Anarchy, p.22
Anarchy, page 22
CRESCENT
I settled back into what was becoming a super cozy nest.
Sometimes my alphas gave it side eyes as if they felt it wasn’t good enough, but they didn’t know the bland place I’d come from.
At the Convent, I’d been banned from anything close to nesting, so this bed, with soft pillows, hidden treasures, and stacked blankets, was like nothing I’d ever had before.
I tucked the books in around me as Vandle spoke to Phantom.
I didn’t completely follow what was going on, and I didn’t think they wanted to scare me with it, but I was listening.
“...Check in on Karma at the gym…” Vandle was saying. “Rick and a few of the others are back next door now. Need to get a bit out of myself.” I peered up to see him stretching his neck, something tense in his expression.
“How is his aura?” Phantom asked.
“It’s not the worst I’ve seen in here.” Vandle didn’t sound confident. His eyes could see how stable alphas and omegas were… And I knew that was critical for our appeal.
We were closing in on it.
Maybe I hadn’t been doing enough?
“He has… cycles.” Phantom said.
“What?”
“His stability. Doesn’t like to burden us with it so he’s got into the habit of burying it down. So then when it comes out, it’s worse. I think the pressure of everything’s been getting to him.”
“I’ll go spar a few rounds. Can’t hurt.”
“He can sleep with me tonight?” I asked. Phantom turned to me, though I couldn’t read his expression from here. “I can do a better job of balancing him…”
It was his turn anyway.
Vandle’s gaze drifted to me for a moment—well, I thought it did. At the door, he was just far away enough it was a bit hard to tell, but blurry or not it was hard to miss the feeling of my pack lead’s gaze on me.
“You’re doing perfect, Little Omega,” Phantom said. “Swear it. He’s more lucid than he’s ever been.”
I nodded, but was distracted by the fact that Vandle was tugging his shirt off in preparation to go to the gym.
Dang.
I squinted, willing these stupid eyes to work a bit better.
I edged forward in the nest, hugging the new fairytale book to my chest, but Vandle was already turning to leave.
I stifled a little whine, cursing out my eyes.
I really needed to try some prayer—faith intact or not. I don’t think I was supposed to be this turned on, even if I was packed up. It was sinful…
Turns out I hadn’t stifled it very well, because Vandle crossed toward me before he left.
Oh, thank goodness.
I got a clear view of his glorious, muscled torso as he approached. He leaned down to give me a kiss and I caught his lip with my teeth before I could stop myself.
“You want me to stay, Princess?” His eyes were so intense, one with his iris pure white and the other shining red like Sin’s.
“No, it’s okay.”
“Did you just lie to me?” he asked.
“No.” I pouted.
“Princess.” His voice was firm as he took my chin between his fingers. “Don’t lie to me.”
The dark bond lit up at the command and my lips popped open. “Yes.” The word spilled out before I could stop them. “But… you gotta go.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I’d have you all in the nest all day and all night if you let me,” I whined.
I was slowly coming to the conclusion that my job, as a pack omega, was to make sure I rotated the alphas just right so they all got equal attention.
I don’t think it was an omega thing, since Sin was not like this at all, but I’d come to the conclusion that I could go my whole life being cuddled by one of my alphas.
It made sense that there were usually more alphas than omegas, since none of us would be able to do anything at all if I only had one and I had to cling to him all the time.
“But uh…” I shrugged. “I have Phantom, and you’re supposed to go beat up Karma?”
Vandle grinned. “Could go either way. Wouldn’t bet on his odds, though. Never got pack lead from me.”
“You go,” I said. “The appeal is the most important thing… I promise.” I added, crossing my heart as he looked skeptical.
He straightened as Phantom snorted.
“Anything you need me to look for while you’re gone?” Phantom asked, waving at the books.
“Found what I could on designations. Looking out for anything to do with the red eyes. Could be nothing, but I want to make sure.”
Phantom nodded. “I’ll start searching.”
I frowned, taking a mental note.
I know they were trying to protect me and all that, but I wanted to be the one to help out again.
Just like in the cage…
I pouted as Phantom shot me a startled look, possibly sensing the spike of lust from me down the bond.
Maybe I needed prayer and holy water…?
Possibly.
When Vandle was gone, Phantom cuddled up next to me, diving right into the first text book to help out with whatever it was Vandle was looking for.
I examined the strange black notebook that he’d picked up.
It was hard, peeling it open, as if it had been soaked in water, but something about the challenge drew me to it.
I eyed Phantom, who was turning pages far too fast.
Narrowing my eyes, I looked back at the book.
Gotta beat him to it.
I opened the notebook, taking in the first few lines of handwriting. A very odd book to be found in a library, but nothing in Anarchy was normal.
The pages were wavy with damage, and the words were often washed away completely. But I peeled one page back at a time.
From what I could gather, it was notes from a scientist, documenting tests or experiments. Many didn’t seem interesting, but they all seemed centred around alphas and omegas.
