Chapter 5
BIANCA
Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three. Forty-four.
My arms shake through the last push-up, and I welcome the burn. Life has been hell, but somehow I’ve still gotten comfortable. Soft. Being surrounded by these alphas has my body forgetting we used to have standards.
The hallway tile is cold beneath my palms as I keep moving. This was my morning at the refuge: wake before sunrise, train until my muscles hurt, practice with my bow, patrol, and take care of whatever needed me. I miss how simple it was.
Unfortunately, the girl who fell in love with these men enjoys being fed, fucked, and tucked into a warm pile of bodies. She likes pretending we’re someone who can afford to relax. Idiot.
At least the phone I smuggled inside has given me a line to the outside world. My first message to Ezra was gracious and mature.
Me
Don’t plot behind my back, asshole.
Ezra
Bianca?
Me
It’s me. How is everything going there?
Ezra
Security team watching the perimeter, but no one has approached. Megan and I are working on something.
Ezra
You doing okay?
Me
Define okay...
Ezra
You know the drill. Four in. Hold four. Four out.
I do one cycle because some habits never leave the body.
Me
Did someone fill you in?
Ezra
Some. Do you feel like you’re in imminent danger?
Me
He wants me pregnant, so no threat to my life... by him, at least. You kinda need a pulse for that. But the refuge comes first, Ez. Don’t do anything that puts yourselves at risk.
I put the phone away without waiting for a response. The burner is hidden beneath the mattress with the rest of my weapon stash. A very pitiful stash. I miss having a bow, but the one I had disappeared the night I broke into this dreadful fucking mansion.
I do fifty jumping jacks and then lean against the wall to let my breath steady out. That’s where Owen finds me.
“You should be in bed, Princess.” He reaches to brush the sweaty hair out of my eyes.
I move before he touches me. I’m still angry about the secret planning behind my back.
“I’m a big girl, Owen. I can leave bed whenever I want.”
He sighs. “How long are you going to do this?”
“Do what?”
“You know what. You’re pushing us away and depriving yourself.”
“Depriving myself or depriving you?”
He closes the space between us until his scent is all I can breathe. “I can feel your frustration through the bond, Princess.” His gaze drops. “I can smell you.”
Fine. I want him. I want all of them. That doesn’t mean I’m ruled by my vagina.
Freddie wanders through the open doorway, stretching both arms over his head and rubbing sleep from his face. “Are you doing your Rambo shit again? I’m making breakfast.”
“I can miss one meal, Freddie. You guys are fattening me up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
He kisses my temple before I can dodge. “How did you figure out our plan?”
His lips feel nice against my skin. Owen gives me a deeply annoying, knowing look while Freddie heads toward the kitchen, humming like the world isn’t crumbling around us. “Now,” Owen says, moving close again. “Where were we?”
His nose traces my neck, and I freeze. Giving in would feel good. Sex always is a stress reliever, and my body would love nothing more than to let him take over. But I don’t want to be calm. I want to be free. I want my alphas to stop keeping secrets.
I still have a list of people who need to die.
I soften anyway, tilt my hips against his, and slide my hand into his sweats. The thick, delicious shape beneath my palm is almost enough to ruin the point I’m making. Owen’s eyes glaze with premature victory.
Then I grip his dick and twist. Hard.
The sound he makes belongs in a nature documentary.
He drops to his knees, cups himself, and starts cursing as Tristan and Weller appear at the end of the hall.
Tristan looks like he’s experiencing sympathetic pain.
Weller folds his arms and sighs with the exhausted patience of a man who believes he’s our referee.
“I told you to leave her alone, Owen.”
I bend and pat Owen’s cheek. “Thanks for the offer, but I can make myself come in thirty seconds. I once tested how many orgasms I could give myself in five minutes. The number would impress you.”
Desire deepens their scents, combining into a heady mixture. I love the smell of sweet victory first thing in the morning. I head to the shower and their voices blur as I consider what one wears to breakfast with the devil.
The alphas made me promise I would behave. Five minutes inside Montgomery’s house is enough to know I’m going to make a liar of myself.
The dining room is already occupied when I arrive. Four women in dove-gray blazers wait around the table. None of them look familiar, but all have clearly been briefed on me.
One holds fabric swatches fanned between her fingers like playing cards.
Another has a clipboard. The third carries a train case the size of a tackle box, apparently filled with every product invented to correct flaws I didn’t know I had.
The fourth stands near the window and studies my body with her head tilted.
Four guards. Four women. One man in a white dress shirt eating avocado toast like he isn’t the most horrible man I’ve ever met. I sit across from him when a tall man on the serving staff pulls a chair out for me.
I make note of where the guards are standing.
“Good morning, dear.” Montgomery gestures toward the food. “You look well.”
“You look like a man who raped a woman behind her back and experimented on her daughter for twenty-four years.”
“Our daughter.” He takes a sip from his coffee mug before adding more sugar and stirring. “And you make it sound much more insidious than it is.”
The fork that was just sitting next to my plate goes into my thigh. Not hard enough to bleed, but enough to ground me. Enough to remind me that attempting to kill him right now won’t go well.
