“You’re supposed to be dead!” a dreadfully familiar voice shrieks, and when I look over to the source, I see that, yep, it’s Paige Lawson.
Dead? Huh. I guess that’s how they covered up our disappearance. Telling everyone we died.
“Yeah, and you’re supposed to be smarter than a bag of rocks, but here we are.” My hand goes to my hip as I look around, spotting Tilly-the-Bitch, Beta McGrabbyHands, and Lars fucking Devereaux. Even that alpha they accused me of tranquilizing before I got sent to the Cathedral stares at me.
As if triggered by my eye contact, Lars stands abruptly from his table, making his drink spill. “Shewillbe dead,” he snarls, stepping over the bench and starting to stalk toward me.
He stops dead in his tracks at the sound of Sam’s shotgun being cocked. “Take one more step, Devereaux,” he growls. “Give me a fucking reason. I’ve wanted to blow your head off since I saw you attack her in the hallway.”
My phone vibrates again, and my anxiety spikes.
“We’re live,” is all the text says. That means that, at this moment, the meeting of Beta Supremacists is being broadcast all over the state. I can only hope they didn’t choose this particular meeting to discuss something boring and not evil—like a budget discussion or something.
“Listen.” I project my voice as loudly as I can. “I—” I glance behind me at my guys, and Hayden threads his fingers through mine. “Wecame back for a reason. This place isn’t what you think it is—”
“Yeah, we know,” Tilly snaps from her seat. “We all agreed to be tested on when we came here so we wouldn’t be put in the Cathedral.”
I want to snap back at her, but for this plan to work, I need them to believe me. I shake my head. “That’s not what I mean. West, could you get hooked up to the projector?” I turn back to the room as West goes to the front and pulls down a screen. “What they told us in the beginnin’, about the medications simply tampin’ down instincts to make it safer for everyone to live together…it’s not the whole story.”
Hushed whispers.
Distrusting looks.
One of the orderlies—Tate, I believe his name is—inches to where Sam is still standing. But my alpha doesn’t see him—his focus trained on Lars. My hand finds a knife and flings it across the room. The blade embeds itself into the wall, right in front of his face. “Donottake another step,” I snap. “Y’all need to hear this. Doctor Brooks…Doctor Whitmore, their whole plan was to make a drug that wouldentirely erase designations.”
Somebody gasps. Another person scoffs. Mostly, they look at me in disbelief.
“So?” Paige sneers. The response earns her some disparaging looks from her tablemates. “What?” she asks defensively. “Omegas and alphas aren’tbetterthan betas.”
“You’re right.” I swallow, looking around the room. “But betas aren’t better either. Think about it. If you take away designations, you’re not just makin’ everyone betas, because a beta can still be bonded. Still have a true scent match.”
West plugs his phone into the projector, pulling up the live stream.
“The man—the beta—that you all know as Doctor West Monroe…he’smytrue scent match. We’re bonded.” Scandalized whispers travel through the room, even as West looks over at me with love in his eyes. “So are Hayden, Sam, and Kole Vasiliev. If you get rid of designations, you get rid of it all. Bondin’. Scent matches. The chance to know for sure one way or another if the person you’re with is your soulmate.”
With that, West plays the live stream.
Sam hits the lights. We’re met with a high view of a large living room, chairs lined up and no less than fifty people watching a man at the head of the room.
Isaac Thornfield.
The meeting has already started, so we only catch half of his sentence.
“...Prometheus is unable to be here with us tonight due to a personal matter. But rest assured, our plans to finally eradicate the plague upon the human race are well under way.”
A hand raises in the audience. “Mr. Thornfield, you promised that you would have a solution soon. My daughter is weeks away from her eighteenth birthday, and I’m afraid she’s exhibiting…” his voice goes quiet, “omega tendencies. I need this drug available now! What are our dues going towards if there’s no promise of it being in my daughter’s veins before she presents?”
“Joseph. I understand why you would feel that way.” Isaac’s voice is calm. Placating. “If you are so concerned about her designation surfacing, why don’t you send her to Thornfield?You know that I allow Felix to keep his girl pampered. What’s her name again? Paige?”
The whispers that travel throughout the room are all aimed at the beta in question, and even in the low light, I can see her face turn red.
“No, thank you,” the man named Joseph answers. “I know enough about how you treat people there to not want to make my precious Penelope one of your subjects.”
Isaac’s mouth forms a tight line. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating—”
“I’m insinuating that half the people in that hellhole don’t even belong in an asylum, but they’re made to eat next to psychopaths who have murdered and kidnapped people!”
“Youknowthat we keep them under control.” Thornfield’s voice is hard. “It’s one of the benefits of the patients not being allowed to ask what’s being injected into them.”
