Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

JED

I had to knock Damon out. The drugs and his bond with the omega didn’t mesh well together, and when the Kelly brothers claimed the winning bid, my baby brother stiffened as if he was about to roar in defiance.

The room was already screaming with unhappy alphas pissed they were out bid, so it wouldn’t have mattered much if he was anyone other than Damon Dresmond.

My baby brother has a reputation for being dead inside. The thousand yard stare has been trademarked and perfected by him, and people have been known to piss their pants when his gaze runs over them.

Don’t get me wrong. We are all scary motherfuckers as brothers. Kane is wild, unpredictable, and will blow shit up for fun. I’m calculating, the planner of our missions, and won’t hesitate when in the thick of things. Damon? He doesn’t care about anything except for his pack.

Until now.

The only way I’m going to be able to keep my brother’s thin grip on his sanity is to get our girl back. I don’t deserve her, especially after what just happened on the auction stage, but I’ll do my damnedest to change that.

Kane walked out with Damon by half dragging, half carrying our unconscious brother to the back to get him out of the public eye, and I’m collecting my beta from wherever he fucked off to.

Pushing past alphas as they talk or begin to leave, I growl under my breath when they don’t fucking move fast enough. The noise is enough to make people flinch and move away from the direction I’m going in.

Fucking finally.

Ophelia is talking to someone and I use my full height to look for him. I don’t know how he’s feeling or what he’s doing and it’s beginning to make me fucking twitchy.

A naked woman between two large alphas is being dragged out the door, and I push my hand through my curls in desperation. I’m fucking them all up, but the charade is almost up. We’re almost home free.

Hold on, Adira. You’re safe, you just don’t know it yet.

The Kelly brothers are in their thirties and are being nudged by their parents to find an omega. They lost their best friend when she was a teen in a kidnapping, and never forgot her. They privately despise the auctions, knowing she could possibly be dead or sold.

It’s been twenty-one years since the day she disappeared in the sunlight. I don’t know how she could possibly be alive in a world this depraved and bleak.

When I reached out to them about buying Adira for us and the reasoning behind it, they agreed immediately. I can’t believe they were actually the winning bid. You can plan and plot something like this and still lose it all.

“Ophelia, I seem to be missing a beta,” I tell her as I arrive at her side with a grim smile.

I need to get the fuck out of here now.

Dad and my business is now concluded, so someone will be picking him up. I’m free to go off on my merry way with my pack, getting to Adira as quickly as I can. I need to make sure no one is tracking me, or all of this will be for nothing.

“What?” Ophelia asks, flinching in surprise. She's very twitchy for someone who is getting a decent cut of this auction, and my eyes narrow at her. “He is probably getting showered and changed in the back. You’re welcome to go collect him.”

Nodding, I turn to make my way to the back of the building. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m not above yelling his fucking name until he answers. I have a hair trigger grip on my anxiety at the moment, and it will release into the world as anger and bloodshed.

I need to keep my shit locked down for just a little while longer.

“Wait, I’ll find you an escort,” Ophelia says as she sees that I have no issues actually going. I’m not shy, I’ll go collect my people.

The madam flags down a beta guard who is thankfully clothed, and I follow him into the employee only area of the building. My head turns on a swivel, searching for Morris, breathing in deeply to catch even a hint of his scent.

“There are several bathrooms back here, he may have gone to the one Ophelia typically utilizes the most when she’s preparing omegas,” the beta says, ushering me to a door.

Carefully opening it, I keep one eye on the beta, expecting to be ambushed. It’s quiet back here, I wouldn’t be surprised. The beta instead takes several steps back to give me space, as if realizing how bad his proximity to me is for his health.

I can spot Morris’ strong muscles in his back as he stands under the shower, his clothes in a disorganized pile just outside of it. That’s not like him, and I forget about the guard as I walk inside and slam the door shut behind me and lock it.

“Morris?” I ask, walking slowly toward him. Most of his weapons are in his shoes, but I can see a gun out of reach of the water yet easily accessible to him. I don’t want to accidentally get shot.

We’ve had more than enough of that.

