Page 39 of Knot All That Glitters: Part 2

All four of them grumble and growl at me, but I don’t take back the words. They’ve used and manipulated me, just like he has. It’s almost worse because I thought we were going to be something. I thought they would be mine and I would be theirs. Forever.

“We aren’t like him,” Jude says low and threatening, as if the very idea of a comparison is enough to make him feral. “Tell me you don’t think we’re like him, button, please.”

My brows arch as I look at him, meeting his gaze steadily. “No, you’re worse. He was always up front about the way he was using me, the things he wanted from me. Be obedient and good. Be polite and smile. Be quiet. Be controlled. Be a beta, not an omega. He never hid what he was doing from me, how he wasmanipulating me. I knew what he was from the beginning, since I was a child.”

Jude’s brow furrows, and he looks away. “None of it was true,” I say quietly. “For weeks, every word out of your mouth to me was a lie. For weeks, you manipulated me into getting what you wanted from me. For fucking weeks, you made me think-” I cut off and shake my head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. You were clearly only interested in my father and the information I could give you.”

“We weren’t using you for information,” Tic says, sounding truthful.

I scoff, because what else could they have wanted from me?

Only… they never asked me for information. They never pressed me to tell them anything about him. I think back to the spreadsheet, the attached videos, the points attached to each act. That is what they wanted from me, to record every illicit interaction. I think of how each video I saw was shot in such a way that either my face or my birthmark were on display. How often they’d manhandle me into positions, to show off who exactly they were fucking.

“No,” I say slowly, with dawning realization. “No, you wanted to destroy my reputation and, through me, to destroy my father’s. It’d be hard for him to explain why his perfectly suppressed omega daughter was begging for an entire pack to fuck her. Especially when there’s video proof.”

Jesus. I think of all the times they made me say what I wanted from them out loud, how they made me beg, how I called myself their whore, their slut, how I told them they could do whatever they wanted to me. I’d thought it was a kink, something that turned them on. But it was this instead…

All of it caught on camera, all of it ready to be used against me. To destroy me and, by extension, my father.

Though… would he even really be destroyed by that? I’m sure as soon as those videos were released, my father would tell the world I had a breakdown, throw me in a mental healthcare facility and distance himself from me as much as he could. He’d present the perfect bereaved father, mourning the loss of his daughter’s sanity, praying that with the right help, I’d be myself again.

It might be hard for him to come back from, but I’m sure that he’s more than capable. It would be me that wouldn’t. Locked away and drugged up for the rest of my life so I could no longer embarrass him. In a few years, I’m sure people would forget I even existed. They hardly remember I exist now.

They didn’t really think about how this would effect me, did they? Didn’t think about the repercussions of this on my life. About how he would react, what he would do to me.

I sway slightly, and Creed reaches out to steady me, but stops when I growl at him. A full on omega growl. His fingers curl into a fist in the air between us before he drops it to slam against his own thigh.

I wrap my arms around myself, hold myself up, because I don’t want any of them to do it. “So, what was the plan? Make me give into every one of my omega instincts, get me to bite one or all of you? Let me feel how you really felt about me, so I would know with absolute certainty that you never actually wanted me? Record everything and… blackmail him with it?”

“No, that wasn’t the plan,” Hale says, sounding calm as hell. So calm and unaffected. I want to smack him, make him feel something like I am. But I already know he feels nothing. His heart is ice cold.

“The plan was to release it to the media. Let everyone see that his policies and plans for the country are bullshit. How can he expect anyone else to suppress their instincts if his own daughter can’t?”

My eyes slip closed. “Right. So this is about his policies? The changes he wants to make to the country? The drug that you’re helping him design to stop designations from even forming?” I open my eyes to look at Tic as I say this last part, so I get to see the way he jolts in surprise.

“How do you know about that?”

“He told me. Right before he commanded me to stand still so he could beat the shit out of me. He told me he knew you didn’t care about me, not really because you were helping him.”

He shakes his head slowly. “I was never gonna develop that drug for him.”

“That’s not the part that matters,” Creed cuts in. “And it’s not why we did what we did to you.”

I want to argue because it absolutely does matter. It matters if they believe the same bullshit he does. But I just want to get this over with and they won’t let me leave until I hear them out. So I’ll listen to whatever they have to say, and then I’ll run away again.

“Then why?”

The four of them exchange a look, one heavy with meaning, one that makes my stomach clench in anxiety. Whatever they’re about to tell me, I’m going to hate. I can tell by that look alone.

“We’ve been a pack for a long time, almost fifteen years,” Hale says. “Since Creed presented as an alpha at fifteen. We always knew the five of us were going to be together.”

I frown. Skimming my eyes over thefourof them. “You had another member?” All four of them nod. “A beta?” A shake of their heads. “Another alpha?” I ask the question with hope, but I know it wasn’t a beta or an alpha. I know, because of how they’re looking at me. Warily, with resignation, like they know this is going to hurt.

“You have an omega,” I choke out. “A scent match.” It’s the only way they could treat me this way. I can see it now. They canuse me like this, fuck me and cast me aside because I was never a genuine option for them. My eyes well with tears. For them. For me.

They’ll never be mine because they already have someone else. Someone who truly belongs to them, with them.

Jude meets my gaze steadily as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and unlocks the screen before handing it to me. The picture I’ve seen before, of him and a smiling girl with hair a similar color as his, the one I asked if she was his sister. “Janie,” he says her name with reverence.

---