Bart grabs a fistful of my hair, and I grit my teeth as I attempt to reach for him. Unfortunately, I can’t touch him at this angle, and my limbs feel as if they weigh a million pounds. While I decide to focus on the pain in my scalp to keep from passing out, he ignores me completely as he drags me along. Those in the warehouse glance over my naked body with a hint of interest before continuing on with their day.
If my boss was Avery, I wouldn’t want to fall behind either.
Lifting the top of a cage, Bart lifts me up and drops me inside before slamming the door and locking the padlock. I’m breathing heavily as he leaves, and all I can do is stew in my anger as I pull oxygen in and out of my lungs.
I was free for long enough to be able to work out the kinks from the pain in my body, but they’re all awakened now. My mind drifts in an effort to disassociate from how much my chest hurts, not realizing Avery is beside me until it’s too fucking late.
“Ahh!” My wake up call occurs as she fucking shoves a prod into my side, and I lose the ability to sit upright while I jerk and ride out the electricity racing through my body.
“I got a new model in, isn’t it awesome?” she giggles. “It won’t leave any marks either. It’s a new delivery. Since you’re occupied, I want to see something.”
Yanking my arm toward her while I flop and gasp like a fish out of water in the small cage, she holds it firmly while she injects something into my system. I don’t know what it is, but my stomach cramps violently, and I gag on bile.
“I have several different types of bond breaking serums, and I’m interested in seeing what’ll work on you,” she murmurs. “Feel anything?”
“No,” I rasp, finally able to speak. “You can’t take them from me, bitch.”
“We’ll see about that.” Sitting down, she peers at me as if she can see the bonds between myself and my pack breaking. If I had the energy to flick her off, I would. “Tina?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The blonde woman appears as if out of thin air, which tells me all of the stress and electricity is taking its toll on me. I lay and pant as whatever Avery injected me with makes me feel groggy, but hold onto the fact that my bonds are still in place.
“Bring me all of the bond breaking vials please. I plan to be occupied for a while.”
“Of course. It’s always nice to see you so engaged in a new project.”
“With Zeno gone, this will have to carry me through,” Avery sighs.
My throat feels like sandpaper from puking up the water earlier, and I cough, hoping to clear it. If Avery is always this chaotic, it’s no wonder that Tina is happy to keep her occupied.
Whether it’s fucking or torturing others, Tina doesn’t care.
Avery can’t take my pack. I secretly hold tightly to the knowledge that whatever vitamins and medicine Papa was plying me with will hopefully keep my pack tightly bound to me. I know it’s selfish with Nico’s bond sickness, but I can’t help it.
If I’m going to die, I want to do it knowing I was happy for a finite amount of time.
“Thank you, Tina!” Avery calls out as her assistant rushes away. I still feel floaty and the room is spinning as I lay prone on the cage. I can see the bolts where they've been screwed in, and I’m in a different area of the warehouse than when I first got here. “Ah! We are going to have so much fun, Rosalia. I mean I’ll have fun, you’re going to have a bad fucking time.”
“I don’t understand. Why break bonds at all?” I whisper, blinking my eyes as I force my eyes to focus on her.
“A bond ruined my mother’s life. I never should have been born, yet here I am. People don’t deserve their happiness, not while I’m the evil that lives in the world. Mother, father, and child, all are fucked up. I’ll continue to fulfill my destiny until someone finally manages to kill me,” she says simply. “Did you know I had a grenade fucking thrown at me? Stupid, crazy fucker. Water and I are friends, so I dove into the pool and let it bring me to safety.
“You, on the other hand, will be sick of water by the time I’m done with you.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
ROSALIA
I’m completely spacedout by the time Avery gets bored with me. My eyes are unfocused, I had a seizure after the third injection, and she still hasn’t gotten the results she’s looking for. The closest she was able to get was when she injected me the fifth time with a serum that caused me to hallucinate, and that’s what I’m still trying to come down from.
“Ugh. Why isn’t this working?” she groans. Her hair looks blue instead of black to me, and I would swear there are devil horns on her head as she complains. Her drugs may not be working as she planned, but I am really fucked up. “I need to figure this out. I’ll be back! I need to take blood samples.”
Turning away from her, I shudder and heave as I throw up until blood mixes with the bile beside me. I feel absolutely miserable due to the amount of shit my captor has pumped into my veins.
My eyes roll back as I begin to shiver uncontrollably, my legs twitching as I flop onto my back. I feel strung out, but my bonds are still in place. That has to count for something.
Cold water hits the ground around me, forcing a yelp from my lips as a guard does his job as he cleans the cage with a hose. The water flows into the wide drain beside me, telling me they’ve been using this space for awhile. The memory that they’ve been selling both omegas and alphas fills me, reminding me they’ve been busy with their own depraved work.
The guard ignores how uncomfortable I am, or the fact that this won’t help my shivers.