“Don’t,” he rasps, his voice thick with sadness. “I’m gross and dirty.”

“Well let’s get you clean,” I murmur, pulling my clothes off.

This isn’t about sex, it’s about comfort, and I pushed Morris to his limit without a thought, because it was necessary. My single mindedness is great when I’m in the thick of things, but is coming back to bite me now.

I deserve this. I threw everyone into the fire in an attempt to save them and pull the wool over my father’s eyes. None of us are unscathed.

My weapons are in my shoes, and I don’t bring anything into the shower with me as I step inside. Morris has a piece within reach and that’s enough.

“Things went a little off the walls,” I begin, my feet now close enough to get wet from the shower. The stall is huge and I clocked the hose on the ground, walking into the bathroom earlier, with the sprayer.

Ophelia needs to be strung up and slowly skinned. I haven’t had the pleasure of listening to a woman scream under my knife in too long. No one is safe from my pack. My father is the only one who has ever held my leash, and I’m considering slipping it once I release Adira from hers. The careful control is slipping and I’m afraid I may resemble Kane’s wildness with little effort.

Morris braces his arm on the tile wall above his head, leaning on it as he remains silent. Fuck. He never hides in his mind, and this scares me.

Slowly, I reach out to touch my fingertips to his back, finding that he’s trembling. “Morris, she’s safe now. The Kelly brothers will keep her that way. We just need to go get her. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Morris is quiet for a moment before his powerful body bursts into movement, turning and shoving me away. The only thing that keeps me from falling on my ass is great reflexes. as I flail on the slick concrete floor before finding my balance. It would be hilarious if not for his following words.

“And what about after we get her, huh?” Morris asks, his hazel eyes filled with pain. “Will we really be able to claim that she’s safe with us? We all dance to your father’s tune, Jed. She will never fucking be safe!”

His normally honeyed tones are filled with gravel, horror, and disgust. My heart pounds as I gaze back at him because he’s right. Things have to change. I’ve already let the thought shift through my mind once today.

My father needs to be knocked off the board completely, along with his pack. They are bound by depravity and their love of making others scream in despair. They aren’t pack the way my brothers, my beta, and I are. Morris hasn’t allowed me to bite him, insisting that it doesn’t matter.

There are many things I’m going to have to change.

“So we strangle his tune,” I say viciously, moving quicker than Morris can track with his exhaustion. He’s coming down from the drug Ophelia gave him and the adrenaline he’s been running on.

It’s easy to wrap my hand possessively around his throat and shove his shoulder until his back hits the wall.

“You’re right. I lead this pack, and my father refuses to let us go. We’re going to lose Damon if we don’t change things. Fuck, I’m going to lose everyone I give a shit about,” I rasp, squeezing his throat enough to know I have his attention. “Will you help me fix this?”

If I thought dropping to my knees and begging would help, I’d do it, but Morris glares at me from his position against the wall.

“How do I know this won’t be history repeating itself?” he asks. “I lost a piece of my humanity today, Jed. I don’t know… I don’t deserve her. The lying, gaslighting. She trusted me.”

“No one knew what we were planning other than Kane,” I whisper, dropping my forehead to his. “To everyone else it looked as if we were giving her up in the worst ways possible. But the joke’s on us, because perception is king. We now have to prove we not only had her best interests at heart, but that I’m also going to make my father a shitstain on the pavement.”

“You’re saying what I think you’re saying?” Morris asks, frowning at me. I hope there aren’t cameras in here, but I nod at him regardless.

“I need you to stay with me, man,” I whisper. “If you need to poison my food, put laxatives in my damn coffee to remind me that I’m an asshole, do it. Let’s get you cleaned up, dressed, and out of here so we can get our girl.”

“Ours,” Morris says, almost amused as I pull him back into the water. It’s fucking freezing, and I hold back a hiss as I grab a bar of soap to lather it up with my hands. His hair is bound at the top of his head still, away from where I’m rubbing the soap all over his body.

He’ll have to take them out of the hair tie to allow them to air dry completely after this.

