Pack of Lies, page 36
JUBILEE
My jitters got worse as the time ticked by. The clock on the wall made a very audible sound. An irritating one. Why did they have a clock like that in a recording studio? Didn’t it interfere with the audio?
Quentin sat on the armchair beside the one I’d slumped into, his hand rubbing my back. Reese and Denzel paced, crossing each other’s paths and getting in the way of the cameraman as he hurried around. Occasionally they would snap an irritated comment back and forth.
Thorn had been gone in the back room for ages. Past ten minutes, now. Denzel’s worry was tangible through the bond, but I imagined he was trying not to be overbearing.
Reese was the one who caved and strode down the hallway Dash had disappeared down.
The following burst of his aura had us all on our feet, sprinting to him.
“Where the fuck is she?” Reese snarled.
He was holding Dash by the throat, his feet dangling from the ground. The slim celebrity was no match for Reese’s bulk. Or his aura. It pulsed and grew, veins bulging from his neck as he struggled to keep his tenuous hold on control.
Dash was glaring, but unconcerned by the grip. It would leave bruises. Couldn’t be easy for him to breathe, either. Did he want to die? I hadn’t had the most contact with Marlowe’s scent match pack, but I knew enough to be aware of Dash’s downward spiral since we all claimed Marlowe. He was circling the drain, turning to sex and booze and obsessive behaviour.
Why had we thought leaving Thorn in his hands was a good idea? None of us had been fucking thinking; too absorbed in the horror of losing the other of our omegas.
I placed a palm on the wall, trying to calm my trembling limbs. Quentin and Denzel tore Reese away from Dash, though neither of them looked pleased either. But they weren’t as unstable as the rogue in the pack, and it was better Dash didn’t find out about Reese’s condition.
Dash let out a dainty cough, straightening the sleeves of his shirt. “She wanted to trade herself for Marlowe. Who am I to stop her from saving her scent match?”
His eyes flashed with merriment, lips quirking into a smirk. He enjoyed fucking with us. This was probably the only joy he’d found in his life since we claimed Marlowe.
“You fucking idiot,” Reese hissed.
He wasn’t doing well. His control was usually ironclad, but not today. Losing both his omegas was doing him in the most, probably because he didn’t feel he had anyone else in the pack. I might be socially inept at the best of times, but I understood that he felt out of place. He’d never gotten close with the rest of us. Only Marlowe, and only because our omega was a beacon of light it was impossible to look away from.
“Did you do something to track her?” I asked.
My voice only wavered a little bit.
We needed to be analytical about this. She was already gone. There was nothing we could do about that. If Thorn had decided to do this — though I wouldn’t put it past Dash to forcibly shove her out the back door — she would have a plan. A risky one, one we never would have agreed to, but there was a plan.
“I can’t imagine we’d ever see either of them again if I hadn’t,” Dash said with a roll of his eyes.
He shoved past us and back toward the studio room, ignoring Reese’s growl. I followed him first, letting the others try to talk some sense into Reese. They were acting on emotion.
I needed the plan, and I needed it before I fell apart.
There were multiple TV screens in the studio, all set up to see what the cameras were recording from every angle. Dash placed a black box on a table beside one of them, fiddling with some wires until it was attached. Then he hit a button and two somewhat grainy images came up.
The inside of a car, with the large form of Ambrose in the front seat.
I’d only met him once, but the scarring on the back of his neck was distinctive. Faint sound filtered from the TV speaker. It was only the sound of cars passing. They were in a nice area of town. Not nice like the apartment building where we’d stayed with her, but nice in a rich, expensive way.
“She has two cameras attached to her, both of which have trackers. Plus a tracker on an inside hem of her clothes,” Dash explained.
The rest of the pack had wandered out from the hallway again. Denzel had one hand on the back of Reese’s neck, making sure he didn’t do anything stupid.
“What happens when I go on the show?” I asked.
“We’re not going live until she’s face-to-face with Marlowe. It’s the only way anyone is going to get to them in time.”
“When will that be?”
Dash shrugged. “Depends how far away they’re keeping him.”
He regally folded himself into a desk chair, long fingers tapping the desk and eyes on the screen.
This plan was risky, but it might work.
It had to work.
But this waiting would be the absolute worst part.
FORTY-EIGHT
THORN
Ambrose didn’t talk much.
At all, really.
Mercury had been clipped and cold as he’d instructed me on what I had to do and shoved me unceremoniously into the back of the sports car. His packmate hadn’t spoken, opting to drive in complete silence across town.
