Chapter 38
June
Gentle fingers probe the back of my head.
With a hiss of pain, I roll away, groaning as my head pounds to the rhythm of my heartbeat.
I blink. Then I blink twice more, but it does nothing to make my vision any brighter. It takes far too long to realize the room is as dark as I think it is, and I don’t have my eyes still closed.
A figure cloaked in shadows watches me from feet away, the whites of their eyes glimmering in the darkened room. As they reach toward me, the sweet scents of rose and strawberry drift closer.
“Don’t!” I shrink away from their touch.
The figure halts and retreats. They stand, revealing a slim silhouette as they cross the room.
A woman.
She draws the drapes aside, flooding the room with light and causing me to recoil from its harsh brightness. At no point has my head stopped pounding. I try to sit up, but my world tips.
When I blink my eyes open, I’m flat on my back, my head is woozy, and a beautiful dark-haired woman wearing a blue slip dress is on her knees beside me.
The corners of her eyes crease with concern. “Are you okay?” she asks hesitantly.
I clear my throat and don’t try to sit up again. “What happened?”
“You fainted.” Her eyes flick to my forehead. “You have a lump on the back of your head, and it was bleeding before. I think that’s why.”
Trying to move my throbbing head as little as possible, I sit up and shuffle away from her. I don’t trust her, but I have the strangest sense that I know this woman, though I can’t remember when I would have met her. At Haven Academy? Is that why she seems so familiar?
Only when my back bumps the wall, as far away as I can get from her, do I let myself relax a little. “Who are you?”
“Lottie.”
I stop scanning the room for a way out. “Lottie?”
I know that name.
Why do I know that name?
Her sweet smile is as pretty as it is sad. “Charlotte Meeks, but everyone has always called me Lottie since I was a baby.” She sucks in a sharp breath. “Juniper? You are Juniper. They got you too.”
“Yeah.” I narrow my eyes at her. “How do you know my name?” My suspicion grows, and I keep searching for a way out of here. Even if I found one, I’m not looking forward to getting to my feet with the way my head is pounding. Sitting up hurts; I don’t want to know what standing will feel like.
“Callum told me about you. They all did.”
“They?”
“Archer and Torin.”
“How do you…”
And then it hits me. Her name. The last time I saw her face. The sense of familiarity when I don’t remember ever meeting her before.
“You were meeting with Archer, Torin, and Callum at the house. I saw you.”
Blue eyes widen in surprise. “You saw me?”
I nod. “You were laughing with them.” They were all so happy, and all too distracted to notice that I’d returned with Veronica from the heat clinic where they’d sent me.
“We never have long to see each other. Ian is usually dragging me out of the room before the thirty minutes are over.”
I scrunch my nose at the unfamiliar name. “Ian?”
She gets to her feet and crosses the room to a glass jug of water on a bedside table. “He’s my keeper.”
“Keeper?”
She fills a glass with water and walks over to me. “Ian comes with me when I go to visit Torin, Callum, and Archer. He’s there to stop them from helping me to escape.”
“I didn’t see him in the room.”
Her eyes are sad. “He was there. He’s always there with the gun he brings with him.”
A gun?
“But they could overpower him.”
“They tried that before, and it didn’t work. He has orders to shoot me if they try it again, and he wouldn’t hesitate to do it.”
Her resigned admission stuns me into silence.
She offers me the glass. “Here. Drink some water. You’ll feel better.”
Taking the glass from her, I sip the cool water. Up close, I see the things about Lottie that the dim light and my suspicion made me blind to before.
Callum said she was a prisoner to ensure their continued good behavior. A hostage to keep them all trapped in a place they wanted to leave, and to keep secrets they could never reveal.
Her skin is flawless, but pale. Big blue eyes show signs of strain, and she’s thin. Too thin. When she sinks back to the floor beside me after handing me the glass, she releases a tired sigh and rests her head on the wall, as if crossing the room for water is all it took to exhaust her.
Callum said she was deathly ill. I believed him, but knowing and seeing are two entirely different things. “You’re sick.”
With her eyes closed, she nods. “Since I was twelve. No one knows what’s wrong with me.”
I offer her my glass. “Do you want some?”
Her eyelids flutter open, and her mouth pulls up in a smile, but she shakes her head. “No, thank you.”
I sip a little more water and set the glass down. “Won’t they let you see a doctor?”
“When I was still living at home, a doctor came to see me. No matter what they tried, I kept getting worse. They gave me pills, and only those help me. Without them, I’d die.”
“And your parents?”
“Died in a plane crash. I was living with my uncle when I got sick.”
“Can’t he…”
“He’s involved in Asylum,” she quietly tells me. “They’re all involved in it, and I know too much about them. Same as Archer, Torin, and Callum. A part of me thinks he was relieved I got sick and had to rely on him.”
I can’t believe her own uncle would do that to her.
“I’m sorry.”
She smiles sadly at me. “It’s not your fault, and there’s nothing anyone can do.”
“Have you taken your pills today?”
She shakes her head. “Someone brings one to me every day. They’ll probably check on you when they bring me my pill.”
“Who brought me here?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I was sleeping. When I woke up, you were on the floor. I think they brought you here so you’d know not to bother escaping.”
“Why would I know that?”
She lets out a frustrated sigh. “Because I’ve tried every way I could. They move me every few weeks, so I can never get too settled anywhere.”
“Where are—”
A key sounds in the lock, and I wrench my pounding head toward it, heart in my throat.
The door swings open, and my mouth drops.
“Oscar?” Too late, I remember that isn’t his name. It can’t be if he’s here. “Wilkes Booth,” I say instead.