I was moving faster than Phantom, mainly because the amount I had to read was scant due to the damage, so I was half way through when I froze, cocking my head to make sure the words I was seeing were right.
Oh—oh!
I stopped on the faintest, smudged scrawl of: ‘crimson eyes’.
I’d found it!
Ah hah—see, I could be helpful.
“Do you have a pencil?” I hissed, squinting at the words like if I stopped, they’d vanish.
“Uh… Karma does.” Phantom got up and rummaged about in Karma’s bed before handing me a rather chewed-on mechanical pencil.
I looked back down at the words, squinting hard—with Phantom joining me this time—to try and lightly retrace the missing piece.
32
VANDLE
The gym seemed duller than usual. Everything always did after I’d been around Crescent.
It was late afternoon, and the gym was busy. The air was heavy with stale sweat, and flaring auras, buzzing like halos of static giving strange, artistic smudges to overlay the greyscale scene before me.
Around us were constant clangs of heavy weights hitting worn old mats, benches busy with packs letting off steam. On one side of the room, rut cages lined the walls, which weren’t the central display cage fights that the Redgraves so often hosted.
I passed a few brawls going on in the sparring field—the open space in the middle of the gym—and toward the others.
I spotted a few members of the Emerald and Wakefield packs first, then caught sight of Sin doing chin ups, while Karma let loose on a punching bag that looked like it was holding on by a thread. As I approached, old foam burst out of one side, forcing him to turn it around.
His aura wasn’t out right now (likely to preserve the life of the punching bag), but I knew what it would look like if he did decide to let it out.
“Spar?” I asked. Trying to settle Karma’s unstable aura was something we could do today.
“You’re worried I’m going to crack?”
I snorted. “Or me.”
Crescent had dragged me solidly back to sanity, but it didn’t mean I was fully stable.
We went a few rounds before taking a break. Karma headed off to take a piss in the nasty gym bathroom, and Sin, who had been focused on his own workout, paused to bring us some water from the fountain.
“How’s it looking?” he asked before Karma had returned.
“Not… great,” I said after taking a drink of the metallic-tasting water. It wasn’t long now until the appeal, so there was just as much chance he might have an episode before, during, or after.
“We still have Crescent, though. So if anything goes wrong, I don’t think he’ll seem… violent?”
I had to cross my fingers.
Karma arrived to take the cup from me, and I was distracted by the approach of a bulky alpha with a black eye and a few smears of blood on his face.
“Vandle, right?” He held out a hand.
I took it before I could register the tenseness from Sin which meant I might be missing some crucial politics.
Whatever.
“Mind taking a look at our packmate?” he asked, pointing two fingers at his eyes to indicate mine. “Want to know how their auras are looking. Appeal in a few weeks.”
“Sure.”
He turned and pointed out two alphas who were in the sparring field, brawling on the ground.
I took a look. Both alphas had their auras out, so it was an easy assessment. “One on the left is fine. Right, looks like he’s on a knife’s edge. Could go either way on appeal day, but stress tends to destabilize, so I’d do what I can between.”
“Any advice?” the pack lead asked.
I sighed as this information manifested from my missing memories without an issue at all. “Keep sparring. Shore up pack bonds—” I cut off, realizing the next thing I’d been about to say was get an omega. But I didn’t think we needed more targets on our backs, so I stopped there.
See. I could do politics.
He nodded. “Alright. Thanks.” He clapped me on the shoulder and left.
I caught Sin rolling his eyes as I turned back to them. “What?”
“Gotta ask for favours if you’re going to do that.”
“We’re out in like… five seconds,” I said, though it hadn’t occurred to me.
I was still getting a grip on the politics of this place.
“You would have been useless even if you hadn’t been feral,” Sin muttered.
Rude.
Right as I thought it, there was a howl across the gym.
I spun, tense, but the threat wasn’t nearby. It took me a moment to hone in on it, but there was a deadly brawl going on in the sparring field. The pack I’d just assessed was nowhere to be seen—though I doubt they wanted anything to do with this attack when their appeal was coming up.
One alpha was already slumped, clutching his broken arm; a few more were backing up to encircle him. The packs attacking them had them outnumbered, and had boxed them in.
Everyone else on the sparring field was slipping away, clearly not wanting to get involved.
Good choice. Those packs were out for blood, though I didn’t know why.
I noticed, then, that one of the alphas being encircled had his hand around another—a slender, dark-haired man who was tense. The others were focused on protecting him, even more than their packmate with the gruesomely broken arm.
Goosebumps lit on my skin, as if my instincts worked it out first.
One of the attackers pounced, trying to break the wall of guys boxing them in. His aura flared, and I could see the glint of a knife before he fell limp.
“Fuck,” Sin muttered at my side.
“What?” I spared him a glance.
“That’s the Leo pack.”
Ah.
Shit.
I might not be great with politics, but I did know the Leo pack.
