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“I’m recording you. You’re going to say you’re renouncing your placement with the Ward Pack.”

For some reason, that’s not what I expected.

“What? Do you really think they’ll believe a video if I look like this?”

I wave down at myself. I look just as good as you’d expect someone who was shot, in a car crash, and kidnapped.

“Unfortunately, you made some very public appearances. The purpose of this video is to get the authorities that will inevitably be looking for you off of my back enough to make us disappear. I have some lovely little homes in the mountains where no one would ever find you.”

I shake my head. There’s no way I’m going to make this any easier for him. If the rest of the Northside’s government is full of alphas like him, there’s a chance that any video where I say what he want would actually give him a chance to make me disappear.

“N—no. I have a pack. I have alphas that I love. I—I’m not going to give them up.”

“Love!” He sneers. “Such a silly little concept. Do you really think they care about you beyond what you can offer them as an omega?”

“They—they do!”

“You will say that you renounce their pack,” Alpha Niall barks, taking a menacing step toward me.

I clench my jaw shut, my throat closing. Every single muscle in my body locks as I fight the compulsion with everything I have. I focus on the feel of my fingernails digging crescents into my palm. My chest heaves, and I taste bile at the back of my throat.

There’s no way to describe how soul-crushingly wrong it feels to not obey an alpha’s bark.

I feel the last shred of control slipping, and my mouth starts to open.

“There you go,” Alpha Niall laughs. He waves to his beta, and the red light on the camera starts blinking.

I throw my head back into the concrete wall behind me, making my vision go white, and my teeth clack together with the impact. The pain makes a cry of pain leave my throat.

But the pressure of Alpha Niall’s bark disappears.

“N—No,” I grit out, panting. “I won’t.”

“You dare disobey me?” He hisses, throwing me to the ground with a savage grip on my hair. “You’ll regret doing things the hard way.”

Niall digs the heel of his expensive shoe into the bullet wound on my arm. The piercing shriek that leaves my throat leaves my vocal cords raw. It echoes in the room around us, bouncing off of the cold concrete.

The beta, who’s still standing behind the camera, winces.

The pain radiating from my arm is all-consuming. It feels like I’m getting shot all over again, minus shock’s natural anesthetic effect.

“Have you changed your mind?” he asks, lifting his stupid leather shoe from my arm as he takes a step back.

I tremble as I roll to my side, vomiting bile all over the concrete beneath me from the pain. My vision is growing hazy, and everything sounds like I’m underwater.

I still clench my jaw shut, refusing to give him an answer. Because I haven’t changed my mind. I’ll never give up my pack. Ever. Especially not for someone like him.

A bucket of ice cold water splashes all over me and the puddle of my vomit.

“Fine,” Alpha Niall huffs, nodding to the beta, who’s holding an empty bucket. “I’ll leave you to think about your decision then.”

I curl up into a ball, the cold seeping into nearly every part of my body. Well, every part of my body except for my still throbbing and now burning arm.

A whimper leaves the back of my throat. I’m no stranger to pain, but I’ve been pampered since my escape. I don’t know how much of this I can take before I break.

My sleep is dreamless.I don’t know whether it’s the drugs or the exhaustion from the adrenaline crash of the situation, but I’m luckily not haunted by any nightmares. Though, I’m not sure if you could call it lucky, considering I’m living one right now.

My eyes fly open and I jerk away when I feel a soft touch brush hair away from my face.