Chapter 14
fourteen
Arms lock around my back like Kevlar.
His body moves with controlled force, every thrust a warning to the men crowding us. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t have to. The message moves through the room anyway. A few of them flinch. Others hesitate.
Some finish too fast. Filth splashes on my sleeves, my hair, the front of my sweatshirt. Anyone who drifts too close to my legs gets snapped at. A sharp bark. A sudden shift of weight.
Ayan doesn’t interrupt. He must be loving someone else using me, waiting for the others to tear me apart. Before he finishes the job.
“Dude! You’re taking too long!” one of the brothers yells from the back of the room.
“Sorry! It takes me a while!” Apollo shouts back, but it’s flat. Sarcastic. Like he’s toying with them and wants them to know.
Half the room empties before he pretends to be done. Men peel away, frustrated, spent, already looking for their next target as the fog thickens around our knees.
The condom covering Apollo’s huge cock has already ripped at the tip, exposing his piercing. But he still doesn’t enter me.
Why didn’t he just take me like all the others?
Why the condom? None of the men in Greek life wear them. We’re all regularly tested for sexually transmitted infections. If he had something, why wouldn’t he tell me before I was with him at the tattoo parlor?
“Come on. We can get more points. The smoke is almost to the top.” The ones already spent head out into the hall.
I gag on the thick mist covering our faces. Turning my head to the side, I spit on Ayan’s shoes as he creeps closer.
“You’re out of time,” he snaps, stepping up.
Apollo doesn’t even look at him.
It seems Apollo’s goal is to outlast them all. Some are flaccid. It’s difficult to tell who’s still ready to go in the haze that surrounds us, creating a curtain of privacy.
Screams ripple down the hallway. I clutch Apollo, digging my nails into his back. He stiffens, then tightens his hold on me.
His mask lifts toward the noise, and I look behind me.
A group of women sprint past the open doorway, not caring who may be around them as they flee for safety. Only two men follow them, but in their hurry, they flush the rest of the Betas from the room who were already done.
Now, there are only three men left. Three, aside from Ayan. And Apollo.
And me.
Apollo’s sweating so much, his shirt soaks my hands.
The fog climbs higher, swallowing faces, turning the room into a half-lit void.
Apollo’s…gentle. His pace isn’t hurried or frantic. It’s almost as if he were actually inside me, and we were anywhere else, maybe I’d enjoy it.
The way his piercing keeps tapping my clit sends a jolt of pleasure through my lower back. Down my legs. And the way his caring rhythm, so steady and slow, pulses through me? I could—
Fuck me! I’m going to come.
My hands tighten into the cotton fabric to tug him closer to me, my thighs spreading wider.
Low, under his mask, he asks, “You…okay?”
“Y-Yeah.” Oh my god! I’m so not okay! What is wrong with me?
My body betrays me. Heat coils low in my stomach, sharp and humiliating and wrong. The steady friction, the illusion of care, the way he shields me without explaining—it scrambles everything inside me.
A guy laughs. “She’s into it.”
I’m covered in cum. Drenched with Apollo’s sweat. On a dirty mattress. Surrounded by lecherous, disgusting men. And my cheating ex.
Not here. Not like this.
Shame detonates. Hot and suffocating. I clamp down on it, on the humiliation, on the fear, and something inside me snaps.
My back arches. A wanton sound tears from my throat.
I hate myself for it.
I hate them for seeing it.
“Yes! Yes! Right there!”
Apollo doesn’t change rhythm or slow down. He just holds me through my release, solid as stone, until my muscles give out.
I’m tingling. Pussy pulsing rapidly. I slump onto the mattress, back bowing and thighs quaking.
“Shit. Shit!” From far away, I hear Ayan yell, then creep closer and toss his load onto the front of my shirt with the others. The ribbons of cum hit me like water from a hose left baking in the sun.
But I’m giggling. So amused at myself for getting off in this place. In this way.
Then Apollo stops. Just stops.
He pulls away, stuffs himself back into his jeans, still hard, still controlled. Then he hauls me upright against his chest. The men left begin shouting.
“What the fuck, man?”
“Put her down!”
“Nah. I got her,” he says, all casual. As if we’re just at a party.
