Page 29 of The Omega Trials: Part Three

She crosses her legs and fluffs her skirt, straightening the hem before saying bluntly, yet incredibly casually, “Yves killed Eric.”

“Excuse me?” I balk.

Titus finally takes a seat in the other chair. “Son of a bitch,” he mutters.

Bishop is the only one that doesn’t seem rocked by this revelation and asks evenly, “Why?”

Merigold sighs and purses her lips. I get the feeling she’s beginning to regret coming here, so I say, “If you want us to even consider helping, you need to tell us everything.” She folds her arms defensively, and I add, “Now.”

“God, it’s so humiliating,” she whispers, looking toward the ceiling. Her foot bounces as she lowers her gaze again. Looking me in the eye, she continues, “The evening of the Loyalty Trial, while everyone else was off partying, we got a visit from three more Elders. Apparently, the trial wasn’t enough. They wanted more.” She tries to keep a flippant tone, but I can tell it’s nothing more than a front. “They wanted more of me. Eric felt terrible. He was sick over it, literally. As soon as they left the Great Hall, he puked his guts up.” There’s no sympathy in her tone—rightfully so.

“So when the Elders came back for round two, Eric refused.” She pauses and swallows deeply. “They said they’d give us an hour to get ‘on the same page.’” Her lip curls. “Yves wouldn’t shut up about how he was making them all look bad, how he’d already let ten of them run through me, what was three more . . .” She bites her lip like she’s staving off tears.

“He didn’t give in,” Eckers says behind me, none of the previous snark in his voice.

Merigold’s mouth forms a tight line and she shakes her head. After a moment, she starts again, almost ruefully. “He was always the most stubborn asshole. They kept arguing, and I eventually went to my room. I couldn’t take it anymore, listening to them barter over me. Until all of a sudden, the fighting just stopped.

“I came out to see who won, to find out if I was gonna get raped three more times that night, but instead, I find Yves holding a bloody lamp and Eric bleeding out on the floor.”

Ecker sighs heavily. “Shit.”

“Shit is an understatement.” She sweeps her hair from one shoulder to the other. “Stefan is a spineless sheep, so he was absolutely useless,” she scoffs. “Just blubbering ‘what do we do’ over and over.”

“What did you do?” I ask emphatically. His body wasn’t found until the next morning supposedly.

“They dragged him into one of the bathrooms and told the Elders he’d gone for a walk to get his head screwed on straight. I honestly don’t think Yves had a plan at that moment other than buying himself some more time. We pretended to wait for ten minutes, then thirty, then an hour, at which point the Elders sent Stefan and Yves out to look for him. When they inevitably came up empty, Eric was officially declared missing.”

“Nobody thought to search your wing?” Titus asks in disbelief.

“They had no reason to believe we were hiding him. They already knew he was conflicted, so Yves’s story was totally plausible. It was way more likely that he ran from his problems and stumbled into foul play from someone else than the reality that his own pack leader killed him and hid him in a tub.”

“How did they eventually find him?” Bishop asks.

“There’s access to one of the turrets from our wing. Yves waited until sunrise, once the all-night search party turned in, and then he and Stefan lugged Eric’s body to the top and pushed him out the window.”

Ecker scoffs. “Geez, that’s cold.”

“Yves hoped they would assume suicide right away, but when they didn’t and started to investigate, he panicked. That’s when he called Baron, his dad—who is also the Cyan in charge of the Trials by the way.”

Nausea churns in my stomach. Yves let his father rape his omega, hismate.Ecker must put the pieces together too because he hugs me a little closer. His hard chest against my back is a soothing presence. I can’t imagine what it would be like to not feel safe in your mate’s arms.

“There is nothing that man won’t do to protect the family’s reputation. Cyan killing Cyan would be an unfathomable scandal. We’d most definitely be kicked out of the Trials, and that just wasn’t an option. So he did what he always does: cleaned up his son’s mess.” She gives a saccharine smile and concludes facetiously, “And everything was hunky-dory.”

Chapter 17

War Paint

Titus

The second Fortitude Trial feels like trying to wake up from sleep paralysis. That moment when you feel yourself gaining consciousness, only to realize you’re being sucked back into a dream you can’t escape.

That’s how it begins, the drugs trickling into my system, making me lose grasp on time and space.

I don’t hear the same voice as last time. Instead, there’s a haunting, all-surrounding chanting. Like before, the words are indistinguishable. If they are even words. It could just be sounds, vocals designed to transport me to today’s particular nightmare: the future.

I can’t claw myself out of the blackness, its grip on me unshakable, inevitable. Eventually I just give in, knowing that whatever is waiting for me on the other side is probably exactly what I deserve. It’s pulled from my own subconscious after all.

Perhaps that’s what makes these trials so effective. They turn our biggest fear and heaviest guilt into one inescapable loop.

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