Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
KNOX
The limo around me lurched, the world fading and hard to pin in place. It felt like a pillar had been ripped out, and the bond I was trapped in burned with the loss of an Alpha as central as Banner.
Still there. Still chaining me, but agonising.
I’d believed when Ace got to his feet before Bella and made to exit the party that leaving her alive was a slight against me. Something to hold over my head for whatever stupid fucking plans he had next.
But I’d been wrong.
The reason was harder to reckon with as I watched.
The Omega had been dumped at the front of our limo like garbage. A bargain from Ace in exchange for Bella’s life.
She should have passed out by now from the amount of blood she’d lost. She had to be in shock, and she was still clinging to Thistle, even as her skin drained of colour.
I glanced at Rogue. He’d been shot, but he seemed stable. It was hard to tell with him, since he easily forgot his own injuries. Right now, he was cutting his shirt into strips with a knife and shoving them towards me.
Right… I think he’d said something. The urgency in his voice still echoed in my mind. It was hard to focus, but I had to.
So many wounds…
“Fucking coward.” I didn’t realise I’d said the words aloud.
These wounds were anger for me —for Thistle. And Bella had vanished from her own party so she could take it out on a defenceless Omega Thistle had left a claim on.
It was overwhelming, staring at the wounds again and again, trying to figure out what the fuck we were supposed to do. We couldn’t deal with all of them. I wasn’t squeamish around blood—never had been, but the Omega’s fear saturated the space, and with the bleeding wound in my bond…
“Daddy.” Thistle’s violet eyes dragged me down to earth. My chest tightened, instincts overriding disorientation as she held onto this Omega.
“It’s… it’s my fault.”
That agony in her voice, I knew that pain, right down to my very soul.
“No, Doll.” I took a breath, picking up the strips of cloth Rogue had given me. I needed to focus.
“Which are bleeding the most?” Ace’s question grounded me, and I looked at them again. Some were bad, but blood wasn’t pooling around them—not like the one across her stomach. I reached for it.
“Are w-we going to a hospital?” Thistle asked as I began wrapping the wound, shoving aside hesitation at the whimper the Omega—Bambi—made as I did.
“Can’t,” I said.
“What?”
“The Ring will know.” I grabbed the next strip, hating the way Thistle jumped as Bambi shuddered with pain. “It’ll undo everything we did tonight?—”
“But—”
“Tonight was protection , Omega,” Ace cut in. “That includes protection for her.”
“It’s not gonna matter if she’s dead!” Moonflower spiked with anger, mixing with the desperation that saturated the space.
“I don’t think the wounds are deep,” I said. “She should be okay if we get the bleeding under control.”
Was that truth, or desperate hope?
I imagined Bella’s rage. I hadn’t felt it at the time—she could lock the bond down when she wanted to. But I knew her rage. Her hatred. Her jealousy.
This Omega wasn’t dead—but if that’s what Bella had wanted, she would be.
Thistle nodded, using her dress to wipe off Bambi’s hand. “This is Bunny,” she whispered, pushing Bunny into her fingers. “He’ll keep you safe.”
Bambi’s grip closed on the toy, but her gaze snapped back to Thistle as she shifted, reaching for Rogue, who was tearing off the next strip.
The frightened whine that sounded from her was enough to set my hairs on end. More tears tumbled down her cheeks as she fumbled for Thistle, Bunny still clutched in her hands.
“O-okay,” Thistle stammered, shifting straight back to Bambi, eyes wide. “I won’t go nowhere.”
She held on, burying her face into Thistle’s side and not letting go. Slowly, Thistle wove her fingers through her blood-matted hair, stroking it gently, eyes still lost and unsure.
As I secured one of the strips of cloth over one of the worst gashes, Ace’s phone rang. He snatched it up. “I need to talk to Cypress,” he said. There was a pause, then his tone sharpened. “Now.”
Thistle spared a glance at him, then looked back down at Bambi. “Cypress is the best in the business,” she whispered. “You’ll be all patched up in no time.”
A doctor, if I had to guess. Maybe one of the ones he’d had on call with the Brotherhood. I hoped they weren’t far.
“I need you tonight,” Ace said. There was another pause, and a faint response. He snorted. “Bad luck. You’ll have to put up with me a bit longer.”
He typed out a few things after he hung up, glancing at Bambi analytically before tossing the phone at Rogue. “Need the address.”
When we arrived home, we’d barely set Bambi on the dining table off the kitchen when Cypress was buzzed in from the front gates.
