Page 84 of Broken Fate
“Take your wretched hands away from the stone, or I will remove them from your body,” Andracis snarled as he stalked across the chamber toward me, whip trailing at his side.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andi dispatch the guard she was fighting. She’d heard the whip crack and my cry of pain. Her right hand dropped to her belt. Pulling a short knife free, she threw it at Andracis.
The Beta’s hand came up, and the whipcrackedagain. Andi cried out in pain as it opened her arm from wrist to elbow. The knife dropped harmlessly to the ground.
“Fools,” Andracis spat, grabbing a fistful of my hair and yanking it, tearing some of the silvery strands free as he exposed my throat. “How dare you attempt such sacrilege!”
“Says the one willingly helping prop up theliethat the Alphas are telling everyone,” I spat.
Andracis’ eyes popped. His bicep twitched, and he slammed my face against the ground once, then twice, in rapid succession, breaking something in my left cheek. I cried out again.
“It’s not alie,” he growled. “It’sorder. We prevent chaos from taking over, from runningeverything. You have no idea what you’re doing.”
“Neither,” I said woozily, “do you. The people deserve to know you’re lying to them. That you’re making the decisions for them. That their lives are not their own!”
“Oh, is that what you think your little demonstration outside was supposed to achieve?” he spat.
In the background, Arcadus and Kiel battled. The Alpha’s roars were a stark contrast to the silence of Kiel. I tried watching them, but my vision was too blurry. Elsewhere, I could hear Andi’s high-pitched grunts of effort.
She was still up and fighting. We still had a chance.
“You talk too much,” I mumbled, slowly reaching for my second dagger, trying to distract him with more insults.
“And you push your limits more than your station allows.”
Before I could blink, he snatched the dagger from its sheath at my waist and drove it through my reaching arm, pinning it to the floor.
I yelled. The pain of his whip was like nothing compared to the white-hot agony burning up my arm.
“It’s okay,” Andracis said conversationally as he sat on me. “I’ll teach you the last lesson you’ll need.”
The weight of his body pulled on my arm, and I shrieked as it sliced through more flesh and muscle, rubbing up against the bone. Blood was now spilling free from both sides of the blade, coating my arm and the floor. Andracis saw it pooling near his boot and, with a sniff, adjusted his seat.
I struggled to stay conscious, my vision swimming in and out, stars exploding everywhere from the pain in my arm and my back, the wounds hammering iron spikes into my brain, making it hard to focus on anything.
“What you need to learn,” the Beta said, the fighting raging around him, “is humility.”
The whip settled around my neck. Andracis hummed to himself and pulled it tighter. I gasped, my head arching back as I tried to breathe, to draw in some air, but he just kept pulling tighter and tighter, twisting the thick braided cord around in circles at the back of my neck, cinching my airway closed.
I clawed at it with my free hand, nails ripping, but there was no room. Blackness filled the corners of my eyes as I slipped close to unconsciousness, one arm still pinned to the ground.
“Shhhh,” the Beta whispered in my ear. “It’s almost over now. You’re going to go to sleep, and that will be it. Nighty night, little bitch.”
I slumped forward.
“Much better,” Andracis said, still humming. “This is where you—”
The noose loosened unexpectedly, and I sucked in a deep breath, even as the weight was lifted from my back.
“Fuck you!” my mom spat from where she lay next to Andracis, having tackled him off me. She was weak and frail from the torture she must have undergone, but somehow, she’d found the strength to save me once last time.
“Will you people notdie!” the Beta shrieked, pulling a bejeweled dagger from his waist and going for my mother.
“Mom!” I shouted, fear galvanizing me into motion, the surge of adrenaline serving to dull much of the pain.
Without thinking, I reached over, yanked the knife out of my forearm, and flung it at Andracis as hard as I could, hoping to buy some time.
The blade spun perfectly, the tip burying deep into his throat. Andracis writhed, reaching up to try to stem the flow of blood as it spurted everywhere. Getting to my knees, I crawled over to the near-fatally wounded shifter, my forearm still dripping blood.
