed to feed my pack.
It was late and almost empty but for a couple of the weaker packs playing cards or chess. The high stakes games at this time of night were in the square, but the weaker Anarchy packs didn’t have much of value to bet. Not if they didn’t want to risk losing everything, anyway.
So they stayed away and played for fun, not favours. At least until they got desperate enough to put their lives on the line.
A weaselly alpha shot me a few glares as I crossed the room. Hmm. Robert Ferguson, I thought…? The sickly pallor to his face rang a bell.
Ah.
Right.
Heh. He was on corpse cleanup. He’d found himself on the wrong side of the Archiva pack after spilling blood on their omega’s favourite books.
Quiet, that pack might be, but they were ancient dwellers. No one fucked with the librarians.
Ferguson was doing his time.
The bitterness he was directing my way made sense. We’d left a number of bodies in the square—andin here, come to think of it—over the last day or two.
Only one guy stood behind the counter, and most of the trays were completely empty of food. “Three plates of whatever’s left,” I barked.
The dishes were plain and all looked slightly brown, but I knew they were edible—at least when they weren’t drowning my servings in fucking salt. We’d all been eating the food cooked by these alphas for years. The packs that ran the cafeteria might not be professional chefs, but their role here was only to keep us alive so we didn’t all have to fumble our way through using the raw ingredients we got.
He narrowed his eyes, but it wasn’t like anyone else wanted the night’s leftovers. If he wanted to test me, I’d be happy to fight.
The packs who did the cooking weren’t weak, exactly. Weak packs in Anarchy didn’t last long, no matter how useful they were. But these packs did the cooking because without the protection it brought, they may well have been fighting for their lives. All of them would rather stay out of trouble.
My aura could destroy him, but I could only touch him if he started it.
He didn’t.
What a shame.
I would have enjoyed a quick fight, to take the edge off.
I grabbed some forks and napkins to shove into my pocket, then turned away to scan the room while he worked.
A few of the other alphas in the room were looking at me, their noses tilted upward like they might catch a whiff of Crescent. None stayed brave when I caught their gazes, at least not until I met the eyes of a tall, broad man veiled in shadow across the room.
Fucking Ozias.
I growled under my breath. He was alone, none of his allies anywhere near, while I had my allies sitting on a nearby bench.