The area we entered was high-end and classy. Terraced houses made of brick and artful decorative trims lined the sides of the roads. Perfectly trimmed flowering bushes and trees blocked the view of the front of the attached homes. They made the area look like a secret garden.
There was the occasional high-end apartment building with a doorman in a suit, but we didn’t stop in front of one of those. We pulled to a stop in front of one of the terraced houses. A bodyguard stood outside the front door, tense and alert at our sudden arrival.
I swallowed.
This was Marlowe’s parents’ house.
Their city home, at least. I imagined they had a country home, somewhere with a little more space for hosting parties. This was their New Oxford residence so they could be close to the gossip and galas.
Mercury hadn’t said anything more about them, and Marlowe hadn’t been forthcoming for reasons I could understand.
My hand shook as I opened the door, and I took a deep breath. They were going to give me to the Centre. I might not see anyone other than this first hired guard.
If I did, though… this was one hell of a ‘meet the parents’ event.
Ambrose, to his credit, didn’t rush me as I stepped out onto the well-maintained sidewalk. Not a crack ran down the cement. It was somehow uniform in colour, too. No stains from leaves being ground by the heel of a boot. No oil spots. No chewed gum.
“What’s your business here?” The guard met me at the base of the stairs leading up to the front door.
My head was down, and Ambrose was already pulling away from the curb.
“Is this the residence of Edith Winston?”
“Yes. What’s your business?”
I peered up, shaking the green bangs off my forehead. His eyes widened as he recognized who I was. “My name is Hannah Cecchi.”
His fingers dug into my arm. He was rougher than he needed to be as he pushed me in front of him up the stairs. I’d arrived willingly.
I let him manhandle me, though. Treat me like the prisoner I now was.
Inside the house, it was bigger than the outside teased. Everything was done in accents of gleaming gold, with regal reds and deep browns. There wasn’t any cheap furniture here, not like the home I’d grown up in. Had Marlowe grown up here? Or had they spent more time in a different house?
Another guard took over from the first, barking into his headset. I ignored the words. As long as they got me to Marlowe. That was the plan. Get my mate into safe hands, or at the very least get us together so we could both be saved. With any luck, we’d find the rest of the omegas the Centre had in their custody in the same place.
Until then I would stay quiet. Compliant. I knew how to be a good captive, after doing it for years.
They brought me straight through the house, feet stomping across the wood and woven carpets. Out the back door and into a garage, where a put-together older woman stood, examining her nails. She looked up when we entered, giving me a once over.
Whatever she saw, she didn’t like.
Her nose crinkled.
There were features of her face that were similar to Marlowe’s, but she didn’t have freckles. Maybe they were covered by makeup. Her hair was in a sleek bob, every single strand straightened.
“This is her?” she asked the guard.
I saw his nod out of the corner of my eye.
“My son is better off without her anyway. There’s only one thing that could be worse than him having that ridiculous peasant pack in the first place, and that’s adding a gold pack into the mix. A broken one, too. Make sure you bring Marlowe straight back here. His pack isn’t to hear from him.”
“Got it, ma’am.”
She didn’t try to speak to me. I didn’t try to speak to her either.
She wasn’t worth a single word. How Marlowe was treated as a child was obvious from the house I’d walked through and the disdain on her face. She didn’t care about him. Only her image. If they’d asked for her in exchange for her son instead of asking for me, she would have scoffed and left him to die.
I was shoved into the backseat of a car, then we pulled out and got on the road. Me and three bodyguards who’d been waiting in the vehicle. No one spoke. I shut my eyes and let a movie play in my head.
Let myself dream of a reality where this would turn out fine, and I’d head back to the pack tonight.
Where they would bond me and I would stay with them forever, and we would never lie to each other again.
It took two hours to drive to the warehouse we were idling outside of now.
A lot of that time was fighting rush hour traffic in New Oxford, but then we spent a stretch of time on the open highway, heading out past the suburbs. This had to be one of the surrounding, smaller cities, but I didn’t know its name. We hadn’t passed any welcome signs, but we had also made a beeline for a rundown industrial district. It wasn’t an area city officials would be happy to showcase.
The guards were on high alert as they got out of the car. Once again they manhandled me unnecessarily, shoving me to the front of the group, exposed. I was expendable.
One of them pulled out a phone as we moved forward, heading for an open bay door.
