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“Are you ignoring me, you ungrateful bitch?” Alpha Niall’s burnt plastic scent fills my nostrils as he steps closer to me. He’s wearing the same stupid expensive shoes he normally wears. I recognize the familiar stitching.

He wrenches my head back with a cruel hold in my hair, so I’mforced to look up at him. The movement causes me to shift my weight onto my injured arm. The pain rips an involuntary cry from my throat.

Tears start flowing down my cheeks. I stare down at Madden’s T-shirt, still tied around my arm. The white fabric is stained from my blood and the dirt and grime from the floor.

“A couple weeks getting fucked by random alphas and you’ve forgotten your place,” he hisses.

My heart beats so fast I’m afraid it’s going to beat right out of my chest. My peppermint perfume is twisted and sour with my fear.

“You—you attacked them. The Ward Pack.” My pack. He attacked my pack. But I don’t dare say that. I have enough self-preservation to know if I say they’re my pack, it’ll only cause me pain.

“I did. Those idiots thought they could take you from me. They were asking for it.”

“H—how?” There were so many men. It can’t be easy to hire that many people to break into a house as well-defended as the pack house was. “Who—who are you?”

“You know, that’s the first time you’ve ever asked me that question,” he bares his teeth in a crazed grin. “I’m a Council Member. I’ve known exactly where you’ve been ever since you ran away from the Southside, my little omega whore.”

“What—what do you want from me?” I manage to croak out, my voice cracking.

“Isn’t it obvious?” He laughs bitterly, shoving me back down onto the floor. “I’m generous enough to take you back even after you’ve sullied yourself by letting other alphas knot you. You were raised to bemyomega, and I refuse to let my investment go to waste.”

Raised to be his omega. I remember the mercenary’s last words before I blacked out. The mention of my mother.

Charlotte mentioned when I first escapedfrom Alpha Niall and the Southside that my beta parents couldn’t be my actual parents. I never looked like my mom growing up. Could that mercenary have been talking about my actual mother?

“Do—Do you know who my parents are?” I don’t know where I find the courage to actually ask a question instead of laying silently and taking it, but it’s there.

He lets out a long laugh. One that echoes in the cold basement we’re in.

“What an interesting question. So you’ve finally connected the dots, have you?”

“I—I did. It’s impossible for them to be my parents. Two betas can’t have an omega child,” I say, struggling to push myself into a sitting position. The drugs are still making my body heavy.

“Well I have no clue who your father is, but your mother was a whore. One of the best omega whores,” The closest thing I’ve ever seen to a wistful expression appears on his face. “Before the riot and all the stupid regulations around omegas, there were far more brothels, whore houses, and unregulated heat nests than there are now.”

“There—there are still those things now?”

“Of course there are! There are just fewer, but they certainly exist. You’re in the basement of one right now. I’m very familiar with the owner of this establishment.”

I swallow hard, looking at the room I’m in with a new lens.

“What happened to my mother? I don’t have any memory of her.”

“She was tainted by another alpha,” he growls, pacing the floor in front of me. “You know, you’re lucky you didn’t come back pregnant like she did. I’d be forced to throw away the decades of investment I’ve put into you.”

The crazed, obsessive look in his eye he gets when he speaks about my mother sends bolts of fear down my spine.

“She died in the riot,” he shrugs. “Raped to death by a whole crowd, I believe. But by then, it didn’t matter.”

“What—what would’ve happened if I hadn’t presented as an omega?”

He shrugs. “There are plenty of beta whores. I would’ve put you to work to try and recoup the loss of having those betas raise you. Lucky for you, you have a much more luxurious life in your future.”

I don’t think we have the same definition of luxury.

“Now then, enough talking.” He snaps his fingers, and a random beta man with a tripod comes into the room.

“What—what’s going on?”