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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

GRACE

“ W hat the hell is that?” I ask, voice quivering and pitching so high I must sound like a child as I fly out of the cell after Raphael. My eyes can’t adjust to the dark, but I see flashes of snaggled, fangs like teeth, blood red eyes, and black clawed hangs.

Holy fuck!

“Raphi! Run!” I shout, but he doesn’t listen to me.

Instead, he leaps in the air and lands on the thing’s back after releasing an ear-splitting battle cry. He yanks two knives from his boots and rams them into the holes where the monster’s ears should be. I guess it does have a brain, because it jerks and collapses.

“This is why we don’t enter the Lighthouse. Now come on. We find Blue Fox, and we get the fuck out!”

I don’t have to be told twice. I should’ve never made them some, should’ve never been foolish enough to dream I’d escape from Providence alive, anyway.

We race down the winding hallways lined with prison cells. I catch glimpses of writing, warnings, and so much blood. Fresh blood. Shit, shit, shit! We shouldn’t have come.

“Come on!” Leo shouts after successfully kicking the door down.

Raphael lifts me into his arms and takes off at a full sprint.

My pride died the day I committed myself to this pack, so I hold on tight and act every bit the part of a spoiled princess.

After all, I’m the reason we’re here in the first place.

The least I can do is not be the easiest target to kill by pretending I can outrun an actual mutant.

“Don’t panic. You’ll only lose oxygen.” Nakoa commands and of course I start hyperventilating harder like a stupid bitch.

“This way!” Raphael shouts and we twist down a tiny path flooded with blue light. It seems to be some sort of secret passage.

“Stay close to me,” Leo orders and I do, flashlight peeking around his shoulder as he pulls his dagger at the noise.

Zombies and secrets.

As the banging outside the door settles down, we examine the room. It’s sparsely decorated, about the size of a small bedroom with a large montering system in the middle, and on the wall opposite a door the has an exit sign a map of, “Providence Private Prison Complex?”

My words seem to drift in the air is so dirty with smong.

Nakoa’s face falls at the sight, hand stroking the image with reverence. Two boys cling to each other on a fishing boat that I can barely make out as Star Spear. The boy in the picture looks so… So…

“Familiar…” I whisper, and Nakoa looks at me strangely.

“Who is he?” I ask, as Raphael and Leo comb through the stash of maps and archive of documents left behind by the stad.

“My brother.”

I’m shivering, but most certainly not from the cold draft blowing through the steel box we locked ourselves in.

“Why are you so unsettled right now, sweet omega?” he asks as he pins my hair behind my ears.

“What’s your brother’s name?”

“Kainoa”

“Right,” I sigh.

What the hell was I expecting? It’s not like a crooked nose is uncommon.

“We found it!”

“Didn’t I order you not to touch shit!” Raphael bellows as the seemingly ancient system boots up.

And what we see flash across the screen forces me to fall back into Nakoa’s arm, the collective gasp in the room removing what little air was left.

“Welcome to Foxcroft Laboratory for the Advancement of Omega Research,” the computer says robotically as it boots up.

I’m too stunned to speak and as I turn to my pack, I see that Raphael is on the verge of mental collapse.

Madame Blu a dataset. The locations Serge rattled off locations of kidnapped alphas.

I tremble, then toss the distorted picture of the faceless pregnant omega lined up like cattle awaiting slaughter Blue Fox a codename for the bloodblooded alphas using this island as their hunting ground.

The climax to this madness should drive me over the edge. But all I can feel is a soul-crushing, mind-numbing, existential thread.

I was always supposed to end up here. If that’s the case, is this my fate?

A light flicks on as I pass through the threshold. I turn and read the screen and freeze

“Grace?” Nakoa ask, using my real name as I force a smile. “Is everything okay?”

“No, but it will be,” I lie, avoiding what he’s actually asking me.

I can pretend, but nothing will ever be the same.

No more running. No more hiding. It’s time for prey like me to become crueler than the predators that roam this place.

Besides, I think, as we emerge from the pits of hell side by side, there’s already so many secrets between us, Nakoa, Leo, Raphael, and I.

What’s one more?