Dr. Hellwood stepped out, a bulletproof vest draped across his shoulders.
“Gentlemen,” he said, nodding. “Good to see you found her.”
“Where’s Marlowe Winston?”
The guard who’d had the phone seemed to be in charge. None of the others spoke.
“Come inside. Doing the exchange out here could open us up to problems.”
They were hesitant, but ultimately they trusted the doctor. They shouldn’t have, and I knew that, but I had no love for them. When each of them were picked off by gunmen the moment they entered the concealed area of the warehouse, I closed my eyes and prayed there were no stray bullets.
A hand grabbed my arm when the gunfire had stopped. My muscles were twitching, threatening to spasm, and a migraine had me wanting to puke. The only reason I hadn’t collapsed to the ground at the sudden loud noises was because I’d been expecting it.
Dr. Hellwood felt the twitch and raised his eyebrow.
“Not surprised by their fate? You know us well,” he said.
“I tried to warn them you wouldn’t be interested in a fair trade.”
I hadn’t, but it made more sense to lie. Dr. Hellwood couldn’t realize I was glad to be here. Well, not glad. It was more that I was less terrified than I should be.
“Makes it easier for us that they didn’t listen. There are just so many experiments we can run on a scent-matched pair.”
He knew how Marlowe’s mother would spin this, too. She tried so hard to pay the ransom, but her poor son… he was still killed. Woe is me. There would be no wrath coming his way, considering he’d given her a perfect sob story.
At least not any wrath from the Winstons. What was his plan for our pack? Maybe I’d rather not know.
My handling was taken over by some of the other men. I didn’t have a history of violence, but Dr. Hellwood would never risk himself in my transport.
Another van like the one I’d been taken to the traffickers in.
About forty minutes longer in the vehicle, at a constant speed.
Dash’s tracker had better work.
Then I was pulled from the van and marched into another warehouse. Marlowe’s cotton candy scent wafted through the hallway air. It shouldn’t be strong enough for my nose to catch it, but it pulled me to him. Close enough to draw me in like a homing beacon.
The room I was shoved into was full of the scent of him.
He’d caught my scent too, because all five feet of him barrelled into me as the door slammed shut.
I buried my face against his neck, sucking in deep breaths of him. His tears dripped on my shoulder, his body wracked by sobs. I could only focus on hugging him. Memorizing his scent all over again.
My migraine faded to a duller throb. Something about my scent matches helped with my side effects. There was probably a scientific explanation for it, or maybe it was only a placebo effect. Either way, since I’d been around all of them it had been easier to ignore my migraines. They’d come and gone faster.
“What are you doing here?” Marlowe asked with a heavy sniffle.
I peered around the rest of the room, finding no guards. Only test subjects. Three and Eight and even Seven, who was curled into a ball in the corner, free of the straightjacket they usually forced her to wear.
“Hopefully saving your life,” I murmured, confident no one here would be quick to step in the way of my plan.
Sure, at the Centre we’d been distant. There was always a chance of being tattled on, because information could get someone preferred treatment. But here, shoved in a dingy warehouse room where we might finally have a chance of escaping our hell?
We would band together.
My eyes widened as I caught sight of one of the smaller omegas, gold eyes peering back at me.
“Jessica?”
I disentangled myself from Marlowe and rushed over to her. I held myself back from touching, knowing what it was like to be prodded without consent, but circled her once, looking her over for injuries. They were only minor.
“Hi, Thorn,” she said.
The haughty rich girl had been taken down a few pegs. She seemed slow to speak.
I realized Twelve was beside her, their hands clasped. If I’d known Denzel and the pack were the good guys, I never would have sent her into that fridge, but for now Twelve’s eyes weren’t gold. There was hope for her yet.
“What happened? You were supposed to run out to the van before me, but when I got out, you weren’t there.”
“One caught me and held me in a closet. They gave me to the Centre as an apology for losing you.”
She rubbed her arm.
This time I did touch her, grabbing her arm and shoving up her sleeve. I loosed a breath of relief when there was no needle mark. She hadn’t been injected yet.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I should have gone with you.”
“No. I didn’t run fast enough, it’s fine.”
She was more confident than I’d been when I’d first been kidnapped. Falling apart way less, too.
“It will be fine,” I said, raising my voice and looking around.
Everyone was terrified, but familiar. And maybe, possibly, a little bit hopeful.
“We’re getting out of here, but we need to hold on long enough to do it.”
