I tried to say “no,” but the word got stuck behind my tongue. All I could manage was a wet gurgle, blood mixing with spit and snot. He slapped me, open palm, and the pain wasn’t even the worst of it—it was the noise, the crack that sounded exactly like the night Dad left and Dennis broke every dish in the house.
“Look at me,” he barked.
I did, because not looking was worse.
“You’re an omega, Danny. You don’t get to act like an alpha. You get to do what you’re told. You get to not embarrass me in front of the whole fucking town.” His voice cracked on that last part, and for a second I saw something raw and ugly behind his eyes—something closer to fear than rage.
Then he punched me again, this time in the stomach. All the air left my body. I gagged, bile stinging the back of my throat. My vision pin-wheeled in and out, black at the edges.
I went limp, hoping he’d get bored faster if I didn’t fight back. It didn’t work. He kept going, fists and boots, until I couldn’t tell one pain from the next, until I couldn’t remember why I was supposed to keep breathing. At some point I heard glass break, maybe a plate or maybe my own head, and then the world dissolved into static.
Somewhere far away, Dennis was still yelling, but I couldn’t understand the words anymore. My ears had turned the volume down to nothing. All I could do was taste blood and dirt and the dust from under the fridge.
The last thing I heard before blacking out was Dennis, breathing hard, whispering, “Worthless omega.”
And then the world let me go.
* * * *
I came to on the kitchen floor, tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth like I’d spent a week drinking nothing but sand. The house was dead silent—no TV, no footsteps, just the weird electric whine that lived in the walls when all the clocks ran down. My face was stuck to the linoleum with a mix of blood and snot. The side of my head throbbed in time with my heartbeat.
I didn’t move for a long time. There was no reason to. Nobody was coming to check on me; nobody had ever come, not once, in all the years Dennis made me his punching bag.I might’ve stayed there until sunrise, but the dull ache in my side turned sharp whenever I breathed, and the smell of blood started making me gag.
I peeled myself up, arms trembling so bad I almost lost it halfway. Something in my chest popped, and a white-hot line of pain traced my ribcage. I leaned against the fridge, breathing through my nose to keep from passing out again.
Blood had dried in a crust down my chin and onto my shirt. My left eye wouldn’t open all the way. I wiped my mouth and saw that my knuckles were stained red, even though I hadn’t thrown a punch.
That seemed unfair.
The rest of the house was a crime scene. A streak of my own blood trailed down the hallway, punctuated by palm prints where I’d tried to crawl away. One of them was smeared across the bathroom door, artless and perfect, like something out of a documentary about extinct species.
My bedroom was at the end of the hall, barely more than a closet with a cot and a metal desk. All I wanted was to crawl into the dark and pretend none of this had happened, but when I opened the door, I froze.
He’d gutted it.
My textbooks were in pieces, their spines snapped and pages scattered like molted feathers across the carpet. My bedding had been slashed to ribbons—actual ribbons, cut with a box cutter from the garage, stuffing pulled out in greasy handfuls. My laptop, the one thing that made online classes even possible, was in the center of the floor, screen caved in and casing shattered. The power light blinked like a dying star.
I don’t remember dropping to my knees, but the next thing I knew, I was kneeling in the middle of the debris, fingertips ghosting over the shreds of a notebook. The notes inside werestill legible if you held the pieces together, but the effort felt pointless.
Everything I’d built, every hour spent grinding through lectures or soldering together bits of scavenged hardware—it was all gone. Just like that.
I tried to swallow, but my throat was closing up. A sound escaped me—a sob, small and jagged, like an animal caught in a trap. I clamped a hand over my mouth, but it was too late. Another followed, then another, until I was shaking so hard the room blurred around the edges.
I wanted to call Burke or anyone, but I didn’t have a phone anymore. Dennis must’ve taken it, or maybe smashed it with the rest of my life. I didn’t even have the energy to be angry.
Mostly, I was just empty.
I curled up on the ruined mattress, arms hugging my ribs, and stared at the blinking light of the dead laptop. It pulsed, slow and steady, like a heartbeat counting down the seconds until I had to get up and keep moving.
I knew I couldn’t stay here. Not after this. The message was clear: I was nothing, and if I tried to be more, Dennis would take even that away.
But first, I let myself lie there, shaking and bleeding, until the sun cracked the horizon and turned the wreckage of my room to gold.
For a moment, it almost looked beautiful.
* * * *
I woke to the sound of glass crunching under somebody’s heel. For a second, I thought Dennis had circled back to finish the job, but the house was empty except for me and the ghosts of last night. The blood had dried in hard ropes down my neck andacross my T-shirt. My ribs felt like they’d been hollowed out and stuffed with broken glass.
