Chapter 49
CRESCENT
Sin had locked me in.
Terror and panic collided as I banged on the door with my fists. A sob caught in my chest as agony spiked in my stomach again.
He'd left me...
The pain had just begun, but it would get worse. I knew it intimately. Each stage… the cramps, and the agony were enough to drive me mad.
A small whisper tried to tell me to drag myself back to the corner and hug myself until that door opened. Deep down, I knew what was waiting on the other end. I knew what Sin had done—why he would feel he had to do it.
I could feel his fear like a beacon, confirming that. So strong that he hadn't closed the bond down.
He'd made the bet that I'd rather suffer my heat alone than with a pack that wasn't mine, and he was right. I loved my pack. I didn't want heat with any alphas but them, but if there was a pack on the other side, they'd target him because of me…
I couldn't let that happen.
Another spike of fear shot through the bond, and a broken wail escaped my chest.
Could they not hear me?
Maybe they weren't out there...
I remembered the way Vandle had crashed against the wall of the rut box in our cell.
With a gasp of pain, I managed to get to my feet. Tears were sliding down my face as I staggered a step back. Then I threw my whole body against the metal of the door.
It didn't hurt like it should. Not compared to the rising tide of agony that was on the brink of choking me.
Sin...
He needed me.
He couldn't do this because of my heat.
The third time I'd crashed into the metal door, I crumpled to the floor, the marriage of heat, pain, and bruising agony across my arm and side almost too much.
I took a breath, lungs so tight, another whine escaping.
Get up.
Not enough.
I opened the bond more, feeling for him.
My mate.
Someone who loved me so fiercely he'd do anything to protect me.
I remembered the gold pack omega I’d seen on that TV screen once, the woman with silvery brown hair, and eyes that had flashed with gold as she’d defended her alpha.
Finally, I understood.
I had someone I needed to protect like she had.
Another vicious spike of poison tore through the bond like a dagger. His fear wasn't like I expected. It was ancient, destructive self-hatred.
It was enough to freeze me in place.
It was... familiar.
I grit my teeth and staggered to my feet again, this time throwing my weight against the door harder than before.
And finally, the sound I'd been desperate to hear filled the space—the loud click of the door opening.
SIN
Holden had dragged me to my feet as Declan, another of Holden’s alphas, reached the door of the rut box.
“No!” My voice was raw with desperation as I threw all of my weight against his grip.
“Who’s in the box, Sin?” Holden asked. There was a feral spark in his eyes, he already knew what he'd find.
“You have me.”
“There's always room for another.”
“Don’t—!” My voice cut off as Holden jammed his hand over my mouth, eyes fixed on the rut box.
There was a strange second of silence as Declan paused, fist on the handle, head cocked as if curiously waiting for the sound again.
My heart pounded in my chest.
Then I heard another thump, this one louder than the others.
I hadn't ever growled like I did as Declan finally turned the handle. It was vicious, guttural, and utterly useless as the rut box opened.
Crescent's scent of roses and cocoa hit the room, beautiful, terrified, and in the full throes of heat.
She all but fell out, catching herself on Declan's shirt. She stared up at him, cheeks tracked with tears, eyes so gold they seemed to shine, each exhale tangled with a faint whine as she felt the fully fledged agony of her heat.
“It's... it's me.” Her voice shook. “Not him.”
A strange moment passed as every alpha in the room realized that whatever they'd thought they were experiencing as heat, was nothing to the true one facing them now.
Holden was staring at her, pupils fully dilated.
No, no, no.
She didn't know what she'd done—what this pack was capable of.
“I'll be whatever you want if you don't touch him.”
VANDLE
We were alive.
Somehow.
Beyond all reason. My body was all but giving out as I slumped against the bars, the corpses of the Wakefield pack bleeding out around me.
Blood made of black, glistening pools seeped outward.
Phantom was clutching a bar with his fist, chest heaving, blood smeared across his hands and face. At some point Karma had passed the knife off to him, and it glinted with stained dark liquid in the dim, flickering lights of the room.
Karma was the only one of us with life in him. A growl ripped from his throat as he threw his weight at the cage door.
I understood that fury. It was a burning monster within me, demanding I pick this stupid body up and move.
The first call had been made. Our appeal countdown had begun, and we were trapped in this cage without our omegas.
We’d survived, but it didn’t matter at all.
I felt them through the bond. Sin and Crescent.
Terror.
It flickered between them—each fighting for dominance in the bond.
My chest heaved as Karma slammed his shoulder against the bars once more, and I tried to pick myself up again.
My… omegas…
Or at least.
Omega.
Omega, and something else.
Sin was rattling like a feral beast in a cage, chained power roiling for freedom, crimson vengeance trying to drag the whole bond into its orbit.
I blinked, and my sanity flickered out.
I was back beneath the bright lights in the room where I’d died over and over. Where I’d watched them die over and over.
Alpha after alpha.
Animals to slaughter.
I had been one of them, but not anymore. Not since he’d chosen me. Dragged me out as a curiosity.
So instead of dying with them, I watched. I spoke so little, and gave him what I could see with this cursed grey-scale sight. He ran his tests on me too, at times, but he never killed me.
He was as lonely as he was cruel, and I sat day after day, listening to his ramblings, having a picture painted, slowly, of the true cruelty of the world we lived in.
His knowledge ran deep, from the most well known parts of the alpha-omega world, to the darkest secrets, the ones long buried and hidden by the power of the Institute.
In this dark cage in Anarchy, my sanity waned; the centre of my bond was besieged by an omega who was not an omega, and I remembered, at last, what the threat of the red eyes truly was.