Chapter 32
VANDLE
The gym seemed duller than usual. Everything always did after I’d been around Crescent.
It was late afternoon, and the gym was busy. The air was heavy with stale sweat, and flaring auras, buzzing like halos of static giving strange, artistic smudges to overlay the greyscale scene before me.
Around us were constant clangs of heavy weights hitting worn old mats, benches busy with packs letting off steam. On one side of the room, rut cages lined the walls, which weren’t the central display cage fights that the Redgraves so often hosted.
I passed a few brawls going on in the sparring field—the open space in the middle of the gym—and toward the others.
I spotted a few members of the Emerald and Wakefield packs first, then caught sight of Sin doing chin ups, while Karma let loose on a punching bag that looked like it was holding on by a thread. As I approached, old foam burst out of one side, forcing him to turn it around.
His aura wasn’t out right now (likely to preserve the life of the punching bag), but I knew what it would look like if he did decide to let it out.
“Spar? I asked. Trying to settle Karma’s unstable aura was something we could do today.
“You’re worried I’m going to crack?”
I snorted. “Or me.”
Crescent had dragged me solidly back to sanity, but it didn’t mean I was fully stable.
We went a few rounds before taking a break. Karma headed off to take a piss in the nasty gym bathroom, and Sin, who had been focused on his own workout, paused to bring us some water from the fountain.
“How’s it looking?” he asked before Karma had returned.
“Not… great,” I said after taking a drink of the metallic-tasting water. It wasn’t long now until the appeal, so there was just as much chance he might have an episode before, during, or after.
“We still have Crescent, though. So if anything goes wrong, I don’t think he’ll seem… violent?”
I had to cross my fingers.
Karma arrived to take the cup from me, and I was distracted by the approach of a bulky alpha with a black eye and a few smears of blood on his face.
“Vandle, right?” He held out a hand.
I took it before I could register the tenseness from Sin which meant I might be missing some crucial politics.
Whatever.
“Mind taking a look at our packmate?” he asked, pointing two fingers at his eyes to indicate mine. “Want to know how their auras are looking. Appeal in a few weeks.”
“Sure.”
He turned and pointed out two alphas who were in the sparring field, brawling on the ground.
I took a look. Both alphas had their auras out, so it was an easy assessment. “One on the left is fine. Right, looks like he’s on a knife’s edge. Could go either way on appeal day, but stress tends to destabilize, so I’d do what I can between.”
“Any advice?” the pack lead asked.
I sighed as this information manifested from my missing memories without an issue at all. “Keep sparring. Shore up pack bonds—” I cut off, realizing the next thing I’d been about to say was get an omega. But I didn’t think we needed more targets on our backs, so I stopped there.
See. I could do politics.
He nodded. “Alright. Thanks.” He clapped me on the shoulder and left.
I caught Sin rolling his eyes as I turned back to them. “What?”
“Gotta ask for favours if you’re going to do that.”
“We’re out in like… five seconds,” I said, though it hadn’t occurred to me.
I was still getting a grip on the politics of this place.
“You would have been useless even if you hadn’t been feral,” Sin muttered.
Rude.
Right as I thought it, there was a howl across the gym.
I spun, tense, but the threat wasn’t nearby. It took me a moment to hone in on it, but there was a deadly brawl going on in the sparring field. The pack I’d just assessed was nowhere to be seen—though I doubt they wanted anything to do with this attack when their appeal was coming up.
One alpha was already slumped, clutching his broken arm; a few more were backing up to encircle him, but the packs—attacking them outnumbered them and had boxed them in.
Everyone else on the sparring field was slipping away, clearly not wanting to get involved.
Good choice. Those packs were out for blood, though I didn’t know why.
I noticed, then, that one of the alphas being encircled had his hand around another—a slender, dark-haired man who was tense. The others were focused on protecting him, even more than their packmate with the gruesomely broken arm.
