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AMAYA

I already know this is worse than the academy. No amount of isolation, weight checks, drugs, heats spent as an experiment or the rough handling of the enforcers at the Premium Designation Academy is going to come close to this next level of hell.

How do I know that?

Us omegas, we kept to ourselves. The academy even did their best to keep us from forming friendships, giving us no chance to really speak or band together. But now, waking up to the sounds of screams and cries of at least a dozen people, tells me everything is different. And not for the better.

No longer are our scents muted or are we being scolded for our loud desperate pleas. Our scents mingle in a cloud of rotten fear, each individual signature of an omega lost in the haze of this new form of torture.

Gone are the large isolation cells, morbid clinic rooms, and stingy dorms. Calling these new accommodations a cell would be generous and laughable. These are fucking cages. Cramped, unable to stretch out in any direction without poking through the bars.

Blinking through the stinging of my dry eyes, I see a few omegas kneeling and gripping the sides of their cages. Worn steel bars showcase claw marks of the poor souls who were here before us.

These mini torture devices aren't new. They've been used and reek of the turmoil left behind by their previous occupants. It's hard to focus on my own entrapment when the horror-stricken faces around me are the most terrifyingly animated things I've ever seen.

Over the past year I've started getting used to omegas showing their emotions, but the four years before rehab are hard to shake. We were meant to be quiet, submissive, and invisible. There was no room for our feelings in the midst of survival, especially once they trained it out of us.

My throat feels like sandpaper and tastes like I got water boarded with salt water. I can just taste the overwhelming undercurrent of sea water in the air. The humidity coating my skin in sweat does nothing to hydrate me, and the bottom of my cage is tucked too far away from the puddle in the middle of the large room.

Even if I wanted to reach for the water, I can't move. My head pounds to the beat of its own drum. I'm too numb to feel the anxiety making my heart race. I know it's there, but I'm adrift; floating on the silent bond I've sufficiently drowned in the abyss of disassociation.

As long as I don't feel, don't react, Vincent is safe from everything I'm about to suffer.

I used to hate how alone I was, especially after having so many people to love and spend time with. While that is true once again, I would rather feel this empty loneliness than subject my alpha to the torture only meant for me.

I’ll stay hollow and drown myself in the sea of my blue-eyed mate for as long as I can. I'll even find appreciation for the mockery of water in the air and use it to think of Vincent.

The ocean is beyond the stone wall at my back, I bet. I wonder if it's as blue as my alpha's eyes. Nothing beats the deep, beautiful, sparkling soul of my alpha, though.

'Alpha?'

As long as we are nothing, he will be okay.

'Protect alpha.'

"Protect alpha," I repeat in a hoarse whisper and drift off in the wave of my mate's love.