Page 14 of Anarchy Chained: Alpha Thomas

She hates that. The reminder that they never finished her. They left her incomplete. “I would’ve killed you,” I growl, my voice clear and strong now. “When I killed all the others, you know.”

“Fuck you,” she says again.

“But only to put you out of your misery.” His—my—laughter bursts forth.

“Give him another dose,” Yasmine barks to her team. “We’ll see who’s aggressive enough.”

See, this is her whole problem. She still lives in the nursery. She still thinks she’s one of the favorites. She still buys into the lies they weaved into our tiny minds—day after day. Until the days turned into months and the months turned into years.

I’m sure plenty of people think Yasmine Bates is aggressive. But that’s not what I’m talking about and she knows it. I’m talking about the modifications they did to us. The manipulations they subjected us to when we were small. Before we left that nursery we were complete and she was missing something. Something I had plenty of.

Aggression.

Not aggression, as in the desire to fight. But aggression as in the ability to hurt. Not with my hands, but my mind.

I told you. I told you there’s anarchy up there. I told you it’s inside me. I told you this over and over and over and over and—

“That’s the second dose,” one of her helpers says.

“Gimme more.” I laugh. “Gimme all of it. I can take it. I can take it and you know it. Nothing you do to me will ever change who you aren’t.”

Level ten aggressionist is part of what I am. Just one tiny part, really. But it makes all the difference and Yasmine knows this. She sees what I can do. She sees what I’m capable of. And she knows she can’t compete.

She’s just missing something.

Her soft hand touches my throat and when I force my eyes open to see my little sliver of reality, she’s baring her teeth at me.

“If only you had fangs, darling, then you could suck it out of me like a leech.”

She squeezes my windpipe. Chokes me. I’d still be laughing if she wasn’t cutting off my airway.

I mentally push against her spongy aura, testing things out.

Not yet. Not quite. But almost.

I don’t want to do it. I’ve taken great care of the past fifteen years to keep it in check. But then fucking Case had to go shoot me with that poison.

You want to kill him for that.

No. I correct the voice inside me. I want to kill someone for that, but it’s not Case. He didn’t do this to me. He didn’t turn me into this fucking freak show. He didn’t strap me down as a child and force me to change.

“You’re wrong, Mr. Brooks,” Yasmine seethes into my ear. “So, so very wrong.” But I’m not. And when she barks, “Give him another one,” I know this for certain.

This is it, Thomas. This is the end of you. One more syringe will be enough. One more syringe will trigger it. One more goddamned syringe and I will finally be free because I’ll be dead.

“Do it.” But this time it’s not out loud. That anarchy chained up in my head knows better than to beg. It knows she will get suspicious and put a stop to it. It knows I will die quietly instead of the way it was always planned.

So she doesn’t hear my warning.

I feel the push in my vein. I feel the burn travel up my arm. I feel it entering the right atrium of my heart. And then a contraction. Thump. It’s in. Thump. It’s out. Thump, thump. Into the lungs. Back to the heart. Thump, thump. That quick… everything has changed.

Her aura is no longer spongy. It’s a wall. And walls can be knocked down. Walls are breakable. Walls are meant to be broken.

My eyes open. I see the operating room light. Yasmine off to my right, still partially bending over, her hand still on my throat in a gesture of aggression she knows she can’t use against me.

Oh, she can choke my throat all she wants. But that’s not the part of me she needs to hold in her hand.

She needs my mind.