Goosebumps lit on my skin, as if my instincts worked it out first.
One of the attackers pounced, trying to break the wall of guys boxing them in. His aura flared, and I could see the glint of a knife before he fell limp.
“Fuck,” Sin muttered at my side.
“What?” I spared him a glance.
“That’s the Leo pack.”
Ah.
Shit.
I might not be great with politics, but I did know the Leo pack.
Their appeal call was today—so close to ours. Phantom, Karma, and Sin were honed in on their fate, because they would be the only pack trying to get out of here with an omega in tow before us.
It was putting them all on edge, and me by proxy. It was the first thing they’d been listening for when the doors unlocked this morning, but the call for appeal over comms didn’t come.
It often happened first thing, but there wasn’t a true routine to it. The only thing you could rely on was that it would happen during daytime hours when the cells weren’t locked.
It seems they’d come to the gym to pass the time, and it had given us all front seats to their massacre.
The smaller one in the middle, I now knew that was their omega.
“Watch their allies,” Karma murmured to me and Sin.
I glanced around, but I couldn’t tell anyone apart.
“Not doing a thing,” Sin replied.
I found myself taking a small step forward, but Sin caught my arm. “Do not go over there. There is nothing we can do,” Sin muttered. “Not without getting ourselves killed.”
None of it felt natural, but I knew he was right—even if he hadn’t just given me a dark bond command. The kind that gripped me by the back of the neck and held tight, threatening pain if I tried to disobey.
I couldn’t look away, though, as the alphas fell, one by one. Throats slit, necks snapped, all with an audience.
Finally, it was only the omega left.
He tried to run, but even from here I could see the stark terror and agony on his face.
His whole pack had been eviscerated in less than a minute.
One of the attackers chased, catching him in moments, and I heard his cracked scream as he was pinned down. I flinched—they wouldn’t—my hackles rose at the omega’s wild growls, but they didn’t kill him.
Karma looked as tense as I did, but he also remained stock-still. We’d need a few more spars; none of this was good for stability.
It felt like no one moved as the pack lead pinned him face down and sank his teeth into his neck. The blackened, poisonous mark was clear even from this distance.
If I was closer I knew, through my eyes, it would be different to the way Crescent’s looked. As a seer, I was able to identify if a dark bond was accepted by an omega, or forced.
My omega’s was as clear as the dark mark of a bond like that could get.
The omega wasn’t fighting anymore, and it was chilling how the quiet settled, as if the bloodbath hadn’t happened.
No more growling or struggling. The pack lead must have given a command, because the omega didn’t fight when he was released.
I watched as they left the gym, prize in tow.
The omega turned right before they left, eyes darting to the bodies of his old pack, something dead in them.
I looked away, not wanting to witness it anymore.
Still, the gym was eerie quiet now the omega was gone, the tang of iron in the air. It wasn’t unusual in this place—I knew that no matter how feral I’d been.
The silence was broken by a crackle, and the comms above us rang through with an automated feminine voice.
“Alton Leo. Your appeal has arrived. Proceed to the waiting room with your pack.”
My heart sank as I watched the pooling blood of the Leo pack slowly drain into the gutter of the sparring field.
The comms would sound two more times before the thirty minute window closed, but this pack would never see the outside world.
Everyone was stiff, and it felt, all of a sudden, like too many eyes were on us.
On Sin.
I couldn’t help glancing at Bug and Sterling, my eyes lingering on Sterling’s awful smelling braided necklace, stained a dull brown from the blood of the alphas he’d killed. I did not, in that moment, feel protected by them.
Even Bug was strangely stiff.
Would the Emerald and Wakefield pack quit on us if it came to it?
What were the benefits of risking anything for a pack that was about to leave forever—aside honour?
I hadn’t truly considered that before.
Finally, my gaze landed on Sin. His jaw was clenched as he dropped his voice just for me. “Closer you get, the more dangerous it gets.”