Chapter 61

I truly believe that panic attack would have never stopped, if it weren’t for my body’s eventual exhaustion. I would have cried and screamed until my heart gave out, I would have died right there, but by the Goddess’s grace I passed out first.

My whole body hurt when I woke up, and my wrists burned from where I’d pulled uselessly at the cuffs. My throat was dry.

I can still feel the baby, my wolf said. We didn’t lose them.

“Thank the Goddess,” I croaked, eternally grateful for this one silver lining. I hadn’t killed my child—I still had the chance to do right by them.

Even if I had no clue how.

I sat up slowly, hissing as various aches made themselves known. Sleeping flat on the hard ground hadn’t helped, and I felt bruises forming where I’d rested on gravel and pebbles. It was the worst sleep of my whole damn life.

It was morning now, at least, according to the light filtering in through the blue tarp roof. I could hear the sounds of the camp beyond my prison and for a long moment I just leaned against the tree and listened.

Eventually, though, I had to turn my mind to what I was going to do. As desperately as I wanted to find the Omegas, my first priority now had to be getting myself and my baby out of this alive, and my best chances of that were to cooperate. I didn’t like it, but if Fay was being honest about her use for me then she needed me alive to bargain with anyway.

Her plan baffled me, though. If it went he way she wanted then she and her Rogues would have enough provisions to get them to Darkmoon, the next city over, and they could seek refuge there where their crimes were unknown. But if her scheme failed, then she was bringing down the full might of the most militaristic pack in Lunaris down on her head.

It was a huge gamble, and there were a thousand things that could go wrong. Then again, she really wasn’t kidding—they truly didn’t have a choice. Every day they were here was a day they risked discovery, and since they’d actually managed to come and go from the city without notice, there was no way they’d be left alive once they were found out.

Footsteps crunched in the leaves in front of my prison, and a shadow fell across the tarp on the doorway. My exhausted heart managed to give a few painful thumps of fear. Whoever was out there, they were coming straight for me.

The fabric pushed to the side, and my mouth dropped open.

“Ines!”

Ines Hardy, 47, was the seventh Omega to go missing. And here she was, walking freely around a Rogue camp , looking dirty but healthy. I was confused, sure, but that didn’t change how elated I was to find her alive.

“She said you would know me,” Ines said, walking right up to me and sitting down, putting a folded handkerchief in front of me. It fell open to reveal nuts and jerky, and I salivated. Olivia took a little first, as if to show me it was safe to eat, before nudging it towards me.

“Go ahead and eat,” she said, pulling a disposable water bottle from the bag at her hip and passing it to me. My parched throat made itself known, and I couldn’t help it, I guzzled that thing down without a second thought. “Fay said you’d want to talk to me?”

“Yes,” I panted, still clutching the near-empty bottle. “Absolutely! I’ve been looking for you for weeks, I’m so glad you’re alive, but—but how? Are the others here too?”

Ines nodded calmly, looking totally unphased. “Everyone’s here, and I know you won’t believe me, but we’re safer here than we ever were inside the walls.” I gaped at her, uncomprehending. She just sighed.

“You know about my husband?” she said. I nodded quickly. Peter “Pete” Hardy was a mechanic, a ‘work hard play hard’ kind of man who often rubbed people the wrong way. His and Ines’s only son died in a house fire a year ago.

“I met him,” I said, “looking for you.” Ines’s smile was bitter and wry.

“My condolences. When you get back, arrest him for murder.” My eyes popped wider.

“What?” I asked. I wasn’t going to lie, I hadn’t really liked the guy when we met, but it didn’t feel like anything more than two personalities not meshing. I didn’t get the sense he was dangerous.

Ines looked me dead in the eyes, her own hard and flat.

“That bastard killed my son.”

She told me everything, the years of offhanded comments and subtle bigotry, the total control he had over the house and finances. How she’d given birth alone after he’d stormed out, and had almost died from a uterine rupture that left her infertile. How Peter had never forgiven her for not being a ‘proper Omega’ and giving him a football team of kids.

She told me her son’s name was Tanner, that he played catcher on his middle school baseball team, and that he was allergic to shellfish. She told me that he’d died by the hands of his father the very same day he presented as an Omega.

She’d tried to save him, but Pete had locked himself and Tanner in a bathroom and she couldn’t get the door down. She listened as her baby boy screamed until he wasn’t able to anymore. Pete had beaten him to death, stomped his skull in right there on the cheap linoleum.

I turned to the side and heaved. Ines patted my back as I emptied my stomach.

“I never thought he’d go that far,” Ines said quietly. “He’d had anger issues all his life, but he’d never raised a hand to me or Tanner. But I was blind.”

The fire had been a cover-up, and no one had investigated. Ines had said nothing, knowing her Mate would kill her too if she even tried, and that her death would be worthless because no one would listen anyway.

“I knew I had to get out,” Ines said, looking me in the eye. “And now I’m out. And you’re not taking me back.” undefined