Chapter 43
Auryn
Coming here was a terrible idea. Somewhere deep down in the pit of my stomach, I knew this. But at the same time, I knew this was inevitable.
All the years I’d been kept, there were plenty of moments that were blurry. Plenty of moments where I woke up with a needle in my arm, or with blood dripping down my skin. I’d become used to the injections, the operations. Though I couldn’t understand what they were doing, I don’t think I wanted to know either. But now I do know what Sneed did to me.
He altered my DNA to make me breedable. He chipped me like a dog. Because he thought he owned me.
Up until now, he’d been content to let his knotless alphas use me. And judging by the mutilated bodies in the room, I can surmise that they are not the first alphas to meet such a gruesome fate, just as all the omegas I never saw again likely suffered the same.
“You fucking piece of shit,”
I say, my voice shaking. Fury bubbles to the surface as I ball my fist with rage. I don’t speak loudly, but it’s enough. Enough to draw Sneed’s attention to me. He looks me over like a trophy he’s won. But he hasn’t won shit, and if I have anything to say about it, he’ll never take another breath.
“Now, five-seven-six, be a good little girl and come home to Daddy. If you play nice, I might even let you keep your little bastard.”
Gage steps forth, opening his mouth, but I stop him. I know the only way to truly take Sneed down is to let him think he has me. I have to play his game. I have to get close to him. And when he thinks he’s got me, I will attack. I will claw his fucking eyes out, and I will slice him from navel to Emmet’s ring, and only when I tire of his screams will I behead him.
There will be no mercy, not for this fucking monster who calls himself an alpha.
“Gage, don’t,”
I say. Diego curses behind me. I meet Sneed’s beady gaze. He smiles cockily.
“Come, five-seven-six.”
He chuckles, and the sound is like nails on a chalkboard. “Let us be a family again.”
Family? What kind of family does he think this is? Last I checked, family didn’t stick trackers in your body and alter your blood. Family didn’t drug you or hurt you…
I take one step forward, and Emmet rushes in front of me.
“Over my dead fucking body, asshole,”
he growls. Before I can think to grab him, Sneed lunges for him and knees Emmett right in his groin. Emmett growls, cursing as he goes down, and everything hits a fever pitch. Gage and Diego descend on Sneed, who squeezes his bloody remote. Howls echo in the wings, and the sharpest pain hits me. It starts in my chest, ricocheting like a bullet through my veins. I cry out because I can’t help it. Everything hurts. I close my eyes because the pain is too much to keep them open as I crumble to the floor. I clutch my stomach, one thought pervading through the rest.
I hope we can come out of this alive. My child and me.
“Auryn!”
Emmett calls for me, but when I open my eyes, I see he too is doubled over, clutching his chest. Diego and Gage are torn between helping us and fighting off two bloody, beaten alphas. I have no clue where they came from.
Sneed fights them off as he squeezes his remote again, the pain fluttering through my body as I clutch that spot in my chest. Gage manages to knock the device out of Sneed’s hand, and I realize all at once this is where it is. Embedded in my chest. In Emmett's chest.
The desire to pull it out and shove it down Sneed’s throat is prevalent, but I know nothing will take if I don’t get into Sneed’s proximity.
I army crawl across the ground as Emmett reaches for me. I find his hand, grabbing it, squeezing it tight.
“You have to fight,”
he says through tears. “You have to get through Gage, and—”
“You have to fight, too,”
I tell him, my voice shaky and terrified.
Emmett sucks in a breath as he lets go of my hand.
“I’ll distract him,”
he says. “But you have to promise me you’ll fucking end him, baby.”
I nod. “Promise.”
I’m not sure what I expect, but it certainly isn’t for Emmett to get up and grab his dick and scream at Sneed like he has a damn death wish. Gage and Diego turn as well, and I know this is it. This is the only moment I have. Sneed lunges for Emmett, Gage and Diego grabbing at his arms to hold him back, and I rise. I spit out a pat of blood on the ground and stand tall.
“Hey Sneed!”
I growl, my vision still blurred at the edges, my body pushing past the point of adrenaline. All I am is pure fight right now.
Pure alpha.
“My name is Auryn,”
I say as he grins. I don’t think, I just act. I tear after him, launching myself at him. I tackle him, despite the alphas holding his arms down. The half-beaten alphas lay groaning on the floor, one with a dislocated arm in the wrong direction and the other holding his stomach tight as he throws up blood. Sneed goes down like a heavy sack, and I waste no time straddling him, holding him down with my weight. He thrusts his naked, bloody cock behind me, and I have to stomach my own bile. I can’t let him rattle me. Not anymore. Not if I want to accomplish what I came here to do.
“See, I knew you’d come to your senses,”
he says, smiling at me. I punch him in his face, bloodying his mouth and lip. He moves to grab me, and I use every ounce of strength I have to fight off his hands. I take his wrists in mine and something else takes over me.
Something I’ve felt before, but not quite as prominent.
Sneed sniffs the air, and then his face wrinkles.
“Cinnamon and peppercorn?”
He growls. “You are sunshine and lemons! You are an omega! You are not—”
“Wrong,”
I tell him as I press hard against his wrists until I hear the crunch of bone, followed by his scream. He thrusts his cock in the air and squirms, trying to throw me off. And then I feel familiar hands on mine. I look up to see Emmett on the ground. He slides my hands off of Sneed’s broken wrists, his green gaze holding mine with promise. I look at where he holds Sneed, and I feel Gage behind me, his scent thick like a fog. One look over my shoulder, and I see him and Diego flanking my rear, grasping Sneed’s ankles. I watch as Gage twists one, snapping the thing with his bare hands.
