Chapter 11
Inside was a small space with a bathroom attached, and on the floor a single beat up mattress. Zed slammed the door behind us, then he ripped the gag from me, and I heard the sliding metal sound of a key before there was pressure on the cuffs around my wrists. They were free in moments.
“On your knees. Strip.” He’d changed. Before he’d been taunting me. Now he just seemed pissed.
“Go fuck yourself.”
“You just brought the Brotherhood down on my pack’s head,” he said, lips drawing back in a snarl. “Please, Glade. Be difficult. Find out what happens.”
“We can be civil.”
I needed that as a baseline. They had bailed me out and saved Lucy. That was something. He sneered. “You’re not here because we like you, sweetheart. You’re here because my brother wants you. Don’t think I’ve forgotten who you are, and all the weapons you’re carrying. I’m not above pinning you like a dog and searching you myself.”
I had to work to control my breathing.
“Boots. Toss them.”
I knew the look on his face, and how little he was fucking around when he was in this mood. Zed Maverick rarely fucked around.
I tugged them off and threw them at him with as much force as I could muster. He caught them easily, dropping them to the floor at his feet.
“Socks and robe.”
He tapped his knife against his wrist impatiently. Scowling, I shrugged off the robe, and tugged my socks off, trying to ignore his expression when one of my switchblades tumbled out.
It was small. Not my smallest, but still. The satisfaction twinkling in his eyes made me want to scream.
“Dress.”
“No.”The word came out too fast, carrying with it a bit of panic.
He didn’t understand. I couldn’t.
He raised an eyebrow, but I gritted my teeth, beating back my fear. I didn’t want him to see it, or he might force it on principle.
But if he saw the marks across my back... I swallowed, not wanting to imagine.
Everything I’d ever sacrificed for…
I’d lose it.
He would know the truth he could never know.
“You don’t understand. You have to let me go.”
He ignored me, waiting quietly.
I took a breath, forcing a snarl on my face as I reached for the clasp of my bra and unhooked it. If he wanted to see the weapons, we could do that without losing the dress. He raised an eyebrow as I fought to get it off. I threw it at him too, holding my head high as another folded blade bounced across the mattress. A little part of me calculated going for it, but there was no way Zed wasn’t waiting for exactly that. And then what? Put a knife to his throat to escape.
“Shit.” His eyes were fixed on my tits, which were on full display through the dress.
My lips drew in a snarl.
“Never found a set quite as good, you know? Would it go to your head if I said I missed them?”
My mind battled with that. Never found?
How many Omegas had they been with since I’d left them?
“Trip on your fucking knife,” I spat.
His grin was wide.
“Am I reading that right—are you jealous?”
“I hope it lands right on your dick.”
He stepped toward me, eyes twinkling dangerously. “Oh, the arrogance.”
“Me?”
“Tell me what you think of that, sweetheart? That we’ve banged more Omegas than I can name since you left.”
A wounded growl rose in my chest born of instinct and nothing else. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t, years of agony, of nightmares, catching up to me in one moment. Zed had me by the throat, pinning me to the wall.
“You betrayed us,” he hissed. “You don’t get a claim.”
I shut my eyes, trying to find safety, solace. Trying to calm my breathing. His cool scent of snow santal made it impossible.
“Do you understand me?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’ll bring an Omega home tonight and make you watch,” he threatened.
I buried every instinct deep, buried the pain at the thought, and swallowed every bit of pride I’d so desperately clawed back in the years since I’d escaped Ace.
“I understand,” I hissed.
No claim.
I couldn’t love them.
Even if that love had been the pillar of my survival for years.
Still was, a little voice whispered.
And he could never know that.
“So. That’s all?” he asked.
“All what?”
“All of your spikes?”
“Yes.”
“Say it for me, Little Devil. ‘That’s every weapon I have on me.”
“Get fucked you piece of Maverick trash.”
He sneered. “Glade. If I go searching and you’re a filthy liar, you’ll sleep chained to the foot of my bed.”
I clenched my jaw. “You wouldn’t.”
He raised his eyebrows with such an incredulous look that I cracked. “Fucking—fine. Just let me—” I tried to pull away to the bathroom, but he pressed me against the wall by my neck harder.
“Right. Here. Little Devil.”
I hated him.
I fucking hated him.
It was a task, with him pinning me against the wall by my neck, but at least he didn’t get a view. The last weapon was slim with a soft case, and roughly the size of a tampon.
There was a nasty smirk spreading on his face the whole time.
“Better,” he said, when I had it clutched in my fist. He plucked it from my grip. Then he collected the rest of them up and opened the door, tossing them out before he turned back to me. “Now. Get in the shower.”
“What?”
“You smell like blood and sex, sweetheart. Get in the fucking shower.”
“Sex?”
I hadn’t perfumed that badly, had I?
