Page 53 of Depraved
Fascinating. I can’t imagine Brittany May being scared of anything.
“He pick you up at a party?”
“A bar. I was way too young. My wolf hadn’t even come in. But I was serious with this older human dude who thought he was a bit of a pool shark and liked to show off for me.” She snorts. “Men always have an inflated sense of their own abilities.”
“So Thomas darted in and swept you off your feet?” I ask, wanting to get a feel for what this lunatic is like. He has to be charming, at least on the surface level, to have snagged himself so many exes.
“You nuts?” She gawks at me as if I’m stupid. “Not at all. Dennis, my boyfriend back then, was such a schmuck. He sank an eight-ball and beat some random guy. Then he turned to me and said, ‘That’s what it's like to be with a winner, babe. That’s what you deserve.’” She shakes her head at the memory. “I think that was what he said. We were both pretty tipsy. And he followed it up with—‘I’ll make sure you’re with a winner forever, Brit. I’m gonna talk to your daddy and make you mine.’” Her lip curls in disgust.
So does mine. “Quite the proposal.”
She shrugs. “Eighteen, low self-esteem. It was the first proposal I’d ever gotten, and I was over the moon. Made out with that idiot until I had to use the ladies' room. That’s when Thomas showed up in the hallway.” Her face grows solemn as the memory goes from foolish to dark. “When I came out, Thomas Stone grabbed me by the hair and dragged me out the back door.”
My heart starts thumping quickly. He assaulted her! I thought they dated. I glance over at Black, but his gaze is fixed on Brittany, intent on hearing every detail and learning what he can.
She continues in a low voice, “He took me back to his place and fucked me for the next seven days straight until my wolf came in. When she showed, I was so damn relieved—thought I actually had a chance of escaping, and I stopped crying. The second I stopped sobbing, he lost interest, and I got away.”
That is about the most messed up thing I’ve ever heard of—though I don’t know that I should be surprised.
“The Dark Nights just let him get away with it?” I’m livid, and my blood is an inferno under my cheeks right now.
She looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “Heard you got taken against your will too. Did the Lobos just let an alpha get away with it?”
My spine stiffens. Behind me, Black growls and takes a step forward, furious to be compared to that piece of trash.
I hold up a hand to stop him. Because at the end of the day, she’s right. Powerful alphas get away with whatever the fuck they want in this world. And though Black and I are finding our way past that initial meeting slowly, though we’re learning things about one another that help us understand and forgive—there’s a reality to shifter life. Might makes right here.
It’s how our kings are chosen; it’s how our packs pass from one set of claws to another. It defines every waking moment of an alpha’s life, and that spills over into betas and omegas.
Black might not like to hear it said, but all three of us know that it’s true.
I stare at the girl across from me. She and I share a wound. Understanding passes between us—the knowledge that this world isn’t fair; it’s fucked up, and the likelihood of us being able to do anything about it is almost nonexistent.
Neither of us is going to paint alphas as heroes. We’re both going to speak our truths and live in gritty reality rather than denial.
Truth has its own strength. It’s the first step towards change.
I need more truths from her, especially if I want to stop this war that Stone Jr. has declared on my pack. “You said Thomas took you to a place for seven days. Do you have an address for that?”
Britney May thinks for a second, but then her eyes spark with memory. Her mouth opens, and I can feel that we’re on the right track. Intuition tingles, telling me that what she’s about to say is crucial.
But then, the side of her skull blasts apart, and brain matter sprays across the steel table beside her. Her eyes grow dull, and I watch her collapse onto her canvas tool bag—taken out by a silver bullet.
15
ELENA
It’s a silver rainstorm—bulletspelting the concrete, biting into it, and sending up tiny puffs of dust. I’d have been dead on the second shot if not for Black’s quick thinking and insane reflexes.
As soon as Brittney starts to fall over, he grabs me and dives for the cement. My elbow skids along the ground, singing in pain as my skin sloughs off. I hiss and cover my head instinctively, only glancing to the side once I realize that my body is not burning from the bite of all the bullets I hear pinging off something in front of us.
My alpha took us down just behind a bunch of sheets of steel propped up in a metal rack. Divots start appearing in the metal as bullets slam into the sheets, but none make it through.
The echoes of the shots are as loud as a storm right overhead when the thunderclaps make you jump.
Black growls in my ear, “Stay down,” and my ears are so overstimulated that it takes me a second to process his words.
Stupidly, I want to retort, “No, I was planning on standing up. Getting shot sounds like fun.” But I can’t speak. My heart has crawled into my throat, and it’s beating there, choking me every time it swells.
