Page 29 of Bonds of Hate

The walk back to the train station will take almost thirty minutes. Unlike the Enclave Omegas, no town-car is waiting to whisk me back to the city. Walking back through the streets at night is a bad idea for any woman, but for me it might just turn deadly.

After reclaiming my bag from the gate guards because they had allowed nothing to be brought inside the palace, I use a public restroom to change out of my dress and into a drab pair of pants and loose shirt. A gray scarf wrapped around my head hides my most distinctive feature before I start the long journey back to my temporary home.

Being out in the world, even surrounded by innocent people, feels dangerous. My shoulders itch with paranoia. I continuously cast glances behind me, convinced that I’ll see familiar eyes glaring at me from the shadows.

I remember my frantic fingers feeling for a pulse in cool skin and not finding one. But did I wait long enough before fleeing into the night? There is no way to be sure except to wait and see if vengeance comes for me.

Unless I find another way to make myself safe.

I don’t care what Logan and his pack do to me. The palace is the safest place imaginable. The harem, even more so. I’d passed almost fifty guards between the palace doors and the inner chamber.

No one could get to me there without my permission.

Except Prince Logan and his pack.

A shudder of memory rocks through me hard enough that the woman next to me on the bullet train casts me a sidelong glance. My mind goes over and over the time I spent locked in that room with Logan and his pack, trying to decide if I walked out of there as a triumph or a disgrace.

Maybe I shouldn’t have stripped for them. But I had to make sure the prince knew I would do whatever he asked me to do. Defiance might be a bold spice, but I can’t sprinkle it on too liberally.

His scent alone had almost been enough to trigger a flashback, rocking my equilibrium in a way I pray he didn’t notice.

Bitter clove.

A year later and the taste of it never quite leaves my tongue, as if taking his essence down my throat was enough to leave a permanent imprint on my senses.

“Cold, dearie?” The old woman beside me asks.

I give her a weak smile. “I’m fine, thank you.”

My fingers pinch the inside of my arm hard enough to leave a bruise. I need to get it together before I call any more attention to myself.

I disembark from the train in the middle of a mid-range shopping district. Silky fabrics in beautiful colors wrapped around mannequins in the shop windows immediately draw my eye and I let my gaze linger briefly before hurrying on.

My more pleasant memories of early childhood involve following my mother from store to store while she amassed an armful of shopping bags. Her promises repeat in my head like an anthem that one day I would have a mate of my own to treat me to all of this and more.

Promises are a lot like exotic pets, easy to get and hard to keep.

Charlotte loved nothing more than to fill my head with absolute nonsense and then treat me like an idiot for actually believing any of it.

More than once in the last few weeks, I’ve considered reaching out to her for help. But even if she’d be willing, which I doubt, her newest husband is a Guardian, one of the Alphas who patrols Capital City and enforce the law. I can’t be with them if my past ever catches up with me.

The nicer shops slowly disappear as I turn down a much more well-worn side street. Designer stores make way for laundromats, liquor stores and money lenders.

I turn into a nondescript pawnshop with old furniture in the window. A bell dings as I push open the door, but noone greets me even when I let the door close behind me with a loud bang.

Racks of clothing arranged in no particular order fill the front half of the shop. I have to wind through shelves of random electronics and appliances to reach the sales desk.

A wizened man naps on a wooden stool, hunched over with his head resting against the wall at his side. He only snaps awake from his doze when I rap my knuckles on the chipped counter.

“I have a rental return,” I inform him as I drop the shiny bundle of fabric in front of him.

With an annoyed grunt, the shopkeeper picks up the dress and shakes it out. “Receipt?”

I produce the receipt with a tight smile, knowing that he would have happily refused to refund my deposit without it.

He makes a show of smoothing out the dress and placing it on a hanger before going to the ancient register.

I glare down at the plastic credit chit he tosses onto the counter. It’s the faded blue of a half-note, not the bright red of the full one I expected. “This is short.”

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