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He pulls the comb out of a matted chunk of my hair and I yelp. He grins and I glare between his stupid face and the stupid comb, fighting back a tenuous lip twitch of my own. He smirks and pushes me back around so that we’re back to front again and, as he starts in on my hair, sending pain shooting through my scalp, I shake off thoughts of his wife, for now, and offer him something unexpected.
“I didn’t expect you to defend me against the dead Alphas,” I whisper.
“Don’t say that shit to me. You think I can’t?”
“I…” I flounder, confused. I’d meant the words as a kindness. “They were monsters —zombies. They smelled dead. You…you killed them and kept killing them and they kept coming back. You killed each of them a hundred times…”
“Think I can’t protect you because a’ these?” He jerks on my chin and leans back so that I can see his largest set of stitches. The wound starts just below the X over his heart before circling down over his abdomen in four short, but deep wounds that are all gruesomely stitched up.Bite marks. These are bite marks.
“No. I said, they weren’t…”
“Doesn’t matter what they were or weren’t. Alphas form packs to share one Omega between them. I’m a Berserker, not a fuckin’ Alpha, and I don’t share. If I lost you to a damn zombie horde, or another fuckin’ Omega or a pack a’ trolls or Alphas or whatever the fuck, I…” He chokes. Shakes his head roughly, the tips of his hair darkened from the water, dark brown and wet and sticking to his skin. He releases my wrist and grabs the back of my neck and crushes his mouth to mine.
His lips are bruising. It doesn’t feel good. I don’t care at all. My body responds in kind. I roll my stomach and I lean into him, but he holds me back with his other hand between my upper ribs. I gasp when he breaks contact. “Have to kill me first and make sure I stay dead, because if those fuckin’ zombies taught me anything, it’s possible to come back. Andyouare the first one I’d come for. The only one.”
He’s breathing hard. I’m breathing hard. Our breath is minty as it mingles and my shampoo smells like a beach paradise. It drips down my forehead, but he rubs it away before it gets into my eyes. I think of his wife. I think how she meanseverythingto him and I recoil from the idea that maybe he doesn’t…actually…have a wi…
“What were they?” I whisper.
“Don’t know. Sent my Six back for the bodies.”
“Your Six?”
“Six Alphas loyal to me. Ones who really run the place.”
“Like your pack?”
“Don’t fuckin’ say the word, Omega.” Omega again.
He kisses me deeply one more time, but this time, I’m the one to break it. I don’t like being his Omega. I…want to be more than that.I want to be more than that tohim, too.
“We need to find out what they are and where they came from.”
His eyes sparkle. I wonder why. I wonder if it’s because I said that horrible, ill-fated word that I know he likes.“Wedo.”
“And Trash City.”
“That, too.”
“And the Omega in the woods. I think she’s the witch Gang Mountain is looking for.”
He rumbles deeply. “Yes, Echo. But not tonight. We’re busy tonight.” Just when I think he’s going to say something salacious, he whips the comb out of nowhere. “Gotta take care a’ my Omega.”
“You don’t…” I start, but he doesn’t let me finish before he whacks me on the top of the head with the hard piece of bone. I scratch his neck in retaliation and he laughs. I laugh too, and for the first time in months, Pain and Fear remain utterly silent all night long.
17 | Adam
Dragnovic Manor
“You know that’s not right.That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. It’s likeyoudidn’t bondher.Shebondedyou.”
I’m gonna kill ‘er. “Didn’t ask your fuckin’ opinion, Alpha,” I shout at Whiskey while she andSierralean against the library wall, amused gazes flicking between me, behind Ward’s desk, and Ward, who sits where any other patient would ordinarily be seated.
Peate’s present, too. So are Balcazar, Barbero and Vi. The whole damn Six even though this is — wassupposed to be— a private fuckin’ meeting between me and Ward. Wouldn’t have let the other fuckers in to overhear me discussin’ all the ways I’m broken and inadequate were they anybody else, but somehow, along the way, these Six I came to trust.
Most of ‘em I met as Betas. Back when I was in the dungeons bein’ tortured as a kid, Balcazar was brought in and tortured in the cell next to me. Whiskey was already shovedinto the cell across from us. Some fuckin’ idiot claimin’himself a prophet thought she and Balcazar would ascend as Omegas and tried to put both of ‘em through the barbaric Omega trainin’ the previous Berserker had put in place — a practice meant toensurethat any Omegas would be the ultimate tools of submission. They rebelled and, when the first Alpha laid a hand on Whiskey, she killed him. She’d been thirteen.
We met Barbero not too long after. He was a Beta servant and would slip Balcazar and Whiskey extra food. Eventually, when he saw the state I was in, he did the same for me.
