Page 77 of Into the Fire: After

I wasso sickof hiding. All I did lately was hide.

I didn’t want to sit in the apartment, all of us stewing in each other’s anger and dismay. That wouldn’tdoanything.

Each day, I wandered. One day I went by Bean & Leaf. Jennie wasn’t in. I ordered a chai and lavender tea from my replacement but didn’t stick around to drink it.

Another, I rode the bus for eight hours straight. Doodled in my notebook because I didn’t feel like words at moment. Doodled amoon and stars. A chubby little dog in a puddle. A girl chopping off a bird’s head.

Sheyna got on the bus that evening. She tried to engage me—we hadn’t seen each other since I’d passed off the ill-gotten meds to her—but my verbal words were just as lost as my written words. She departed at her stop with a comforting hand on my shoulder.

My appointment at Brooks’ clinic passed in silence, neither of us feeling up to the normal flirts and teases.

Five days after Gail’s news, I texted Sheyna.

Taryn

Basement at 3?

Sheyna

See you then.

Sheynalistenedtothewhole sordid tale with an impassive face. All the consequences my Registration had wrought.

My abduction. My forced heat. Our narrow escape. The tenuous line we’d been walking for months now, trying to build a case against the Wainwright behemoth. Only for it to crumble around us.

“I can’t believe after everything, they’re just going to get away with it.” I ran my hands through my hair. “It’s fucking criminal."

My friend shook her head, her pistachio and cherry scent sharpening. “Taryn, what the actual fuck.”

I nodded. “Right?”

“Like you—you actually—Taryn,what the fuck.”

God, how amazing was it to finally tell the full truth to an outside party, someone not directly involved in the absurdity of it. For Sheyna to validate how above and beyond awful it really was.

We’d survivedhelltogether.

But that hell would outlive us. Unwitting omegas would participate in these studies, thinking they were helping find a treatment for morning sickness or whatever, when they were actually potentially damning their children to be lab rats or worse.

Monsters like Wainwright would always prey on the vulnerable. Omegas like Sheyna’s unnamed acquaintance, or Caro from the bus…they’d be the ones to slip through the cracks and fall directly into the waiting hellfire.

“I’m all out of ideas,” I said, resting my chin on my folded arms on the table. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Sheyna sat in silence across from me, chewing on her thumbnail.

“What?”

She shook her head. One booted foot tapped on the floor like a damn telegraph. “Court isn’t the only place to hold these fuckers accountable.”

I listened. My skin prickled with interest. My gut tried to tell me this was a bad idea. My brain screamed to call Brea, Caine, anyone who could talk sense into me.

My heart, trampled but unbeaten, soared.

Wainwright better not count me out yet.

Thirty-two

Brea