Chapter 35 Xander
XANDER
I couldn't tear my eyes away from the monitors. Our small security room with its ten small screens—five cycling through areas of the compound outside, five offering scenes from inside these walls—was too warm right now. I pulled at my collar, feeling a strange tightness despite the loose fit.
Three hours since we'd dumped her in that hellhole of a room, and not a single tear.
Not one goddamn complaint.
Just eerie stillness.
I hated that the helmet was back in place, and I wasn’t sure why. Who cared if her silvery hair and delicate features were hidden from view? Certainly not me. I wanted this bitch gone.
Not for the first time, I scrolled back through the feed and saw the moment when the helmet slipped over her head, concealing her face.
She’d lifted her hands after, placing both palms flat against her chest. Her shoulders had risen and fallen, risen and fallen, as she breathed.
Something twisted in my gut as I considered whether removing it had caused her pain.
Then I fast forwarded, still waiting for the moment she broke.
I wanted her anger. Her sadness. Her fear.
She gave me nothing, just like the first three times I’d watched.
There was zero indication that our morbid, crude display affected her.
I hunched forward. My eyes were beginning to hurt from watching.
Surely, she’d come back to life soon. She’d freak out.
She’d pound on the bedroom door, desperate to leave.
Fuck, she could at least ask for a damn sheet or a blanket.
Instead, she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the nasty mattress.
Lucy, delicate and small, looked tiny on the king size even in the bulky suit. A brief, sharp pang hit my heart. I hit my chest with a fist, slamming back the unwanted feeling.
My right leg bobbed up and down nervously as I widened my eyes, trying to fight the ache in them. It was like a strange as game of who can blink first, only my opponent never tired.
She moved, stretching her legs out. Her gloved hands rubbed her thighs, maybe rubbing away stiffness. Then she went still again. Move! I mentally shouted. Get up and fucking do something!
But she did nothing.
As if the life had bled out of her.
Maybe this was her brokenness. Maybe this was her defeat. Maybe she’d already fractured to the point of no return.
I leaned back in the chair, letting the worn leather creak beneath me. Closing my eyes against the view which had become painful—both physically and mentally—I took a deep breath. In the dark of my mind, Lucy’s stillness was a new scar that wouldn’t fade.
What the fuck was wrong with me? I didn’t care about her. I didn’t want to care. She was a necessary evil. We had to get through her to gain a chance at a better match. So why did I suddenly feel worse than ever?
For a moment, I wished Asher hadn’t polluted the house air with gasoline fumes.
Those few moments Lucy had the helmet off, I could smell her.
The faintest perfume of Omega pushing through the pungent air.
There was a medicinal taint, but below that something pure.
Cotton clothes air dried outside. The way the world smells right before Summer rain.
Strawberries. Lemonade. She smelled like brightness, despite the fuel stench.
Sitting up quickly, eyes flashing open, I refocused on the monitor live streaming the barren bedroom. I cursed softly under my breath, because she was still motionless.
The heavy door behind me creaked open, drawing my gaze away from the screens. I half turned in the wheels chair, finding my pack brothers tricking in one by one. The already stifling room felt heavier as it grew more crowded.
“Falling apart yet?” Asher swaggered over to me with a grin, leaning down to my right to peer at the screens. His brows furrowed, the playful glint gone as he realized Lucy had moved very little since the last time we all were in this room several hours ago.
“What the hell is she doing?” he asked, tilting his head toward the screen.
“Being a fucking statue, apparently,” I muttered, leaning back in my chair, arms crossed over my chest. “I didn’t know if we’d break her from the start, but I sure as fuck thought we’d make an impression.”
“Look at that,” Nitro laughed darkly, also moving close enough to see Lucy in detail. “just sitting there like a scared little bird. Isn’t she precious?”
I hated that she was so quiet. It was worse, far fucking worse, than screaming.
"Precious?" I scoffed, rolling my eyes at Nitro’s words. "She’s not precious; she’s just pathetic." I leaned forward, my elbows digging into my thighs as I stared harder at the screen, willing her to move. "It’s like someone yanked her batteries out.”
