28. Kane
Kane
T he metal of the gun feels cool in my hands. Its shape is so incredibly familiar. I’ve spent more hours than I can count at the firing range practicing.
But still, there’s something about its weight in my hands that feels unnatural. It’s almost like my fingers are itching to pull the trigger.
I swallow hard.
The red haze, the bloodlust, is something I can normally keep in check. I think there’s just something about seeing the place Luna grew up, hearing how her so-called mother and father speak about her, and knowing the horrible things that were done to her under this roof that makes my blood boil.
“Why the fuck should we listen to you!” Roger spits.
My hands move before I think and the next thing I know, there’s a bullet hole in the wall right beside Roger’s ear. Even with the suppressor on, the bang of the gun is still loud and shocking.
Archer glances over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow at me in question. I just shrug.
“Well, that wasn’t what I had in mind,” Archer chuckles under his breath .
Roger’s eyes are wide and he seems almost frozen in fear, all of his muscles locked. If it weren’t for Madden pinning him against the wall, I don’t know if he would’ve been able to stay standing.
“I can give another demonstration if you’d like,” I growl, my voice low. “My aim may not be as good, though. I’m getting impatient. You could end up losing an ear this time.”
He shakes his head.
“Are you both prepared to cooperate?” Archer asks them both.
“What do we get if we do?” Luna’s mother asks, still squirming against Chase’s hold.
“Damn, woman,” Chase says. “I know drugs is all you can think about, but Kane literally just nearly shot your husband.”
“Life would be better if he’d actually shot him,” She mutters.
“You’re a fucking cunt, Carol,” Roger yells back at her.
Archer’s getting more visibly upset again. Understandably so, these two seem to just be set on arguing with each other.
“This isn’t going to fucking work with both of them in the same room,” Archer mutters under his breath. “Madden, go have Roger here give you a tour around the house. Have him show you the places where they kept Luna.”
“Come on,” Madden says, practically dragging the man by the collar of his shirt.
“Now. Your turn, Carol,” Archer says, turning. “Bring her to a seat, Chase.”
Chase drags her over to one of the rickety-looking wooden kitchen chairs, setting her down. “No reaching for any more knives,” he says, reaching down and picking up the knife she tried to stab him with earlier and sliding it back into its place in the knife block.
“Fine,” Carol says, rolling her eyes.
“You said Luna’s not your daughter. Whose daughter is she, then?”
“I dunno exactly who, all I know is she was brought here to us by a man who promised us a bit of money if we took care of her when she was a baby.”
“Did you want to take her in?”
“Fuck no,” She spits. “I ain’t never wanted a kid. Roger was the one who agreed before I could say anything.”
“When did the drugs start coming into play?” Chase asks, leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed.
She shrugs. “I’ve always used.”
“When did it start getting bad?”
She narrows her eyes at him. “You don’t know me, I don’t have a fuckin’ problem.”
“Lady, you just tried to stab me with a kitchen knife. If that’s not you tweaking out, I don’t know what is.”
She rolls her eyes. “Roger started getting me harder pills after we took her in. It was great, ‘cause I dunno how else I would’ve survived raising a fucking kid I never wanted. It got better when we figured out she’d become an omega.”
The three of us freeze. My muscles are so tense, I feel like I’m going to explode. The last thing I would’ve expected would’ve been for her to volunteer this sort of information without any more pressure. Especially considering the fact that she didn’t even flinch when I nearly shot her husband.
“What did you do when you found out she was going to be an omega?” Archer asks, his voice low and controlled as if he’s barely keeping himself in check.
“We hid her away the moment Roger smelled a hint of pre-awakening. Took her out of school, didn’t let her outside,” she shrugs. “Didn’t want anyone else hearing or smelling that she was going to be an omega and ruining things for us.”
Fuck. She wasn’t allowed to go outside ever since she went into pre-awakening? Pre-awakening happens around the time puberty really kicks in, so she could’ve been as young as thirteen when she was basically locked away. No wonder she just didn’t know a lot about how the world worked .
“Ruining what?” Archer pushes.
The fierce scowl on Carol’s face that was there when she first appeared returns.
“Ruining everything!” She eyes all of us up and down. “I bet you guys are here ‘cause you met her. She’s got all of you wrapped around her little omega pinky, and you just had to come in here guns blazing.”