FORTY-NINE
JUBILEE
“Are you ready to go live?”
Dash’s voice didn’t give me the same comfort or stability I got from hearing a member of my pack speak.
Unfortunately, my pack wasn’t here.
It was only me. Me, Dash, Mercury, and the sole cameraman.
Denzel, Reese, and Quentin had opted to drive out to the suburbs, following the little blinking dots of the trackers Thorn was wearing. They wanted to be there when the GPRE jumped into action to save them, after they’d been called out publicly on the internet.
I couldn’t blame them, but I hated being alone.
I hated bearing the burden of speaking about this, of making it go viral and make sense to the general public. Telling them exactly how horrible it was. It was the only way we could spur the GPRE into immediate action. I had to be convincing and charismatic.
I was neither.
“We don’t have all day,” Dash said dryly.
My fingers clutched my pants, making wrinkles in the fabric. Just breathe.
Thorn thought I was charming. So did Marlowe. I just had to channel whatever it was that made me charming to them.
“Turn on the camera,” I said.
It was a challenge to push the words past my dry throat. My anxiety medication was at home, so I couldn’t even take an emergency dose.
A red light began to blink on the professional camera. Studio lights glared at me, obscuring the rest of the room. Mercury was a blob of darkness. Same as the cameraman. Only Dash was clear, lit as well as I was.
“Welcome to Dirt with Dash. I’m here today for a special bulletin, and a surprise episode. You usually recognize the people on the show with me, but I doubt you’ll recognize my guest today. Rest assured; he has something horrifying to say to the world.”
Dash turned on a megawatt smile. It was fake. Anyone who’d ever met him in real life knew that, but the masses believed it.
How many viewers did we have already? A thousand? Five? Five hundred? The videos got millions of views once they were posted online, but how many views did he get during the live broadcasts?
“This is Jubilee Balch. He holds too many degrees to list and grew up a bit of a child prodigy. We’re here to talk about his specialty today — arkology. Why don’t you give us a quick rundown of what arkology is, Dr. Balch?”
Hearing ‘Dr. Balch’ put me in the teaching mindset. It steadied my thoughts. I tended not to lead classes often. My home was in the research department of the university. I’d covered classes, though. Ran one for a semester a couple of times.
My jitters got worse as the time ticked by. The clock on the wall made a very audible sound. An irritating one. Why did they have a clock like that in a recording studio? Didn’t it interfere with the audio?
Quentin sat on the armchair beside the one I’d slumped into, his hand rubbing my back. Reese and Denzel paced, crossing each other’s paths and getting in the way of the cameraman as he hurried around. Occasionally they would snap an irritated comment back and forth.
Thorn had been gone in the back room for ages. Past ten minutes, now. Denzel’s worry was tangible through the bond, but I imagined he was trying not to be overbearing.
Reese was the one who caved and strode down the hallway Dash had disappeared down.
The following burst of his aura had us all on our feet, sprinting to him.
“Where the fuck is she?” Reese snarled.
He was holding Dash by the throat, his feet dangling from the ground. The slim celebrity was no match for Reese’s bulk. Or his aura. It pulsed and grew, veins bulging from his neck as he struggled to keep his tenuous hold on control.
Dash was glaring, but unconcerned by the grip. It would leave bruises. Couldn’t be easy for him to breathe, either. Did he want to die? I hadn’t had the most contact with Marlowe’s scent match pack, but I knew enough to be aware of Dash’s downward spiral since we all claimed Marlowe. He was circling the drain, turning to sex and booze and obsessive behaviour.
Why had we thought leaving Thorn in his hands was a good idea? None of us had been fucking thinking; too absorbed in the horror of losing the other of our omegas.
I placed a palm on the wall, trying to calm my trembling limbs. Quentin and Denzel tore Reese away from Dash, though neither of them looked pleased either. But they weren’t as unstable as the rogue in the pack, and it was better Dash didn’t find out about Reese’s condition.
Dash let out a dainty cough, straightening the sleeves of his shirt. “She wanted to trade herself for Marlowe. Who am I to stop her from saving her scent match?”
His eyes flashed with merriment, lips quirking into a smirk. He enjoyed fucking with us. This was probably the only joy he’d found in his life since we claimed Marlowe.
“You fucking idiot,” Reese hissed.
