Page 88 of Pretty When She Breaks

“No way,” I groaned. “I’m exhausted. And I ache all over.”

Hugo threw another crumpled-up paper bag at me. I scanned his cell. Looked like that was the last one he had.

“Up, boy. If you want your body to absorb this training for when you’re rutting, you need to be practicing it constantly.You need proper posture to be as instinctive as breathing. So, on your feet.”

I sighed and stood, testing my weight on my sore ankle. It ached, but I could tolerate it.

“Okay, we’ll start with moving around in a proper fighting stance,” he said.

“You sound way too happy about this torture,” I grumbled as I copied his posture.

He grinned at me. “I haven’t had this much fun in years. Now, start moving.”

FORTY-SEVEN

KAOS

I lifted my head as Laurel returned, relief washing over me.

That’s strange.

My thousand eyes of focus and the singing in my veins hadn’t lasted, and I was left, as always, to choose between being present in a reality I hated or being lost to that quiet oblivion. I’d been spending far too much time in this reality since Ocean was taken. It was exhausting.

Now that she was here, though, I could focus on her and forget that reality sucked without going blank.

Something about her being around helped everything feel a little less sharp. She wasn’t soft or delicate, like some omegas. It was as though someone had tried to remove that part of her. But it still lingered. In the way she hid in her hair for a moment. In the way she sometimes scurried from room to room. That vulnerability that passed over her face when she thought I wasn’t looking. She wasn’t what I had been expecting; she wasn’t the cold Duchess that had condemned Ocean to the Blood Well on a whim.

“I’m having a visitor,” Laurel told me. “I’ll meet them out back, so just stay out of sight.”

“And what if I tell you to send them away?” I asked.

She raised her chin. “That would look suspicious. It has to be at my place because I’m sharing some sensitive information.”

“About us?”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you,” she said, grabbing her laptop and walking outside.

I watched her go, then turned for her office, remotely activating the small bug I’d put on her and slipping on my headphones. What was she doing? Probably something shady, like planning when they were going to kidnap their next alpha victim.

I settled in to the sounds of the water in the pond, of pigeons and Laurel clicking away on her laptop. Eventually, footsteps approached.

“Hey, babe,” said a feminine voice, and someone pulled out a chair to sit. It sounded familiar. The same woman who’d driven Laurel and Finch around the other day.

Jade?

“Thanks for agreeing to work with me on this,” Laurel said. “I really want to make this right. I can’t help feeling like I let him down. Like, I missed something big, and if I’d caught it in time, he’d still be around.”

Her voice had thickened a bit, and I heard a sniff. I was taken aback; were they talking about Ocean?

“He drove us both off,” Jade said. “But I agree there was something off about him after he claimed his aura.”

“Right?” Laurel said. “He started going missing for days at a time, he stopped talking to us. Pushing us away. But he wasn’t suicidal.”

“Jule suicidal?” Jade said. “No way. Homicidal? Now that I could see.”

Oh. Not Ocean. Jule. Julius.

Memories assaulted me.