Dropping to my knees, I run my hands over his pelvis and thick thighs, biting my lip as I gaze at his cock half hard in front of my face. Knowing where it was last, I thoroughly wash his dick and balls, smirking at Morris’s grunt.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I murmur once his legs are also washed and clean.

As I put away the soap and stand up, I’m not expecting Morris to grab my curls in his fist and gaze at me hard.

“What?” I ask, wondering if I hurt or triggered him in some way.

“I’m just as much a problem in this as you are,” he reminds me. “I could blame you for everything. It would be easier than dealing with this gnawing, angry pain in my chest. I can’t, though. I did things to her that are going to haunt me. These two hands. Me. I can’t blame the drug O gave me completely. The auctioneer told me to make it look good.”

“It was a show put on for the buyers,” I say softly, waiting to see where this is going to go.

“Adira doesn’t need a physical reminder of what happened to her,” Morris finally says. “I think I should leave the pack.”

My blood runs cold and I lose my shit. Twisting my body, I shove him against the wall, my hand holding onto his man bun to pull his head to the side. Pulling away from his fist, he loosens his grip for a moment and then my teeth are sinking deep into the tissue of his throat.

Mine.

I scream it in my mind, angry that he’d ever think about leaving us. The pack is forever, even if he’s been hesitant to complete the bond. He always explains that it’s not because he doesn’t want to, but because he doesn’t think betas are important enough for it. Bullshit.

Morris groans as I suck on the bite, the tang of his blood hitting my tongue.

“You are mine,” I growl. “You’re just as important to this pack. I let you continue on this ridiculous notion that you didn’t need a bite because your voice and consent is important to me. But now?”

My cock is rock hard, a side effect of the adrenaline and arousal of biting him. If I had been fucking him when I did it, he’d be full of cum right now.

“What, asshole?” Morris growls, making me chuckle darkly.

“You’re fucking stuck with me,” I rumble, moving to kiss him roughly. “You go, I go. Want to burn the whole goddamn world down?”

“Name the time and place,” he grumbles, rolling his eyes. I can already feel the strand of his awareness inside of me, and it’ll get stronger as time goes on. Oddly enough, betas don’t always need to return the bite, not when they already have a strong relationship with the alpha.

“I can’t imagine a more aggressive or romantic claim. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Smirking, I turn off the water and grab towels to dry him off first. He glances at me, and I merely roll my eyes, tossing a towel over his shoulders. He can dry his own back.

Dressing takes more time to get our weapons back in place, and I yank open the door to find Ophelia about to knock on the door.

“You took awhile,” she says slowly, glancing between the two of us. My bite is clear on his throat despite his shirt and sluggishly bleeding, despite the fact that I attempted to clean it up a bit with what I could find in the bathroom.

Grinning lazily as I play my part as the possessive alpha, I shrug. “I had to remind him who he belonged to,” I tell her.

Morris merely gazes at Ophelia with a shrug as if to ask her what else she expected.

“I guess I can’t ask for you to loan him out from time to time now,” she says with a sigh.

Shaking my head, I deny her without an ounce of worry. My father won’t push for this, as he knows Morris is a part of my pack and team. Missions go off as well as they do because of him.

“Not a chance,” I grunt, moving around her to get the fuck out of here.

I find my brothers out in a hallway in the main auction hall, the place almost abandoned by now. I didn’t plan to take as much time as I did in the bathroom, but it was necessary.

Helping Kane lift my still unconscious brother, I walk out of a side exit to our car.

We’re coming, Adira. I promise.

ADIRA

I’m exhausted, weak from lack of food, and coming down from the drugs still as I blink open my eyes. I’m laying in a soft bed with a fluffy comforter over me, and when I take a deep breath, all I can smell is a laundry detergent. Even that is light and doesn’t tickle my nose uncomfortably.

What is going on?

Shifting in the bed, I go to sit up but can’t. My arms are sore and tied to the headboard over my head. Frowning and confused, I wiggle around, seeing that my body is covered in a long-sleeved men’s shirt. It’s also freshly laundered with no scent.

