Anarchy Found (SuperAlpha, #1)(38)

She starts to cry again. And what did I expect? She’s eight years old.

“You can never talk about this place again or they will kill you.”

I wait for her to acknowledge my order. She should be the one ordering me, but she’s always looked to me for guidance. The administration would’ve figured it out soon. They’d have figured out she’d never be able to control me and had her eliminated.

That’s why I agreed to escape tonight. To save her.

She finally nods, giving in, or giving up, or both. So I lift her up until she can swing her legs over the side of the windowsill, and then I push her and she plops down into a snowdrift.

She looks up at me one more time, the tears on her cheeks already freezing. And she says, “I’ll find you, Alpha. I will. One day I’ll find you.”

Then she turns and instincts kick in. She runs and she never looks back.

I take a deep breath because her words mean more than she knows. They are the words of my killer. My death. My demise. Because that little girl is the only person left in the world who can hurt me.

And I just let her go.





Chapter Twenty-Three - Molly




I do as I’m told. I start running and I never look back. And every time my feet crunch into the deep snow, my long flannel nightgown gets pushed further up my legs. It gets wetter and wetter. And so heavy I feel like I’m dragging a dead weight.

I pump my arms, pleading with my legs to take me under the cover of the trees before someone from school sees me outlined against the stark whiteness of the valley.

I expect to be shot in the back with every passing moment. I expect a yell, telling me to, “Get your ass back here,” and then the sharp crack of a rifle and the scream of a bullet into my spine.

But I gather up all my strength and leap from the deep snow into the scant dusting under the pines. I slip, skid, and fall down on my knees.

The air is rushing in and out of my mouth in long heaves. My chest is burning, my throat is burning. I feel like I might die right here and now. Of fear, or exhaustion, or sadness.

I grab fistfuls of snow because there is nothing else to cling to, and the burning from exposure winds its way from the tips of my fingers to my palms. In a few minutes it will pass my wrists and run up my arms.

I shove my hands into my coat pockets, desperately wishing I had Alpha’s gloves and the heat of his hands to keep me warm.

But I don’t get either of those things from my pocket. My fingertips bump into a slender tube of plastic. A chill of fear runs through me, because I know what this is. Every time Alpha had to use it, he showed it to me first. He said, “I’m not the one hurting you, Omega. This”—he’d hold the syringe up—“this is what hurts you. Not me. They make me do this, Omega. I have to do it. But what happens after?” His face was always calm and his words were always soft. “Tell me,” he’d say.

And I’d say, “You take care of me.”

Every time I said those words he’d smile and say, “That’s right. I have to give you the drug, but I always take care of you after. I will never leave you, Omega. You’re mine and I’m yours. And we take care of each other.”

But he made me leave him, and that’s the same thing as leaving me.

I’d always nod. Because as soon as I was better, after he’d cared for me for days, and sometimes weeks, as I pushed the drug through my blood, I’d have to hurt him too. And they never let me take care of him. They only made me watch him writhe in pain, alone, on the other side of a glass window that he couldn’t see through.

The syringe in my pocket comes with a note. It’s wet from the snow and a little bit smeared. But I rub my wet hands on the inside of my coat, smooth out the piece of paper, and the words form in my head. I hear them in his voice.

My Omega, it says. This is the last time, I promise. It’s not what you think. It’s a new start and a way to forget the past.

I bend my head until my chin bumps up against my coat collar, and I cry.

My Alpha.

I cry for him. I cry because of him. I cry for the times he hurt me and I cry for the times he didn’t. I cry because I’m an Omega and the only reason I exist is to hurt him back. I cry because if I do what my Alpha says, if I leave this place and use that drug, I will never be his Omega again.

I will stop. Everything will stop. And even though each time he drugged me in school I begged God to make the pain go away, I never want it to stop.





Chapter Twenty-Four - Molly




I wake up surrounded by darkness, with his name on my tongue. Not Lincoln. Alpha.

“Shhh,” he whispers into my neck. His hush is a wave of warmth that floats across my skin and then pools in my belly. His arms are wrapped tightly around me and we are lying on a bed, somewhere in the dark.

“Where did you go?” he asks.

“Back to that day in the snow.”

“No. Where did you go when you left me?”

“I didn’t leave you. You made me go.”

“It was let you go or kill you dead, Molly.”

“Omega,” I say, a sob coming out with my name. “And I died anyway.”

I see it in my head. I feel the cold freezing my body from the tips of my toes on up. It burned so bad. And maybe I wasn’t old enough to understand what frostbite was, but I knew if I did not get somewhere warm soon, I would fall down and stop existing.