Page 53 of Who We Were

I'll see them soon, and until then, I'll see them here, in the darkness.

It's enough.

Eighteen Years Old

Junior year is notwhat I dreamed of growing up. Discrimination, forcefully administered drugs, abuse, weight checks, starvation. Yeah, definitely not the exciting designation college experience I had planned on.

It's hard to focus these days. The most clarity I have is during meal times now, and it's only because I used tolovefood. My nana made me kind of a food snob, which hasn't helped me these past few years.

I miss Mrs. Jenkins’ cooking especially. I missNana'scooking, but the memory of her food is further away.

I've long since gotten used to my diet of barely fucking anything, but I still wish for the life I had before this. Sometimes I’m unsure I'll ever get to experience the comfort of a homemade pasta, or even a Caesar salad again.

My final gulp of what little water I have left for dinner doesn't drown out my omega's quiet whimper. ‘Mates?’

The sad inquiry from the other half of my soul is like a stab to the heart. They haven't come for me. Nobody has come to save me, and I'm starting to wonder if anyone is even trying.

IknowI was loved, and if not by Samuel, Oliver and Emmett, then by their parents. They cared for me like I was their own when Nana passed away and even before then. I felt like partof their family, but now I'm starting to wonder if I was ever considered enough for them to love me unconditionally.

The longer I'm here, the less likely I will come out the girl they invited over for dinner every night. Maybe they've given up because of that reason. It checks out. I don't feel the same or evenlookthe same.

Practically skin and bones, I walk around like a waif. Actually, I'm pretty sure Iama waif. Neglected, abandoned, and definitely homeless. Where would I go if I escaped?

I have nobody and nothing.

Part of me fights that reality, but it's been two years. The people who I thought once loved me above all have already proven I'm not worth it.

So why fight it?

‘Mates?’

No.

‘Yes.’

None worth living for.

Nineteen Years Old

It's almost over.What comes after this, I have no idea, but it can't be much worse, right?

I've lost everything that makes me who I am, so what else is there for them to take besides my body? Well, I'm an experimentso my body is theirs for science, but nobody has touched me below my panties or beneath my bra.

My mind, my omega, they're gone most days, which theoretically would make it easier if they took all that was left. I feel like I'm inching my way through quicksand, and sometimes I just let myself be drug down.

Senior year has been something else.

There's a rising tension that hasn't gone unnoticed by the omegas. The betas and alphas seem clueless, only focusing on themselves and acting like a bunch of pricks.

We've always been a timid, angry bunch of abused omegas. But since that one girl dropped into her heat in the middle of campus because a beta and two alphas were posturing around her, things have been weird.

I think her name is Freya. I've heard the awful names they call her because the quarterback doesn't like her.Frail Freya.

It's not her fucking fault we're constantly starved, but apparently the academy has scooped out their brains making them unable to think for shit.

The omegas have been watching Freya since. We don't speak to each other, but we're all aware of each other since we might as well be dirty, scrawny orphans held in dog cages for four fucking years together.

The omega, Freya, has broken free of her numb state and we've noticed. Her lows seem really damn low, but I've heard her laugh too. Always with those guys, but still, she's the only one who has allowed the sparkle in her eye to show.

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