He wasn’t doing well. His control was usually ironclad, but not today. Losing both his omegas was doing him in the most, probably because he didn’t feel he had anyone else in the pack. I might be socially inept at the best of times, but I understood that he felt out of place. He’d never gotten close with the rest of us. Only Marlowe, and only because our omega was a beacon of light it was impossible to look away from.
“Did you do something to track her?” I asked.
My voice only wavered a little bit.
We needed to be analytical about this. She was already gone. There was nothing we could do about that. If Thorn had decided to do this — though I wouldn’t put it past Dash to forcibly shove her out the back door — she would have a plan. A risky one, one we never would have agreed to, but there was a plan.
“I can’t imagine we’d ever see either of them again if I hadn’t,” Dash said with a roll of his eyes.
He shoved past us and back toward the studio room, ignoring Reese’s growl. I followed him first, letting the others try to talk some sense into Reese. They were acting on emotion.
I needed the plan, and I needed it before I fell apart.
There were multiple TV screens in the studio, all set up to see what the cameras were recording from every angle. Dash placed a black box on a table beside one of them, fiddling with some wires until it was attached. Then he hit a button and two somewhat grainy images came up.
The inside of a car, with the large form of Ambrose in the front seat.
I’d only met him once, but the scarring on the back of his neck was distinctive. Faint sound filtered from the TV speaker. It was only the sound of cars passing. They were in a nice area of town. Not nice like the apartment building where we’d stayed with her, but nice in a rich, expensive way.
“She has two cameras attached to her, both of which have trackers. Plus a tracker on an inside hem of her clothes,” Dash explained.
The rest of the pack had wandered out from the hallway again. Denzel had one hand on the back of Reese’s neck, making sure he didn’t do anything stupid.
“What happens when I go on the show?” I asked.
“We’re not going live until she’s face-to-face with Marlowe. It’s the only way anyone is going to get to them in time.”
“When will that be?”
Dash shrugged. “Depends how far away they’re keeping him.”
He regally folded himself into a desk chair, long fingers tapping the desk and eyes on the screen.
This plan was risky, but it might work.
It had to work.
But this waiting would be the absolute worst part.
FORTY-EIGHT
THORN
Ambrose didn’t talk much.
At all, really.
Mercury had been clipped and cold as he’d instructed me on what I had to do and shoved me unceremoniously into the back of the sports car. His packmate hadn’t spoken, opting to drive in complete silence across town.
The area we entered was high-end and classy. Terraced houses made of brick and artful decorative trims lined the sides of the roads. Perfectly trimmed flowering bushes and trees blocked the view of the front of the attached homes. They made the area look like a secret garden.
There was the occasional high-end apartment building with a doorman in a suit, but we didn’t stop in front of one of those. We pulled to a stop in front of one of the terraced houses. A bodyguard stood outside the front door, tense and alert at our sudden arrival.
I swallowed.
This was Marlowe’s parents’ house.
Their city home, at least. I imagined they had a country home, somewhere with a little more space for hosting parties. This was their New Oxford residence so they could be close to the gossip and galas.
Mercury hadn’t said anything more about them, and Marlowe hadn’t been forthcoming for reasons I could understand.
My hand shook as I opened the door, and I took a deep breath. They were going to give me to the Centre. I might not see anyone other than this first hired guard.
If I did, though… this was one hell of a ‘meet the parents’ event.
Ambrose, to his credit, didn’t rush me as I stepped out onto the well-maintained sidewalk. Not a crack ran down the cement. It was somehow uniform in colour, too. No stains from leaves being ground by the heel of a boot. No oil spots. No chewed gum.
“What’s your business here?” The guard met me at the base of the stairs leading up to the front door.
My head was down, and Ambrose was already pulling away from the curb.
“Is this the residence of Edith Winston?”
“Yes. What’s your business?”
I peered up, shaking the green bangs off my forehead. His eyes widened as he recognized who I was. “My name is Hannah Cecchi.”
His fingers dug into my arm. He was rougher than he needed to be as he pushed me in front of him up the stairs. I’d arrived willingly.
I let him manhandle me, though. Treat me like the prisoner I now was.
Inside the house, it was bigger than the outside teased. Everything was done in accents of gleaming gold, with regal reds and deep browns. There wasn’t any cheap furniture here, not like the home I’d grown up in. Had Marlowe grown up here? Or had they spent more time in a different house?
Another guard took over from the first, barking into his headset. I ignored the words. As long as they got me to Marlowe. That was the plan. Get my mate into safe hands, or at the very least get us together so we could both be saved. With any luck, we’d find the rest of the omegas the Centre had in their custody in the same place.
