42. Chapter 42

Chapter 42

L ayla took a step back. Her first instinct was to run, but where the hell would she go?

The girl was blocking the path down the side of the vast building, and they had come quite a distance from the main door of the house. The girl was strong. Maybe she was fast, too. Trying to make it back to the room would be a gamble. She should never have come out in the first place. She should have listened to Jackson.

"You shouldn't be here, Monica," Diedre said, stepping in front of her as if to shield her.

The woman's sunny nature had disappeared, and it actually felt a little chilly in the air. Layla had no idea if Diedre was just like the girl, if she was just as strong from whatever they ate or injected themselves with in this place, but she hoped so. She did not fancy getting her ass kicked again.

"But I didn't do anything wrong," the girl, Monica, said.

Her voice sounded small. That fierce snarl she had shown the first day was nowhere to be seen. The anger and the attitude were gone as well.

"You should have known better," Diedre said firmly.

"But Cassie said it would be okay," Monica insisted.

Tears started falling down her cheeks. Monica sniffed and angrily wiped them away before she looked back at Diedre. In her fashionably torn pair of jeans and t-shirt, her brunette hair in a braid, she looked every bit the little girl that she was. Monica reminded her of the mean girls at Britney's school. She would be harmless without the ring leader, the girl who said she would be Jackson's girlfriend. Cassie, she assumed.

Diedre sighed and relaxed her stance.

"You still can't be here, Monica."

"Can't you talk to him? He listens to you."

Did he? Was Diedre the one she had to appeal to to find a way out of this place?

"I can't interfere."

"But you're a—"

Diedre took Monica's hand and started to drag her back the way they had come.

"Layla, give me a second," the woman said with a tight smile.

Not that she gave her any other choice. They were already far around the corner by the time Layla responded. She turned to watch them and saw the stern look on Diedre's face. The friendly woman suddenly looked as dangerous as everyone else as she hissed something at the girl. Obviously, Monica had done something terribly wrong, but what had she been about to say? Who was Diedre to Jackson?

They went too far for her to read their lips and then disappeared around the house. But Monica looked like she was crying more from whatever Diedre said. What had Jackson done to those girls? How had he punished them? Not that they didn't deserve everything that had come to them. She'd thought she was going to die in that basement.

It was only when she heard the rustling of the leaves behind her that she realised she was out all by herself. She turned quickly and noticed three big men coming out from the woods beside the path. They sneered as they slowly approached her, and a chill went down her spine. This was exactly what she had tried to avoid.

Two of the men were younger than the third, and they all had brunette hair similar to Monica's. The longer she looked at them, the more the similarities became clear. This was Monica's doing. They had to be her family, possibly her brothers. They had the same hazel eyes and mean faces that Monica had when she'd attacked her.

"So you're the reason that our Monica has been banished?" the older of the three growled.

She stepped back. Banished? Had the girls been kicked out of the cult? Well, lucky them. Maybe out there, they would realise how fucked up their situation had been with Jackson.

"I don't want any trouble," she said, taking another step back.

She lifted her hand to her pendant again. How was it supposed to protect her from this? The three of them could see it clearly, yet they didn't seem to know what it meant.

"You should have thought of that before you came here, you bitch," the other said. "Did you really think we would allow somebody like you to live among us? To fuck our Alpha?"

Her heart started to pound in her chest. She could feel the fear slinking down her spine. Once again, she knew that her self-defence lessons would not help her in this situation. Monica looked harmless, and yet she was stronger than anything. These three men looked anything but harmless.

Like most men she had met in the house, these had more muscles than she had seen on any man in town. They could all have been models on the cover of a men's fitness or bodybuilding magazine. They looked like they could crush her without even trying.

"I'm not going to be here for long," she whispered as she took another step back.

"Of course, you're not. I don't know what magic you have done on the Alpha, but the moment you are gone, it will go with you," the older one snarled. "Rogues are not welcome here."

"What sort of rogue are you anyway? You smell completely human," the youngest asked.

She frowned at his question as she looked behind her to see if Diedre was on her way back. A rogue? Was that what they called people who were not part of their cult? Or was it something else?

She started to breathe hard as adrenaline shot through her body, and her fight-or-flight responses went into overdrive. Nothing made sense, and it was feeding her paranoia. Humans. Alphas. Growls. And now, rogues?

"I'm Jackson's guest here," she tried again.

Could she try to run? It seemed her only option now.

"Well, Jackson isn't here," the older man chuckled. "I'm sure when he gets back, he'll be glad we have done this job for him."

The moment they all rushed towards her, she turned and ran. She knew she was fast, but these men seemed faster. They caught up with her before she had gone very far. Something big and hard hit her in the back with such force that the air was knocked out of her lungs as she fell forward. It was only as she tried to catch her breath with the heavy weight on top of her that she realised she had been tackled. The younger man had thrown himself, not a heavy, inanimate object.

"Should we find out what all the fuss is about first?"

Her blood ran cold when she felt his strong arms roll her over onto her back and pin her down. She couldn't move. She sucked the air into her lungs as she looked into the hazel eyes of the man straddling her. They were so full of hatred and anger that she knew he would hurt her beyond anything she could imagine.

This was every woman's fear.

"Please let me go," she whimpered.

"Maybe we should find out, son," the older man said.

She knew she had to defend herself, to fight with everything she had so they wouldn't do what she knew they were about to do, but she just froze. Something in her just wouldn't move. Everything she had learnt about how to get out of this position flew out of her head. There was nothing but fear—sheer terror.

Ice flowed in her veins, and her limbs weakened.

"You know, despite what you are, you sound pretty good when you're getting fucked. Maybe you've had plenty of practice. Where exactly did you trap our Alpha? A brothel?" he continued as he started to lower his sweatpants. "Hold her down, boys."

Her scream built up in her throat but didn't escape as something snapped inside her. This couldn't happen. It couldn't.

Her knee connected between the boy's legs, and an ugly howling sound came from his lips as he fell to the side of her. She rolled over and tried to stand, but the other man had already caught her by the arm while the older one grabbed her hair.

"If you like it rough, I can give it to you rough," the older man snarled as he shoved her down onto the ground again.

He pushed her face down onto the pavement, scraping her skin as the other boy fumbled with her jeans. If she was still in town, she could have screamed to draw attention to herself, and somebody would have come to help. But who would help her here? They were all the same.

She thrashed around, trying to slip out of their grasp, but they were so strong, and the other man had gripped both her legs. It felt like trying to fight her way out of a metal grip. Her body started to tremble. She knew her body was going into shock, unable to process what was about to happen to her in broad daylight.

"Get back over here and help us. We have to get rid of her quickly."

The man she had kneed returned, and they rolled her over. This time they managed to undo the button of her jeans and pull down the zip.

All the fight left her body. The shock finally made her numb. It was over.