Page 131 of Psycho Alphas: Part One

This was the start of the chains, before Rogue’s mansion. I’d presented as an Alpha at the late age of twenty-two, and I’d been taken from the streets not long after.

I’d been dropped into an arena.

Into a hunt.

An endless forest surrounded me, a monitor on my ankle so I couldn’t truly escape.

I was here for sport.

Before me was the shadowed figure on a forest floor. A flickering, blurring shape that had once held meaning too agonising to hold on to the details of in memory.

It was the horror at the core of all nightmares.

Her scent was there, too, the sharp bite of absinthe tangling with the dust and juniper trees.

A scent match in a nightmare.

“Bella Morgan.” That, I think, was the first time I’d ever heard Rogue’s voice. I don’t know how long I’d been here. Hours. Days… It was impossible to know. “You killed my mark.”

I was bound and sick. I’d just gone through hell, and here was an Alpha kicking up dust in frustration at how that inconvenienced him.

“Should have been faster, Manzo.” Bella’s voice grated, just like every memory of her did.

Rogue drew his lips in a snarl of frustration, eyes darting around the fire where her pack sat. The remains of the brutality I’d been forced to watch was laid bare—there was crimson on their hands and clothes, staining the very stones that scattered the clearing.

Then Rogue’s eyes had fallen on me, and he’d waved his gun my way. “What about that one?”

“The Alpha?” Bella didn’t even look my way as she picked blood from her nails. “Was fun, making him watch. His screams werealmostthe best.”

“I’m taking him,” Rogue growled. “I’m done in here.”

Taking… me?

I didn’t want that. I wanted this to be over. All of it.

“Are you?” Bella asked, something deadly in her voice as she eyed him.

“Will youchallengeme?” Rogue asked, eyes raking over the lounging crew of Alphas, none of whom looked like they were interested in a one-on-one fight.

“Fine.” Bella let out a false sigh, a cruel smile flashing on her face. “Have him. I already got what I wanted.”

Three and a half years before—The day of the switch.

“You thought you could leave me?”

Chains were sore upon my wrists, and cold water shocked me awake.

I blinked, staring up into frigid eyes.

A hulking monster sat in a chair before me, within the iron bars of the basement cage I was chained to.

A monster I now knew too well, because I’d been chained to him since he’d plucked me from that nightmare a year and a half ago.

And I’d run…

For the first time, I’d escaped. I’d been free for a week, if that, before bounty hunters caught up and dragged me back here.

To him.

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