Page 138 of Psycho Alphas: Part Two

“It… hurt,” I said.

Maybe that was the point.

But this time, I couldn’t bring myself to immortalise his suffering. Tonight, for Thistle, the story hadn’t ended in death.

I’d seen Bella’s darkness. There was no world in which Bambi survived the night if we’d left. I was sure, in fact, that Bella hadn’t killed her because she’d hoped to do it in front of Thistle. She’d wanted to do it after Banner was finished…

The pain, the agony, the filth she’d inflicted on the night, the state Thistle would have been in—it wouldn’t have been enough for her. No amount of begging, of pleading for humanity would have stopped her from dragging Bambi out. To twist the knife. To turn something sick, into something worthy of hell itself.

“She’s alive,” I breathed.

AndIwas… The whisper of a thought trailed off into nothingness—something that shouldn’t be allowed to be.

So I drew it, instead.

Another different figure than before.

It was difficult, as if with every stroke my ribs were slowly crushing my lungs, as if they weren’t sure I was allowed this. But the details manifested, until on the canvas there was a figure—a creature clutched in Thistle’s arms.

For the first time, that person in the centre of the canvas was… alive.

I shuddered, panic clawing up my throat, and I dropped the charcoal, reaching out with a flat palm to smudge the whole stupid thing away. Thistle’s squeak of distress caught me—and her grip tightened on my wrist as she tried to drag me back.

I froze, still caught between here, and there. The nightmare I’d never escaped. But slowly, she pulled my hand away, turning and looking up at me with glassy violet eyes until I’d fully relaxed back into the stool.

For the first time since I’d woken in that forest,Iwas alive, too—and this was the Omega with violet eyes glittering in the dim moonlight—the one who’d saved me.

“You know,” she whispered. “I think your hair is shorter in real life. You should work on that.”

I snorted, swallowing through a thick throat.

“But uh… I thought it was gonna be Bambi,” she grumbled.

I smiled, unable to take my eyes from hers. “Bambi’s yours, Doll. You gotta do your own.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

ROGUE

Cypress was working quickly. Bambi was out cold with Bunny still tucked into the crook of her elbow, and a monitor attached to her finger tracked her pulse and sats. Cypress had injected something into Bambi’s skin around some of the wounds while Vance held pressure on others.

Now she was focused beneath the ceiling lights, suturing closed the worst wounds. She cut one, then turned on her stool to Ace. “You’re hovering.”

He raised his eyebrows, but his gaze was fixed on the suture she was holding. Finally, she rolled her eyes. “Do you remember?—?”

“Yup.” Ace was already washing his hands, and before I knew it, he was seated beside Cypress, suture in hand as she pointed along one of the wounds. “Close it neat. Don’t pull too tight?—”

“I know.” Ace was eyeing the stitches she’d already done. “Those?”

“Internal. They’ll dissolve. That one was deeper than the others—but I don’t think anything was nicked.”

“I don’t want her looking like a patchwork doll at the end of this,” I said.

Cypress grinned. “He’s shockingly good, would you believe? And the faster we can get this done, the better.”

I watched with mild fascination as Ace got to work, swallowed entirely by his focus on the stitches. He didn’t have a single tremor in his hands, despite the instability of Thistle in the bond, and the thick scent of this Omega’s blood saturating the air.

Bambi’s scent was in there somewhere—a hint of desert and charred sugar, stress twisting it into something bitter. I couldn’t identify it properly. She must have taken a scent blocker—there’d been nothing in the car—but that level of terror had a way of burning through those quickly.