Page 15

Della

Not for one minute do I close my eyes.

After what happened to me the last time I shut them, I am never sleeping again.

At first, the silence is welcome.

No voices, no footsteps, and no laughter mean my torment is over.

For now.

As the seconds, then the minutes, then hours stretch out, the silence becomes an oppressive, heavy weight that presses down on me.

I should stop cowering like a wounded animal and escape like I need to. But my mind keeps dragging me back to waking on the floor, my skirt up over my hips, as an alpha did up his pants.

Did they all take turns as I lay near drowned from having my head shoved down a toilet?

How many times?

I force myself up from the floor, breathing heavily, my eyes dry and itchy.

I look around me for the millionth time in case I missed an easy way out of this hellhole.

But it’s still just me, a locked door, and no easy way out of this at all.

My eyes slice to the door, to the keyhole, a tiny bead of faint light bleeding into the room.

My footsteps aren’t as steady as I’d like them to be as I walk over to it. I think over every crime show I ever watched, everything I might have seen or learned about how to break myself out of a locked room.

I try everything.

And when nothing works, I scream at the door as if my rage will blow it open.

Defeated, I sink to my knees, turn so I have my back to the door and rest my head on it.

I think about how hope feels a lot like desperation.

I never needed hope to sustain me.

I had drive.

That’s all I needed to succeed.

Everleigh disappeared. No. She was taken by an alpha who abused her. I didn’t hope I would find her. I knew I would. It would just take time. It didn’t matter what it cost me. College? Who cares about that when your sister is missing?

All I needed was a way to get into Lawrence Wentworth’s house, create an opportunity to speak to Everleigh, and get her away from that prick before I set fire to him.

Easy.

“This is the same thing,” I whisper. “Don’t waste time on hope. Do .”

I get up again because it isn’t hope I need, it’s that same drive.

I’m just tired and hungry. That’s all this is.

Another hour passes.

Bruised toes make hobbling painful. I’ve nearly broken a finger, a clip I had in my hair, and I have crawled over every inch of this room, searching for any stray bit of glass, rock, or metal to force the lock.

Nothing.

There is nothing.

If I can’t get out of this room, then I have to think of something else.

My gaze settles on my sneakers. Or rather, one of them. I don’t know what happened to the other. It could be back in the parking lot or in the room with the toilet that the asshole shoved my head into.

I take my sneaker off, and I spend the next two minutes pulling the laces from it. Then I place the sneaker beside me and I hold the black shoelace as I work out how I can kill someone with it.

A door bangs in the distance. I scramble to my feet, press my cheek to the cold metal, and strain to listen through it.

Thud .

I flinch, hating my reaction to the sound as I steel my spine.

Male laughter drifts toward me.

The alphas are back.

I weigh up my options. It doesn’t take long. It’s just me and a single black shoelace against three big alphas.

Do I wait beside the door for it to swing open and then…

“No.” I shake my head, already dismissing the idea of jumping at them.

Three of them and one of me means whoever I grab had better be the one with the taser, or I’m going to be in a world of pain. I can surprise one of them, but not all of them.

As I cycle through ideas and swiftly reject them, the footsteps move closer.

“Make it count, Della,” I whisper.

Stiffening my jaw, I take the shoelace and stretch it, wishing it were longer. I wrap the end around one wrist, and repeat the action with the other end until I’m holding it taut.

I’ve never garroted a man before, but it can’t be that hard, can it?

As I listen to those footsteps, their laughter stirs the memory of waking up on the floor and not knowing what they did to me.

I flatten my lips as I stand right beside the door, holding the ends of the shoelace. Fear keeps trying to overwhelm me. I refuse to let it.

Forcing my racing heart to slow, I wish I’d told Everleigh I loved her the last time I saw her. I don’t regret going into Haven Academy or taking Mercy’s place, but I regret not telling my sister I love her.

My heart spikes at the rattle and clang of a key in the lock.

I slow my breathing down and lift both my arms up over my head. Straight.

And I wait.

“She’s quiet,” one of them says from right outside. “You think she’s planning something?”

“After the way Zach nearly drowned her?” Another alpha snorts. “She’s probably waiting on her knees to do whatever will get her out of here.”

“Are you sure? She seemed?—”

“Open the fucking door. Of course I’m sure.”

The door swings open.

An alpha walks in. I don’t wait to see who it is. I jerk the shoelace down hard around his neck, and I pull tight, gritting my teeth.

Someone yells.

Pain radiates down my side and back. More yelling. More pain. I have my knee in the alpha’s back, and I’m pulling and pulling.

I slump forward as the alpha drops to his knees. Everything hurts, but I refuse to let go.

My head rings. My world turns upside down and inside out.