Their appeal call was today—so close to ours. Phantom, Karma, and Sin were honed in on their fate, because they would be the only pack trying to get out of here with an omega in tow before us.
It was putting them all on edge, and me by proxy. It was the first thing they’d been listening for when the doors unlocked this morning, but the call for appeal over comms didn’t come.
It often happened first thing, but there wasn’t a true routine to it. The only thing you could rely on was that it would happen during daytime hours when the cells weren’t locked.
It seems they’d come to the gym to pass the time, and it had given us all front seats to their massacre.
The smaller one in the middle, I now knew that was their omega.
“Watch their allies,” Karma murmured to me and Sin.
I glanced around, but I couldn’t tell anyone apart.
“Not doing a thing,” Sin replied.
I found myself taking a small step forward, but Sin caught my arm. “Do not go over there. There is nothing we can do,” Sin muttered. “Not without getting ourselves killed.”
None of it felt natural, but I knew he was right—even if he hadn’t just given me a dark bond command. The kind that gripped me by the back of the neck and held tight, threatening pain if I tried to disobey.
I couldn’t look away, though, as the alphas fell, one by one. Throats slit, necks snapped, all with an audience.
Finally, it was only the omega left.
He tried to run, but even from here I could see the stark terror and agony on his face.
His whole pack had been eviscerated in less than a minute.
One of the attackers chased, catching him in moments, and I heard his cracked scream as he was pinned down. I flinched—they wouldn’t—my hackles rose at the omega’s wild growls, but they didn’t kill him.
Karma looked as tense as I did, but he also remained stock-still. We’d need a few more spars; none of this was good for stability.
It felt like no one moved as the pack lead pinned him face down and sank his teeth into his neck. The blackened, poisonous mark was clear even from this distance.
If I was closer I knew, through my eyes, it would be different to the way Crescent’s looked. As a seer, I was able to identify if a dark bond was accepted by an omega, or forced.
My omega’s was as clear as the dark mark of a bond like that could get.
The omega wasn’t fighting anymore, and it was chilling how the quiet settled, as if the bloodbath hadn’t happened.
No more growling or struggling. The pack lead must have given a command, because the omega didn’t fight when he was released.
I watched as they left the gym, prize in tow.
The omega turned right before they left, eyes darting to the bodies of his old pack, something dead in them.
I looked away, not wanting to witness it anymore.
Still, the gym was eerie quiet now the omega was gone, the tang of iron in the air. It wasn’t unusual in this place—I knew that no matter how feral I’d been.
The silence was broken by a crackle, and the comms above us rang through with an automated feminine voice.
“Alton Leo. Your appeal has arrived. Proceed to the waiting room with your pack.”
My heart sank as I watched the pooling blood of the Leo pack slowly drain into the gutter of the sparring field.
The comms would sound two more times before the thirty minute window closed, but this pack would never see the outside world.
Everyone was stiff, and it felt, all of a sudden, like too many eyes were on us.
On Sin.
I couldn’t help glancing at Bug and Sterling, my eyes lingering on Sterling’s awful smelling braided necklace, stained a dull brown from the blood of the alphas he’d killed. I did not, in that moment, feel protected by them.
Even Bug was strangely stiff.
Would the Emerald and Wakefield pack quit on us if it came to it?
What were the benefits of risking anything for a pack that was about to leave forever—aside honour?
I hadn’t truly considered that before.
Finally, my gaze landed on Sin. His jaw was clenched as he dropped his voice just for me. “Closer you get, the more dangerous it gets.”
33
SIN
‘The characteristic tell of…’ I squinted, reading the blurred out words. ‘…Blood-red eyes.’
I stared down at the single line of handwriting.
The rest of the page was heavily water damaged, the words smeared and rubbed from the paper. A few lines of irrelevant text could be made out in the middle, and then the words: ‘...never allow them to join packs due to the risk of danger…’
“What?” I frowned. Dangerous? “Why would it say that?”
Could it have anything to do with the way I’d turned the dark bond on my own alphas?
“Haven’t found anything else yet,” Vandle said.
“Too late for us anyway.” Karma shrugged like he wasn’t worried. “Already all packed up.”
“I’m not a danger to anyone in this pack.” My chest felt tight as I slid my gaze up to meet Cresent’s. She was the one who’d found this. “Where did you get this?”
She looked at Vandle.
His jaw was set, arms crossed over his chest. “Library.”
That wasn’t what I really wanted to know. I cleared my throat, rephrasing my question. “How did you find it?”
“Had a hunch. Saw your eyes when you were with Crescent in the cage. Got some memories moving.”
I frowned. “Is there anything else?”
“Got a bunch of books, haven’t got through them yet.”
“Fuck.”
Anyway. We didn’t have time.
Appeal was in five days, and we were trying to keep a low profile.
This was a problem. “If they think red eyes are dangerous…” Well. “They reject alphas for being feral. We’ll never get out.”
“What?” Crescent, who was seated on the edge of her nest, having been listening to the whole conversation, looked stunned.
