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Plunged into darkness, Stella and I both screech, grasping for each other wildly as we back toward the bed.
But nothing happens right away. It stays dark and quiet.
“Who’s there?” Stella yells. “Mother?”
There’s no answer, just the shuffling sound again and the creak of a floorboard, followed by the strike of a match.
The light flickers in the hallway, and I tense as a terrible scent drifts toward us. Rotten, it’s filled with sulfur and anger.
My breath catches in my throat as the light moves in the hallway. Until finally, he’s revealed, standing in the doorframe, a sneer on his face as he looks upon me and Stella.
Cass.
44
The Mark
Noah
Hetty’s screaming, clinging to Stella.
Cass moves closer to them, slow and calculated. As he gets closer, she slashes her arm forward in a futile effort to fend him off. But he dodges her easily, a nasty look crossing his face before he lunges toward her.
A sharp pain pierces the back of her head, and she and Stella are forced apart. Her body crumbles to the ground, and he kicks her hard in the back—once, twice, three times—knocking the breath out of her.
When he turns his attention to Stella lying a few feet away from her, Hetty claws at her chest, gasping and sucking air into her greedy lungs. She can’t get enough, her face pressed into the thick carpet.
Through the glow of the candle and her tear-soaked eyes, she can make out the fabric of the bed’s long canopy pooled on the floor around her face as she listens to him argue with Stella.
Stella’s not going easily, she thinks with a delirious laugh. But through the fog of pain and hysteria, she realizes she has to do something while he’s distracted.
Hit him or throw something at him.
There must be a way to stop him.
But when she finally attempts to rise to her feet, there’s a heavy weight on her chest, pinning her down. Her pulse pumps wildly when she realizes she won’t be able to stop him. She’s trapped.
And when Cass’s face hovers above hers again, the glow of the candlelight lighting his heavy brows and mean eyes, her body goes cold with terror.
“Hetty, the beta,” he calls her.
He’s angry. His voice is filled with hate. She embarrassed him.
Now she has to pay.
She screams one last time as his pressure hits her hard, and then, at last, the world is dark and calm.
I stumble, falling into the mud as vivid pain courses through my body. My head aches like it was hit with something hard, and my lungs burn as if I were the one who had my breath knocked out of me.
But it’s over now. Just as quickly as the vision came upon me, it disappeared. Everything is quiet again.
Slowly, I rise to my feet, wobbling as I look around, confused. I’m not in a dark bedroom anymore. No, I’m standing near the gate with Rill. My mind reels as I try to make sense of the sequence of events.
The rain had just stopped, and I was in the middle of explaining my conversation with Marcus to Rill. A growing number of his alphas started congregating nearby, pretending not to listen to us argue about what to do next. Now, they’re all watching me with fear etched on each of their faces.
“What the hell was that?” Rill asks, his brows drawn in concern. “You dropped to the ground and started having some sort of episode.”
“Cass attacked Hetty,” I mutter distractedly, the images and sensations still reverberating through my body. “She’s in pain. Screaming. I saw it and … felt it.”
