Chapter 8
Lynn
Iwoke up sweating, cold to the bone, and shaking so hard my teeth rattled. For the tenth night in a row. My subconscious was a dick, and refused to let me rest. One more night of this and I’d punch myself in the temple just to get sweet relief. True and total unconsciousness.
I missed my coma.
I tried to sleep one last time, finally succumbing around two a.m. One hour of blessed unconsciousness; that’s all my brain allowed me until the emptiness of sleep filled with the scent of slick and cum and rancid piss.
Whimpers attacked my ears, morphing into pleas, then screams, then silence.
I wished those noises came from the other betas, but this time they were mine.
I was the one screaming, sobbing, as pain tore through me.
I came awake with all the violence of an explosion, throwing myself sideways out of bed, the covers tangling around my legs. I landed on my ass, instinctively throwing most of my weight onto my shoulder so I didn’t fuck up the stitches that held me together.
Pain shot like a bullet through my pussy, ripping tears from my eyes, and I splayed there for long, long minutes.
It passed quicker than it used to. I took that as a sign I was healing, like Ndidi said at my check up this week.
I didn’t want to go to the check up, but I was a huge fan of the pain killers Giant kept in his clinic and a purple-haired gnat had annoyed me into going.
ChaCha was infuriatingly hard to shake off.
She glued herself to my side, invited herself into my room even when it was locked (I had yet to figure out how,) and insisted on dragging me into the sanctuary to ‘socialise.’ Mostly, I stood in the kitchen and ate their stock of Lunchables while they all bickered and gossiped and spoke about the sad selection of DVDs the Knights provided, or the men themselves.
I’d learned more about their families and side-pieces and their wives attempting to murder them over the discovery of said side-pieces than I cared to.
It was kinda fun sometimes. And the girls were…
honestly kinda decent. Not judgemental or bitchy or snide, mostly because ChaCha glared at anyone who made a too-personal comment until they apologised.
I’d met one of the other people rescued from the farm, Thora, an omega who seethed with rage.
I understood that feeling. The deep, scorching fury that razed a path through my chest seemed to match hers.
Someone was probably awake right now. I untangled my legs from the comforter and debated going into the main sanctuary room.
I didn’t want to talk about my nightmares, but there was comfort in knowing I wasn’t the only one haunted by them.
Mostly, I wanted comfort food, and some fucking idiot with a Lunchables obsession had eaten all the boxes of the only food I wanted to eat right now.
(It was me. I was the fucking idiot.)
I massaged the ache in my shoulder as I got to my feet, expecting the pain inside to be a lot worse than it was.
Maybe I’d gotten lucky. Maybe the scars the farm left on me really were fading.
They refused to leave my brain, though. I was exhausted.
Short-tempered. Frustrated and raging and ground down by the nightmares.
I praised myself if I got through a single hour without seeing hay strewn with blood and vile alpha fluids when I blinked.
I couldn’t imagine getting through the whole day without remembering it, let alone sleeping through the night.
But that was all I wanted right now, as I threw an oversized hoodie over the leggings and loose shirt I’d slept in—all the pyjamas were pastel colours or fucking frilly—and trudged into the hall.
I just wanted to sleep. My head pounded those words over and over, pressure building in my sinuses.
I was in a foul mood, so when a door opened deeper in the clubhouse and a half-naked woman stumbled into the corridor, clutching a low-cut silk top to her chest, her golden legs bare and trembling, anger hit.
She whipped around to face me, her eyes like a doe’s—big, spooked, a little watery.
She was dishevelled, her honey-blonde hair a mess, and her makeup had run down her face.
I went still inside a moment before my steps froze. She was clearly shaken, frightened, and fleeing someone’s room.
“Are you alright?” I asked, quickly closing the distance between us, my rage a lit match inside me, the flame catching on a fuse of dynamite. A slow, dangerous threat. “Did someone hurt you?”
She swallowed and shook her head, but the movement shook tears free of her eyes. I watched them fall down her cheeks and my chest filled with understanding and fury. The flame travelled closer to the explosives inside me. “I-I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“It’s my fault,” she said with a breathy, self-deprecating laugh that made me angrier. “I thought I could handle it that rough.” At the horror on my face, she shook her head. “It’s not what you think. I knew… what to expect.”
