Chapter Thirty-four
Jasmine
Then the door swung shut, cutting off the light, warmth, and hope, leaving me alone with the monster who'd already destroyed me once before.
On the other side, the cold hit me like a slap, the night air cutting through the thin silk of my gown and raising goosebumps across my exposed arms and shoulders. The service door slammed shut behind us with a finality that made my stomach drop, cutting off the last traces of warmth.
Something stunk out here, rotten food in skips along the far side, a dead cat beneath it. The stench of the place made me gag as Bane pulled me outside.
The alley stretched before me in shadows, lit only by a distant streetlight that cast everything in sickly yellow tones. And in those shadows, shapes moved.
More of them. More pack members.
My eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness, picking out details I didn't want to see.
Three men, maybe four, stepped forward from where they'd been waiting against the alley walls.
I recognized faces from my time with the pack.
The one with the crooked nose I'd seen laugh when Bane hit me.
The younger one with the scar across his lip, who'd held me down while others took their turns.
The older one with graying hair who'd called me worthless so many times I'd believed it.
They were all here. All waiting. This had been planned meticulously.
Bane shoved me forward, and I stumbled immediately.
My heel caught on the uneven pavement, my ankle twisted painfully, and I barely caught myself before going down completely.
The light green silk that had made me feel beautiful hours ago now felt like a costume, something fragile and inappropriate for what was about to happen.
The pack members closed in, forming a circle around me.
Their presence was suffocating, blocking out the distant streetlight, creating a cage of bodies with malicious intent.
I turned slowly, searching for any gap I might slip through, any chance of escape, but they'd positioned themselves perfectly. Predators who knew how to trap prey.
“Look at her fancy dress,” one of them sneered, his voice carrying a mocking lilt. The one with the crooked nose. “Thinks she's something special now. Thinks she's better than us.”
“Did you like her little performance?” another added. The younger one. “All those people were clapping for her. Bet she forgot where she came from. Forgot who she belongs to.”
Their words circled me like physical blows, each one landing in places that were already vulnerable. I wanted to respond, to defend myself, to tell them I'd never thought I was better. But my throat had closed up completely. Fear had stolen my voice the same way it had stolen everything else.
“You can dress her up,” Bane said from behind me, his voice carrying an authority that made the others silence immediately. “But she's still the same worthless Omega. Still damaged goods. Still ours.”
The word "ours" hit me like ice water, triggering memories I'd tried desperately to bury. Memories of being held down, being used, being broken in ways that left no visible scars. My hands started shaking, tremors running through my entire body until my teeth chattered with more than just the cold.
One of the pack members stepped forward. The older one with graying hair. His face was set in lines of cruel satisfaction, like this moment was something he'd been looking forward to. His eyes tracked down my body in a way that made my skin crawl, then returned to my face.
“Did you really think you could escape us?” he asked, and his voice held genuine curiosity beneath the cruelty. “Did you think those Alphas would protect you? That you deserved better than what we gave you?”
I opened my mouth to try to answer, but his fist was faster. It slammed into my sternum with a dull thud that echoed through hollow bones, expelling every molecule of air from my lungs in a single, agonizing rush.
Stars burst behind my eyes. Something inside shifted wrong. My spine curved like a question mark around the place he'd hit.
The three-inch heels I'd been so proud of skidded across loose gravel. Concrete rushed up. My palms slapped against it, skin shredding on impact. The shock reverberated through wrists, up forearms, into my shoulders. Silk tore beneath my weight, like the sound of a letter being torn in half.
Something warm and sticky pooled between my fingers, mixing with a black grit that smelled of cigarettes and urine.
Inhale. Nothing happened. Inhale harder, damn it!
A thin whistle of air trickled into my lungs.
Not enough. Nowhere near enough. Panic bled through my eyes, wide and all-encompassing.
Tears escaped my face, absorbing into the ground below me.
Each breath scraped my throat raw, like trying to swallow glass shards.
I clawed at the ground, nails digging into pebbled cement, staring up at the row of legs that circled me in the alley.
The world had shrunk to this: the sharp grit embedding itself in my shredded palms, the suffocating compression in my chest, the animal certainty that I was going to die, right here, in my ruined shoes and expensive dress.
Movement above me—a blur of denim and old blood.
Reaper’s boot swung inward and ricocheted off my thigh.
I tried to push myself upright, but my arms barely held me.
The sound that came out was half retch, half howl.
I rolled onto my side, curling around the emptiness where breath should be, blind to everything but the panic.
My vision pulsed at the edges; blackness threatening to fold in. Bane crouched and grabbed a handful of my hair, wrenching my head upward so my neck stretched and the world wobbled sickeningly around me.
“You see?” he hissed. “She can't even stand. Can’t sing, can’t fight.” His knuckles bruised the pale skin of my cheek as he hauled my face closer. “Told you she was nothing.”
The others closed in, drawn by the scent of Omega panic and the sick light in Bane's eyes.
He shoved my face into the pavement. My forehead cracked against the concrete, and white exploded through my eyes.
For a second, I was back at their pack house, with the stench of bleach and old sweat and the wire-bristle brush scraping my arms until they bled.
I'd learned then that some hurts never healed.
“Should we drag her?” Reaper asked, breathless with anticipation, already reaching for my swollen ankle. “Or maybe just rip the dress off her first?”
They seized my limbs, hauling me upward by heel and elbow, and I thought my shoulder would pop from the socket. The world tipped, nausea swirling in my gut, but I wheezed in a thin gasp of oxygen. Not enough to scream, but enough to taste the old city air, slicked with the scent of my fear.
Reaper’s fingers dug so deep into my upper arm his nails broke skin. His breath was sour with vodka. He pressed his nose to my cheek and inhaled, then spat in my face. It stung where I was bleeding.
