Chapter 12
SELENE
What the hell, Diana?
I don’t know what else to do other than to walk away from her. I’ve done so fucking much for her, all for her to want to keep that cunt face alive? This always happens. I give too much, I sacrifice everything, just to maybe have an idea of what a family would be like. What friends are like.
And they always fuck me over.
She seriously wouldn't kill him for her freedom that he stole.
Judge will eventually fully own her, ruin her, use her for whatever twisted future he's carved out in his head. I should've known. Why was I so dumb to go so far for an omega? As soon as Judge got his hands on her, I should have never looked back.
Sex, romance, all of it, has never meant anything to me. But it’s what everyone wants.
Except friends.
I was so fucking stupid thinking an omega could be a friend I’d get to grow old with. She could have lived as a beta, had a family that way. I could have been the fun aunt.
My boots echo in the narrow corridor as I keep walking deeper into the Mirage's belly, not caring where I end up.
Lanterns flicker against the walls, turning my shadow into a stretched, uneven shape.
I hate how small it looks. I hate how small I feel—because I've never operated alone. Never survived alone.
I can’t stand being alone.
A figure steps out of the shadows. "Where's your friend?" he asks, voice sliding along the wall like oil. “The blonde omega?”
"We're not friends," I snap, looking him over to realize I somehow wandered right back to the fucker that has to be named Sid. "Not anymore.”
He smiles. “Well then, would you, perchance, like to make some money?"
My breath stutters, my chin tucking into my neck. "By doing what, exactly?”
"I need dark deals," he says softly. "Betrayals. Backstabbings. It’s what fuels me.” He pulls out a blade from his holster, and I hardly flinch.
“You seem well-suited. I can see how angry you are. How betrayed...” He gestures for me to follow, and because I have no other purpose, I do.
He leads me to a row of cages that stink like animals.
"Open that door, and I'll pay fifty silver.”
I blink and look at the cage he pointed to. “What's behind it?"
"He likes to eat omegas," Sid whispers.
My whole body goes cold.
But even if Diana’s still here, Judge is coming. He'll find her. He'll take her. He'll bind her deeper, breed her eventually ‘for the good of Dominion.’ She'll spend the rest of her life as his property.
And she’s choosing that. Just like my mom did. Abandoning me for the fucking knot of an alpha.
The dagger glints, and I press my lips together.
I move to the door, just to see what the hell he is talking about.
My eyes widen when I see, in the very back, what looks like a warrog.
It's fucking massive, its ribcage expanding and contracting with deep, rumbling breaths as it sleeps.
Even dormant, it radiates violence with coiled muscle, matted fur, and claws that could open a person from throat to groin in one lazy swipe.
Like the one that hunted us.
I think of Diana. Of everything we survived together—the cold nights pressed back to back, the shared rations when neither of us had enough, the way she held my hand when I thought we were going to die once when raiders came too close, and told me it would be okay.
Of the way she looked at me like I was family. Like I was hers.
But nothing good ever comes from this world. It takes and takes until there's nothing left but the ugly choices and the people desperate enough to make them.
I shake my head. “I might be pissed off and betrayed, but I’m not going to murder my friend.”
"You know she never really saw you as an equal," Sid says softly, stepping closer, and I just glare at him like he’s crazy. "She saw a useful body. Someone to absorb the danger while she figured out her next move."
"Shut the fuck up," I say, my lip slightly snarling in disgust. “You’re an insane, disgusting man.”
"She pitied you." He tilts his head, something glassy and wrong in his eyes. “Just like your mother did.”
My jaw locks. “Excuse me?”
He holds a nasty, thin finger up, moving in the air like it’s helping him think. “Every time you cried, your mother changed the subject.” My lips part, as that’s true.
“What, you can read minds or some shit?” I ask, stepping to the side, only for that blade to point right at my stomach.
"I'm not in your head." He smiles, and it doesn't reach anything.
"I'm just saying what's leaking out of you.
You've been alone your entire life." He moves closer still, his voice dropping to something almost gentle, which is worse.
"Your friend doesn't even like you, Selene. She loves the alpha. She’s already replaced you for his knot.” He pauses. "Sound familiar?"
My back hits the wall, as I definitely didn’t tell him my name. “Can you just let me leave alone?”
“All you have to do is open the cage,” he says, tilting his head. “I need you to, I need the betrayal… Or should we talk about Josh?”
“Stop!” I shriek, flashing back to the man that abused me when I was younger.
“Oh, did that do something for you? What about the bathroom when you were seven—” I step away, only to realize it’s in the direction of the cage. “You run in that direction and the beasties in there will kill you.”
I’m nearly hyperventilating as I obviously ignore him, heading down there anyway, only to stop when there’s a massive pit that shows all the gear below moving, and on the other side…
I shriek again, staring at over a dozen eyes of black creatures with massive fangs, all panting and staring at me with their onyx eyes.
I step back toward Sid, looking him over—
He starts to tell me about my childhood. About when it happened. My throat starts to close up when he describes what Josh felt as he did it the pleasure he had—
I slam open the cage door, staring at the beast of what I’ve done, and place a hand on my head. And then the warrog explodes out of the dark, which makes me press my back against the wall as he runs past me.
"No—" The word escapes before I can stop it. "No, no, no—"
Sid is laughing like a mad man as I watch the warrog take off in the direction of where Diana has to be. My mind spirals, visions of my mom, my abusers, my family that left me—
I want to run after the animal to warn Diana, but then I’ll have to watch it rip her apart.
There’s no way I can stop it. I take a few steps forward, only to backtrack just as many.
I can’t watch that. I don’t deserve this!
I slide down the wall, my legs giving out entirely, and the sound that comes out of me doesn't feel like mine. It's ugly and animalistic and too loud for this corridor and I cannot stop it. My throat constricts and it’s like I suddenly can’t breathe, gripping at it as if it’ll help.
"I'm sorry." The words tear out between gasps, pointless, into an empty corridor that Sid has left me in, because there is no one here to hear them and I don't deserve anyone to hear them. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't—"
My lungs stop working right. The air comes in too fast and goes nowhere, my vision tunneling at the edges, hands pressing flat against the floor because it's the only solid thing left and even that doesn't feel real.
I think I'm going to be sick.
I think I'm going to die here on the floor of the Mirage and no one will find me until it's too late and maybe that's exactly what I deserve, and then I’ll have to explain to Diana’s ghost that I’m the reason the warrog got her.
She's going to die because of me.
I press my forehead to my knees and scream into the dark until my throat gives out.