The doctor looked as if she was in her late thirties, with dark skin and long box braids tied back in a high ponytail.
She didn’t seem fazed by the wounds as she examined them, not even when she got to the one across Bambi’s face.
Then again, I doubted a physician on call for the Brotherhood would be shocked by much.
“Can I help?” Vance strolled in, first aid kit in his fist, eyes falling on Thistle and Bambi.
I frowned. That was quick.
He spotted my confusion. “Scum—” He cut off. “R—” He winced, trying again. “ This one texted.” He nodded at Rogue without looking at him. “Said we had an Omega incoming.”
He had?
I… should have done that.
I was too slow right now. Not on top of things like I should be. My stupid pack bond felt like being trapped in a hurricane with the windows blown wide open. It was a bleeding wound destabilising my sanity.
Cypress side-eyed Vance for a moment, watching as he tugged gloves from the box she’d provided. “Check on whatever’s going on with him, I’d rather focus on one patient at a time,” she said, nodding faintly in Rogue’s direction.
“I’m fine ,” Rogue grunted as Cypress wiped down Bambi’s arm, IV kit on the table. He grabbed a hand towel from the kitchen and put pressure on it. “Just a graze.”
Cypress rolled her eyes, then returned her attention to Bambi. She’d managed to find a vein, and was pushing a syringe of clear liquid into the IV.
“What is that?” Thistle asked, voice tight as she looked at the drugs. I watched as Bambi’s eyes fluttered closed, and her grip on Bunny loosened as she went limp. “What did you?—?”
“Maverick.” Cypress glanced up at Ace, cutting her off. “Am I here to work, or babysit your traumatised Omega?”
Thistle growled, but Ace caught her before she could launch at the doctor. He lifted her from the table before she could argue, and she spun on him.
“Enough,” he said, taking her chin. “Let her do her job.”
“And you—” Cypress jabbed a bag of fluid at Rogue, eyes flicking to the sticky blood on his shirt. “Sit down. I didn’t bring enough of these for a meathead your size.”
“I said I’m fine .”
“You were shot,” I said. He probably should sit. And Thistle had to calm down too. I rested a hand on her waist.
“Too many hormones in the air,” Cypress said. “She’s scared. She’ll burn through the drugs quicker.”
“I’m not going?—”
“Your scent will help during recovery, but right now I need you out.”
“We can go,” I said.
“No!” Thistle hissed, throwing her weight against me as I pulled her toward the door. “I can’t leave her!”
I had to sling her over my shoulder when she tried to bite my arm, which was a good indication this was the right call.
I took her down the hall to the west wing. I don’t know what possessed me to bring us here, but once the idea had entered my head, I couldn’t shake it.
“I can’t—I gotta go back!” Thistle cried as I shut the door behind us.
“You will be there when she wakes,” I told her.
“Let me go! You don’t understand?—”
She cut off as my hand clamped around her mouth, and I dragged her against my chest. I held her close as I tugged over a stool, positioning it before a dusty canvas I’d set up ages ago. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I picked up an old stick of charcoal from the table beside us.
“I do understand. Let me show you.”
I paused right before the charcoal met paper, heart thundering in my ears, a slight tremor in my fingers as I realised what I was about to do—the world I was about to re-enter.
Then I took a breath, loosening my grip on Thistle, who was no longer fighting me, and began.
The piece formed quickly. The forest was one I’d carved into the cream of a canvas over and over again. I knew every blade of grass, every tree.
Each rustle of leaves above… The beat of my own heart slamming into my ribs.
I used my finger to smudge the lines, blurring shadows and building up the nightmare once more.
I was back in that forest, footsteps crunching through shrubs, a few birds the only sound I could hear. That was good. This place was a sick game, and I was being hunted.
I was alone for a long time, until at last I was stopped by another. The Omega looked maybe eighteen, if that, with black hair and ruddy skin from running. He was distinct, with dark eyes, and one slightly crooked front tooth.
I remembered his fear as he stopped me in the woods, eyes wide as I tried to push him away—telling him to hide, to run, to do anything. At the time I didn’t understand his words, but it didn’t matter. I felt them as if my instincts could understand better than any language.
“Net!” he’d gasped, trying to grab at me. “Alfa… ne brosay menya…” He looked so terrified, fists closing around my shirt. “Zashchitnik! Pozhaluysta…”
He said those words over and over.
After everything, I’d looked up what they meant and was left hollow.
Thistle was still, as entranced by the work as I was.
I made semicircular smudges with my thumb, forming thick clumps along the treetops before I added hard, thin lines of leaves to contrast the blurry shadows.
