Page 45 of Ruthless Alpha
Again.
It was locked. I was trapped. Panicked and desperate, I tugged at the handle with all my might, but it was stuck fast. I tugged at it again, the panic growing, but my second attempt was just as fruitless as my first. With an anguished scream, I threw my weight against the door, but Arbor wood was strong, and I found myself back on the floor, my vision blurring and spinning.
“Good morning to you, too,” said a muffled voice from the other side of the door.
It was as if a decade of pent-up hatred hit me all at once, and I could only scream again, smacking the door with my palms.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” said my uncle, as if I were a toddler having a tantrum. “You can stay in there until you’ve remembered your place.”
I could hear him laughing all the way down the hall, and I banged my fists against the door once more for good measure, with furious tears springing to my eyes. I had left my mate for the sake of freedom, and all it had led to was a worse imprisonment.
There was no point in trying to get up or move over to the bed again. I didn’t want to be comfortable. I would never let my uncle use me again, and if that meant I starved to death in this room, so be it.
I sat for what must have been hours, my head pressed against the door, my stomach growling, my mouth dry, only vaguely registering the change in the light that indicated the passing of the day. I tried again and again to reach for my magic, but each time I tried, the dizziness would return, and the pain in my head. I couldn’tconcentrate,couldn’t connect with my own body to find where my power resided. Perhaps I was simply powerless without the sword to help me, but I wasn’t going to give up. I was going to get out.
Sunlight was starting to fade by the time I felt it, that tight little ball inside me, trembling with power. Carefully, so carefully, I drew it up, up, up until I could feel the buzzing of it in my fingers. But now what did I do? I could hardly blast the door off its hinges—I didn’t think it was that kind of power—but if the golden thread I’d conjured as a child had been solid enough to cage the butterfly, it might be strong enough to pick a lock.
I couldn’t help the soft gasp that escaped me as that golden thread of light burst from my fingers, responding to my every thought as if it was part of me—because it was, it hadalways been part of me. The door was held closed with nothing but a deadbolt, so it was easy for the light to wrap around the handle of the bolt and draw it back.
I was free. Wrenching open the door, I dashed down the stairs as quickly as my still-aching body would allow, my heart thundering in my chest. It was only when I reached the bottom of the stairs that I realized I wasn’t alone in the house after all.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
My aunt Moira was sitting in her rocking chair, knitting in her lap. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t catch me if I went straight for the door, so I did. It was locked.
“There are dishes in the sink that need washing,” she said evenly.
“Not my problem,” I retorted. I didn’t dare risk the same trick I’d pulled off on the door upstairs, but there had to be a spare key somewhere.
“You might have forgotten your place while you were whoring yourself on Ensign,” snapped my aunt, “but here you do not talk back to me.”
My aunt had a fresh bruise on her cheekbone and a look of disdain in her eyes. I knew she was cruel to me because my uncle was cruel to her, but that didn’t make it any better. I’d taken her cruelty for the last ten years, and I wasn’t going to take it any longer.
“Where’s Stanley?” I asked, opening various drawers to rifle through their contents.
“Where do you think?” she shot back.
“Right.” He’d be out at one of his awful friends’ cabins, drinking liquor brewed in someone’s bathtub. When he camehome, he’d be stinking drunk, and it was up to fate whether that put him in a good mood or a bad one.
“He’ll be back any minute now,” Moira added casually. “He wants steak and potatoes for dinner.”
She gave me a significant look, and I stared back at her, utterly disbelieving.
“I’m leaving,” I told her, in case it wasn’t clear enough.
“Sure, me too,” she scoffed, her attention back on her knitting. “Everything’s in the cold box. Get to it.”
I remained standing stubbornly where I was. Moira might not be as aggressive as my uncle, but I could feel her irritation growing with every stitch and pearl.
“I said get to it,” she repeated, trying and failing to sound unbothered by my new rebelliousness.
“No,” I said. The me who existed just a few months ago could never have fathomed sayingnoto anyone in this house, but now it tripped easily across my tongue. Moira’s needles stopped, her knuckles white where she gripped them.
“You’ll be the one who gets the beating when he comes home,” she warned, but we both knew that was only half true. Stanley’s bad moods meant that everyone suffered, regardless of who initially set him off.
“I’m sorry, Moira,” I said softly. Her eyes narrowed.
“What?”
