The words slam into my torso and knock the wind out of me. When I am finally able to suck in a ragged breath, I want to lash out. To scream. To throw something at her. And at Madame Ellora too for stupid, pointless, worthless advice.
My torso's suddenly stuffed full of thorny brambles that scratch ragged holes through my lungs.
Each breath is painful.
Each imagined second of my future is worse than the last.
Am I really supposed to live this way?
Subject to every alpha command?
Dragging myself through my life on my knees like some pathetic slave, grateful for the opportunity to follow their orders?
Herorders?
My mouth opens, and I nearly give in to the temptation to wail. To rend the air apart with my furious devastation. The intense outrage. But any scream would be so amplified by this stupid echo chamber that eighteen doors would open and a million servants would rush in and everyone would witness me “throwing a tantrum.”
And that's when the lessons Alpha Tamlin taught about history hit me. He told us once that the general who picks the battleground usually wins.
I glance around this massive throne room. This space that the public and all servants can access at any moment. The press is probably waiting in the halls, ready to pour in the moment she's camera-ready.
She didn't just pick this room to intimidate me.
It's a trap.
She brought me in here and said the most abrasive thing possible because she wants to stoke my emotions when I'm vulnerable just after a heat. She wants me to scream like a banshee and have a parade of witnesses rush in so that she can say I'm too volatile to make decisions for myself. That would allow her to swoop in and take charge for my own good.
This isn't some mother-daughter heart-to-heart.
This is a queen making a move on the battlefield.
Sacrificing a soldier to her plan.
I mean nothing to her.
The betrayal of that realization smashes over me like a military tank. Heavy, brutal pain judders over each of my bones and compresses me until my lungs stop working, and the air still stuck inside them stings.
I don't think anything has ever hurt more.
Not when Sam betrayed me.
Not when my exes sold me.
Never.
Nothing has ripped me up by the root like this.
My own mother doesn't see me as human.
Only as a pawn.
No wonder Teddie won't confess the truth of his illness.
She has to be the most selfish person who's ever lived.
I fight the burn at the back of my eyes but lose as a sheen of tears coats my vision and makes my mother's face blur as if she could be anyone. A stranger. Which is exactly what she feels like.
The woman who birthed me is not a mother.