Bark etched along the shaded side of the trees, with scattered branches peeling outward…
That night in the woods had lasted an eternity.
His name was Adrian. I wouldn’t find out until later where he was from, when we’d made broken attempts at conversation—when he’d point to me and say ‘America’ and then to himself and say ‘Saratov’.
Thistle had found him in this room not long ago, etched into the art here—but was this the only place he remained? Just like me, victims of the Ring rarely had people looking for them.
I hadn’t cared before, how hollow it made me to wonder about that, but this time, when I reached to carve out the centre of the piece, I froze.
This was his place—one he’d never left.
It was the first time I’d crossed paths with Bella Morgan, and the last time I’d seen him. I lifted my hand to draw him again, but it didn’t feel right.
His torture was eternal, his death repeating over and over, a glitch in my system I could never fix. In the Ring I’d seen it endlessly. His was the first torturous death I’d witnessed, not the last. But it had been a long time since I’d been this close to it.
I always knew the fate of the slaves I crossed, but the open wounds across Bambi’s body were fresh, with the tang of iron I could taste with her blood dripping to the floor of my home…
“What happened?” Thistle asked, fingers tracing the place she knew Adrian should be. She’d seen the other one I’d made—the moments of his pain I’d been forced to watch.
“He died.”
His words rang again in my head.
Alpha, don’t leave me…
Protector, please.
Protector…
The thousand distortions of him all blurred the canvas at once. The screams that turned to choked whimpers, that turned to silence.
Bella had enjoyed torturing me as much as him. Forced me to watch the death of an Omega I’d so foolishly promised to protect. She was the scent match I’d just found, though she didn’t know it, and she’d enjoyed carving out the part of me that made me an Alpha.
I was almost insane by the time Rogue appeared and claimed me.
I jumped as I felt a tug on my cuff. Thistle was peering up at me curiously. I looked back to the canvas, but when I pressed the charcoal against it, the lines were unfamiliar this time.
She came to life quickly, with lopsided buns, a plushie at her side, and in her arms she clutched a formless figure.
“Is that…?” Thistle trailed off, as if unsure about the figure she held. Mirroring the scene that had played out moments ago. A figure in her arms, blood running red, soaked with the burden of what it meant to cross the Ring.
“You always draw the pain,” she whispered. “Why?”
I considered that.
What had been the point?
Over and over, I’d immortalised that agony. He’d begged me to save him but instead I’d let him die again and again by the charcoal at the tip of my finger. And every time he died, it shredded any blossoming sanity that had begun to cultivate after I’d become free of Rogue.
“It… hurt,” I said.
Maybe that was the point.
But this time, I couldn’t bring myself to immortalise his suffering. Tonight, for Thistle, the story hadn’t ended in death.
I’d seen Bella’s darkness. There was no world in which Bambi survived the night if we’d left. I was sure, in fact, that Bella hadn’t killed her because she’d hoped to do it in front of Thistle. She’d wanted to do it after Banner was finished…
The pain, the agony, the filth she’d inflicted on the night, the state Thistle would have been in—it wouldn’t have been enough for her.
No amount of begging, of pleading for humanity would have stopped her from dragging Bambi out.
To twist the knife. To turn something sick, into something worthy of hell itself.
“She’s alive,” I breathed.
And I was… The whisper of a thought trailed off into nothingness—something that shouldn’t be allowed to be.
So I drew it, instead.
Another different figure than before.
It was difficult, as if with every stroke my ribs were slowly crushing my lungs, as if they weren’t sure I was allowed this. But the details manifested, until on the canvas there was a figure—a creature clutched in Thistle’s arms.
For the first time, that person in the centre of the canvas was… alive.
I shuddered, panic clawing up my throat, and I dropped the charcoal, reaching out with a flat palm to smudge the whole stupid thing away. Thistle’s squeak of distress caught me—and her grip tightened on my wrist as she tried to drag me back.
I froze, still caught between here, and there. The nightmare I’d never escaped. But slowly, she pulled my hand away, turning and looking up at me with glassy violet eyes until I’d fully relaxed back into the stool.
For the first time since I’d woken in that forest, I was alive, too—and this was the Omega with violet eyes glittering in the dim moonlight—the one who’d saved me.
“You know,” she whispered. “I think your hair is shorter in real life. You should work on that.”
I snorted, swallowing through a thick throat.
“But uh… I thought it was gonna be Bambi,” she grumbled.
I smiled, unable to take my eyes from hers. “Bambi’s yours, Doll. You gotta do your own.”