Page 143 of Carnage Island

Alpha Kin chuckles at my back, amused. He shifts the blade back to my shoulder, digging in again to reopen the wound he created there. It isn’t deep but ithurts, drawing a scream from my lips that makes him laugh harder behind me.

Fucking sadist!

The silver leaves my skin, returning to my neck as he wraps his palm around my waist to hold me upright. He thinks I’m losing strength over this. Maybe I am.

Or maybe I can use that to my advantage.

He sees me as an Omega. A weakling.

But he has no idea who I really am, who I trained all my life to be.

I feign a shudder that earns me another lick to the neck. I fight the urge to gag, my stomach churning in disgust.

“Well played, Bryson,” he says as the male in question appears on the phone—which my former father is holding with blank eyes.

He’s definitely under Bryson’s hold, I decide.

Not that it makes anything different between us. He willingly handed my mother over to the Santeetlah Wolves. And he disavowed me in front of the pack. That was all him.

Not the Alpha studying me from the screen.

Bryson doesn’t say anything for a long moment, his eyes assessing. I feel cold under his stare.Dead.

“What a disappointment you’ve proven to be, Aspen,” are the words he finally chooses to voice.

And something about his statement makes me even angrier.

He’s callingmea disappointment? After everything he’s done to my mother? After everything he’s done to me?

“Release her,” I hear Tieran demand.

Alpha Kin snorts behind me.

“That’s not how this is going to work,” Bryson says conversationally, the phone’s image angling down to the ground. “I make the calls here.”

My jaw clenches.Yeah. You always make the calls, don’t you? With my life. With my mother’s life. You’re a fucking disgrace.

Lava pumps through my veins, my wolf pacing angrily inside me, dying for a chance tokill.

Alphas protect.

Mates cherish.

Alphas protect.

Mates cherish.

She seems to be repeating those words over and over again in my mind, her tail swishing in fury as theAlphaat my back continues to hold me at knife point.

TheAlphawho is supposedly myhalf-brother.

Maybe that’s why his scent is familiar.

Or maybe I’m smelling my father on him.

It doesn’t fucking matter.

I am not going to be a pawn, I decide.I’mdonebeing a pawn.