Until then I would stay quiet. Compliant. I knew how to be a good captive, after doing it for years.
They brought me straight through the house, feet stomping across the wood and woven carpets. Out the back door and into a garage, where a put-together older woman stood, examining her nails. She looked up when we entered, giving me a once over.
Whatever she saw, she didn’t like.
Her nose crinkled.
There were features of her face that were similar to Marlowe’s, but she didn’t have freckles. Maybe they were covered by makeup. Her hair was in a sleek bob, every single strand straightened.
“This is her?” she asked the guard.
I saw his nod out of the corner of my eye.
“My son is better off without her anyway. There’s only one thing that could be worse than him having that ridiculous peasant pack in the first place, and that’s adding a gold pack into the mix. A broken one, too. Make sure you bring Marlowe straight back here. His pack isn’t to hear from him.”
“Got it, ma’am.”
She didn’t try to speak to me. I didn’t try to speak to her either.
She wasn’t worth a single word. How Marlowe was treated as a child was obvious from the house I’d walked through and the disdain on her face. She didn’t care about him. Only her image. If they’d asked for her in exchange for her son instead of asking for me, she would have scoffed and left him to die.
I was shoved into the backseat of a car, then we pulled out and got on the road. Me and three bodyguards who’d been waiting in the vehicle. No one spoke. I shut my eyes and let a movie play in my head.
Let myself dream of a reality where this would turn out fine, and I’d head back to the pack tonight.
Where they would bond me and I would stay with them forever, and we would never lie to each other again.
It took two hours to drive to the warehouse we were idling outside of now.
A lot of that time was fighting rush hour traffic in New Oxford, but then we spent a stretch of time on the open highway, heading out past the suburbs. This had to be one of the surrounding, smaller cities, but I didn’t know its name. We hadn’t passed any welcome signs, but we had also made a beeline for a rundown industrial district. It wasn’t an area city officials would be happy to showcase.
The guards were on high alert as they got out of the car. Once again they manhandled me unnecessarily, shoving me to the front of the group, exposed. I was expendable.
One of them pulled out a phone as we moved forward, heading for an open bay door.
Dr. Hellwood stepped out, a bulletproof vest draped across his shoulders.
“Gentlemen,” he said, nodding. “Good to see you found her.”
“Where’s Marlowe Winston?”
The guard who’d had the phone seemed to be in charge. None of the others spoke.
“Come inside. Doing the exchange out here could open us up to problems.”
They were hesitant, but ultimately they trusted the doctor. They shouldn’t have, and I knew that, but I had no love for them. When each of them were picked off by gunmen the moment they entered the concealed area of the warehouse, I closed my eyes and prayed there were no stray bullets.
A hand grabbed my arm when the gunfire had stopped. My muscles were twitching, threatening to spasm, and a migraine had me wanting to puke. The only reason I hadn’t collapsed to the ground at the sudden loud noises was because I’d been expecting it.
Dr. Hellwood felt the twitch and raised his eyebrow.
“Not surprised by their fate? You know us well,” he said.
“I tried to warn them you wouldn’t be interested in a fair trade.”
I hadn’t, but it made more sense to lie. Dr. Hellwood couldn’t realize I was glad to be here. Well, not glad. It was more that I was less terrified than I should be.
“Makes it easier for us that they didn’t listen. There are just so many experiments we can run on a scent-matched pair.”
He knew how Marlowe’s mother would spin this, too. She tried so hard to pay the ransom, but her poor son… he was still killed. Woe is me. There would be no wrath coming his way, considering he’d given her a perfect sob story.
At least not any wrath from the Winstons. What was his plan for our pack? Maybe I’d rather not know.
My handling was taken over by some of the other men. I didn’t have a history of violence, but Dr. Hellwood would never risk himself in my transport.
Another van like the one I’d been taken to the traffickers in.
About forty minutes longer in the vehicle, at a constant speed.
Dash’s tracker had better work.
Then I was pulled from the van and marched into another warehouse. Marlowe’s cotton candy scent wafted through the hallway air. It shouldn’t be strong enough for my nose to catch it, but it pulled me to him. Close enough to draw me in like a homing beacon.
The room I was shoved into was full of the scent of him.
He’d caught my scent too, because all five feet of him barrelled into me as the door slammed shut.
