It would wreck Slade, too, but they’re so far gone, I don’t think that they’ll back off this time even if I asked them to. Meeting mom’s eye, I give her a pointed look, hoping that I’ve studied Reid and Cinjin enough that some of their twin telepathy has rubbed off.
“That would be a waste when she has the ability to finally give us some answers.” Taking a step back, I press the button to get us going again, quickly glancing at the illuminated numbers.Six floors until the lobby.Subtly using my body to block access to the panel, I thread my fingers through Slade’s to keep him at my side and hopefully appease him while giving Mom my attention. “Why did you never tell me about any of the wolf stuff?”
She returns to glaring up at Kaige as he keeps her trapped in the corner without even having to touch her. The evidence that he isn’t bluffing is written all over his face, and it’s enough to keep her rooted to the spot. “So you could lament over the fact that you couldn’t shift? That there was an entire world out there that you were a part of, but didn’t fit into? I know you, Sabrina. You’d have gone looking, even if you knew it could get you killed.”
She turns to face me, but Kaige snaps a hand out, driving the end of the blade into the wall a hairsbreadth from her face. “You don’t look at her.”
When she adjusts her stance, using it as an excuse to subtly slip her hand into the pocket of her apron, she doesn’t even get a chance to remove it before Kaige has a hand on her wrist, slowly withdrawing it to reveal a syringe. Thankfully, this one looks nothing like those used at the Alodia mansion to create the lycans. Knowing what she came here to do, I’d wager on it being a sedative.
Tightening his grip until she’s forced to drop it, as soon as it clatters to the floor, Kaige uses the heel of his bare foot to shatter it. “You could have had at least one person to understand what you were going through and make your life less miserable, yet you hurt her any chance you could. Why your mates have wasted all of these years searching for you is beyond me.”
Nostrils flaring, she retorts, “I kept her safe.”
“You kept her beaten down so you could feel in control!” My stomach flips as Kaige’s deadly presence grows. “There’s a special place in Hell for people like you; the ones that constantly play the victim, yet become the same type of monsters as the ones they escaped. You were hellbent on protecting her from suffering through the things that you endured, only to turn around and treat her like shit? Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that doesn’t make you the martyr you seem to think you are.”
Eyes burning with disdain, she spits, “Iwassaving her.” Shoving his chest, he doesn’t so much as budge an inch, but she continues her seething rant nonetheless. “Do you know what happens to alpha wolves that have no one and nothing to feed off of? They go mad, then they die. And since we can’t live without them, with it, so would she. So yes, I made her suffer. Because one day, when I wasn’t around for her to siphon from anymore, she’d implode. I gave her enough pain that she could store it away to get her through the next few decades, or if she were ever found, she’d have something to fall back on to have a chance of escaping.”
Furious tears form in her eyes. “Do you even know her at all? Sheneedsto latch onto some form of misery or hatred, otherwise she falls apart. Alphas use pain as fuel, and she needs more than most to keep her putting one foot in front of the other. She’d never have been strong enough to survive on her own if she didn’t have everything she took from me over the years to do so.”
When she falls silent, Slade argues, “She couldn’t siphon until about a month ago.”
Throwing a hand in the air, Mom looks at him like he’s a complete idiot. “Of course she could! You wolves just refuse to see anything that doesn’t fit into your perspective of how the world works. Newsflash; the top of the mountain offers a very different view than the bottom does. If you haven’t noticed yet, Sabrina’s an anomaly. Wolvesarepain. That tight pressure in your chest you get randomly when she’s around? The one that makes you want to rub the heel of your hand over your heart when you’ve never struggled with your beasts like that before she showed up? It’s not because you’re in love with her, it’s because her wolf got its claws in you and was discreetly feeding; even when she wasn’t nearby.”
She snorts, the sound saturated in disdain. “Her beast is a parasitic abomination that doesn’t require contact to affect you, and any shifter caught in her proximity is a potential victim; hence why they’re all drawn to her. The only place she’s safe is surrounded by humans where her wolf can’t grow so strong that it’ll completely destroy her, but she can only survive on her own if she’s so miserable, it keeps her alive. I thought that her being different might mean something was finally changing to end our wretched existence, and I was right, just not in the way I’d hoped. You take her back to that place, surrounded by hundreds of wolves that she can feed off of? She’ll kill us all.”
