I should have run when I had the chance. I glanced back over my shoulder towards the Center. Could someone see what was happening? But we were too far, just around a curve in the road that blocked the view of the cameras mounted on the Center's fence. This man knew exactly where to wait for me.
Before I could run, he grabbed my upper arm.
“Hey, I learned something interesting today. Did you know your IP address is stored each time you fill out a form on a website?”
Scream, my brain insisted.Scream, now.
“And with the right resources, you can easily match up an IP address to a physical address. Did you know that, Bridget? I guess not, right?”
My mind ground through the panic, trying to make sense of what he was saying.
“And then youemailedpeople?” He shook his head like I had disappointed him. “Stop playing detective. Stop contacting members of the study. In fact, you should probably just find a new job, cause I don’t think you’ll have this one for much longer.”
If I was small and quiet, maybe it would end soon.
“You’re fucking with the money, now. And they don’t like it when people do that.” He squeezed my arm tighter until I winced. “Understand?”
I nodded.
The hand that wasn’t gripping my arm emerged from his coat, just enough to show me he was casually holding a gun, as if he threatened women all the time. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, and the rush of my breath sawing in and out.
“Good, cause my next visit won’t be so nice. I might even go see Anvi. Doesn’t she have a baby niece?”
“Please,” I whispered.
“I’m glad you get it.” He squeezed my arm once more, and slipped the gun back into his pocket before releasing me. I hugged myself tightly and fought the whimper in my throat.
His expression of boredom slipped, and for a moment he looked much younger. But then he hitched that dead-eyed smile back on his face.
“Let’s keep this between us, okay? Be good, Bridget. Or I’ll be seeing you soon.” He feinted towards me with a mocking laugh at my flinch, then turned towards the train station and disappeared.
I was fifteen years old again, my father’s face a mask of anger as he berated me for “not conducting myself properly” at the coming-out ball of one of his friends’ daughters.
“Who will ever want you when you act like a fucking child, Bridget?” he hissed, his hand tight around my upper arm. His white-blond hair was disheveled, strands spilling across his forehead, and he bared his teeth like an enraged animal.
That night, I had avoided the advances of one of those “friends” — a man his age who led a pack of high-ranking Alphas — who had asked me to dance several times. I’d escaped to the bathroom for the last hour of the party.
I wasn’t sure if these were the men my father intended to bond me, but it didn’t matter. If it wasn’t them specifically, it would be someone just like them.
His packmate, Domenic, watched from three steps behind, his dark, nearly black eyes burning with a suppressedsomethingthat scared me more and more with every passing day.
“Answer me,” Sebastian yelled, shaking my arm savagely. We were in his study, a room that I only saw when being punished. The dark leather furnishings and dim lighting made menacing shadows on the walls.
“I’m sorry. I was nervous,” I said, barely above a whisper. My arm burned under his hand. I knew what to say to make it end. “I’ll be better.”
Instead of defusing my father’s anger, my comment had the opposite effect. He growled and switched his grip from my arm to my throat. He squeezed hard enough to cut my airflow to a trickle. I tried to suck in a breath, and my head went light from panic. I wanted to scratch at his arms, to fight back.
“I’m sick of the excuses. When an Alpha asks you to do something, you do it. When you’re bonded, that is your duty as an Omega. If you can’t even follow simple requests now, you will be useless to your pack.” My father eased the pressure on my throat, but didn’t release me fully. “This is for your own good, Bridget. You know that, don’t you?”
Tears streamed down my face. Even though I could breathe again, I still felt choked. “Yes,” I whispered.
Domenic stepped forward then. There was a strange excitement in his expression. He stroked the side of my face before murmuring, “You are so beautiful, Bridget. It would be a shame for such beauty to go to waste.”
My skin crawled under his touch.
A hand on my back pulled me back to the present.
“Are you okay, dear?”
