36. Amaya

36

AMAYA

ACADEMY YEARS

Seventeen Years Old

T hey will come, I know it. I'm sure they're just trying to find out where I am, but they will be here. Someday they will find me and rescue me.

"They will come," I whisper into the dark.

It's been a year, I think. I don't really know, but sophomore year just started, and many of the omegas are losing hope.

There were quite a few who had none to begin with, but they won't be alone for long. Some of us had people who loved us even if we were sold by our guardians. Every story is different, and it's been a long time since we've shared or even spoken to each other, because an omega is meant to be silent and submissive.

"Silent and submissive," I huff to myself, knowing nobody can hear me. This is isolation. It's meant to deprive me of my senses and social interaction.

I think I prefer it down in this cell, though. Sure, it smells like mold, and the solid ground is wet, but time doesn't exist here. I can't track how long it's been since I saw my friends. My boys.

Are they watching the clock tick by until they see me again, too?

Will I ever see them again?

A rattle vibrates my chest, making tears prick in my eyes. I hold my hands to my chest, thankful for my omega keeping me positive and hopeful.

Oli, Em, and Sammy will come for me.

When the starvation cramps my insides, and the enforcers leave bruises in their wake of 'obedience' training, I remember them. Our summers spent running around together, the school years filled with laughter, and new adventures are always on my mind.

In isolation, I feel closer to them. My eyes don't see the leers of the alpha and beta students, or the sorrow deepening in my omega classmates’ gazes. I don't have to smell anyone’s scent reminding me that there's no lime, mint, or fresh cut grass to soothe me here.

In this damp, dark cell, I can lose myself in the memory of my best friends. My mates. That's why I fight back.

Fighting back looks different for every omega here, but mine is simple. I disobey so I get thrown into isolation for a couple days, then get to live out the life I've lived with the boys, their parents and Nana.

I miss them all so much it makes me forget the ache in my gut and head.

In here is also the only place my omega quiets and curls around me like we are one again. This may be isolation, but it's the only place I don't feel alone.

I'll see them soon, and until then, I'll see them here, in the darkness.

It's enough.

Eighteen Years Old

Junior year is not what I dreamed of growing up. Discrimination, forcefully administered drugs, abuse, weight checks, starvation. Yeah, definitely not the exciting designation college experience I had planned on.

It's hard to focus these days. The most clarity I have is during meal times now, and it's only because I used to love food. My nana made me kind of a food snob, which hasn't helped me these past few years.

I miss Mrs. Jenkins’ cooking especially. I miss Nana's cooking, but the memory of her food is further away.

I've long since gotten used to my diet of barely fucking anything, but I still wish for the life I had before this. Sometimes I’m unsure I'll ever get to experience the comfort of a homemade pasta, or even a Caesar salad again.

My final gulp of what little water I have left for dinner doesn't drown out my omega's quiet whimper. ‘ Mates?’

The sad inquiry from the other half of my soul is like a stab to the heart. They haven't come for me. Nobody has come to save me, and I'm starting to wonder if anyone is even trying.

I know I was loved, and if not by Samuel, Oliver and Emmett, then by their parents. They cared for me like I was their own when Nana passed away and even before then. I felt like part of their family, but now I'm starting to wonder if I was ever considered enough for them to love me unconditionally.

The longer I'm here, the less likely I will come out the girl they invited over for dinner every night. Maybe they've given up because of that reason. It checks out. I don't feel the same or even look the same.

Practically skin and bones, I walk around like a waif. Actually, I'm pretty sure I am a waif. Neglected, abandoned, and definitely homeless. Where would I go if I escaped?

I have nobody and nothing.

Part of me fights that reality, but it's been two years. The people who I thought once loved me above all have already proven I'm not worth it.

So why fight it?

‘ Mates?’

No.

‘ Yes.’

None worth living for.

Nineteen Years Old

It's almost over. What comes after this, I have no idea, but it can't be much worse, right?

I've lost everything that makes me who I am, so what else is there for them to take besides my body? Well, I'm an experiment so my body is theirs for science, but nobody has touched me below my panties or beneath my bra.

My mind, my omega, they're gone most days, which theoretically would make it easier if they took all that was left. I feel like I'm inching my way through quicksand, and sometimes I just let myself be drug down.

Senior year has been something else.

There's a rising tension that hasn't gone unnoticed by the omegas. The betas and alphas seem clueless, only focusing on themselves and acting like a bunch of pricks.

We've always been a timid, angry bunch of abused omegas. But since that one girl dropped into her heat in the middle of campus because a beta and two alphas were posturing around her, things have been weird.

I think her name is Freya. I've heard the awful names they call her because the quarterback doesn't like her. Frail Freya .

It's not her fucking fault we're constantly starved, but apparently the academy has scooped out their brains making them unable to think for shit.

The omegas have been watching Freya since. We don't speak to each other, but we're all aware of each other since we might as well be dirty, scrawny orphans held in dog cages for four fucking years together.

The omega, Freya, has broken free of her numb state and we've noticed. Her lows seem really damn low, but I've heard her laugh too. Always with those guys, but still, she's the only one who has allowed the sparkle in her eye to show.

Not just a happy sparkle. No, Freya looks ready to burn this place to the ground when she thinks nobody is looking. She has plummeted into depression a few times since the beginning of the semester, but each time I really watch her.

We're all meant to be numb. To be nothing. Submissive to the wicked, disassociated from ourselves and detached from the world.

I just don't think I want to feel.

Maybe Freya doesn’t want to either, but while she has people in here to make her smile. I've given up on everyone who used to do the same for me. There's nothing to raise me up anymore.

This is it. There is nothing. Nobody to grab my hand and pull.

That's the thing about quicksand. If I sink too deep, I'll suffocate to death.