Page 64 of Sweet Torment

I wander down the hallway, running my fingers along the expensive wallpaper. Each room I peek into feels like opening another box of nightmares. What happened in this one? What did Whitney do to them here? The ghosts of her cruelty seem to linger in every corner.

I find the library with an office in a side room that must've been hers. Dr. Montgomery's too meticulous to leave anything interesting behind, but maybe he missed something. I make a mental note to check it out later. Maybe after I'm done fantasizing about setting it all on fire and dancing in the ashes.

The cameras track me, and for good measure, I flip off every single one of them.

The alphas are trapped in the same hell. Just with a new omega. A new toy to play with. No. Wrong line of thinking. It’s not the same. I'm not a replacement. I'm not⁠—

My hands won't stop shaking. The adrenaline crash slams into me, leaving me hollow and jittery. I flex my fingers, watching them tremble. I feel useless.

And my stupid idea got my team locked up.

Isn’t that what Ezra was always afraid would happen?

I don't know whether to be angry, sad, play detective, grow even more violent, channel the sweet omega, or just be fucking horny.

D. All of the above.

I find a bathroom that's bigger than my entire cabin back home. Shit. I guess that’s not my home anymore. Is this my home? Gross. Never. Marble everywhere, gold fixtures. Pretty, in that soulless way that expensive things often are. I stopped giving a fuck about pretty interiors around the same time I learned how to skin a rabbit. At one point, rabbits were my favorite animal. Yeah, the woods changed me. I don’t fit here, and that much is obvious.

I lock the door even though I know it's meaningless. Locks won't keep Dr. Montgomery out. They won't keep the alphas out either. But the illusion of privacy feels necessary right now. I turn the faucet as hot as it will go, watching steam billow up. The mirror begins to fog, blurring my reflection until I'm just a smudge of color. Good. I don't want to see myself right now. Don't want to look into my own eyes and see what's looking back.

I don’t even know her anymore.

I peel off the ruined clothes that reek of forest and blood and them. My body is a collection of fresh injuries. Dirt in places I didn't know dirt could reach. They tried to clean me up, but between my legs is a literal disaster zone.

"Jesus," I hiss, examining some of the particularly nasty cuts and bruises.

I drop everything in a heap on the floor. Nothing feels like mine. Not even my skin.

No cameras in here. Are bathrooms safe zones?

Finding brand new toothpaste and toothbrushes in the drawer, I scrub the hell out of my teeth.

Then I pour in bubble bath from a crystal bottle, grateful when the scent rises to overpower the lingering rose that permeates from everything in this fucking house. Whitney's scent is embedded in the walls. It’s like she refuses to let me go.

I get in before the tub is full, impatient for something to feel good. The water burns my skin, but the pain feels right. Grounding. Real. I hiss through my teeth as I sink lower, letting the heat turn my skin pink, then red. Everything stings. Every part of me is sore in ways I didn't know were possible.

"I'm a piñata for dicks now," I say to the empty bathroom, and laugh until it turns into something close to a sob. They'll just keep coming at me. Nonstop. Four alphas with their needs and their knots and their fucking feelings and scents. Not so long ago, I hated alphas. Hated everything about them.

But there's a sick part of me now that craves their worship and needs it like oxygen. I sink deeper into the water, bubbles tickling my chin.

I don't know if I'll ever fully process what's happened. How do you make peace with becoming the very thing you spent years running from? And we still haven't talked about the fact that their fathers fully supported the Havershams taking whatever they wanted from me. Like I was property. I guess no differently than they did to their own sons.

Was I completely blind back then? What kind of life were they living with their fathers? Their homes were always so cold. Perfect and pristine and utterly lifeless, but I didn’t suspect the depth of darkness that lurked there. Is that why they spent so much time at my house with Winston? Winston. God, I miss him. Seeing him so broken in the hospital crushed something in my soul. I need my brother.

Being in this house is beyond fucked up. Her scent is everywhere, and then there's the impossible task of not thinking about them fucking her on every surface. The images come unbidden. I know they didn't enjoy it. I know they didn't want her. But still. They touched her. She touched them. They've been inside her. She changed them. They're not the men they would've been without her. And I'm not the woman I would've been either.

"Stop it," I whisper, pressing my fingers into my eyes. "Just stop."

I sink under the water, letting it close over my head. I open my mouth and scream. It comes out muffled, broken bubbles rising to the surface. All the rage and grief I've been swallowing pour out of me in underwater howls no one can hear. I surface for air, gasping, then go back down. Again and again.

Time becomes irrelevant. The water cools. My fingers wrinkle like I've aged decades in minutes. I keep going under, screaming where no one can hear me, where I can pretend I'm still alone. The bonds won't let me hide, though. They're there, in the back of my mind, four distinct presences pulsing with concern. They probably feel every jagged edge of my emotions right now.

I can sense them moving through the house, drawn to my distress. The water has gone lukewarm by the time I hear footsteps outside the door.

The handle jiggles. "Bianca." Freddie's voice, careful and soft through the wood. "Open the door."

I stare at the handle. Part of me wants to stay silent, to pretend I've drowned. Another part wants to scream at him to go away. But the omega in me, the part I've spent years denying, whines at the sound of his voice, desperate for a comfort I'm not sure I deserve.