9. Brylee
9
brYLEE
“I don’t feel so good,” I murmur, my head lolling against my chest. Fuzzy cotton balls have taken up residency in my head. No, not cotton balls…bowling balls. They slam against my skull every time I attempt to move. A searing pain explodes behind my eyes.
“It’s okay, baby. I have you.” He glances over his shoulder at his packmate and brother, who stands on my other side, one of his tattooed arms around my waist. “ We have you.”
I try to speak again—though I have no idea what I intend to say—but the words catch in my throat like fish in a net. All that comes out is a garbled “ughh” and a little bit of saliva.
Once again, the two men exchange glances, furrows between both of their brows. The final member of their pack moves to stand in front of us. He forks a hand through his reddish-brown hair, his movements jerky with agitation and something else. An emotion I can’t quite name.
“They should be here shortly,” he tells the two alphas on either side of me.
Who are “they”?
Where is “here”?
I remember being at the club with my alphas. Dancing. Laughing. And yes, admittedly, drinking, but I only had one, and it was a fruity cocktail with more juice than alcohol inside of it. Definitely not enough to make me feel this shitty.
“I don’t feel so good,” I repeat, willing myself to lift my head and stare into my lover’s searing green eyes. He’ll know what to do next. How to take care of me. He always does.
His expression is pained when he says, “I know, baby. But you’ll be okay soon.”
The alpha on the other side of me blows out a breath, that one noise laced with a plethora of emotions he struggles to express with words. This one is the sensitive alpha. Sweet. Compassionate. Always willing to make me hot chocolate when I’m feeling sick.
But just now, his eyes glimmer with pain, not sympathy. Then, in a choked voice, he rasps out, “I’m so sorry, Brylee.”
Huh?
I think I may have said that out loud. Or maybe I just think it. Confusion weighs down on me like a coat woven out of lead strips.
I hear the squealing of tires, and then a rusty black van pulls into the parking lot. The side door opens, and an unfamiliar man peers out at us. I don’t remember a lot of details about him except for his eyes. They’re such a shade of light blue, they could be white in some settings.
“You boys did good.” A grin tugs up his lips.
My two lovers release my arms simultaneously, and I stagger forward, feeling unsteady and confused. Rough hands grab at me and then haul me into the vehicle. I land on my palms and knees with a choked sob, but the physical pain is nothing compared to the terror rushing through me.
What the hell?
No. No. No. No.
Just before the door to the van slides shut, I lift my head and turn so I can see my alphas one last time. They’re not my scent match mates by any means, but I chose them as my own. Thought I loved them. Thought they loved me.
They stand shoulder to shoulder now, their expression impassive, the only tell of their tension the way their knuckles whiten. The triplets maintain eye contact with me until the door slides shut, obscuring them from view.
And then the van is weaving away with me inside of it.
My feelings of confusion and fear alchemize into something new, something I can barely articulate.
My alphas…
My pack…
They betrayed me.
I don’t know to who, and I have no idea why, but they discarded me as if the last year and a half meant nothing to them.
Tears burn where they land on my cheeks, and I twist my head to smother my sob. But it still comes out anyway, ripping through the silence like the crack of a whip.
One of the guys in the van—and I think there are at least six, though I could be seeing double—begins to chuckle. Blue Eyes twists where he sits in the passenger seat and offers me a malicious smile that has fear percolating low in my gut.
“Welcome to hell, little princess. Let’s see just how much your mommy and daddy love you.”
* * *
I wake with a gasp, heart pounding, throat clogged, and terror sweeping through my tired body in a raging inferno. I suddenly feel too hot, too constricted, and kick off the blankets.
At first, I don’t know where I am. I half expect to be in that tiny, abnormally bright room my captors brought me to. But then my heart rate begins to calm as I take stock of the familiar surroundings. The framed picture of me, Caran, and Teddie. The unicorn stuffed animal I won at a fair when I was a little girl. The green backpack I stole from my brother. My Darling uniform, immaculately ironed and hanging off the back of the desk chair.
Darling Academy.
Safe.
I’m safe.
I repeat that mantra in my head as I reach for my phone on the bedside table. It’s a little after five, which means breakfast should start soon. Since it’s a Tuesday, I have to hightail it over to Eros Academy before eight for my first class of the day. At least it’s a lecture. I don’t think I can handle starting the day with brutal hand-to-hand combat, especially after the night I had.
A tremor works its way down my spine as I force myself out of bed, force myself to get ready for the day.
I haven’t had a nightmare about my exes in…fuck, I don’t even know how long. They aren’t usually the stars of my bad dreams. That position is reserved for the men my alphas handed me off too.
I know innately what’s the cause of this particular nightmare.
The masked alpha.
My…scent match.
Another tremble ricochets through me.
Did he smell me, or were my scent blockers effective? Who is he? Will I see him again? I pray that I won’t.
It’s no secret that I don’t want a mate—or mates. The triplets were an exception, and one that cost me everything.
Trusting people only leads to pain. How can it not? Everyone has an ulterior motive. They smile when you face them and then stick a knife in your back the second you look away. What makes me think that the giant I saw would be any different? He’s wearing a mask, for fuck’s sake. That has to mean something.
