Page 137 of Psycho Alphas: Part Two

“Net!” he’d gasped, trying to grab at me. “Alfa… ne brosay menya…” He looked so terrified, fists closing around my shirt. “Zashchitnik! Pozhaluysta…”

He said those words over and over.

After everything, I’d looked up what they meant and was left hollow.

Thistle was still, as entranced by the work as I was.

I made semicircular smudges with my thumb, forming thick clumps along the treetops before I added hard, thin lines of leaves to contrast the blurry shadows.

Bark etched along the shaded side of the trees, with scattered branches peeling outward…

That night in the woods had lasted an eternity.

His name was Adrian. I wouldn’t find out until later where he was from, when we’d made broken attempts at conversation—when he’d point to me and say ‘America’ and then to himself and say ‘Saratov’.

Thistle had found him in this room not long ago, etched into the art here—but was this the only place he remained? Just like me, victims of the Ring rarely had people looking for them.

I hadn’t cared before, how hollow it made me to wonder about that, but this time, when I reached to carve out the centre of the piece, I froze.

This was his place—one he’d never left.

It was the first time I’d crossed paths with Bella Morgan, and the last time I’d seen him. I lifted my hand to draw him again, but it didn’t feel right.

His torture was eternal, his death repeating over and over, a glitch in my system I could never fix. In the Ring I’d seen it endlessly. His was the first torturous death I’d witnessed, not the last. But it had been a long time since I’d been this close to it.

I always knew the fate of the slaves I crossed, but the open wounds across Bambi’s body were fresh, with the tang of iron I could taste with her blood dripping to the floor of my home…

“What happened?” Thistle asked, fingers tracing the place she knew Adrian should be. She’d seen the other one I’d made—the moments of his pain I’d been forced to watch.

“He died.”

His words rang again in my head.

Alpha, don’t leave me…

Protector, please.

Protector…

The thousand distortions of him all blurred the canvas at once. The screams that turned to choked whimpers, that turned to silence.

Bella had enjoyed torturing me as much as him. Forced me to watch the death of an Omega I’d so foolishly promised to protect. She was the scent match I’d just found, though she didn’t know it, and she’d enjoyed carving out the part of me that made me an Alpha.

I was almost insane by the time Rogue appeared and claimed me.

I jumped as I felt a tug on my cuff. Thistle was peering up at me curiously. I looked back to the canvas, but when I pressed the charcoal against it, the lines were unfamiliar this time.

She came to life quickly, with lopsided buns, a plushie at her side, and in her arms she clutched a formless figure.

“Is that…?” Thistle trailed off, as if unsure about the figure she held. Mirroring the scene that had played out moments ago. A figure in her arms, blood running red, soaked with the burden of what it meant to cross the Ring.

“You always draw the pain,” she whispered. “Why?”

I considered that.

Whathadbeen the point?

Over and over, I’d immortalised that agony. He’d begged me to save him but instead I’d let him die again and again by the charcoal at the tip of my finger. And every time he died, it shredded any blossoming sanity that had begun to cultivate after I’d become free of Rogue.