I should call someone. That thought drifted through my foggy brain, and I reached for my phone. Oliver. Garrett. Levi. Micah. Any of them would come if I asked.
But what would I even say? "I feel weird"? They'd think I was being dramatic. They'd worry over nothing. I slid the phone back into my pocket and forced myself to stand. Maybe I just needed to lie down. A nap, and I'd feel better.
I made it inside, made it to the living room, but the couch seemed impossibly far away. My legs were shaking, my vision swimming. I grabbed the back of a chair to steady myself and heard it scrape against the floor, too loud in the quiet cabin.
What was happening to me?
The back door creaked open.
I turned, my movements sluggish and uncoordinated, and my blood ran cold.
Trinity stood in my kitchen.
She looked different than the last time I'd seen her—calmer, more composed, with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. She was dressed in dark, practical clothing, her hair pulled back from her face, and she moved with the easy confidence of someone who knew they had all the time in the world.
"Hello, Daphne," she said, her voice sweet as honey and twice as cloying. "Did you miss me?"
I tried to speak, tried to demand to know what she was doing here, but my tongue felt thick and clumsy in my mouth. All that came out was a slurred, "What... how..."
"How did I get in? You really should lock your doors, you know. Anyone could just waltz right in." She moved closer, circling me like a predator with wounded prey. "As for what I'm doing here... well. I think you know."
My instincts, foggy as they were, screamed at me to run. But my body wouldn't cooperate. My legs felt like they were filled with sand, my arms heavy and useless at my sides.
"The tea," I managed, the pieces clicking together through the haze. "You... you poisoned..."
"Clever girl." Trinity's smile widened. "It's called omega's bane. Nasty stuff—mimics heat sickness, but worse. Much worse. You've probably been feeling it for hours now. The weakness. The confusion. The way your body just won't do what you tell it to."
She was right. God, she was right. Every symptom she described matched exactly what I'd been feeling all morning.
"Why?" The word came out as barely a whisper.
"Why?" Trinity's composure cracked, just for a moment, revealing the rage beneath. "Because you took everything from me. The pack that was supposed to be mine. The future I'd been planning for years. You waltzed into this town with nothing—no family, no connections, no breeding—and somehow convinced them that you were worth choosing over me."
"I didn't... I never tried to..."I stuttered out, words hard to form with my hazed mind.
"Oh, save it." She waved a dismissive hand. "I don't care about your excuses. I don't care about your sad little orphan story or your pathetic garden or whatever other sob story you've been using to manipulate them. All I care about is making you understand."
She stepped closer, and I stumbled backward, my hip catching the edge of the couch. I grabbed for it, trying to stay upright, but my fingers wouldn't grip properly.
"Understand what?" I asked, stalling for time, trying to think through the fog.
"That you don't belong here." Trinity's voice dropped to something low and dangerous. "That you were never going to keep them. That sooner or later, they would have realized their mistake and come back to me. I'm just... speeding up the process."
She lunged. I don't know where I found the strength—maybe pure adrenaline, maybe some deep well of survival instinct, but I managed to dodge, stumbling sideways as her hands grabbed at empty air where I'd been standing.
"Don't make this harder than it needs to be," Trinity snarled, spinning to face me. Something had shifted inside me. The fog was still there, the weakness still dragging at my limbs, but underneath it, my omega was awake. And she was furious. This woman had poisoned me. Had invaded my home. Was threatening everything I'd finally let myself have.
I wasn't going to go down without a fight. When Trinity came at me again, I was ready. Sort of. My movements were clumsy, uncoordinated, but I managed to rake my nails across her arm, drawing blood. She shrieked, more from surprise than pain, and I used the moment of distraction to shove past her toward the kitchen.
My phone. I needed my phone. Trinity recovered faster than I expected. Her hand closed around my wrist, yanking me back, and I felt something wrench painfully in my shoulder.
"You little bitch," she hissed, her face inches from mine. "I was going to make this easy. I was going to let you walk away, let you run back to whatever hole you crawled out of. But now?"
She shoved me, and I crashed into the kitchen chair, sending it toppling. Glass shattered somewhere—the tea mug I'd left on the counter—and I felt a sharp sting as a shard sliced across mypalm. "Now I'm going to make sure you never forget who you're dealing with."
I hit the ground hard, the impact driving the breath from my lungs. Trinity was on me in an instant, her hands closing around my throat, and for one terrifying moment, I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but claw weakly at her wrists.
"They're mine," she was saying, her voice distant and distorted through the roaring in my ears. "They were always supposed to be mine. You're nothing. You're nobody. You're just a placeholder until they came to their senses?—"