While I appreciate the lack of scents to avoid throwing me into a tailspin, it leaves me with even more confusion.

“What?” I ask, rasping as I look around. The gag is gone now, leaving my mouth sore after being forced open for so long. I can finally breathe properly and swallow, while my cheeks heat in humiliation at how demeaning it was. If they wanted me to feel less than human, the goal was accomplished.

Swallowing hard, I take an inventory of my body, twisting and moving to see how hurt I am. There’s a heavy, painful ache between my legs from the alphas and Morris’ enthusiastic sexual activities, my ass is throbbing as well, and my stomach is cramping hard.

Unfortunately, there’s also still a slow leakage of fluids from both areas, making me whimper as I shudder. Maybe this wasn’t a great idea. While they say ignorance is bliss, I don’t think it is.

The collar is thankfully gone though, my neck feeling lighter for it as I turn it from side to side.

In my mind, I know my body will heal, but I’m not so sure if the rest of me will. I haven’t had dreams yet because I was knocked out, and if I did, I don’t remember them. My mind is whirling with questions, many I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to find the answers to.

Some are even too painful to look at too closely, as they’re tied to Pack Dresmond. I should consider them dead to me. A small inner light burns inside of me, and it’s screaming, but I don’t know what’s being said. Damon is pissed off, that much is clear.

The ‘whys’ of it don’t make a difference. Not anymore when I’m in this big, foreign room.

My eyes take space around me curiously, trying to figure out if there’s any use trying to get out of the black ties around my wrists. Everything is done in shades of gray and purple, and there aren’t any identifying features around.

It appears to be a guest room. A really nice one if the chandelier in the middle tells me anything. Why am I here, though?

I wasn’t aware sex slaves were given nice rooms. Hell, even my scent match gave me an unfinished room for a nest. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath as a pain finally hits my heart.

My emotional numbness is beginning to fade, which is a shame. I can’t think about any of them. They did this, gave me up to be sold to alphas I don’t know. This pack could do anything to me.

Even if they’re decent, they clearly have expectations. I vaguely remember Rock said that these brothers were looking for someone to impregnate. Pack Kelly.

I wish my father would have spoken about business around me, but he never did. I don’t know anything about this pack. From what I saw of them, they’re made men because of the way they carry themselves. It’s as if nothing can touch them, and if anyone tries, may God protect them because their weapons won’t.

They’re dangerous, which doesn’t do me any favors.

“Good, you’re awake,” says a voice as he opens the door wide. It’s the man with the crown tattoo, wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt. My memories aren’t steering me wrong here, but I don’t know his name. “Are you hungry?”

“No,” I rasp, eyes wide. “Why did you buy me?”

“That’s a very long story,” he says, folding his arms over his chest as he comes closer. “I can hear your stomach talking from here and it’s seriously irritating me. Will you please come with me to eat?”

Frowning because my stomach is grumbling now, I realize that I also really have to pee. Ugh. My body won’t even let me sulk in peace.

“Only because I really have to use the restroom first,” I mutter.

“I will still take it,” he says with a smirk. “I’m Callum, and my brother is Duncan. We make up the small pack of Pack Kelly. I’m going to make sure this shirt is covering everything before I untie you, okay?”

“Not to be peevish, but why bother?” I grumble.

“Be as pissed off as you’d like,” Callum says, shrugging. “It doesn’t affect me in the least. I would be pretty pissed if I was in your position. Duncan and I aren’t the best people as made men, but one thing we’re not are rapists. We aren’t going to force you into bed.”

“What about what you told Ophelia and Rock?” I ask as he respectfully runs his hands underneath the covers to pull the shirt down over my legs. He never once touches my skin.

“Lies,” he grunts, moving his hands to begin to release the ties before they go still. “Fuck, I’m a dick. Like a really big dick.”

“Okay,” I drawl, craning my head up uncomfortably to look up at him as he begins to untie the knots angrily. “Kind of an awkward moment to tell me about your dick, don’t you think?”