“I come bearing gifts,” he announces as if he expects us to be happy to see him.
Looking handsome in a pair of smart dress pants and a white button-down shirt, he dips his hand into his pocket and pulls out one small white pill.
He flashes the same charming smile at me that convinced me I could trust him.
If Torin hadn’t told me who he was, I never would have seen beyond his smile and learned he was putting on a charming act.
“Awake, I see?” he says.
“What are you…” My brain makes a connection I should have made the second he pushed open the door. “It was you. You hit me on the back of the head.”
He knew where I worked, and he likely knew when I worked. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to walk into the hotel, maybe going floor by floor, or save himself some work and put on that charming smile and ask if anyone had seen me. Someone would have told him which floor I was cleaning.
As he steps into the room, I get a brief glimpse of a luxurious gold and burgundy hallway before the door closes gently behind him. He spares Lottie a passing glance as he strides toward me.
I look at her, and she has her head tipped back against the wall, her eyes closed. She said she hadn’t had her pill today yet. Is she okay? Could she die before Wilkes gives it to her?
He drops into a crouch in front of me and places the white pill beside the half-empty glass of water. Lottie doesn’t stir, and my fear grows.
With a shrug at Lottie for not taking the pill, Wilkes turns to me and reaches out to touch my face. I angle my head aside, dodging his touch.
He drops his hand as his lips tilt into a smile. “Don’t like me anymore? I guessed Torin told you who I was when you canceled our date. It was me in the silver car, by the way. From the way your blinds were twitching, I know you were peering out of that window like a nosy grandma.”
I knew it.
“So why wait until now to grab me?” I ask.
“The only time your scent matches aren’t close by is when you’re at work. I knew the day they moved into the apartment near yours. I was just biding my time.”
His attention dips to my lips, and he reaches out to touch.
Leaning away, I knock his hand aside. “Don’t touch me.” I’ve never hit anyone in my life, but he is not putting his hands on me.
He laughs, the rich sound filling the room. “The hard way it is.”
My heart stops beating when he fishes something terrifying from his front pocket.
A needle.
I press my back against the wall. “What’s that?”
His smile is so slick that I can’t believe I ever trusted him. “This triggers an omega’s heat. I’m going to trigger yours, and you, sweet June, are going to be my mate. It’s part of the deal I made to play this game.”
I scramble to the left. He slams one hand against the wall, inches from my head, blocking my one avenue of escape. Lottie is on my right, and she looks so ill that she might not survive that needle if it accidentally gets her.
“You didn’t have a problem with me before,” he says, crowding me.
Turning my face to the left to avoid his touch, I always keep one eye on the needle inches from my skin. “That was before I realized you were evil.”
“I’m not—uh.”
He grunts as he topples backward, landing heavily on his back and the needle flying out of his hand.
“Come on!” Lottie grabs my hand and yanks me to my feet before I realize she’s gotten up from the floor.
I sprint after her, delighted. “You were faking!”
She grins at me. “For once. Come on. This is the only time they unlock my door.”
In the hallway, it’s quiet. I pull on her hand to slow her dash toward the staircase at the end. “Wait, what about your medicine?”
Her lips compress into a tight line. “I refuse to live in a room being fed pill after pill. That’s not living. And it doesn’t just trap me. It traps my friends.”
“But—”
“Fucking bitch!” an enraged yell goes up from behind us.
The bang of a door slamming open propels us to run faster.
I peek over my shoulder, and immediately regret it.
Wilkes is sprinting after us, his handsome face twisted into an ugly, rage-filled snarl.
I whip back around. The staircase comes into view.
Lottie is about to charge down them as fingers brush the ends of my hair. With nothing but a germ of an idea in my head, I throw myself to the side and yank Lottie away from the staircase.
The sound Wilkes makes falling down the stairs will haunt me forever. The crack of a bone breaking makes me shudder as Lottie squeezes my hand. I squeeze hers back. Her face is white, and I have a feeling mine is as well.
“Come on,” I whisper, and hurry down the staircase where Wilkes is lying on his front, his head twisted unnaturally to the side, with a pool of blood forming under him.
“Wait!” I stop Lottie before she can dart past him.
Dropping to my knees, I search through his pockets, feeling sick to my stomach to be riffling through a dead man’s clothes. He’s dead, but Lottie can still live. I find a small brown container of pills in his left pocket and give it to her. “There. Now you have some for a while.”
“Thanks.” She smiles gratefully at me.
As we dart through the entryway and to the large front door, I’m two steps behind her. She wrenches it open and slips out. I’m following when a small sound pulls my attention to the left. “Veronica?”
She grabs my shoulder in a painful grip, dragging me backward. My hand slips from Lottie’s. The door slams shut and Veronica’s fist flies toward my face.
My world goes black.
The last sound I hear is the locks engaging.
When I blink my eyes open, I can’t move my hands. I’m sitting in a hard wooden dining chair at the bottom of a long mahogany table, and Callum’s dad is sitting opposite me. I haven’t seen him since that awful first breakfast in the garden.
He lifts his wine glass containing a dark red liquid. “Welcome, Juniper. I’d offer you a glass, but… well. You can see why yourself.”
I look down.
Thick brown ropes loop around both my arms, tying me to my chair.
No escape.
“Now, before my son makes an appearance, we have a lot to talk about, you and me.”
I’m afraid of what he’ll do to me, but at least Lottie got away. I hope Lottie got away. If nothing else, she’s free now. I lift my chin. “If I don’t want to talk?”
“I’d think you’d want to save your scent matches, or was I wrong? Would you prefer if I killed them?”