My throat feels clotted, and an acrimonious tension seeps into my muscles.
I just have to stay calm.
Stay calm.
Stay calm.
No one will hurt you, Brylee. They can’t. They don’t know you’re an omega. If you keep up the ruse, you’ll survive this year unscathed.
But what if I run into the masked alpha again? What if he has a pack?
Oh god.
Panic beats in my chest, and I find myself dialing a familiar number before I can think better of it. She owes me. She fucking owes me. I’ll beg if I have to. I’ll?—
“Hello? Brylee? Is that you?” My mother’s cold, slightly accented voice isn’t the balm it should be. It doesn’t envelop me in a feeling of comfort or serenity. If anything, the sludge in my veins turns to ice, and that ice expands to my joints, which freeze over. My grip around the phone tightens.
My mother…the queen.
It’s not completely uncommon for a woman to be an alpha. We have schools for talented female alphas all across the country. However, while the men train to fight on the front lines, the women are taught how to analyze problems and solve them. They’re our best war strategists and negotiators. Yes, the male alphas are taught these things too, but the women are only taught them. It’s a fucked-up, sexist system that I despise but can’t change.
My mother was one of those alphas and quickly rose to the top of her class. It’s then she met my father, an omega, and the crowned prince of the kingdom. The rest, as they say, is history.
A part of me thinks my mother despises marrying my father. She loves him, but she hates being confined to a castle. She may not have been fighting on the front lines, but she was there , hidden away, devising strategies to ensure our side would win each and every battle. And I know for a fact that she does despise having me and Teddie. She had to, as the queen, but she passed us off to nannies as soon as she could. She always regards us with thinly veiled distaste, as if we’re inconveniences she’s being forced to interact with.
She didn’t even care when Teddie got sick.
When I got…
I shut that shit down before it can fester.
Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true. Mother doesn’t know the extent of Teddie’s illness, but it’s only because she’s a judgmental shrew who never changes her mind after she makes it up, and she decided long ago that Teddie’s sickness was just a phase. She did send a team to rescue me, but that was probably because she didn’t want our enemies to know we were weak enough to lose the princess.
“Brylee? What do you want? I’m terribly busy.” I can hear the telltale sound of my mother’s heels clacking against the floor in the background. Even though it’s barely five in the morning, she’s probably already been to three or four meetings. I swear she’s a robot. That’s the only logical explanation.
“I need a favor,” I blurt. No point in beating around the proverbial bush.
There’s a beat of silence and then a “I see.” That’s it. Nothing else.
Silence stretches as she waits for me to say more, to explain myself.
“I need to remove some professors at Eros Academy. Or maybe they’re students. Or maybe it’s just one person.” God, I seem to have a serious case of verbal diarrhea. What the fuck am I even doing? Why did I think this was a good idea?
Because you panicked, dumbass.
Yuuuup.
“What are you rambling on about, Brylee? Did something happen with some alphas?”
Am I mistaken, or is that genuine worry in her tone? No. Probably not. Maybe she’s just constipated and on her way to the bathroom.
“There’s this alpha…” I struggle to come up with an excuse. Saying “I’m pretending to be my twin brother and ran into my scent match at the academy,” isn’t going to cut it.
“And?”
I can practically visualize her arching an elegant blonde brow.
“I think he’s stalking Teddie,” I stammer, scrambling to come up with an explanation that isn’t completely shit.
So of course, that makes me come up with an explanation that is completely shit.
My god, Brylee. Stop talking.
“They could be traitors to the crown trying to harm the prince,” I continue to blurt out like a fucking dumbass. At this point, I’m not just going to get the alpha removed from the school but executed. “Or he is. I don’t know if he’s on his own or if he has a pack.”
“You’re not making any sense, Bry. Is it one alpha? A pack? A student? An instructor?”
“He’s huge. And has a skeletal mask. He may have a pack.” The hand holding the phone begins to tremble. “But he needs to leave the school. He could be a threat to Teddie?—”
My mother releases a weary sigh. “Brylee, sweetheart… Are you sure you aren’t projecting some of your issues?—”
“Mom, it isn’t about that!” I squeeze my eyelids shut and count to ten in my head. “I just don’t think?—”
“Alpha Team X is the best of the best,” Mom says placatingly.
“So you know who I’m talking about, then?” I ask, somewhat desperately and one hundred percent hysterically.
Mom chuckles, though the noise is devoid of any humor, as is usual with the ice queen. “There are only so many alphas that fit that particular description.” Her tone takes on a gentler tone, which for her, sounds like she just sucked on a lemon. “Honey, I know how paranoid you have become since the…incident. But I promise you, Alpha Team X isn’t a threat to Teddie or to you.”
“But…” I don’t know what else to say. I fucked up. Jumped the gun and all that shit. I should’ve never called my mother.
“I have a meeting I need to get to. I’ll talk to you in a little bit.”
Before I can say anything more, my mother hangs up.
And I spend the next few minutes staring at my phone, wondering how epically I just fucked everything up with my impulsive decision.