Chapter 29 #2
They cry out for me, my name, every sweet thing they call me, warnings, promises.
Warning the Soldiers that there will be retribution for blackening my eye, for collaring me.
Promising they’ll rescue me. They fight against the Soldiers holding them, their instincts riding them, spurring them to come to my side.
The Soldier holding the phone on their end whips out his scribe, and the video goes wild, bouncing around and showing me the floor, then the ceiling as the Soldier shouts out a hex.
I can hear it sizzle even from here, can hear it strike.
Luca’s bellow of pain sounds, and I cry out.
“Stop,” I plead with them. “Stop. Please, I beg you. They aren’t going to kill me. I’m too important to—”
The call cuts out on the other end, ended by the Soldier who hexed Luca.
The Soldier draws his scribe away and sets his hand against my neck in its place, squeezing. I gasp out a breath, but it only drains my lungs of air. I try to draw in a breath and can’t. I fight against the Soldier, desperate for air. Saints, he’ll kill me if he squeezes much longer.
“We have ways of making you comply, too, witch. The butcher wants you alive, but we can still make you suffer. We can torment you.” He doesn’t have to say it.
I know what he means by the way he cocks his head, the dull light of the hospital room shining off his vicious mask.
They’ll hurt or kill my pack to make me behave.
He releases me and shoves me back against the bed.
I cough and gasp, my breath sawing in and out of my lungs.
As much as I want to, I don’t lash out with my affinity, but I do reach out with it as I struggle to breathe.
The Soldier wanted to kill me but knows he’ll be slain by the Prince if he does.
The last thing he wants to do is disappoint the Prince.
Still, he thinks of the light leaving my eyes, my body going limp.
I withdraw my affinity in the space of a heartbeat, recoiling from him.
“Behave, you stupid bitch, or we activate the collar.”
Why haven’t they activated it yet? It would lock me in my mind. It would make me docile.
But that’s not what my father wants. He wants me to fight because crushing me will be so much sweeter if I do. He wants to see me suffer, just like the Soldier does. Except my father doesn’t want to kill me. Not yet.
Not until his success rate improves.
The Soldier reaches out with his hand again, as if going for my neck once more, and I recoil, letting out a whimper of fear.
He laughs, his whole body shaking with his mirth, then leaves me, locking and warding the door behind him.
I collapse against the bed and curl in on myself, trying to protect myself from all the threats bombarding me.
Saints, I haven’t had a scribe held to my throat since my first day at Fairhaven Academy when Rad, hidden behind a Baphomet mask, held me to him, forced his scent into my lungs, his scribe into my skin.
Two of my men fell that day, struck by the Ever Ember hex, then Ian took their embers into his own body.
Cassian, Ian and Marcus suffered the effects of the ember until Ian finally figured out how to remove them.
Am I thinking of Marcus as mine now? I was just as relieved to see him alive as I was the rest of my pack.
Hot tears leak from my eyes, tracking trails down my cheeks.
He’s alive. They’re all alive. And like me, they’ll be kept alive as long as I comply.
They’re leverage intended to make me behave.
I know the Soldiers would have no compunctions about killing them, but for now, they’re useful.
They’re alive. They’re alive. They’re alive.
My breath finally evens out.
They may be alive, but they feel further away from me than ever before. Close enough to sense, but only just. Somehow the distance between the rooms we’re held in feels worse than the distance between Connecticut and Fairhaven did during the summer I was forced to court Rad.
It feels insurmountable. Impossible to cross. I pray for them to rescue me. I pray for them not to. I pray for them to live.
The next time I wake is to my womb contracting, sending familiar pain shooting through my abdomen.
My heat.
It has to be at least a week early, no doubt caused by the stress my mind and body are under.
No. Not now. Not when my pack feels miles and miles away. Not when I’m left on my own. Not when I’m already vulnerable.
It hits hard and fast, dragging me into the usual haze faster than it ever has before. But I don’t even feel desire or need; all I feel is pain lashing through me.
Heats without a pack are particularly hard on mated omegas, and I’m about to find out just how hard they are.
When I was younger, still in my father’s care, a nurse would help me through my heat with spells and sedatives.
When I came to Fairhaven, Marcus applied the spells that saw me through my first heat on campus.
I thrash against the cuffs, trying to alleviate the pain, but it only worsens as I move. It envelops me, drowning out what thoughts aren’t lost to the haze.
The pain heightens, like white-hot needles in my veins, digging into every soft part of me, every tender inch of my flesh. I scream out my agony, curling in on myself, trying to contain the torturous throbbing. I scream myself hoarse, but the pain doesn’t abate.
Still, I scream, my voice ragged, my throat feeling sliced to tatters.
I get flashes of my guards’ thoughts as I slip in and out of my heat haze. They delight in my pain. They wish it would kill me.
They relish my screams.
But my screams are quieted when my father comes into the room, a syringe in one hand. Panic dashes the haze of my heat away as my father approaches me. I feel the prick of the needle in my arm, and I can’t even fight it as I curl tighter in on myself.
I start to slip into unconsciousness, my final thoughts full of despair and horror.
Is it finally my time to die?