Chapter 40
Flynn barely hesitated.
His teeth at my neck were everything my nightmares were made of. Only, this time, he wasn’t threatening a dark bond. There was a slam on the window as if the weight of a body was being thrown against it, and I heard a faint shout, raw and desperate.
Ransom was gone.
Umbra was gone.
Dusk’s terror was the last thing I felt.
The gun vanished and Flynn grabbed my arm, turning me and slamming me back against the table as he dragged my neck into an arch and sank his teeth into my flesh. A whine escaped my chest as I felt the pain of his vicious mark precisely over Dusk’s bond.
One bond replaced another, as he took my mates from me.
I shuddered, throat closing up as Dusk’s presence in my mind turned to smoke.
Tears flooded my face as I was ripped from one pack to another. It was a strange and uncomfortable sensation. The place I left was home, and this new one… it was cold and empty.
I squeezed my eyes shut, fingers digging into the table.
“That’s it, then?” Gareth’s voice was low. “It’s healed?”
“Is it instant?” Flynn asked. “Should be, right?”
Flynn’s grip fell away, but I didn’t dare open my eyes, not yet. “I’ll consider freeing them when we’re far out of range. They’re fucking insane, and I don’t trust them to not do something stupid.”
“I want my bite now,” Gareth growled. I jumped violently at his touch as he lifted me roughly so I was sitting on the table, closer to his height. Sesame seed and sunflower made me want to gag.
My breathing was ragged, and my eyes were still closed as my memories flashed back to the day I’d visited Uncle.
“Shatter,” Uncle said, catching me before I left.
I turned to him, clutching my bag to my chest, trying so hard not to feel defeated.
“There’s something else,” he said.
I waited, and he looked uncomfortable. “Your death wasn’t the only thing I lied about.” His lips were drawn in a flat line.
“What?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t have survived that injection. The consequences were far more… unpredictable than we ever imagined. There was… one other thing. I never told the Institute because I knew, if I did, they would never let you remain here. They would have taken you and locked you up forever.”
My blood chilled. “What do you mean?”
It was a truth I should have known since the moment I’d woken.
From the blinking ERROR sign, when I’d seen the kaleidoscope of colours in clinical, white lights above.
In the hours it had taken before they’d freed me from the bindings that strapped me to the table, agony tore through my body over and over.
When my breathing had dissolved to wails and I’d realised the truth I couldn’t see—not with my head bound in place. Not when all that was in my vision was the blinking sign, and the broken glass upon one of the monitors that had been dragged on its side, tilted against the wall.
And I’d wondered, endlessly, why it was like that?
Why was it broken—as if someone had grabbed it violently?
Why had it taken them so long to get me out?
Something had gone wrong.
I’d been given something I shouldn’t have. I may have no past, but that I knew. When I was finally rescued, it was by figures in white suits with their faces masked.
And I’d known by then, why it had taken so long.
That I’d already begun to beg to be freed over and over, as I realised that around me were bodies, still and lifeless.
I was left there long enough that their smell of decomposition began to rise in the air. The Institute had wanted to keep me for more than just the fact that I was broken.
They had wanted to keep me because they weren’t sure I wasn’t dangerous.
A trickle of blood rolled slowly down my neck from Flynn’s bite, hot against each goosebump it trailed.
Please…
“I’ve been dreaming of biting you since the last time.” Gareth’s breath was hot against my neck. His scent smothered me, vicious and possessive. Doubt turned my stomach, panic lurking at each second that passed.
What would I see if I opened my eyes?
Was it enough?—?
His teeth sank in, making me jump, the bite so much more painful than Dusk’s had been.
“The full, and final effects of the experimentation came when that alpha tried to form a bond with you—a bond you didn’t want.”
I frowned at my Uncle, thinking back to the alpha with a goatee, the bond he had tried to make. “But I tried to say yes.”
“Did you truly want it Shatter?” Uncle asked. “Or were you just afraid?”
I stared at him, unsure how to answer that.
“The want—the true want of an omega matters greatly,” he went on. “Some packs think they can get by with a dark bond simply because a seer will confirm it was accepted. But if it was blackmail, coercion—if it was never truly wanted, there will be sickness in that connection. Those packs wither. They turn on one another, cursed and decaying.
We who study this field for a long time know that truth, even if it is hard to quantify. We might have manufactured the dark and princess bonds, but there is no tricking nature.”
“What does that mean?”
“When he tried to bite you into a connection you didn’t want, he became sick.”
“Sick?”
“Atropa’s poison—the modified substance designed to drive alphas to kill—believing if they don’t they will die themselves. The same poison you were accidentally injected with. That unwanted bite he gave you sent him into a frenzy.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your blood,” he said. “It poisoned him.”
A click echoed in the room. The sound of a gun cocking.
I heard a low rumbling growl behind Gareth.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Eric sounded shocked.
Three auras flared, and Gareth’s hands released me as a gunshot split the air.
“But… but I’ve been bitten before,” I said, staring at Uncle, confused.
“I believe the full effects of the poison were only an issue when the bite was intended as a bonding mark—but, more importantly, when it was unwanted.”
“If the Institute knew?—”
“They don’t.”
“That’s what you lied about?”
He leaned back, expression suddenly cool. “If they had discovered your blood became poisonous in defence against unwanted bonds, they would have taken you without a doubt. Perhaps, for the safety of society, but more likely to discover how to reverse engineer such a thing. Alphas and omegas with poisonous blood? I think I’ve seen quite enough experimentation in my lifetime not to contribute more to that.”
“D-did he live?” I asked.
