Chapter 14 #2
“They deserved it,” I say, sucking in a breath as I admit that.
“Right. Now, to hard truths,” he says. “Doing bad things does not always make you a bad person. There’s so much sweetness inside of you that I see. Your laughter is light and airy too. Already, you’re kinder to Troy than his ex-wife was.”
Troy growls under his breath while my lips twitch, and I dig the knife deep into Dennis’ side, enjoying the way his back bows in pain. There’s not much room for him to move away, leaving him to suffer at my hand.
“You’re going to learn that safeguarding yourself is part of life. Winter and Bellamy don’t hold anything against you, so stop believing you’re someone you’re not,” Lyle whispers in my ear.
“You’re putting yourself in another type of prison,” East says, watching as Lyle hugs me. “Ugh, I’m jealous now. Lyle, you’re an asshole.”
“Too bad,” he grunts, burying his nose in my throat. “I can’t wait until these bastards are dead. It’ll break another chain these alphas tried to use to tie you to them.”
“I never wanted to be theirs,” I say fiercely, digging one last word into his skin.
Jailer.
Forced bonds never go well for the omega I learned from Dr. Walsh yesterday. They slowly waste away, and sometimes even if they escape, they can still hear and feel their alphas.
I find myself stabbing Dennis repeatedly, gasping with anger at how close they were to permanently bonding me.
“Breathe, Little Fighter,” Lyle says, pulling me back from the brink of despair. Looking down, I realize Dennis’ eyes are sightless.
“Fuck. I killed him,” I sigh.
“It happens,” he says easily. “What matters is you’re the one to send him straight to hell. We can still blow him up.”
The way Lyle talks so nonchalantly about Dennis’ death makes me huff out a laugh.
“He deserved it,” Silas says, standing. We’re surrounded by blood, though Lyle is holding me out of most of it. “Dennis also served his purpose. You needed to expel all the anger you were feeling, Alisa. There are many reasons to torture people. Sometimes it’s therapeutic.”
“I feel better,” I rasp, moving with Lyle as he straightens and then picks me up.
“Then these bastards have served their purpose,” he says easily.
Lyle, Troy, and I watch from a decent distance away as Silas and Easton dig open a hole where my rapists’ dicks were. My lips part with surprise as I watch as they place a stick inside of it.
“These are deemed a little stronger than a firework,” Lyle explains. “It won’t blow up the building or the room, but it definitely will do damage to the person. Aw, Jai is crying out of his one good eye. Let me play my tiniest violin.”
Dr. Walsh pushes the wheelchair to safety and grabs Troy’s backpack to keep it out of the way of the gore about to transpire.
“It couldn’t happen to more despicable people,” he mutters, disgusted.
Together, we watch as Silas and Easton light the fuses and then jog toward us.
“Sure you want to watch?” Lyle asks, his lips parting in a wild smile as the fuse runs low.
“I need to,” I confess.
If their guts are scraped from the walls of this room, then I can remind myself of this moment over and over again. They can’t hurt me because they became a human explosion.
The bodies are far enough that their guts don’t touch us, but it’s definitely messy when it finally happens.
It’s also very loud, and my ears ring as I giggle.
Lyle presses a kiss to my forehead as I feel lightheaded from the adrenaline rush and they move back into the main warehouse to survey how much blood is on us.
“I have a change of clothes for everyone,” East says, grinning as he begins to walk.
“Ah, there’s blood all over your face. Give me your keys, Easton,” Dr. Walsh says, dropping the backpack in the warehouse and rushing over to him.
“I bet he didn’t think babysitting a pack of murderers would be in his job description,” I say, grinning.
“Oh he’s definitely realizing it now,” Lyle says. “At least there aren’t any guts in your hair.”
“I think that would gross me out,” I decide. “That’s my line in the sand. No guts, please.”
“Pretty sure that’s an easy boundary we won’t cross,” Troy smirks. “How are you feeling?”
“Lighter,” I admit. Concentrating, I realize I don’t feel as filled with hopelessness. Is this because of the bonds that wouldn’t heal?
There’s so much metaphysical stuff I don’t understand about alpha-omega bonds. I bet the world doesn’t understand it all either.
“I think it was really important for me to do this.” I don’t feel as starved of air and I’m breathing easier as well. “They made me feel as if nothing would ever be good again. I was trapped inside their evil bubble.”
“You deserve all the good things,” Silas says. “Troy gets back in a couple of days. We can either wait to have a pack discussion or have it now.”
“Pack?” I ask, blinking at him.
“Courting means we need to communicate, and I believe in manifesting what I want,” he states. “We want you and Troy, so yes, instead of a house or family meeting, it’s a pack one. Words matter, Little Fighter.”
“How much fallout could there potentially be with this pack meeting?” Troy asks carefully as East watches us. He’s so quiet, it feels as if he crept up on us.
“It all depends on Alisa,” he says. “We know who you are, baby. The question is, are you ready to talk about it?”
“You know?” I whisper.
“Not everything about your past, but some things we’ve been able to piece together,” Lyle amends. “Talking to Bellamy and Winter helped, and their alphas added more details.”
“I’ve never discussed who I am with them,” I deny.
I still have a hard time seeing Chase and Winter as their actual names, but I will do my best to start using them.
Names are important, and I know that. Before I escaped from Jai and his pack, I hadn’t heard my own name in five months. “I can’t wait. I need to know more.”
“Hollis Edwards was at an auction looking for you last year, not knowing the event was selling Bellamy, Winter, and Cassidy instead,” he says. “All she saw was that there was a female omega being sold and she followed her gut to attend.”
My mind spins, trying to figure out how this relates to me, and how Winter and Bellamy were recaptured. When I saw them, they were happy…
And Hollis is in Savannah? My mind is spinning.
“Cassidy isn’t an omega,” Silas says, supplying more information. “Clara decided to kill her for shits and giggles.”
“I’m too hard to kill it seems,” a woman says, coming closer to us.
I recognize her as the person I glimpsed with her omegas, and my eyes narrow as I think.
“Hollis helped in the fight to save us, and we’ve been trying to help her and your brothers find you.
They’ve been traveling back and forth between Minneapolis and Savannah for months. ”
“My…brothers?” I ask, feeling something inside of me break.
“They never forgot about you,” Cassidy says.
It feels as if she’s saying the words from a long, dark alley, and I can feel my eyes rolling back as my body shuts down.
“Alisa?” Lyle calls to me, but my head falls back off his arm as I pass out.
A part of me is happy to know people from my past haven’t forgotten about me, but the rest of me is scared shitless.