He admitted to it like it’s nothing. No denial. No flinch. He takes another bite of avocado toast and chews while I stare at him. “It was nothing as uncivilized as rape,” he adds.
“Wow. I thought you were psychotic but I underestimated you. Do you hear yourself?”
“Your mother and I knew each other well. I cared for her deeply. I would never hurt her.”
The swatch woman appears beside me without a sound. Under different circumstances, I might admire the skill. She holds a square of fabric against my cheek and studies the color against my skin with the concentration of someone choosing tile. I ignore her.
“You did hurt her. You tricked her. You lied.”
“Lying is not the same as omission.”
The clipboard woman takes my hand without asking and turns it over. Two fingers settle over my wrist while she watches the second hand on her wristwatch. Her pen waits above the paper. My pulse gives me away one beat at a time, and when she has enough, she writes it down. I snatch my hand back.
“What about Whitney? Was she my sister?” Something shifts across his face, too fast to identify before he smooths it away.
“Whitney was the product of an unfortunate situation. Her mother was an addict who would have sold her for her next fix, but she overdosed. Her father wrapped a car around a tree with a bottle in his lap.” He drinks from a crystal tumbler.
“Gratitude was never her strength, but she was lucky. I gave her everything.”
Including what was mine. My teeth grind together and I shove the fork deeper into my leg until the skin breaks.
“She didn’t get love,” I say. “That was what she wanted most.”
“No.” His pause lasts longer than it should. “I suppose she didn’t.”
The woman with the train case uncaps a small brush and examines the skin near my temple.
She catches my chin between two fingers to turn me toward the window.
I pull away. One of the guards at the door shifts his weight forward, and she reaches for me again while Montgomery cuts a piece of toast neatly in half.
“I’m not having children for you. Do whatever you want, but I’m not doing it.”
“You’re still new to this.” Montgomery takes another bite, chews, and swallows. “An omega in heat is a flashing beacon - one an alpha can’t resist. When your next heat arrives, you won’t be able to stop them.”
Three to six weeks. That’s the estimate he gave me, the small window I was supposed to use to decide whether he gets the pregnancy he ordered. Now he says when like the time belongs to him too.
I stare at him. “They would never rape me.”
“I’m not talking about rape, dear.” His tone suggests he’s explaining something simple to a disappointing student. “The drive to breed with you will be overwhelming. Impossible to deny. Your scent will call to them, begging them to dominate you, to implant part of themselves inside you?—”
I gag. Loudly.
Three.
“—and lock you down forever.”
“If I say no, they won’t touch me.”
He puts down his fork and looks at me. The woman with the huge makeup case reaches for my face again, and I catch her wrist before she gets there.
Montgomery’s attention drops to my hand. There’s no anger or irritation there, though. “Let her continue,” he demands, his voice perfectly level.
One of the guards at the door takes a single step forward.
His steps soften against the rug that’s under the table.
The woman waits with her wrist in my grip, neither fighting me nor backing off.
I could put her on the table before the guard reached us.
I could probably break the guard’s knee before the other three closed in.
But while I’m not okay being his complicit little doll, I do need to return to my mates.
I release her. She places two fingers under my chin and turns my face toward the light as if my refusal never happened. Behind her, the clipboard woman’s pen moves. My skin crawls beneath the examination.
“Omegas suffer considerable pain when they go through heat without a mate. The cramping can be severe.” He folds his hands. “Worse than natural childbirth.”
My leg is bleeding from the tines now.
A different woman holds a scratchy fabric against my shoulder and murmurs to the one taking notes. The other paints a few streaks of cool liquid on my skin, steps back, and points at my cheekbone. The three of them consult in voices too quiet to catch. The fuck off sits right there on my tongue.
One guard along the far wall is watching me with an intensity that makes me uncomfortable.
“So if I refuse to cooperate, my own biology punishes me.”
“Your body was designed for this.” Montgomery picks up his fork. “I didn’t design it. I simply understand it better than most.”
I scoff. “You designed plenty. So what is this for?” I ask, and he raises one eyebrow.
I gesture at the women. “The fitting. The gala. All of this bullshit. Why are we doing all of this?”
He looks pleased.
“The gala is for you.”
The hair on the back of my neck rises. “For me?”
“Twenty-four years in the making.” He lifts his orange juice. “The scientific community has waited a long time to understand what I’ve accomplished. The gala gives me the opportunity to present those findings.”
By findings, he means me. My life. My suffering.
I’m the presentation.
Everyone begins packing up, and I have yet to touch a thing on my plate.
“Twenty-four years of data points,” I say.
“To the day.” He’s pleased that I understand. “I couldn’t have planned the timing better myself.”
Of course he could. He planned all of it.
He planned me.
“The fitting will continue this afternoon,” Montgomery tells me. “We still have a great deal to accomplish before the gala.” He finishes his orange juice and blots his mouth with exacting care. “I encourage you to eat, Bianca. It’s going to be a long day.”
He pushes away from the table and leaves me here to stew.
One of the women left a fabric swatch on the table. Baby blue. Must be close to the exact shade of the dress I wore to Whitney’s graduation party.
I pick up the swatch and let it fall. It settles onto the table while I imagine what happens when the masterpiece jumps off the pedestal and stabs its creator in the throat.