Page 3 of Dark Goodbye

No good came from my dynamic. If he had said the words I longed to hear, I would have fallen at his feet, but it wouldn’t have been me. It would have been this godsforsaken dynamic that pushed me to action and not actually love or desire — just like he was driven by the Alpha instincts to mate and claim.

I didn’t need some test to tell me. I was far smaller than the others, a lot more fragile and delicate. It didn’t matter that I somehow tested as beta when I was a child. Either someone switched it, or the test was wrong. It was only a matter of time before they officially knew.

Even when I was ten and he was twenty, I knew it then. He was so confused at his pull toward me, but I knew. I always knew. At first, he protected me, like an older brother, and as we both grew a little older, it turned into something else.

The way Davix’s gaze changed, becoming darker. The way he felt far sharper around me. There was a bite to his words, an unrequited longing that he never acted upon, a shifting of the eyes when he thought I wasn’t looking. There was a timepiece in my mind that pounded every time he was near, as if both of us were waiting for that magical day that I’d go into heat, and he’d be well within his rights to claim me.

It was that clock, that biological urge that drove me. It had to be. Because, even though I vowed to never take an Alpha as a mate, I started to fall for him. My body burned in a way that was wholly inappropriate, especially since I continued masquerading as a beta.

That’s when I knew I had to leave. We would both get hurt. Though I wasn’t a future teller, I didn’t need the stars, moon, or flight patterns of the various animals to tell me that. He was interested in me, at least, that’s how I perceived it.

Perhaps I was wrong all along. Perhaps all he wanted was to be that brother to me, a protector of someone weak and frail. It could be he really didn’t know that his breathing hitched the moment he came into my presence. He never once mentioned he knew I was an omega, so it could be it was in my head after all.

How many of these memories are like this, distorted visions I’m seeing through a foggy lens? My head is in a jumble, throbbing every time I try to look at things more closely. He never used his words to tell me he wanted me, but I saw it in his eyes that last year I was still in Stanlion. Then again, I’ll never know for certain.

It rained that day. Either that or Davix actually cried. The memory is so jumbled, so stretched to its edges that I cannot trust anything I’m seeing. How much of it is reality, and how much is simply fictitious longing, a yearning for a time when things were far simpler, and I was with an Alpha that protected me from everything?

However, this stranger that hovers over me, this monster, fills my vision every time I blink, shoving the comforting memories away and forcing me back to reality. Gone is the envelope of safety I cocooned myself into. Gone is the young man that held me against him as my deepest fears took hold of my mind.

There’s nothing calm about this man standing before me. Where Davix was always a safe haven, a place to run to, this Alpha only makes me want to run away. Instead of Davix’s soothing scent and aura, this Alpha is all aggression and pent-up frustrations.

But is my sensibility even to be trusted? Years spent at the commune drove the memories of Alphas so far back that I never gave them another thought. Perhaps I’m skewed, unable to trust my instincts after years of not needing them.

“You’re awake,” he murmurs again, his fingers sliding up to brush my hair out of my face.

The thin tresses stick to the wet skin around my eyes, but even they move at his behest. With soft tsking sounds, he slides his thumbs across the damp spots, rubbing them until they’re dry. His touch is cold, calculated, nothing even close to what I imagined it would be.

Once more, I turn my face, wishing to be free of this nightmare, but his fingers grip my chin, refusing to let me move. My body quakes as his touch drifts over my lips, touching them, teasing them, coaxing them open, then pulling away. I’ve watched enough rituals at the commune to know what seduction looks like.

However, he still keeps his touch light, almost clinical. I don’t understand what he wants from me, and he’s not saying a word. He simply stares at me, his eyes dilating every few moments then returning to normal. It’s this sense of unease, this unknown, that eats at me, gnaws at me.

“Please. Please tell me what you want.”

“Oh?” He peers down at me, his lips widening to show his teeth. Images of the few anorakuses, predators of the desert, I’ve seen flash to mind, just as hungry and just as thirsty for blood. “I’m simply responding to the need I heard in your voice, all soft and plaintive. ‘Please, I’ll do anything,’ Is that not what you said?”

My fingers shake as I attempt to ball them into fists again. Something isn’t right. My normal senses and reflexes aren’t working. Every movement is slow, like sap dripping down the syrup trees in the Agro freezers. I go to move my head, finally free of his grip, but even that is labored. The room spins with each minute movement, and the need to hurl beats at my brain.

Is there anything even left in my stomach? No doubt I left all its contents on the guard that barreled into my cell. Is that why I’m here? To be punished for a natural bodily reaction?

“Open your mouth for me.” With every bit of energy I possess, I grit my teeth, refusing him entrance. “Listen, you stupid bitch,” he hisses, his face mere millimeters from mine. “You said you’d do anything. Right now, I need you healthy enough to take you up on that promise. Open. Your. Fucking. Mouth.”

A growl laces his voice, saturating the air with his command. I’m helpless to resist. Tears stream down my face, blurring his face as my mouth inches open. I fight the compulsion as best I can, but eventually, it’s wide enough for him to stick a finger inside.

Holding my breath, I lie there as his thick digit swirls around, sliding deep into my throat, causing it to convulse as bile rises once more. The sound of gagging reaches my ears, but it sounds so far away, as if it’s not me doing it. My stomach clenches as everything in me tightens up.

At the last minute, he pulls his finger out and turns my head as more comes up out of me, splattering against a tin object he’s holding beneath my chin. Pink swirls about, mixed with vile greens and browns. Pain erupts through my stomach as everything seizes up again.

Even more comes up, each heave filled with pinks and splashes of dark red. Blood. The word slithers around my brain along with the very real terror that I’m dying. Though I haven’t made my peace or sacrifices to the gods, I can only hope they look at my heart and see that it is mostly unblemished.

Hopefully, Abenomed, the god of final judgment, will have mercy, taking account of all the good I’ve tried to do. Surely, he cannot condemn me. Surely not. I long to wrap my arms about my waist, to rock back and forth in an attempt to self-soothe, but I’m still held firm, splayed under the confines of a single, white sheet.

The Alpha pulls the metal out from under me long enough to slip a glass tube between my lips. Cold water shoots in, reigniting that churning sensation. Pulling it out, he sets the metal beneath me.

“Spit.”

This is one command I gladly obey. The stench of my vomit slams into me as I swish the water around and spit it out. Hopefully, the worst is over, and I’ll no longer be forced to endure this humiliation. Once my mouth is empty, he slides the tube in again.

“You’re far too thin,” he murmurs, pushing the tube in further this time so I gag once more. “The food they fed you is tearing up your insides, causing you to hold onto blood you shouldn’t. I’ll probably have to put you on transfusions if I’m going to fuck you as I plan on doing.”