But Ridge leans up in bed, grimacing and grabbing at his side.
Hissing through his teeth, pain keeping him more clear-headed than the others, he growls, “Whydon’t you have panties, Brylee?”
Oh shit.
“I guess it’s time to talk?” I say weakly.
The TV flicks off.
Taking that as my cue, I hesitantly tell the guys about my escape. When I reach the part where I put my panties into the vent, Ridge’s hand shoots out and clamps down on mine.
My eyebrows fly up, and my story falters.
He shakes his head. “No. Keep going. I’m just going to have to kill every fucking bastard there who?—”
“Oh, you don’t have to. I already did,” I chirp lightly. “Problem solved.”
Kylian leans forward in his seat, his brow furrowed. “Excuse me. You killed a warehouse full of alphas?”
“Yeah.”
Luka scrubs a hand down his face. “I’m freaking out imagining this, so please just tell us in excruciating detail everything that happened from the second you were taken.”
The second I was taken…
“Oh.” I sit up straighter in bed, hand flying up to cover Colter’s. “Shit! So much has happened that I forgot to tell you. Sam did it. That beta? Sam’s the one who sold me out to the Noths.”
All the air in the room compresses as my four enraged alphas exchange charged looks.
I know what follows looks like those.
Violence.
Lots of it.
19
LUKA
The sterile biteof antiseptic hits me like a slap the moment I step into the corridor. It scours the air, sharp and clinical, but it can’t erase the other scent that clings to me—the sour, invisible trace of betrayal.
I swear I can feel it on my skin, in my pores, a substance no amount of scrubbing will ever quite remove.
My boots strike the linoleum in a dull, steady rhythm.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
The sound echoes down the hall, a metronome set to the tempo of my fury. It lives inside me now, that rage—coiled tight in my gut, breathing, waiting. Every turn at the end of the corridor pulls it tighter.
I pace like a caged tiger, shoulders brushing invisible bars.
Only the cage isn’t made of steel.
It’s made of my own failure.
Sam.
