Ever been run over by a supercar?
I had.
At least, that was what it fucking felt like.
I moaned like a dying animal as my heavy eyelids cracked open. My limbs burned as pain lit up my nerves like scrap-metal grenades.
Flickering green shadows taunted me, and a noxious odor itched my nose.
My mouth cracked with dried blood as I tried to gasp in more air but choked on a lungful of smoke.
A blurry, rotund body paced back and forth.
“Wakey, wakey,” Spike said with way too much glee.
My shoulder blades burned unbearably, and I moaned as I tried to lift my head.
A bloody beating flashed through my mind in broken fragments, like a dream that was just out of my reach.
The last thing I remembered was Spike stabbing me in the neck with his needle.
“Wake up now!” Spike alpha-barked.
A chorus of moans responded, and I struggled to lift my head. Gravity pulled it back down.
My vision blurred, and a warm liquid dripped down my face. Definitely blood.
The familiar throbbing pain in the front of the skull told me I was sporting two wicked black eyes.
Abruptly, the dark, flickering room was illuminated in a harsh white light. It took a second, but I finally focused on my surroundings.
I wished I hadn’t.
My stomach emptied bile down my chest. I heaved and coughed as I choked on it.
Throwing up while upright was fucking awful.
You know what else was awful? The remains of two alphas that were scattered around the floor like a messed-up science experiment.
The only things that kept me from hysteria were the four familiar bodies that swung beside me.
My men were okay.
I could not say the same for the other two alphas. The jerk who had mocked us was now disassembled into hundreds of pieces across the floor.
There was nothing left to identify him by.
Just an empty rope swinging across a mess of gore. Now I knew what the awful smell was.
Suddenly, I missed the creepy flickering light that had broken up the room’s darkness.
Everything was too bright.
“Sadie?” Ascher moaned loudly as he struggled to move. He violently shook from his rope.
I groaned back, “Present.”
The pain in my arms was too much, and my head swirled with darkness. I was thirty seconds from passing out.
“Is everyone okay?” Jax asked softly, his smooth voice rough and mangled, similar to my own.
A chorus of weak grunts sounded.
Was I alive? Yes.
Was I okay? Hard. Fucking. No.
Okay people didn’t feel like they’d been flung off a mountain, then had the mountain fall over on top of them.
I turned my head and took in Xerxes’s awful state.
He was so bloody that he was no longer blond. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was a ginger.
I winced at his mangled face.
Then I winced because wincing made my face pound with pain in rhythm to my heartbeat.
Things were not well.
I whispered to Xerxes, “Are you okay?”
His lush lips were swollen and distorted, and he tried to speak, but only made a harsh wheezing sound as his mouth gaped hopelessly.
After a long, awkward moment where he gasped, and I grimaced at him, he stopped trying to speak.
Instead, Xerxes stared at me with swollen purple eyes.
Intensity seeped from them, and even in my pain-stricken state, it made me squirm.
The pain must have been making me delirious, because he stared at me like he could see through my corporeal form. He devoured me like he was peering into my soul, into another astral plane of existence.
Like I was his savior and damnation.
His obsession.
Clearly, torture had addled my brain and made me weirdly poetic.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I said as my bound arms were slowly ripped from their sockets.
If I didn’t get let down from the rope in the next second, I was going to cause a scene.
“Kitten?” Cobra asked in a slurred whisper from across the room.
I bit down on my tongue and screamed into my mouth.
My mood boomeranged in time with the pounding agony ripping my cells to shreds.
The next person to call me a pathetic nickname was getting stabbed.
The big alpha fuckface, aka Spike, smiled and interrupted my mental breakdown. “Well, now that you’re all awake, I just have one thing to say…”
He paused dramatically,
Everyone glared at him as we swung back and forth from the fucking ceiling. Who was going to tell him we didn’t need any more drama?
The mood was already set.
Finally, Spike clapped his hands. “Congratulations! You passed the first initiation test.” He showcased his four teeth. “The first test has a passage rate of less than 1 percent, so you should all be proud.”
His smile transformed into a savage look as he sneered down at the mess of gore on the floor. “The other alphas answered the question…and they were set free. Just like we promised.”
“Freedom” clearly had a different meaning to Spike.
Although, I guessed their brains were freely splattered across the white floor.
I chuckled, then frowned because that was really not funny.
I needed a therapist immediately.
Spike’s smile returned. “You will be contacted with your next initiation challenge. Congratulations, you are one-third of the way to getting your tattoo.”
Wait, what?
Abruptly, Spike pulled out a wicked-looking knife and sawed at the ropes around my wrist.
Of course, he didn’t bother to catch my limp body. He definitely could have.
A positive: Most of the gore covered the far side of the room, so I didn’t fall into it.
A negative: I slammed down, face forward, legs and arms sprawled, onto the hard cement.
Weren’t cats supposed to always land on their feet?
I could not emphasize how much I landed completely on my belly.