“Then we’ll just have to charge her up properly,” Nitro’s wicked smile grew to devilish proportions.
“Just needs a plug in her socket,” Kane added.
“Maybe more than one. She’s got a few holes.” The gleam in Asher’s eyes made feel sick. But fucking why?
“Enough.” I snapped on impulse, the word forcing itself to life.
My pack brothers all turned to stare at me, expressions caught in various stages of shifting from amusement to surprise.
“I’m just fucking frustrated,” I added quickly, “if she acts like this, we’ll have to wait the entire damn trial period to send her packing.”
“Oh, we’ll break her, Xander.” Fallon, per usual, was cool and calculated.
I could tell he was strategizing, planning the worst we could do without causing irreparable damage to Eros’s ‘product’.
My sharp-minded brother was often the most sinister, because he was able to push things to the precipice and then step back from the ledge in the nick of time.
The rest of us were not so light on our feet.
Thinking about Fallon applying his calculative mind to the Lucy problem caused red to seep in at the corner of my vision. A low growl escaped my throat as I met his gaze. Our eyes locked, a storm brewing in my body. Fuck! What was wrong with me!
I stood up, taking one step towards Fallon, who held up a hand to stop me.
I was holding onto rationality with a tenuous thread, but I didn’t take another step.
Slowly, my head swiveled left, then right, eyes roving over the faces of my pack.
Was I really about to beat the shit out of Fallon because of some bitch that we were all dead set on rejecting?
“Let’s break her,” I breathed, turning back to the monitors. “Into so many goddamn bits, that she’ll be piecing herself back together for the rest of life.”
No pitiful Omega was going to come between me and my brothers.
Twenty minutes later, I found myself alone again. The eerie glowing of the screens had become unsettling. The silence kept growing heavier with each second, punctuated only by my own shallow breathing.
And Lucy didn’t move.
She didn’t readjust her legs.
She didn’t stretch.
She didn’t stand.
After an eternity, when I thought I lose my ever-loving mind, Lucy shifted.
I watched as she stood, staring down at the mattress as if trying to decipher meaning in the stains.
She picked up the medical bag and walked it over to set on the floor near the wall.
Then she grabbed the mattress’s flimsy cloth handle and leaned back, trying to use her bodyweight to yank it across the floor.
The struggle should have made me laugh.
This weakling woman who couldn’t even slide a mattress was piteous.
But no laughter bubbled in my chest.
It took her half an hour to get the mattress against a wall. The tension in the pit of my stomach twisted tighter as she pulled. I watched her body tremble with exhaustion, yet her determination never wavered. When she finally released the handle, she stumbled backward, nearly falling.
She lifted one gloved hand, then the other, giving herself a high five. Ridiculous. Fucking stupid. Why did I want to take her a damn blanket right now?
Lucy resettled herself onto the mattress, back against the wall, legs outstretched. She faced the bedroom door now, visor-shielded face staring directly toward it as if seeing us coming would somehow help her.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” I breathed out the question, voice low. “Do you really think you can survive us?”
I didn’t sleep.
I couldn’t sleep.
Eventually, Lucy’s head lolled forward from exhaustion.
As dawn hit, light creeping into her bedroom, fatigue was trying to pull me under.
I slapped my face a few times, refusing to miss a moment.
Surely, any minute, she’d wake up and realize her situation.
And then we’d be able to teach her an unforgettable lesson.
One she’d never forget. She didn’t belong here, and she never could.
My jaw locked so hard my teeth threatened to crack when Lucy stirred. I shot up from the chair, knuckles blanching white as they crushed the desk edge. My body lunged forward until my face was inches from the screen, pupils dilating as I devoured every microscopic twitch of her body.
I remained there, hands brutalizing the furniture as I studied her, my heart racing in ways I didn’t want to acknowledge. The moment she leaned away from the wall and stretched, suited arms lifting and gloved fingers reaching for the ceiling, I felt something inside me restructure.
What the hell was wrong with me?