“No, I mean, fuck,” Callum says, blushing. My lips twitch in amusement for the first time in… I don’t even know how long, as he shakes his head. “We didn’t want to linger at the auction house, and I didn’t think about how you may want to shower. Do you?”

“Yes,” I say vehemently. “Please.”

“It’s something I should have thought about,” he mutters to himself. “I’m an idiot. Dammit, Duncan. You and your fucking knots. There.”

The ties fall away and he steps back to allow me to push myself up in the bed. I’m not an idiot. The longer I’m awake, the more I realize. Time has passed since I was shot. A lot of it. I just don’t know how much.

“Weird question,” I say slowly, my legs pulling away from the sheets. “Ah, what day is it?”

His eyes widen as he swallows hard. “It’s Tuesday, January fourteenth. It’s just after midnight.”

I was shot on Christmas Day. I’ve been unconscious or out of it for almost three weeks.

“Wow,” I whisper. “Talk about Sleeping Beauty and losing time.”

“How much time?” Callum asks, anger beginning to bank in his green eyes. Huh. They kind of remind me of the grass. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it because of the snow and stuff.

“Since Christmas,” I rasp. “The day Pack Dresmond shot me.”

“You were shot?!” he yells.

My shoulder doesn’t even twinge when I shrug. “That’s not even the worst thing that’s happened to me in the last three weeks,” I tell him, forcing myself to stand.

My legs wobble, and Callum holds his hands up as if unsure whether or not to help me. I don’t fucking care if I need to sit on the floor of the shower to clean up, I don’t want help. A place this nice better have spotless bathrooms too.

I’m crabby, sore, and just exhausted from the hits life is throwing me.

“Is she okay?” Duncan asks, walking into the room.

Gritting my teeth, I lock my legs and force them to hold my weight. I haven’t been eating well because of the medication and gunshot wound, which means my curves are suffering. I’m feeling weak overall.

“Surviving,” I answer him, forcing myself to take a step forward.

“I see, Short Stuff,” he says with a small smile. “Do you want any pain medication or anything?”

As my eyebrows lower in confusion, he shakes his head. “Headache medicine,” he corrects himself. “Nothing stronger than acetaminophen. It won’t affect anything else.”

“Oh,” I say absently, my legs wobbling when I lose concentration. “I don’t know if I should take anything.”

“Adira is going to take a shower before coming down to eat, “ Callum says.

Blinking, Duncan begins to curse under his breath. “I’m a fucking idiot,” he says, turning and walking out the door.

“Why are you two so wired up?” I ask as I walk next to Callum at a slower pace. After the third time my legs wobbled, he put his arm out for me to hold onto, maneuvering his body in front of me to be able to get out the door first.

“We’re bachelors who have all of these protective instincts and no idea how to help you,” he grumbles. “I should have thought about the fact that you’d want a shower as soon as you woke up.”

There’s not much I can say to that because I’m still confused about why they bought me. There were so many men in that room, and I shudder at the memory of it.

“I’ll turn up the heat,” Callum says with a worried glance at me.

I’m not cold because of the house, but explaining takes too many words that I’m not ready to use yet. My heart is sad, angry, and filled with pain. I don’t know if living or dying would be better right now. I don’t know how to do either.

“There’s towels in the bathroom, body wash, shampoo, conditioner, everything,” Duncan says, stepping out of the room. “What else can you think of that you may need?”

Wincing, I run my tongue over my teeth, gagging. I can still taste the men from earlier, and shudder as I put my hand up to my mouth.

“Toothbrush?” I ask, shuddering as my body freaks the fuck out.

“Yeah,” Duncan says, paling. “There’s a new one, I just opened the package, so you wouldn’t struggle with it. I didn’t pull it out, though, so you can see that it wasn’t tampered with.”

“Thanks,” I whisper, watching as he moves, so I can walk as quickly inside as I can manage.

My hands are shaking, my skin is breaking out into a cold sweat, and I can feel my gord rising. Coughing, I slam the door closed and lock it, my body finally winning the fight to dump me on the floor.

Crawling, I can feel hot tears rising behind my eyes as I shove open the toilet, rising onto my knees as bile and something even worse pours out of my mouth.