No wonder she looks like hell; she hasn’t had anyone taking the burdens from her shoulders since I left.
I clear my throat, because we don’t have long left before we hit the lobby and can’t afford to waste time standing around dumbstruck. “So you put the block in place then, I wasn’t born with it?” As she glances my way, I clarify, “How else could you have known that I had alpha traits?”
A dark look overtakes her face. “Yeah. Cost more than I wanted to pay, but he made it so that I could actually pick you up as a baby without being at risk of you draining me dry.”
My chest tightens, and like a broken record, the first thing out of my mouth is, “Why didn’t you ever tell me anything? Who did you find that was even capable of putting a block in place?”
As she scoffs, it hardens my heart a little bit more, my counterpart pacing with furious indignation. “You’ve always been after someone to swoop in and take care of you, like the rest of the spoiled princesses. If you’d known that all you had to do was snap your fingers to get people eating out of the palm of your hand, coupled with the power boost you’d get from them? You’d have jumped at the chance.” Her condemning gaze rakes over me from head to toe as she ignores the second half of my question. “After all, you really went all in on the mate front once you found out what you were, didn’t you? Surrounded yourself with as many spare batteries as you could. I tried to keep you from turning out like the rest of the alphas, but it was an effort in futility. The only thing your kind is capable of loving is power.”
The sound of my palm smacking across her cheek echoes around the metal walls with enough force that it renders everyone speechless, the low growls coming from Kaige and Slade cutting off abruptly. I don’t even remember closing the distance between us; one moment I was standing beside Slade as all of my fears were confirmed, and the next I’m standing before her, rethinking my decision not to walk away.
At this point, I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for reasons why I shouldn’t relinquish control, and it only serves to irk me that the more I try to hold onto it, the more I’m proving her right. Ultimately though, I steel my spine and hold my ground, because I’d already had my own concerns about my other half conniving quietly in the shadows, being ten steps ahead of all of us. If she’s screaming at me to shut my mother up, there’s a reason, which is all the more incentive to keep her alive.
Even if I trust the devil on my shoulder far more than my mother, the only thing that I know without a shadow of a doubt is that I don’t really know anything. With only half the facts, making an irreversible decision in the heat of the moment is just as likely to bite me in the ass as playing the waiting game while I gather more information will.
Though my heart is thundering a mile a minute, I lean back into Kaige’s bare chest, acting as a barrier between the two of them as he vibrates with barely restrained fury. “No. You don’t get to come here after all of these years and make me feel like shit again. Of course I wanted someone to take care of me; I was achild, and the people who were supposed to take care of me left me to fend for myself. First Dad, then you.”
She opens her mouth to retort, but we’re out of time, and I’m out of fucks to give.
“You never warned me to avoid the wolves, or told me why you ran from them in the first place. You never told meanythingabout myself,so is it seriously a surprise that I didn’t become the person you secretly wanted me to be?”
Grinding her teeth, she crosses her arms, stepping into my space. “You done?”
Kaige wraps an arm around my stomach, but he doesn’t allow either of us to lose an inch of ground. Staring her down, she looks so much... smaller than she used to. Still fiery, but easier to identify as a bitter person that continuously blames the world for all of her problems instead of someone to be feared.
Looking straight into her eyes so there’s no misunderstanding, my voice comes out completely calm, and each word that rolls off of my tongue shifts something integral inside of me. “With you? Yeah, I think I finally am.”
The door behind us opens to the lobby, the noise of people milling about a precursor to my turning around as I track her movements. I watch as she takes a hesitant step past me, and then swiftly passes Slade until she’s safely surrounded by witnesses. And I watch as she shakes her head like she’s disappointed in me before merging into the crowd, returning to the shadows that she so desperately clings to in order to survive.
Storming toward me, Slade demands, “Why?”
With a sad smile, I watch one of the glass doors open in the distance, a blip of dark hair visible over the sea of people slipping through, and out of my life yet again. “Because Cinjin was right. Death is quick, but suffering is much more satisfying. And there's no worse fate for Annika Slaughter than continuing to live the miserable life that she made for herself completely alone.”