I buried my face against his neck, sucking in deep breaths of him. His tears dripped on my shoulder, his body wracked by sobs. I could only focus on hugging him. Memorizing his scent all over again.
My migraine faded to a duller throb. Something about my scent matches helped with my side effects. There was probably a scientific explanation for it, or maybe it was only a placebo effect. Either way, since I’d been around all of them it had been easier to ignore my migraines. They’d come and gone faster.
“What are you doing here?” Marlowe asked with a heavy sniffle.
I peered around the rest of the room, finding no guards. Only test subjects. Three and Eight and even Seven, who was curled into a ball in the corner, free of the straightjacket they usually forced her to wear.
“Hopefully saving your life,” I murmured, confident no one here would be quick to step in the way of my plan.
Sure, at the Centre we’d been distant. There was always a chance of being tattled on, because information could get someone preferred treatment. But here, shoved in a dingy warehouse room where we might finally have a chance of escaping our hell?
We would band together.
My eyes widened as I caught sight of one of the smaller omegas, gold eyes peering back at me.
“Jessica?”
I disentangled myself from Marlowe and rushed over to her. I held myself back from touching, knowing what it was like to be prodded without consent, but circled her once, looking her over for injuries. They were only minor.
“Hi, Thorn,” she said.
The haughty rich girl had been taken down a few pegs. She seemed slow to speak.
I realized Twelve was beside her, their hands clasped. If I’d known Denzel and the pack were the good guys, I never would have sent her into that fridge, but for now Twelve’s eyes weren’t gold. There was hope for her yet.
“What happened? You were supposed to run out to the van before me, but when I got out, you weren’t there.”
“One caught me and held me in a closet. They gave me to the Centre as an apology for losing you.”
She rubbed her arm.
This time I did touch her, grabbing her arm and shoving up her sleeve. I loosed a breath of relief when there was no needle mark. She hadn’t been injected yet.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I should have gone with you.”
“No. I didn’t run fast enough, it’s fine.”
She was more confident than I’d been when I’d first been kidnapped. Falling apart way less, too.
“It will be fine,” I said, raising my voice and looking around.
Everyone was terrified, but familiar. And maybe, possibly, a little bit hopeful.
“We’re getting out of here, but we need to hold on long enough to do it.”
FORTY-NINE
JUBILEE
“Are you ready to go live?”
Dash’s voice didn’t give me the same comfort or stability I got from hearing a member of my pack speak.
Unfortunately, my pack wasn’t here.
It was only me. Me, Dash, Mercury, and the sole cameraman.
Denzel, Reese, and Quentin had opted to drive out to the suburbs, following the little blinking dots of the trackers Thorn was wearing. They wanted to be there when the GPRE jumped into action to save them, after they’d been called out publicly on the internet.
I couldn’t blame them, but I hated being alone.
I hated bearing the burden of speaking about this, of making it go viral and make sense to the general public. Telling them exactly how horrible it was. It was the only way we could spur the GPRE into immediate action. I had to be convincing and charismatic.
I was neither.
“We don’t have all day,” Dash said dryly.
My fingers clutched my pants, making wrinkles in the fabric. Just breathe.
Thorn thought I was charming. So did Marlowe. I just had to channel whatever it was that made me charming to them.
“Turn on the camera,” I said.
It was a challenge to push the words past my dry throat. My anxiety medication was at home, so I couldn’t even take an emergency dose.
A red light began to blink on the professional camera. Studio lights glared at me, obscuring the rest of the room. Mercury was a blob of darkness. Same as the cameraman. Only Dash was clear, lit as well as I was.
“Welcome to Dirt with Dash. I’m here today for a special bulletin, and a surprise episode. You usually recognize the people on the show with me, but I doubt you’ll recognize my guest today. Rest assured; he has something horrifying to say to the world.”
Dash turned on a megawatt smile. It was fake. Anyone who’d ever met him in real life knew that, but the masses believed it.
How many viewers did we have already? A thousand? Five? Five hundred? The videos got millions of views once they were posted online, but how many views did he get during the live broadcasts?
“This is Jubilee Balch. He holds too many degrees to list and grew up a bit of a child prodigy. We’re here to talk about his specialty today — arkology. Why don’t you give us a quick rundown of what arkology is, Dr. Balch?”
Hearing ‘Dr. Balch’ put me in the teaching mindset. It steadied my thoughts. I tended not to lead classes often. My home was in the research department of the university. I’d covered classes, though. Ran one for a semester a couple of times.