“Barely. We managed to contain him before he hurt anyone. You had fled to the gardens, thankfully—Lauren didn’t want you to know. She believed you had suffered enough.”
My mind raced with that information, processing it all, filing it away, trying to find something of use in it for my pack.
Blood was sharp in the air, and I tried to pretend it was tangled with wolfsbane. The world was still pitch black, my eyes squeezed shut as my nails dug into the table.
Another gunshot echoed, making me jump violently.
A savage snarl tore through the air.
The poison was taking hold. Poison Umbra and Dusk had already survived for their willingness to die for each other. Poison the Lincoln pack would not live through.
I couldn’t look, not until I heard the violent pounding on the window. It was the only thing that gave me the strength to open my eyes. Their absence was a void in my chest, and I needed them.
The world spun as I looked around, unable to avoid the fight before me.
“Fuck—!”Flynn was clutching his side, holding himself up against the wall. Gareth had Eric pinned to the ground by his neck. Eric’s eyes were wide as he fought, and for one, strange moment they met mine.
I saw his terror and confusion, but all I felt was dread.
Gareth looked mad, pupils constricted as poison tore through his veins as he strangled his own pack mate, succumbing to the very drug he’d watched given to others all those years ago.
Eric’s face was ruddy and he struggled between reaching for the gun and throwing Gareth off. I tried, again, to drag my eyes from the way Eric’s movements became weaker with each second.
I took a breath, chin quivering.
Dusk was right there.
Why couldn’t I look at him?
Tears wet my cheeks, pulse thready in my veins.
“This…” I whispered, trying to drag my eyes away from the fighting alphas. They were dying, and I hadn’t… I swallowed. I had never wanted anyone to die.
In my periphery, I saw movement stop, the choked, gurgles cutting off at a dull crack that shook me to the core.
I felt the loss of one of the alphas in this vile bond with me like a knife to the heart.
Eric was gone.
That was… that as forever. Unchangeable. I shook.
“This is a lot, you know?” I released the desk, fingers tangling together tightly enough that the pain distracted me for just the briefest of seconds.
I had to look up.
To look away from what was before me.
To see who I was protecting.
It would help… right?
“Uncle?” I asked. “I have one more question. It’s about aura contracting. There are a few times when one alpha or pack is obliged to surrender a bond for it to pass from one pack to the next.”
“Like when a pack negotiates for their scent match from a dark bond?” he asked.
I nodded. Just like that. It wasn’t what I was asking about, but it was the closest thing I’d heard of that mirrored what Flynn had over the Lincoln pack: the bond he had to surrender in order to free Umbra and Dusk.
“If those negotiations began, and the pack with the dark bond destroyed themselves before a resolution, would that constitute a surrender?” I asked.
I needed to know how the principle worked.
Uncle narrowed his eyes, considering. “I… I think so, yes. But I’m not sure. I’ve never heard of that happening.”
I nodded, knowing now what I needed to find.
Proof that it worked. A case study in which a pack had died before the negotiations completed. Or even better, that a pack had destroyed themselves before that moment.
The last piece of the puzzle I needed to know beyond doubt, and the answer—that study Mord had pulled me from—I’d never been able to read it.
Everything that happened from here—it was unknown.
My soul shook as I watched. There was blood everywhere. Flynn’s aura, healed from the princess bond I’d accepted, was strong in the air as he fought with Gareth.
“Shatter!”
I heard my name. Faint through the thick glass, but it was enough, even in this nightmare, to drag my gaze away. Yellow eyes fixed on mine and I felt my lungs unlock.
The sounds in this room were horrible, enough for years of nightmares, but I could see Dusk.
He was an alpha made of vengeful fury, and yet right now, as his enemies died before him, he wasn’t looking at them. His palm was on the glass, eyes fixed on me as he spoke furiously, and I could see the words upon his lips.
“Look at me!”
At a strangled, desperate whine from my left, I almost glanced back, my frame tense, tears burning my eyes, but I didn’t.
Even when I felt the death of another alpha in this bond with me.
The bright yellow of Dusk’s gaze was enough. I reached my hand toward his, placing it on the glass, trembling to the bone as the sounds of fighting in the room died down at last.
My heart raced.
Ragged breaths were all that was left.
One alpha.
Flynn or Gareth?
I had to wait. I heard the scrape of metal upon the concrete floor and the click of a gun. I didn’t look back, but for the briefest of seconds, Dusk faded and the reflection of the room came into focus.
Flynn was there.
The gun was in his hand, pointed, not at me, but to his own temple.
One. Alpha. Left.
“Shatter!”
Bright yellow returned, fixed on me, my hand to his and my whole body jolted with the ear splitting bang!
And with that, my mates’ bond flooded back.
My breath caught, tears blurring away the most beautiful eyes in the world as I felt them.
And not just any bond…
Something… new.
Something more powerful than it had ever been. Flynn Lincoln had taken everything from Umbra and Dusk, had stolen from body, to soul, to the scent match that should have been theirs. But the twisted bond he had offered me now became a gift to the alphas he’d tried to destroy.
My breathing was short and sharp, the scent of blood strong in the room. Too strong.
Blood and death, caused by me…
All of this…
My palm remained on the glass, Dusk’s eyes holding mine for… I don’t know how long. Then blood tangled with wolfsbane.
“Nightshade…”Umbra’s voice was low as his touch soothed my terror and I was drawn away from the glass as huge arms enveloped me. He pulled me against his chest and I clutched him, trembling violently, relief shattering my fear at last, and blackness seeped in.
He was back.
My alpha was back.
Tethered to me by the strongest bond in the world; to a princess bond that made my pack whole at last.