"Precious?" I scoffed, rolling my eyes at Nitro’s words. "She’s not precious; she’s just pathetic." I leaned forward, my elbows digging into my thighs as I stared harder at the screen, willing her to move. "It’s like someone yanked her batteries out.”
“Then we’ll just have to charge her up properly,” Nitro’s wicked smile grew to devilish proportions.
“Just needs a plug in her socket,” Kane added.
“Maybe more than one. She’s got a few holes.” The gleam in Asher’s eyes made feel sick. But fucking why?
“Enough.” I snapped on impulse, the word forcing itself to life.
My pack brothers all turned to stare at me, expressions caught in various stages of shifting from amusement to surprise.
“I’m just fucking frustrated,” I added quickly, “if she acts like this, we’ll have to wait the entire damn trial period to send her packing.”
“Oh, we’ll break her, Xander.” Fallon, per usual, was cool and calculated. I could tell he was strategizing, planning the worst we could do without causing irreparable damage to Eros’s ‘product’. My sharp-minded brother was often the most sinister, because he was able to push things to the precipice and then step back from the ledge in the nick of time. The rest of us were not so light on our feet.
Thinking about Fallon applying his calculative mind to the Lucy problem caused red to seep in at the corner of my vision. A low growl escaped my throat as I met his gaze. Our eyes locked, a storm brewing in my body.Fuck! What was wrong with me!
I stood up, taking one step towards Fallon, who held up a hand to stop me. I was holding onto rationality with a tenuous thread, but I didn’t take another step. Slowly, my head swiveled left, then right, eyes roving over the faces of my pack. Was I really about to beat the shit out of Fallon because of some bitch that we were all dead set on rejecting?
“Let’s break her,” I breathed, turning back to the monitors. “Into so many goddamn bits, that she’ll be piecing herself back together for the rest of life.”
No pitiful Omega was going to come between me and my brothers.
Twenty minutes later, I found myself alone again. The eerie glowing of the screens had become unsettling. The silence kept growing heavier with each second, punctuated only by my own shallow breathing.
And Lucy didn’t move.
She didn’t readjust her legs.
She didn’t stretch.
She didn’t stand.
After an eternity, when I thought I lose my ever-loving mind, Lucy shifted. I watched as she stood, staring down at the mattress as if trying to decipher meaning in the stains. She picked up the medical bag and walked it over to set on the floor near the wall. Then she grabbed the mattress’s flimsy cloth handle and leaned back, trying to use her bodyweight to yank it across the floor.
The struggle should have made me laugh.
This weakling woman who couldn’t even slide a mattress was piteous.
But no laughter bubbled in my chest.
It took her half an hour to get the mattress against a wall. The tension in the pit of my stomach twisted tighter as she pulled. I watched her body tremble with exhaustion, yet her determination never wavered. When she finally released the handle, she stumbled backward, nearly falling.
She lifted one gloved hand, then the other, giving herself a high five. Ridiculous. Fucking stupid.Why did I want to take her a damn blanket right now?
Lucy resettled herself onto the mattress, back against the wall, legs outstretched. She faced the bedroom door now, visor-shielded face staring directly toward it as if seeing us coming would somehow help her.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” I breathed out the question, voice low. “Do you really think you can survive us?”
I didn’t sleep.
I couldn’t sleep.
Eventually, Lucy’s head lolled forward from exhaustion.
As dawn hit, light creeping into her bedroom, fatigue was trying to pull me under. I slapped my face a few times, refusing to miss a moment. Surely, any minute, she’d wake up and realize her situation. And then we’d be able to teach her an unforgettable lesson. One she’d never forget. She didn’t belong here, and she never could.
My jaw locked so hard my teeth threatened to crack when Lucy stirred. I shot up from the chair, knuckles blanching white as they crushed the desk edge. My body lunged forward until my face was inches from the screen, pupils dilating as I devoured every microscopic twitch of her body.