I blink my eyes open, head woozy. Confused.

How did I end up on my back?

Tiny white light dances across my vision as I sit up.

And then I see them, the three alphas, standing across from me, near the closed door.

Watching me.

Zach, holding the taser, smirks at me. “Nice and awake, sleeping beauty?”

The alpha with the dark blond hair hasn’t blinked since I sat up. There’s no missing the red line on the front of his throat.

“You’re going to regret that,” he says, eyes spitting rage.

“Already do.” I slowly get up. “You’re still breathing.”

He takes a step forward. The black-eyed alpha with the light blond hair grabs his arm and yanks him back. “Wait.” His eyes are on me. Not angry, but curious. Instantly, it puts me on high alert. “Just give it a minute.”

“Give what a minute?” I ask.

He smiles. “Wasn’t talking to you.”

Dread coalesces in the pit of my belly, a sick churn that grows.

Why are they there watching me like they’re waiting for something to happen?

After what I just did, they should have killed me, tossed my body, and gone looking for their next victim.

So why am I still alive? And why are they looking at me like that?

Zach, the one in charge of all this, asks, “Do you know where you are, worthless beta?”

Sweat breaks out on my forehead. “Fuck off.”

He smiles as he tucks his taser in the front of his pants and sticks both hands in his pockets as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

My eyes dart to the taser.

His smile widens. “You see, my dad used to own this place. Now he’s moved to a larger site since he outgrew this one. Would you like to know what his little chemical factory created?”

I press my back to the wall as sweat drips down the side of my face. My knees are shaking again, and I’m burning up. “I don’t care.”

His smile is slick, so greasy I have never itched to punch someone in the face more than this guy. “See, you out of anyone should care.”

I wipe my sweating brow with the back of my hand. My sweat stinks. "I don’t.”

“You should, given you have that drug swimming in your veins right about now. Haven’t you wondered why you’ve got the sweats?”

“I don’t believe you.”

He takes his right hand out of his pocket, pulling with it a tiny, clear vial.

An empty vial.

He tilts his head as he studies the vial, as if it holds the meaning of life. “ This is my great-grandfather’s pride and joy. A drug to trigger an omega’s heat.”

I recall the last time I heard of a drug like that.

Lawrence Wentworth kidnapped Everleigh and auctioned her off before Pack Ashe rescued her.

Before her rescue, someone stuck her with a needle, injecting her with drugs to induce her heat.

We never figured out what the drug was or where it came from.

Now, I know.

More cold sweat dribbles down the side of my face as my world tilts ever so slightly to the right. “I’m not an omega.”

He grins at me. “You’ll be our science experiment. What happens when you give a beta a double dose of great grandpappy’s special sauce? I’d say something interesting with the way you’re sweating. Got an itch for my knot, yet?”

“You’re lying,” I whisper, searching my arms for any needle marks. I can’t see one, but it’s not normal to be this shaky and hot for no reason.

He smirks. “No. I’m not. You made it so easy. Then again, betas always are.”

More liquid drips down the side of my face.

I swipe the back of my hand across my forehead, and it comes away bloody.

I’m sweating blood.

Zach is speaking, and I’m still burning up inside as I slide down the wall and hit the floor with a thump.

He is still talking, words that make not a lick of sense when my teeth chatter. I start shaking and my muscles seize up.

Everything goes black for two seconds.

Then white.

Someone curses. “Shit, you gave her too much.”

“No, I didn’t. This shit only works on omegas.”

“Well, it’s doing something to this beta. She’s barely breathing.”

Every inch of my skin is on fire.

“We have to get rid of her.”

“Get rid of?—”

“My dad has a site manager who checks out this place every few days. If he finds her here, my dad will know it was me. We have to dump her.”

“Is she still breathing?”

“I don’t know. Check her pulse.”

“Me? You do it.”

“I say we dump her. If she’s not dead now, she soon will be. Look at her.”

Silence

“Ok. Where?”

“Who the fuck cares? Help me pick her up. We’ll dump her somewhere remote, and we’ll hope to fuck she’s good and dead before anyone finds her. The last thing we need is for her to point fingers at us.”

“We could?—”

“You want to kill her? Go right ahead.”

Silence.

“Okay, fine. Let’s get her out of here. You grab her legs.”

Everything goes black.

I open my eyes, but they don’t want to work.

Wherever I am is vibrating.

The vibration stops, a metallic creak splits the air, and I’m moving.

I fall on my face too quickly to protect myself.

I can’t breathe lying on my face like this.

Footsteps move away fast.

Car doors slam.

One, two, three.

An engine purrs, tires squeal, and then… nothing.

Just me swimming in an ocean of pain and blackness.