It burns, my throat throbs as it ejects the bodily fluid from my mouth, and all I can do is endure it.

Gasping and crying in pain, I hold onto the bowl as I puke. The thought of their taste in my mouth and their cum makes me sob as I struggle to keep as quiet as possible. I don’t want Pack Kelly to see me like this, breaking and destroyed.

Spitting into the bowl, I flush the toilet with trembling fingers. Getting up from the cold tile floor is a struggle, but I manage to leverage myself until I’m holding my body up with my upper arms.

My face is covered with dried body fluid, and I need it off me immediately. Running water from the faucet, I pump some hand soap into my hand, uncaring that it’s probably terrible for my skin.

It could remove a layer of it for all I care, and it would probably be an improvement at this point.

My other hand cups under the running water to get my face wet and then I’m scrubbing at the dried and crusted semen. I could have waited to shower if I was in any other frame of mind, but I’m not.

My breaths are coming quickly, and I’m seconds away from hyperventilating. I just need it off!

Swallowing back a frustrated scream as I scrub at my face, I pump some more soap into my hand to get under my chin and neck. The rest I’ll get in the shower, but having the scent of spicy manure and pickles so close to my nose now that it’s no longer swollen with snot is unveiling those terrible scents.

You can do this. Just scrub!

Gathering the warm water in my cupped hands, I wash everything off, keeping my gaze firmly on the shiny faucet. I don’t want to see how gross the water running down my face looks. On the upside, my skin feels cleaner, and I sneak a glance at the mirror. All I can see is slightly red skin from rubbing at it and swollen eyes, but nothing else.

Drying my face, I make myself ignore the rest of my body to pull the toothbrush out of the opened package. The bathroom I’m in, while in the hallway, appears to connect to two bedrooms on either side of it.

I’m going to have to lock those doors as soon as I can catch my breath for my own sanity. I need to at least have the illusion of privacy and safety.

It matters to me.

My fingers lose the cap of the toothpaste when I attempt to screw it off, skittering across the marble countertop but not falling. Shaking my head as my body twitches, I carefully squeeze some paste onto my toothbrush.

Is this what shock or trauma feels like?

My body doesn’t want to do what I want to, feeling like one more type of betrayal. How could I come for those men?

All I can see is the way my body responded to the men who hurt me. I can’t understand how I keened and moaned for them. Granted there was a lot of screaming and crying, but I squirted all over Morris’ face several times.

I know the pills I was forced to swallow did not do me any favors, they made me act differently than I ever would have. I’m still incredibly angry with myself. There’s this aching disappointment in my soul that I couldn’t hold back.

My mind is giving me my own memory reel of what happened as I run the toothbrush under water and then stick it in my mouth to aggressively brush. Pushing down on the faucet to turn it off is a struggle as I try to stay in the present.

I hate my body right now. I’m falling apart when I need to be strong, but Jed and his pack did this to me. Weeks of sleeping and being medicated did me no favors. It took me too long to realize the tea Morris was giving me was laced with a sedative.

I trusted him too much, right up until he showed me the option of the pill or the sedative laced injection.

A keen escapes from my lips as I struggle to breathe, forcing myself to finish brushing my teeth and tongue. Now all I can taste now is minty toothpaste instead of cum, puke, and fear.

Rinsing my mouth out with a handful of water, I spit and then repeat before taking an easier breath and washing off the toothbrush. Shutting off the water, I dry my face and then walk to one of the doors that I’m certain opens to a bedroom and lock it. Then I do the same with the other and face the shower.

It’s a smaller frameless shower enclosure that fits perfectly against the corner of the wall and then a freestanding stone resin tub next to it. It all flows well to serve its purpose, to bathe in, but I don’t want to lay in a tub.

Moving forward, I open the glass door and see the odds and ends I’ll need to get clean and then turn on the water. I turn it onto the most powerful setting and the warmest the temperature will go short of burning my skin, and step inside. I’m sure there are other cool things it can do, but I can’t bring myself to care.