“You want to get horny for the Alphas you rejected, you’ll have a cold shower every time.”
His pack might have saved my ass today, but Zed was out of mercy. He dragged me to the bathroom and forced me to my knees in the shower. When he turned the water on I gasped. It was frigid. When I tried to scramble out, he shoved me back with his foot.
“Fight me again, I’ll take the dress myself.”
That stilled me, terror made of colder ice than the water running through my hair. That terror seeped to my marrow, a secret I could never give up.
So I remained, shivering on my knees as he sprayed me with the shower like I was an animal.
“Does this get you off?” I asked. “Seeing me like this?”
He barked a laugh like it was a stupid question. “You took our entire life and crumpled it in your self-serving, spoiled Omega fist—and for what?” He looked truly disgusted as he stared down at me. “Status? Pride? Or did you just want to feel powerful?” He crouched, the shower head still in his fist. The jet caught me in the face and I was forced to look away. “I don’t just want you on your knees, I want you to suffer, and I want you to know it’s because of me. You asked why I came tonight? I wanted to find a way to see this.”
I couldn’t answer that, trying to control my breathing. This cold, it was nothing. Not really. I’d faced worse.
His fury was absolute. He was an Alpha who put his pack first no matter what, and I had betrayed him. Them. I had betrayed him the same moment he had been about to extend that protection to me. I didn’t have the strength to contemplate, again, how my life would have looked if I’d said yes to that offer. My chance stolen. I hadn’t known that day how much more could be ripped away.
Hearing his fury, borne of the protection for the very pack I’d damned, though, it was hard not to let those time worn dreams creep back.
“Nothing to say?” he asked.
I remained silent.
I’d endured worse.
I told myself that as I shivered, counting the seconds like I used to do to stay afloat.
Finally, he turned the water off, seeming satisfied.
“Get up.”
I staggered to my feet, needing this to be over. Needing him to be done. His hatred saturated his scent, making it impossible to escape.
He looked me up and down, eyes snagging on my chest where my dress clung for dear life over my tits. He stepped closer and his proximity triggered a cascade of confusing reactions in my half functional Omega brain. Torment crumbled for comfort, as if being close to him might fix everything.
He was my mate, after all.
He’d brought me here to protect me—just like he was supposed to.
I shoved that away much too late.
“You want to know the part that brings me the most satisfaction?” he asked, cupping my chin and forcing me to look at him.
My hair stuck to my face, dripping down my body, and my shivers wracked me head to toe. I jumped as I felt his hand brush the underside of my breast, trailing up just slightly.
Heat speared my core and I stifled a whimper. Traitorous. Desperate. Fucking foolish. He was everything I’d dreamed of through heat after heat. A desperation I’d come to resent.
“I almost believe that if I offered my touch…” His finger circled my nipple through the thin fabric. “...You might just beg.”
I clenched my teeth to fight my whine.
“Why is that, after everything?” he asked. “The scent match? Or maybe I remind you of my brother?”
I flinched back, bile rising in my throat. I reacted in a flash of rage, and struck him across the cheek before I could catch myself.
He went deathly still, head turned, pupils constricted. The cool santal of his scent turning to ice.
“I was going to let you have a visitor—even though you almost got my pack mate killed for her today, but now?—”
“What…?” My voice shook.
Lucy?
He was going to let Lucy in?
I needed to see her.
I shoved the tears back. I’d endured worse, I told myself again. So, so much worse without tears, and yet it was harder to fight them now than ever before.
He was my mate.
He was one third of the tiny slice of comfort I’d used for years as a crutch, and that crutch, flimsy, desperate and weak as it was, was dissolving at last.
A trickle of blood trailed down Zed’s cheek from where my nails had made contact.
He drew his finger along the scratch, examining the drop of blood, a cruel smile on his face.
He pressed his thumb to my lips and I tasted the tang of iron on my tongue. “Kiss it better, Glade. Apologise. Get on your knees and beg me. I might change my mind.”
He was taunting me.
He wouldn’t change his mind.
I could do all of those things, and he would never let Lucy visit. I recognised the wounded pride of a Maverick with deadly clarity. That same look had cost me over and over. That look alone was almost enough to turn me back into the shell I’d once been.
“No?” He took a step back. “Shame. I’d have taken a photo. Would have kept me nice and warm tonight.”
“Fuck yourself.”
His grin widened as he placed a hand on the doorknob.
“Wait—” Shit. He was really leaving? “I n-need a fucking towel.”
I was shivering. The mattress had the thinnest of blankets, and it was freezing in here.
“You aren’t getting shit.” He was opening the door.
He had to be joking.
I threw myself after him just too late.
“If you don’t give me a towel, I’ll get sick and then you’ll have to deal with—!” My voice raised to a screech but he slammed the door in my face.