Page 47 of Knot All Is Ruined: Part 1

“Dani, please tell me they fed you breakfast?” Bethany asked as she collected my shower caddy and towel, handing them to me.

The rooms didn’t have attached bathrooms, instead, we all shared a community shower area and I was used to this. Although it wasn’t as nice as the one in the Care Center, it still provided the basic necessities.

“Yes, Vicky got me a massive plate of food,” I assured her.

Frowning, she settled my clothes on top of the pile in my arms. “Vicky? Since when do they have a woman hanging around them?”

“Sorry, Victor,” I corrected. “Victor made sure I ate.”

Her mouth dropped open for a second before she recovered and collected herself. “Victor, the man with the beard, muscles, and permanent scowl on his face like he’s ready to kill you? That Victor?”

Grinning, I nodded. “That’s the one.”

“He let you call him Vicky?” Bethany pressed.

“Let would be a strong word, he keeps telling me it’s not going to stick and I remind him that he has no choice in the matter. Though your brother tried to use it and almost got gutted with a table knife,” I shared.

Tossing back her head, laughter bubbled out of her. “Oh that sounds like Vic, alright. Now, I want you to shower, change, and be in this room resting when I come back to check on you. Don’t think for one second I don’t know you snuck out of here. I’m not going to ask why or how you ended up with Toma and the others at the crack of dawn. Being here recovering can make you stir crazy, but this is your one pass. Don’t ever try it again, or you’ll find out how easy it is for me to take away your privileges. You’re under my care, and I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to you. Have I made myself clear?”

Biting my lip, I nodded. “I’m sorry, Bethany, I didn’t intend to leave the premises like that.”

“For the tenth time, call me Beth. I feel like we know each other well enough not to be so formal. Run along, and stay out of trouble for a little while at least, please,” Beth pleaded, then squeezed my arm reassuringly and left to meet with Sorin.

“That went better than expected,” I mumbled to myself as I headed for the showers.

One thing I will never take for granted again is hot water that I can let run for as long as I like. Not feeling completely safe here in the showers, I never took long, except today I decided to indulge myself. That, and it took forever to get the tangles out of my curly hair from the bike ride. I refused to look at the mirrors when I came in, not willing to see how bad it was. Letting the conditioner sit was an excellent excuse for lingering in the steamy shower. Allowing myself to just be while sitting on the pulldown bench was magical. Until I wasn’t alone in the shower room anymore.

“Did you see that Sorin is back again today? I don’t think I’ve seen him at the Med Center so often before,” a woman said.

“Rumor is that he brought back an Omega from the North and has taken a shine to her,” another woman added.

There was a scoff, and the sound of the shower curtain to my left was pulled back. “Seriously? What, no woman from the South is good enough for him and his pack that they have to pluck one from the dirt of the North? Maybe it’s because she’s a breeder and doesn’t expect anything from life but to be fucked.”

“Mora,” her friend scolded. “How could you think that of the President’s son? Besides, they have that baby-faced Beta male they all fuck around with. Why would they need another whore when they have one ready to bend over and take it from any of them?”

An image of Cris’ kind smile flashed before my eyes, followed by a wave of anger that they would dare talk like that about him. Out of all the men, he’d been nothing but sweet, kind, and gentle. How could they even think of him like that? Obviously, they were jealous they would choose to sleep with a man rather than them, but it was clear why that was. Who would want a snake in their bed? Needing to get the hell out of here before they finished with their showers, I started to rinse the conditioner from my hair, not caring if it still had tangles.

“They can all have the Beta, I just want Sorin. Furthermore, who else would want to sleep with that monster Victor? You know he killed two of the men in his last unit, don’t you? It makes me question why he was allowed to live after killing two of our own. Maybe he’s working with the North and this breeder is an informant. It wouldn’t be the first time they tried something like that, which is why we need to make sure Sorin only surrounds himself with people he can trust.” Mora reasoned.

Her friend laughed. “Oh, and I bet you think you're the right person to keep him safe and out of the clutches of some bitch with a hidden motive?”

“Of course,” Mora said, her self-grandeur dripping off her words. “Who better than a woman whose father is on the board of advisors to the President? It’s like I was born to support the next man to be our leader. Then I can cut away all the useless baggage holding him back from greatness. It’s like he feels the need to take in the outcasts no one else would want, taking pity on them. Seriously, it’s just disgusting to think of that riffraff sullying his reputation.”

That. Was. It. I’d had enough. I couldn’t take it anymore. I might not know those men, but from what I’d seen they were a family who cared and looked after each other. How dare this woman think to strip him from the pack he built himself? Did no one understand the sacred bond a pack has to each other?

“What about Petru? I hear his father was a traitor, which is why he was executed, and his mother killed herself. The poor thing was left to take care of his little brother and his cousins, those his mother took in. He can’t be all that bad if he did all that,” Mora’s friend commented.

The water turned off next to me, allowing me to hear her hollow laugh. “You can’t honestly believe that a traitor’s son would be any better, do you? He might be the worst of them all. How can you trust someone whose family has already betrayed the South? His father’s actions caused the lives of a whole village to be lost. The whole family should have been put to death to ensure the poison was cleansed from the population.”

The last strand of control I had snapped hearing how callus she was about the matter. Ripping back the shower curtain, I saw the woman walk out of the stall turning away from me as she dried her hair with a towel. Using that to my advantage, I tackled the bitch slamming her to the tiled floor with a screech. She was pretty with dark brown hair, blue eyes, a tiny nose, and full lips. I fucking hated her.

“What the hell, you psycho, get the fuck off me,” Mora yelled, batting at me with her hands in a lame attempt to attack me.

I punched her right in the mouth making her scream and thrash under me. “You should learn to watch your fucking mouth, you entitled cunt,” I spat.

“Vela, get help,” Mora cried out as I slammed my other fist into her face.

Mora was now trying to fight back in earnest and landed a blow to my chin, but I shook it off and kept pummeling her. She tried to hook her leg around me to get me off her, only I grabbed her hair and yanked her head back so she couldn’t see me making it harder to fight back.