He tosses my limp figure over his shoulder like I weigh nothing at all, then manages to elbow one guy clear across his jaw until his mask flies off.
Ayan makes a leap, but I donkey kick when he gets near, and he goes down, cursing and spitting.
Apollo takes off in a run, faster than I would have expected had I not sneaked peeks at him playing soccer across the field.
The world turns into motion and smoke and jolting impact. Every step jars my ribs. I’m half-naked, dizzy, choking on the chemical fog that now blankets the lower floors. I can’t even think, just hold on.
He ducks into an alcove, crouches, and sets me down. His hands are careful now. Measured. Without hesitation, he rips his mask free and presses it hard against my face.
He coughs into the crook of his elbow, then points above us. “Straight up. I’ll take you there.”
“What about you?” I rasp. “Your mask—”
He shakes his head, already turning. “I’ll find another. Follow. Stay close to me.”
I’m finally able to suck in some air that doesn’t suffocate me. Still, my heart pounds fast as we slide up the staircase carefully, attempting to avoid anyone nearby.
Apollo’s hand reaches for mine, and I plant my fist in his grasp. His hold is firm. He leads me down some rickety halls. Like he knows exactly where to go. The floor creaks beneath our feet. Walls swell and shrink with every door slam. I shudder and flinch at a distant scream.
Finally, we find a skinny staircase hidden behind a door.
“This will lead you right up to the attic. Go!” He gives me a shove, but I pause, then rip off the mask.
When I hand it to him, I ask again… “Why?”
Serious eyes greet me, and I’m struck once again by how handsome he is. Dark hair plastered with sweat to his forehead. A pleading look on his face. Grimace coating his lips. He spits out, “Run.”
So I do…
The stairs are narrow and steep, hidden behind a warped door. I climb until my legs shake, until the fog thins and light spills in from above.
I burst through the attic door and collapse on the floor. Too exhausted to move.
A cacophony of cheers and groans greets me.
“Another Omega!”
“Scout?”
“Caliphylla’s sake! Is she bleeding?”
“She looks hurt…”
“Someone call the judge! She’s cut!”
That’s about the last thing I hear as everything fades from black and white…to nothing.
“It’s not fine,” Mom says. Her hands are steady. Her mouth is not.
She cleans my cuts with clinical precision, then presses a bandage down harder than necessary. I don’t complain. Just sip in deeper through the oxygen mask to clean out the smoke from my lungs.
“We can’t tell you what happens in the games, and you know that.” I swallow. “But Ellis is dead.”
The words don’t feel real yet. They sit in my chest like a foreign object, sharp and unmoving.
Olivia Cardell, Omega’s president, brought me to the hospital, but all I wanted was my mom. The emergency room doctor called her, and here I sit. In her clinic in the middle of the night—er, morning—getting treated for a deep laceration from the glass.
“Where’s Olivia? Did she leave already?” my mom asks.
Olivia’s family and ours are close. So close that Olivia is like my mom’s other daughter. We used to be closer when we were kids, but she was older. And not as nerdy as me. Always into popular stuff at school, while I enjoyed lone activities at home.
“Yeah, she went to break the news to Ellis’s parents.” Just the thought makes me sob.
Mom exhales brokenly and pulls me closer to her in a tight squeeze. Both of us tiny and shaking. And for the first time since the attic, I let myself grieve.
“I hate it to say this, but I’m so glad it wasn’t you.” Mom doesn’t cry. But when I look at her, she has a line of tears along her lower lids.
Fragments replay when I close my eyes. Fog. Screams. A blade rising and falling.
The man straddling Ellis. Ripping out part of her organs… Wait. Did he? Was that what happened, or am I making things up already?
That can happen with trauma. Especially in those who develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
I should try to remember every detail accurately. Or maybe not at all. I can’t remember what my freshman psychology professor said.
“Red Converse!”
Mom cleans up our mess, tosses her gloves into the can, and raises her eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“The man who didn’t help. Who walked away… A man with red Converse saw Ellis getting murdered from a different angle. Maybe he could help identify who did it.”
And why.
“Where have you seen red Converse?”
My stomach drops.
Every Sunday night.
Under fluorescent lights.
In anatomy lab.
“On Rowan Greaves.”