The story of my life should have been titled Sadie: The Bitch Who Was in Pain.
Existence fucking hurt.
Anyone who said differently lived a pampered fucking life and shouldn’t be trusted.
My last shred of dignity was the only thing that kept me from passing out onto the cement as agony rocked through me.
Instead, because I was a bad bitch—who for some unknown reason kept fighting against the sweet caress of death—I battled gravity and dragged my aching limbs off the floor.
Impressively, I stood up.
Well, if being half-keeled-over and moaning like a polar bear was considered standing.
Spike cut down Xerxes, and he scrambled next to me.
Silently, the omega tossed an arm around my shoulder, and we leaned against each other.
Just two adults using each other for support.
No biggie.
I pretended not to notice that Xerxes was still staring at me. If he wanted to be weird, that was his prerogative.
Instead of worrying about Xerxes’s strange energy, I focused on the other men.
Cobra collapsed weakly onto the ground.
Finally, Jax was released, and the big man landed on his feet gracefully. He was bruised but looked to be in the best shape compared to the rest of us.
Dark-purple bruises covered every inch of his pale skin. We all waited for him to stand, but he just moaned and lay on the ground, unmoving.
I grimaced at his awful state.
Something told me they’d gone harder on him because he was the prince.
He had more to gain and thus more to prove.
Also, it looked like another one of us was joining the severe parental issues group. I’d let him know when Aran and I scheduled our next therapy session.
Sun god knew we needed it.
Jax leaned over and stroked his dark hand softly across Cobra’s bruised forehead. Then he gently lifted Cobra and cradled him against his chest like he wasn’t holding a six-foot-five man covered in muscles.
My breath caught as I stared at Jax.
His long braids softly tinkled with chains, and his earrings, nose ring, and piercing gray eyes sparkled.
He calmly carried Cobra after being tortured.
As every pain-stricken cell in my body wept with relief, I marveled at Jax’s poise.
He was more than a man.
A god.
Finally, Ascher was released, and he stumbled to his tattooed feet, his horns splattered in blood and his amber eyes swollen shut.
The moment felt monumental because we’d done it.
All of us were still alive.
I coughed up blood and cleared my throat. “Um, so can we just leave?”
Spike nodded and gestured toward the door. “A car will take you to Xerxes’s place.”
I didn’t bother to ask how he knew that was where we were going to stay. As we limped past him, I couldn’t help but check over my shoulder nervously.
After our little rope torture session, it didn’t feel right that we were just free to go.
Being threatened with guns or thrown into a pit of poisonous snakes seemed like a more fitting next step than just leaving casually.
Whatever, I didn’t argue.
Jax carried Cobra silently, and Ascher leaned an arm against Jax’s bicep for support. I held on to Ascher’s arm, and Xerxes wrapped himself around me.
Together, we limped out the door.
There was no one in the room, and we shuffled down the long hall we’d entered through.
Hell is paved with the bones of the disloyal, took on new meaning as we struggled past the words on the wall.
I’d heard the term hell before, but had never wondered what it stood for.
Now my skin rolled with the premonition that it wasn’t good.
If it was a place, I didn’t want to be there.
This time, when we were finally free of that awful building, the icy wind and rain were welcome. The droplets kissed my aching flesh in a cool relief.
It was still night.
We limped down the abandoned alleyway.
No one spoke, but we moved with the single-minded purpose of a unit.
We were on the same page.
The wind gusted strong, and Xerxes’s hand tightened painfully against my shoulder as he struggled to stand. I clenched Ascher’s arm to hold us upright, and he leaned heavily against Jax.
Cobra’s eyes fluttered open as his head lolled upside down across Jax’s arm, but he didn’t move.
Jax tensed his legs as we shuffled forward, his strength the only thing keeping all of us upright.
The puddles beneath our feet turned red as the rain washed away our blood.
Before, hundreds of shifters had bustled down the busy city streets. Now they were almost completely empty. Eerily so. A few men and women hurried through the rain, heads down to remain unnoticed.
Towering buildings glowed neon and illuminated dark, rainy shadows. Gloom overtook the world. A bone-deep melancholy invaded my body.
It was impossible to feel anything other than angst while limping through the fluorescent city.
So big and overwhelming, it completely consumed us.
None of us said anything. We didn’t need to.
All we had was each other.
We turned the corner, and our beta driver from earlier was leaning against a shiny emerald supercar.
With trembling grips, we kept limping forward. Eons later, we collapsed in a pile of limbs across the fancy leather interior.
Somehow, we all ended up in the same row of the car.
Jax lay partially across the seat with Cobra leaning against him. Ascher draped across Cobra. Xerxes lay across the floor at their feet, and I sprawled atop his body.
The reality of what we’d been through hung heavy around us.
The bruises and fatigue were mutual.
As was the pain.
Finally, between the soft hum of the engine and Xerxes kissing me softly on the cheek, I fell asleep.
