Chapter Four
~ Danny ~
Walking home from the corner took me eight minutes, but I stretched it to twelve by limping around the block twice. I told myself it was to make sure Dennis’s truck wasn’t waiting, but the truth was I needed the extra time to stuff my insides back into something resembling a person.
All I wanted was to replay the way Burke said my name. To let it squeeze out the leftover horror of being followed, always, by a brother who could smell the truth on my skin even after I’d scrubbed myself raw.
It was almost midnight when I slipped the key into our back door, praying for quiet. Praying for the thin miracle of a night where nobody noticed my return.
Dennis was waiting in the dark. I didn’t see him until the kitchen light snapped on, an interrogation beam that stabbed straight through my eyelids and down into the gut.
“Where the fuck were you?” he snarled. Not even a question—more like a statement with teeth. He stood between me and the hallway, arms crossed, mouth already working the words into acid. I barely got two steps inside before I knew I’d fucked up by coming home at all.
“School,” I said, automatic. “Lab ran late.”
His eyes flicked to my backpack, then to the front of my shirt where a thread of loose fabric still smelled faintly, terribly, like Burke. Maybe only I could smell it, but Dennis’s nose had always been better than mine. He inhaled once, nostrils flaring like a startled horse.
The punch came faster than I could process. One second I was swallowing my fear, the next my teeth were clacking together and blood filled my mouth, hot and briny, like licking a nine-volt battery. I staggered back, one hand flying to my face, the other clutching my backpack like a life raft.
Dennis stepped in close. “Who the hell was that alpha?”
I shook my head, trying to clear the ringing, but it only made the pain worse. “What—what are you talking—?”
He slammed me against the fridge. All the oxygen in my chest went out in a little “whuf.” His grip landed under my jaw, squeezing until I couldn’t breathe, let alone answer.
“I saw you, you little shit,” he said, breath sour with gas-station beer and whatever he’d been chain smoking in the garage. “Saw you getting in some stranger’s truck. You think I’m fucking stupid?”
He let go, and I crumpled to the floor, backpack wedged under my ribs. I couldn’t get enough air to speak. Before I could even try, his boot caught me in the side, right below the lowest rib, hard enough to make my whole body fold in half. I curled up, hands over my head, knees to my chest.
Another kick, then another. Each one sent white noise through my ears, and all I could do was count the seconds between them, like waiting for the next roll of thunder.
My face throbbed where he’d clipped me, lip already swelling.
Tears stung, hot and involuntary. I hated him for making me cry, but I hated myself more for not being able to stop it.
He yanked me upright, one fist twisted in the collar of my shirt. “You think it’s funny, embarrassing me? Going around like some little whore?”
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 were still 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 and across my T-shirt.
My ribs felt like they’d been hollowed out and stuffed with broken glass.
The world was different in the morning. Not better, just changed. The light through my window made every torn page and ruined blanket gleam like crime scene evidence. There was no hiding what had happened, no way to convince myself it was a bad dream.
I sat up slowly, gritting my teeth as every muscle in my torso screamed for mercy. I looked around my room and tried to decide what, if anything, was worth saving.
The answer was almost nothing.
My backpack was in the corner, half-zipped and missing a strap. I shoved a handful of clothes into it—hoodie, spare jeans, a T-shirt that wasn’t bloodstained—then scooped up the shattered remains of my laptop. Maybe the hard drive still worked.
I couldn’t afford to hope, but I took it anyway.
There was one thing Dennis hadn’t found.
Under the mattress, wedged between the plywood and the frame, was a loose floorboard.
I pried it up with a chipped screwdriver, fingers numb with cold and fear.
The envelope inside was battered but still there: three twenties, a crumpled ten, and two ones.
Emergency cash for a bus ticket or a bribe, whichever I needed more.
I counted the money twice, just to make sure it was real.