I’ve met beta women like her before. There’s a sort of prejudice they have against omegas where they feel like omegas have everything easier.
There’s some sort of truth to it. Biologically, alphas and omegas are hardwired to be attracted to each other. Omegas physically cannot be without alphas during their heats or else things go wrong. The societal structure we have here mimics that sort of pattern.
But still, Carol’s opinion and the opinions of people like her leave a bad taste in my mouth.
It reminds me of how people tend to view omegas, especially omegas without status, as objects.
Worst of all, it reminds me of how people thought of omegas like my mom: like property that could be stolen back.
“The whole reason why that ungrateful girl was given to us was so we could keep her from other alphas.”
“Is that why you sold her to betas instead?” I growl, my knuckles going white around my gun.
Carol’s laugh is almost like a maniacal cackle.
“Getting on her back and earning us some more money was the least she could do for us after all we did for her. Plus, we got permission to do that.”
“Permission from who?” Archer growls.
“The alpha who gave the girl to us. He wanted to be the only alpha that’d ever use her, but he didn’t really think much of betas, so he didn’t mind. I think he saw it as training her.”
I see the muscle in Archer’s jaw clench. “Who is this alpha?”
Carol just shrugs. “He went by Niall. Don’t know too much more than that, though, I’m not one for questions, especially since the guy was getting me my pills.”
“Thank you for answering our questions,” Archer says.
“No need to thank me, where’re my pills?” Carol’s eyes get wilder and the muscles in her body tense.
“We didn’t say anything about giving you any pills,” Chase says, a look of genuine bewilderment on his expression.
“But I helped you! It’s the fucking least you can do!” She stands from the seat, screaming in Chase’s face.
Chase’s expression immediately grows serious. She moves a lot more quickly than I ever would’ve expected from a woman of her age and stature, and starts clawing at Chase’s face.
“Fucking come on! Seriously?” Chase yells before knocking the woman out. He holds her body away from his as he lets her unconscious body slump to the floor.
There’s an angry red welt across his cheek where she scratched him.
“You good?” I ask him.
“Fine,” he says, wiping at his cheek with the back of his hand. “Should’ve expected something like that.”
Archer glances up from his phone, nodding to both of us. “I asked Madden to come back up here.”
Madden appears in the hallway a second later, a dark scowl on his face as he drags the smaller beta man along with him. “You gotta see this shit,” he growls.
He’s not even aiming his glare at Roger, but Roger might as well be so scared he looks like he’s almost going to piss himself.
Madden guides us down the hall, nudging open a bedroom door to reveal a room the size of a closet. It’s absolutely tiny with nothing but a twin-sized mattress on a rusty frame and a small set of drawers at the foot of the bed.
“This was her bedroom,” Madden says.
The one thing that catches my eye is the windowsill.
There are a few books there. Luna mentioned something about really liking to read.
Considering those are the few things that’re actually in the room, besides the basic essentials, I’d assume they’re important to her. I need to remember to grab them.
Madden continues dragging us down the hall before stopping at another door. This one is thicker, newer, and overall, doesn’t fit the dilapidated feel of the rest of the house.
“This is where she spent her heats,” Madden growls.
The rest of us stiffen as he opens the door, revealing a dark staircase down to a dingy concrete cellar space.
As we head down, there’s the obvious smell of dust from the cardboard boxes in the corner, but also the hint of something overwhelmingly sweet it almost chokes me. The air is thick with it.
It’s the smell of an omega who never got relief from an alpha during her heat. It’s the scent of Luna’s pain.
Even though she hasn’t been in this room in a long time, the scent is so strong it lingers down here, soaked into the cardboard and coating the room like its own sort of twisted, hormone dust.
The blood in my veins boils when I see a dingy pallet in the corner of the room, where the acrid scent is most obvious.
“Your turn to answer fucking questions, motherfucker,” Madden growls, aiming the full force of his glare down at Roger.
“So this is where you locked Luna away during her heats?” Archer asks, his rage making his voice shake.
“It—it’s 'cause I was ordered to.”
“By this Niall person?”
Roger’s eyes widen at the sound of that name.
“Your wife spilled,” Chase says, his jaw ticking as his eyes continue to bounce around the small room.
“Who is he?” Archer growls.
“I—I can’t tell you.”
I step forward and slam my fist into his jaw, making him stumble to the side and into a pile of cardboard boxes.