The water is scalding as it runs over my body and as I gaze at the hair products in the alcove, it feels like too much work, until I think about the fact that there’s unmentionable body fluid in my hair and sob.

“It’s everywhere!” I scream, hugging my waist as I just let it go. Sobbing, I do the work to shampoo my hair, my knees collapsing underneath me, so my ass is on the cold tile floor.

Hands falling to my lap, I let the water begin to wash it away, watching it swirl as it disappears down the drain.

“Why can’t I vanish just like that?” I whisper, dropping my head back to let the water wash away my tears.

I’m not okay. I feel used, abused, and thrown away by people who biology says are supposed to give a damn about me.

“Fuck biology,” I rasp, my words sounding like gunshots in the quiet shower.

The place inside of me that has all of these emotions that aren’t my screams and rails, but I recognize one word.

“ Mine.”

I shake my head violently, soap flying as I do. I’m arguing with a voice in my head. Fucking wonderful. I don’t want to belong to anyone.

The whine my lips emit is unintentional, and I despise that there's so much about my body that I can’t control as an omega. It responds to stimuli, craves the things that make it feel safe, but that’s a lie.

Nests aren’t safe unless you have locks on the doors that alphas can’t break into. The world isn’t fucking fair.

I gaze at the floor for way longer than even I know, but the water slowly begins to get cold. Shivering, I get off the floor at the speed of an old woman. Everything hurts, and I’m still not fucking clean.

I struggle not to disassociate as I condition my hair and wash my skin with the body wash. Even these products smell nice and light, in fact there’s almost no scent, and that makes warning bells go off in my mind. Why would they have all of this? Are they secretly into using products that would make an omega happy?

Did they plan in the hopes they would place the winning bid, or was the whole damn thing rigged?

I’m shaking by the time I’m done with my shower, but it’s with a growing rage. I can use anger, while the fear, and devastating sadness I’ve been feeling does me no favors. I need emotions that will help me fight through tonight’s events. There’s a lot I’ll need to unpack at some point, and I know that. It’s just all too close right now.

I can’t afford to sit in a ball of tears, sobbing until the next bad thing happens to me. I am so tired of being a victim. I want to be proactive, and if things are incredibly terrible; the one who ends it all.

The bubble of anger and sadness in me at those thoughts doesn’t belong to me. Is Damon raging? It’s interesting that I’m able to make him dance to my tune when I’m feeling things strongly enough, but I can’t afford to stop and play with him. It also isn’t as much fun if I can’t see the way he screams when I squeeze his knot.

Turning off the water, I open the glass door to snag a towel. I notice a pair of sweats that I didn’t before, and I wonder if someone came inside while I was losing my shit. Shuddering at the thought, I dry myself off and walk gingerly to the pile of clothing.

It’s a pair of joggers in my size, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt, socks, and a pocket knife.

My fingers close over it with furrowed brows, very confused. It’s sitting at the marble counter where I brushed my teeth, and I’m sure I’d have seen it if it was here before. Glancing at the door and then the shower, I shake my head as if to make myself focus.

Putting my hand on the knob, I turn back toward it, twisting it to find the door is unlocked. Fuck. These alphas and their dirty mouths are rubbing off me. I swear I’ve never used so many curse words before.

Flicking the lock so it’s engaged again, I get dressed, almost thankful there isn’t a bra or panties in the bundle of clothing. I don’t think I’d be able to handle that. So much of this feels coincidental, and I need answers as to why.

Gazing at the mirror, I see myself with wet hair and a covered body. I nod. The last thing I do is slide the knife into my pocket and reach out to unlock the door.

Ready or not, here I come. The words feel as if they’re more for me, than as a danger to anyone else. I need to be ready for whatever happens next.

Despite how my heart pounds.

Duncan and Callum are leaned against the wall as I open the door, grim looks on their faces.

“I was half worried the water would wash you away,” Duncan says gravely, his arm sweeping in the direction of the stairs. “I need to get you fed before Callum and I crawl out of our skin. It’s a need, not a want, Adira. Please.”

Nodding as I rub my aching stomach, I walk out of the bathroom to follow them.