“It is not your fault,” I hissed, close to grabbing the woman and doing something truly stupid like hugging her.
“It’s not like I didn’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll be fine, I just didn’t realise it would be so…”
“Intense,” a low, smoke-raspy voice finished.
Cold skittered down my spine like an ice cube, clashing with the incendiary rage inside me, and I whipped around with my upper lip curled. “You,” I seethed when my eyes clashed with green venom.
“Me,” Cobra agreed, his expression too fucking neutral for someone whose bedroom had just produced a crying woman in too few clothes. “I told you to stick around until you’d calmed down,” he said to the shaking blonde woman, his tone almost gentle.
“I’m fine,” she dismissed, taking a few steps away. “Really. Sorry about—chickening out.”
Cobra crossed his inked arms over his chest. He wore only a pair of low-slung black sweatpants, his entire body covered in tattoos. “Don’t apologise. You don’t owe me shit. I told you it could wreak havoc on your emotions and overwhelm the fuck out of you.”
“I’m really—” she began, then cut off when he raised an eyebrow. “Well, uh, I wish it worked out. I’m gonna… go now.”
“Do you want me to kill him for you?” I asked, my eyes narrowed as I followed their conversation. I’d got the gist of it, enough that the fuse burned faster, my arms shaking with it, hands curled into fists.
“No,” the woman laughed. “No, seriously, it’s fine. Just a… difference of interests. I’ll be fine.” She gave me a double thumbs up and backed down the hallway. “See you around,” she told Cobra, and then turned away.
I watched her leave, assessing her tread, the way she carried her weight, how she held herself. No signs of pain, no injuries she was avoiding, and she moved fine.
I let out a slow breath. The side of my face tingled with his attention. “I would have killed you if she said a single word,” I told Cobra without looking at him.
“Doesn’t surprise me. You got something to say, Lynn?”
I whipped around to glare at him, my canines bared and a rumble of warning in my chest. The explosive feeling inside me had shifted, less destructive but burning every bit as fiercely. “What the hell did you do to make a woman run out of your room like that?”
Cobra leant against the doorframe, his head cocked as he assessed me, seeing all my fury. “That’s between me and my sexual partners.”
“If you hurt her—”
He sighed. Heavily. But it was offense, not anger in his voice. “Do you think I’d be in a place like this, working with the Knights to stop abusers and violent monsters if I was one.”
“Hiding in plain sight,” I countered, my heart thunderous, hands shaking harder. I had so much adrenaline in my body, and it clashed with my exhaustion and sharp temper until I genuinely wanted to lash out at Cobra. “She was terrified.”
“She was overwhelmed by a cocktail of chemicals flooding her brain. That shit tends to happen when sex is concerned, let alone… what I need.”
What I need. Those words echoed through my head, through the chambers of my furious heart. “And what is it that you need, nightmare?”
Something flashed through his eyes. If I was reading him correctly, he was pleased by the name.
He leaned closer, enough that my breathing went shallow and the explosive rage inside me turned to liquid heat.
Oh. That was… unexpected. Not entirely unwelcome.
I just hadn’t expected to get turned on by anything ever again.
“None,” he murmured, so close I could taste the menthol cigarette and rum on his breath, “of your fucking—” He leaned closer, until he must have seen the flare of my eyes, my involuntary swallow. “Business.”
I would have loved to say his words doused the fire in me, but they were a challenge, a red rag waved at the bull of my sudden interest. I tilted my head slowly, the two of us caught in a moment of tense eye contact. “I could make it my business.”
“I don’t fuck rescues,” he said with a coarse scoff, retreating inside his room. The harsh expression on his face made it clear it wasn’t an invitation.
“You don’t fuck anyone, apparently,” I taunted, glancing down the hallway as if that woman was still there. “You just scare them off.”
Cobra gave me his middle finger.
I smirked and walked away, heading in the same direction as the woman he scared off by being ‘that rough.’ What did that mean?
How rough exactly? I’d never been interested in anything but plain, vanilla sex before.
Hadn’t experimented with anything more exotic than doggy style, and even that had been quick and satisfying.
But the dark seed of an idea took shape in my head, and I was as disturbed by it as intrigued by the relief it might hold.
It would either fuck me up beyond all repair, or it would shut up the darkness in my head. And I could finally get some fucking sleep.