Page 75 of The Beta: Part Two
Seth looks like he’s about to say something else, but the door opens and Derek strolls in with Mitchell following behind him like a lovesick fool. Fucking Mitchell. Derek stands in front of Nathan’s cell and taps on the lock. “You want out of here, asshole?”
“Eat shit,” Nathan doesn’t even look at him.
“Come on. I’ve got a job for you. You do what we want, and maybe we can talk about cutting you loose.”
Trent answers this time, “fuck off. Nathan’s not doing anything for you.”
Derek laughs, “we’ll see, I guess. Let’s go.” He unlocks Nathan’s cell and motions him out.
Nathan doesn’t move.
I don’t know why Derek thought he would.
Derek pulls a gun and points it at Trent. “Come with me now, or you can spend the next few weeks watching Trent rot on the floor. And you’ll still do what you’re told.”
The problem with the situation is that I don’t doubt that Derek will shoot Trent. Derek would enjoy shooting Trent in front of us.
Nathan sighs and exchanges a look with Trent, then nods at me. “I’ll go. Figure it out.”
Then he lets Derek pull him from the cell and shove him out of the bunker. Mitchell follows like the good little lap dog he is.
“They’re not going to kill him. I overheard them talking about getting into the council’s main system. They found out Nathan installed everything and set it all up. Their tech guys couldn’t get past a firewall or whatever. I don’t know what they’re trying to do, but they need access to the records and digital communications to do it. They won’t kill him, but they might hurt him. They’ll definitely hurt you guys if they think it will make him do what they want. That’s why they took my fingers and my eye. My father refused to turn over a list of addresses and,” he clicks his tongue and points at his empty eye socket.
“Yeah,” I say, rubbing my jaw, “I’m pretty sure we got your eye. Wrapped up in a box. We thought it was Talia’s.”
Seth laughs. He sounds more than a little manic, and I’m sure he is. Losing your pack, your eye, a couple fingers, your freedom, and probably eventually your life would certainly drive someone to be more than a little manic.
“It’s not funny,” Trent barks, “it threw Jasper over the edge. He almost died.”
“No, it’s not funny,” Seth abruptly sobers, “I’m a horrible excuse for an alpha, but I’d never want to hurt Jasper. They had me believing they sent my eye to my father to get him to cooperate. Jay took it out himself. Said he got the idea from Talia when she told little Mitchie she’d take his. They fucked up, though. Wrong shade of blue.”
Damn if he’s not right. I look at his remaining eye, he must know what I’m trying to see because he holds it a little wider and stares straight at me. His eyes are just a bit paler than Talia’s, but a few days in a box changes a lot of things. Still, I’m shocked he held onto a detail like the exact color of her eyes.
“Who took those fucking pictures of her?” I need to know. When I get out of this cell I’m going to kill a lot of people, I’d like to prioritize the list.
“Derek. Derek took them. He told me. He’s probably who sent them. I told them back then we needed to leave Talia alone. But they kept talking to my father about her. Before they started talking about her, I didn’t even know who her family was. She goes out of her way to keep it secret. But Derek and Jay knew somehow, and after my father found out he could tie our family to the Graves family he started to become obsessed. He knew Elizabet when they were younger and remembered that she was a late bloomer that didn’t bloom until the right combination of alphas claimed her. Derek and Jay had him convinced that Talia would be the same. Turns out they were right, I guess, huh?”
Seth slumps down on the bench in his cell and bangs the back of his head against the bars behind him, “Dad said that if we were strong enough she’d make the switch. He told us to not let on that we knew who her mother was, and to just make it happen. Dad is a son of a bitch, but he’d never even suggested forcing a female before. But I was stupid, and I said we would but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was supposed to be the pack leader because of my position, Derek and Jay were supposed to follow me. But they didn’t, they did it all on their own when I wouldn’t sign off on it. I’ve never been so sick in my life.” He closes his eyes and breaths for a few moments before he continues. He looks the grayish color of nausea even now.
“Kaleb, I swear to fuck, if you don’t kill him the second you can reach him I’ll never forgive you.” Trent would have probably spent the entire time we’ve been here trying to beat his way through the bars separating Seth’s cell and mine if our places were switched.
“I walked in on them with her. They had her tied down to a fucking table. There were wheels on it. I had nightmares about them squeaking for weeks after. That’s what made me start looking, you know, I had to find out what that horrible sound was,” Seth recalls, sounding like he’s drifting away.
Then he mimics the squeaking of the wheels that he must have heard as his pack mates were raping Talia, and I feel my nails digging into my palms.
Trent is gripping the bars in front of him so hard I can hear his knuckles cracking.
“I almost puked when I walked into the room,” Seth continues, “she didn’t make a sound. She just looked at me like she hated me, like she should have. I don’t know how long I just stood there. It could have been seconds or minutes, I don’t know, but when I heard the camera sound I snapped out of it. If Jay had fully knotted her I wouldn’t have been able to wheel her away.”
He wheeled her the fuck away. Bloody and hurt, tied down to a table, fucking wheeled her out of one awful situation into another.
“You did as much harm as they did, you piece of shit,” Trent growls.
Seth nods, “I did. But they were behind me the entire time telling me what would happen to her if I didn’t. They got my father on the phone, he told me all kinds of shit, made me think that I could do it. But I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. Jay and Derek wanted to hurt her. They did hurt her. I fucked her when she didn’t want it, but I tried not to hurt her. I wanted to keep them from hurting her. I thought if I did it, at least they weren’t. That’s when I knew there was something really wrong with my pack.”
I expect him to keep talking, but he just stops. That’s a whole lot of heavy shit he just dropped. He looks absolutely wrecked. If he’s telling the truth, I don’t know how he’s holding himself together. I remember Seth as a kid, he’s Jasper’s age. I remember him being a whiny little shit. But the man slumped against the bars isn’t that whiny kid, he’s broken. And as much as I’d love to rip his face right off his skull, I don’t think it would be very satisfying at this point.
“That’s not going to save you,” Trent seethes. Trent is a good man, but he isn’t going to care about how broken Seth is.
