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The audience surged to their feet afterward. But my sharp pleasure soon turned vicious without the help of those tiny white pills. My genius accessed only through the chalky taste. Until they, too, stopped working. My fingers curled in worse. The notes came out wrong. So, I crushed the pills and snorted them instead. One became two, two became three. Until I was face down on the stage with my nostrils caked with vomit.

It didn’t matter.

My parents handled the bad press, swept it under the rug with a statement about it being the combination of a bad flu and ‘exhaustion.’ The exhaustion was true. It was constant. if I didn’t take something to get through the day. Black shadows painted my under eyes, and I swallowed yawns that made my jaw ache. I wanted to play, but my fingers wouldn’t stop shaking, and my stomach would turn so violently I doubled over.

I craved calm.

All I wanted was the shield of that first time. The easy slide into peace, where my screaming insides turned numb. When the constantly berating soundtrack of my parents turned off. Back when I could access the only part of me other people cared about.

I had a talent others would dream of, and losing it was killing me. I was a jittery, angry mess.

When I met Walden, I got clean for a while. I could barely string together two notes, but I’d been determined to impress the alpha. The stiffness in my right hand made me fly into a temper. Until my piano mentor offered me something new.

SubduX.

What alpha would take a drug that emulated being like an omega?

But I was hiding a secret, one that this drug made right for the first time. There was a ravenous hunger inside me, since I could remember, to be an omega. When the glittery, cloud-like fugue settled over my body, I was hooked. My insides were marshmallow, soft. I could perform again. I felt perfect.

Until it wore off, and a gaping maw opened in my chest and clawed at my soul. It left me hollowed out, shrunken in its absence. The glossy haze over my vision became haunting. My skin was too tender to touch, yet prickling with need. SubduX became my whole world. I lived between moments when I was high, and it worried my piano mentor so much that he refused to buy for me any longer.

But without it, my hand became a claw, and the shivers returned. So, I made more reckless trips to The Barracks than anyone ever should. I was careless, selfish, and it had almost destroyed my pack.

Giving it all up nearly broke me, and even now I could feel the echo of it in my veins. So, I used hard spirits to replace the endless hunger. But it didn’t match the glow I craved, just made me sloppy enough to forget what I really wanted.

When I saw Tully for the first time, a glimmer of a high sparked in my chest. Where SubduX flooded me with calm, Tully was a soft trickle. Being around her sweetness didn’t make me itch with endless need or leave me with the growling ache of the comedown.

Until the night of the gala.

I was on edge because it was the first time I’d been out in public with the pack, sober, sincethe incident. Seeing someone else playing the piano made my chest ache with everything I’d lost. All night long, I tasted phantom alcohol on the back of my throat. Then CJ waved my greatest weakness in my face. My nostrils itched and my blood grew feverish under my skin.

All I could think about was the rush. That first taste and the soft escape to follow. The tight grip around my lungs and chest would ease, and all my worries would melt away. My fingers would be soft, not stiff.

I found the strength to resist, surrounded by the skeletons of my dead talent. For myself, and the future I wanted with Tully. But now she was gone, and for what? A campaign that was crushing Walden and this pack to pieces?

“I can’t even concentrate on it,” Walden muttered, carded his hand through his hair.

Each word was a razor blade on my insides. Cutting narrow, deep slices. We were mirrors of lost passion.

“Walden…”

“This won’t break us. I won’t let it.” A flash of the Walden I knew reappeared, but only for a moment.

He was gaunt with guilt, but his words soothed me. I caught my bottom lip to trap a whimper of relief. We were good. But we weren’t perfect, not with our omega still missing. Walden dropped a kiss on top of my head.

“If it’s any consolation, she’s safe and settled in The Barracks,” Lorna piped up.

Sybil and Beatrice smacked her shoulders and Lorna swore under her breath.

“Pretend I didn’t say that.”

We shared uneasy looks.

Lloyd folded in on himself. “The Barracks?”

“I know you promised never to return there—” Walden started, but Lloyd held up his palm, his lips colorless.

“Has she been there this whole time?” Ajax asked.