“Pathetic,” he sneered. “You were always weak, Jaz.”
Then his hand released my chin and moved, quick as a snake, to the top of my gown. He ripped at the neckline, but when the fabric didn't give, another hand joined, tearing. The sound was appalling, like flesh tearing from bone. Cold air rushed against my skin where silk used to be.
I tried to fight. Swung desperately, dug nails into whatever part of them I touched, but there were too many hands and I was too weak. Every movement made my lungs seize, and panic spiraled quicker.
A furious slap whipped my ears. “None of that, bitch,” a voice said; not Bane’s, but his echo, his disciple. “You think you're something now, singing for scraps on a stage?” Another fist, this time into my side. I doubled over, retched, and hot bile coated my tongue.
I twisted, searching for an escape, some angle to slip through. Nothing. Just a wall of bodies, all of them waiting for their turn.
A piece of my mind, the part that survived the first time, the part that still thought in rational sentences, counted the number of feet on the ground, calculated the odds. Maybe if I bit someone's hand, maybe if I screamed loud enough for the bouncers or a random do-gooder, but—
A cold circle pressed into the bare patch of my ribs. Metal. My heart stopped altogether. There was the click of a safety.
“Try anything, and you die right here,” said a voice, low and close. Bane.
Somebody yanked my hair and smashed my head into the metal edge behind me. My scalp went numb. From somewhere far off, I heard my own teeth chattering.
“You think you can just leave?” Reaper said. “Everyone's got to know what happens to a bitch who runs from her real pack.”
At the word "pack," a fist closed around my throat, squeezing until black floated around the edges of my eyes. I clawed at the hand, but my own hands were weak as moths; I couldn't do anything but make a low, rattling noise.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured the stage.
The applause. Kade, Theo, and Lucian waiting and watching, their faces proud, their hands always gentle.
I tried to hold on to that, the knowledge that I’d once been something more than this.
My chest ached with the effort, more than the bruises could account for.
The hand released. Air whooshed in, too little, too late. More laughter now, triumphant and ugly. Someone shoved me forward, and I fell, landing in a sodden gutter. My knees scraped, the tissue raw and exposed.
“Thought you could run, Jasmine? You can’t even walk without help.” He leaned in, his breath hot on my ear.
“Let’s see if your fancy new Alphas like you better once we’re through.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of crying. I wouldn’t give Bane that power ever again.
But when they pulled at me, my heels scraped across the pebbles. I heard laughter and distant voices from the main street, but nobody turned down this alley. Nobody heard or cared.
My lungs burned, the world refusing to stabilize.
I tried to kick, but my body was too flimsy, each muscle too slow to obey.
The panic was receding now, replaced by a cold clarity: I was going to die here, in a side alley, beaten until Bane was bored and then thrown away like the trash they thought I was.
Boots scraped against the pavement, and I flinched at the sound. Then Bane was crouching beside me, his face coming into view at my level. His brown eyes held satisfaction so complete it made me want to vomit. This was what he'd wanted—me broken, on the ground, reminded of my place.
His hand shot out, grabbing my chin with fingers that dug into my jaw hard enough to leave marks. He forced my head up, made me look at him, his grip so tight I felt bone grinding against bone beneath my skin.
“You're worthless,” he said, and his voice carried the certainty of absolute truth. “You always were. A broken Omega who can't even carry a baby to term. What use are you to anyone?”
The words cut deeper than the physical pain, slicing into places that were already bleeding. Every insecurity I'd ever had, every fear about not being enough, came flooding back with visceral force.
“We own you,” he continued, his face close enough that his diesel scent was all I could smell. “Your body. Your voice. Every part of you belongs to this pack. You're marked property, even if we never bothered making it official. Did you really think singing pretty songs would change that?”
Tears were streaming down my broken face, hot and unstoppable. They mixed with dirt, running in muddy tracks down my cheeks. I tried to shake my head, to deny what he was saying, but his grip kept me immobile.
“You'll never live your life without us,” Bane finished. “Those Alphas in there? They'll see what you really are. They'll see the damage, the worthlessness, the fact that you're nothing but a broken toy. And when they do, they'll throw you away too. That's what happens to things like you.”
His words painted a future I'd feared in my darkest moments.
The image of my Alphas' faces when they realized I was too broken to fix, too damaged to keep.
The rejection I'd been waiting for since they'd first shown me kindness.
The inevitable abandonment that would prove Bane right about everything.
“Please,” I gasped out, the word barely audible. “Please don't—”
“Don't what?” Bane's laugh cut through my plea. “Don't remind you of reality? Don't show you what you really are?”
His other hand drew back, and I watched it rise. Watched his knuckles go white as he made a fist. Watched the muscles in his forearm tense to prepare for the blow. Time seemed to slow, everything moving through honey, giving me far too long to see what was coming and knowing I couldn't stop it.
The punch landed on my cheekbone with explosive force.
Pain detonated across the right side of my face, radiating outward in waves that made my vision white out completely.
I felt something crack—bone maybe, or just the sound of impact—and then my head was snapping to the side with momentum I couldn't control.
My skull hit the concrete with a sound that seemed impossibly loud in my ears. A second bloom of pain, this one at the back of my head, and the world tilted sideways. Everything blurred, shapes lost definition, sounds became distant and muffled.
Through the static filling my brain, I heard laughter.
High and cackling, like a hyena finding something hilarious in the darkness.
Bane's laughter, the sound that had haunted my nightmares for months.
It echoed off the alley walls, multiplying, surrounding me from all directions until I couldn't tell where it originated.
My vision narrowed to a pinpoint of light, then went black completely. The last thing I registered was the laughter, still echoing, multiplying, still proving that some nightmares never really ended.
Then nothing.