Chapter 21 Calliope
The silence in the room thickened as they waited for me to continue. My pack had no idea what to do. They were mine, always would be. Sometime in the last week I had started to consider Dax mine. That certainly complicated things. He was the only one that didn’t know about that particular trauma. The recovery had been obvious to him, I couldn’t help what triggered me, but the truth was he had no idea.
Dax started to stand. “I’ll let you three talk.”
Ayden and Cain watched me, whatever I decided they would stick to. It just didn’t feel right to ask Dax to leave. The only thing I could hope was it didn’t come back to bite me in the ass. “Stay.”
He sat back down as I shifted in Ayden’s arms, so I was comfortable. “That voice belonged to the man who directed the whole night.”
“How sure are you?” Ayden pressed.
“Certain.” I sighed; Dax had a confused look on his face. Taking a deep breath, I elaborated. “The night I met these two was the worst of my life.”
“You don’t owe him anything,” Ayden grumbled.
“Hush. I was in a relationship with my high school sweetheart. He was everything I ever wanted in an alpha.” When Ayden and Dax both growled, I added, “At the time. It didn’t last long, he started alienating me from everyone. Making people around me disappear one at a time. It was exhausting.”
“Baby girl, you don’t have to—”
I cut Dax off before he could continue. “Don’t interrupt, this is hard enough as it is. Then he started to hit me. Training, he called it.”
“Where exactly can I find this alpha?” There was death in Dax’s eyes when he said that.
“You’d have to ask Ayden that.”
Ayden just shrugged. “He was dead when we got there.”
There was something incredibly sexy about the dark hunger in his eyes that made me clench my thighs together. But then the memory of that night came rushing back, killing that mood completely. “The night that Ayden and Cain came for me, I was taken. That’s too simple of a word really. My wrists were tied to the bed, I was made to present for a room full of alphas. They all took turns on me, moving me around as they wished.”
I was rubbing my wrists with the memory, the feeling of being completely at my pack’s sexual will had always been hot to me. I hated that it had been taken from me by force instead of gifted as it should have been. “I’ll hunt every one of those mother fuckers down and torture them to death.”
“I’m kind of ahead of you there.”
He stared at me like I had grown a second head. “The Alpha Ripper.”
“That’s what they’re calling me.”
“So, what do I have to do to get in on that?”
“About that.” I bit my lower lip before replying. “You guys didn’t kill Samuel, did you?”
Cain replied to me, drawing my attention to him. “He’s in the warehouse we use.”
That made me smile and I wiggled until Ayden let me go. Moving out of the living room, I headed up to my nest as the men continued their conversation behind me. Grabbing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, I dressed and prepared myself for my next kill. I was ahead of schedule. Way ahead. Samuel wasn’t supposed to die for another six months. His taking Penelope had sped that up. Hearing that voice had also sped up my timeline a bit. There was nothing I could do about it. The whole point of this was to lure out the person who was behind all of it. Killing everyone in that room with me was the only way to lure out the person behind it all.
I never once believed that Jarrod came up with the whole plan on his own. I knew someone was behind all of this. It had taken Ayden two years to trace the website back to a server farm in Ohio. Not surprising. I knew that the person who had orchestrated all of this was in the room that night. Jarrod never was the smartest man in the room no matter how much he wanted to think he was. There was no world we lived in where Jarrod was intelligent enough to orchestrate something so disturbing. I had known in my bones I would know who he was when I heard his voice. I hated that I was right. Hated that it was Ayden’s boss. That in and of itself presented challenges. He would be expecting to be targeted. Would protect himself. There was no way he didn’t know someone was coming for him. He had to have figured it out when I got to his inner circle. I had killed everyone but Samuel.
I had a full breakdown of the hierarchy of the organization, but I only really cared about the top. The driving force behind the brutality that these alphas released on innocent omegas. I had a plan, and taking out Samuel was the last thing I needed to wrap up before I was ready for the boss. That person happening to be Ayden’s boss at the FBI changed nothing in my mind. My hand itched to latch my claws into his throat and steal his voice once and for all.
Leaving the room, I went down the stairs and headed to the front door. There was nothing that would stop me from killing Samuel today. It was high time that this ended so I could move on with my life. Reaching for the knob, I called over my shoulder, “Y’all better hurry, I’m leaving.”
I was in the driveway by the time they all caught up with me. Cain grabbed my hand, leading me to a Hummer parked out front. It was a garish yellow color. He led me to the back, opening the door for long enough that I could slip inside. Everyone piled in and we pulled out, heading towards one of Cain’s warehouses. The silence of the drive seemed to rise with the tension. Cain caught my eye a few times in the mirror, and I just shrugged. Whatever issues Ayden and Dax were having, they could figure out on their own.