Page 33 of Psycho Beasts

Subconsciously, my mind was bellowing at me to protect them even while consciously, I recognized their competence.

It was torment.

The only thing that stopped me from growling at Sadie like a maniac was Jinx.

My youngest sister had always been strange, and from the outside, she looked like a delicate waif that couldn’t harm a fly. An innocent little girl that needed protecting.

Even hanging from the ceiling with blood dripping from my mouth, I couldn’t stop the slight chuckle that shook my chest.

I’d seen the little girl make grown soldiers cry with a few choice words.

At school, they had elevated Jinx to the highest classes because, even as a six-year-old, her intelligence had been unfathomable.

She was also the class bully.

I’d received detailed letters from Jala and Jess about how Jinx kept making her older classmates cry.

Of course, they thought it was funny.

The lesson of it all: Looks meant nothing.

I repeated this mantra in my head as Sadie and Xerxes held on to each other.

The omega stared down at the little alpha with an intensity that made me want to growl at him that she was mine. Not his. Claim her in every way possible, so he knew who she belonged to.

Fuck it, that was how Cobra acted.

No, I needed to be better.

We’d all just been tortured for hours. Two dead alphas were splattered across the floor in hundreds of tiny pieces.

If all five of us were going to survive this new realm, I needed to be a leader.

With a crash, Spike cut Cobra down, and his pale body slumped against the concrete floor.

My heart crashed with him as I stared down at the man I’d been trying to not focus on.

We were a partnership.

I’d told him I would always be by his side, and I meant it.

Yet once again he was suffering unmercifully, and I couldn’t stop it.

I willed Cobra to move, to drag himself to his feet and give me his signature cocky sneer.

He remained collapsed and unmoving.

Sadie and Xerxes swayed laboriously as they struggled to hold each other up.

Ascher was cut down next, and his tattooed fingers shook with stress.

Blood dripped from both his eyes, and it tracked across his harsh cheekbones like tears.

It didn’t make him look soft.

Ascher’s expression was hard as granite. He wasn’t a man to be fucked with, and a small part of me was grateful for his presence.

Cobra and Sadie consumed my thoughts obsessively. Xerxes’s omega status made my instincts go haywire.

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