God, that’s hot.
“La muerte is too good for you, Sneed.”
“Let me go, you—”
I rake my hands down his chest, nails digging into his putrid skin. He screams as I leave bloody trails, and then I see the glint of something silver. A knife. I don’t think twice. I reach one hand for it and slide it up to his throat.
“You will never be free again, Sneed,”
I hiss. I press the blade against his throat. He spits at me. Laughs at me.
“You think you can hold me down, five-seven-six? Hmm? Think your alphas are so strong?”
He lunges forward, bucking me off of him, and my back hits the hard floor. Emmet and the others rush to pull him off of me, but he covers me with his heavy frame. Adrenaline and drugs must be to blame for Sneed’s sudden burst of strength. I can barely breathe under his weight, and once again my vision goes white. He thrusts himself against me, and his hands try like hell to tear off my tactical pants, and I kick at him with all my might.
We roll around on the floor, punching, kicking, and scraping as our growls echo in the room, and he knocks the knife out of my hand. I scramble to get it, my fingers making deft work, and I spin on my heels and strike him right in the jugular. Sneed screams, reaching for the blade wedged in his neck. He pulls it out, and blood spills like a geyser. He presses his hand over it, but the blood coats his hand, his arm, and he staggers.
I force him back against the wall, rip the blade from his hands, and stab him in the chest, right at the spot that looks fresh. Where he tore his tracker out. He screams as I wedge the knife deeper and slice down his chest. A fresh wave of adrenaline fuels me. And rage.
So much fucking rage.
“That one’s for my baby,”
I snarl. I pull the knife out, and his blood spills all over my arms. I can see his insides in the sliver of a crack down his abdomen. I drag the tip of my bloodied knife over his stolen ring of skin and scrape beneath the stitches, plucking it off as he mewls and writhes beneath me.
“That’s for my mate,”
I snarl, growling at him with a ferocity I’ve never truly known until this moment.
Blood covers us both now, but I have one more score to settle.
Mine.
I grab his flaccid, bleeding cock in my free hand, and he laughs. He thrusts his limp dick at me, growling like he likes it.
He won’t when I’m done, that’s for sure.
I bring my knife to his slit and press it inside until I hear him scream and Diego curse.
And then I slide the knife up and split his head, and I don’t stop there. I slice all the way up until his cock is butterflied, and he can’t breathe from the pain.
“And this one is for what you did to me.”
He chokes as blood spurts from his neck, his chest, and his cock. His blood bathes me like rain, and I know it won’t be long before he ceases his feeble existence.
“Auryn…”
One voice cuts through the impeccable silence. Emmett.
I blink, realizing I must have zoned out, because Sneed is heavy against my palm, his eyes vacant and black. I take one step back, and he falls to the floor like a crumpled piece of paper.
I drop my knife, and immediately I feel the rush. Arms pull me in every which way. Warm scents of cherry and peppers and bourbon assault me, and I close my eyes, breathing them in like air.
I trace my fingers on the back of someone’s hand and just breathe.
He can’t hurt us anymore, little one. He’s gone for good.
Licking my lips, I taste the faint metallicness of blood. My heart is racing, my body is spent, and I feel like I could pass out and sleep for days. I open my eyes to see the knotless alphas on the ground. They aren’t alphas I recognize. I cock my head to the side as I realize they are smaller than the average alpha. And they are…
Whining. Whimpering. Clutching their chests as their bodies shake like leaves.
It dawns on me they are terrified. Because they are not alphas, I realize.
They are omegas. Male omegas.
Emmet buries his face in my hair, and I squeeze his hand. “Do you think we have room for a few more omegas?”
I ask, my voice raspy.
Gage nuzzles my neck as he says, “Where?”
I nod to the shaking men who are now huddled together. “Looks like I’m not the only experiment that was successful,” I say.
“We can bring them to the institute with the females,”
Diego says. “I think the facility–more of a school, really–is coed.”
“I’ll get them,”
Emmett says.
“I can help,”
Diego answers as Gage grunts out a sound that tells me it truly is over.
I look behind me, almost afraid that Sneed will pop up from his heap on the ground like some cartoon villain.
But he doesn’t.
Because I killed him.
“Come on; let’s get you cleaned up,”
is all Gage says.
I nod because words are difficult right now. So, I don’t speak. I let Gage guide me out of the dark basement to the Jeep, where Olly waits with the five women we rescued. I don’t recognize any of them, but they all look the same. They look just as I did before I’d escaped. Thin, washed out. Scarred.
My gaze meets Olly’s, and I know I must look like an absolute wreck because he covers his mouth and furrows his eyebrows. The girls look at me with fear. They must think I’m here to hurt them, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Gage rubs my arm, and then it’s all slow motion as Olly launches himself at me.
He pulls me into his tight embrace and doesn’t say a word. But I can feel his relief, his love echoing deep within me. When he lets go, I see I have left bloody prints all over his tactical gear, and I know I must be covered in Sneed. I sniff the air, scenting my beta and breathing a sigh of relief when I smell rain and earth, when cherries and bourbon and spice settle on me like a blanket.
“Time to go home,”
Emmett says.
“Couldn’t agree more,”
Gage says as he loads me into the Jeep. He buckles me in, and I let him, my bones and muscles like Jell-O.
I close my eyes for just a moment, relishing in the cool air against my warm skin, and let darkness come for me once more.