Page 77 of The Beta: Part Two
Somehow, I manage to keep myself from puking all over the floor. They do have Jasper. They’re going to wheel him in here and hurt him while I watch. I’m going to have to watch them torture other’s first, I’m sure. Until I see Jasper with my own eyes I’m not doing anything.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out, uselessly reaching toward the omega. She lowers her eyes and cries all the harder. I get the pleasure of watching her tears splatter on the floor before the alpha yanks her up by her arm and hauls her back out.
I can’t help them. I can’t give them access to the omega registry. I can’t do anything that will help them take and hurt more omegas. I can’t doanything. Especially if they’ve got Jasper.
More hours pass, then I hear a squeaking sound. The sounds of the omegas start and stop sporadically, but all noise ceases when the squeaking starts. It sounds like a squeaky cart at the grocery store. Then the screaming starts. The omegas are screaming and every instinct I have starts clawing at me, but I’m trapped in this cage.
One voice cuts through the rest, “leave him alone! Don’t hurt him! Don’t! You’re hurting him! You don’t have to hurt him!”
They’ve got Jasper.
I’m going to go insane.
A red haze starts to ring my vision and all I can hear is that one voice pleading for Jasper and that squeaking sound.
Chapter twenty-six
Kaleb
I think it’s been two days, maybe four, since we’ve been here. There’s no natural light in this goddamned place and I can’t go by meals because they throw bags of chips and fucking granola bars at us at sporadic intervals.
I can feel Nathan. He’s frantic. I don’t know what state he’s going to be in when they bring him back. After that initial burst of speech from Seth on the first day, he’s been mostly quiet. Every now and then I hear what might be crying, but it sounds so far away that I can’t make it out clearly.
Seth says it’s probably a new shipment of omegas. I don’t know how this many missing omegas have gone unnoticed. It’s absurd.
Derek and Mitchell are in the bunker now, as well as two other alphas and five other betas I don’t recognize. I’ve been trying to keep up with faces and frequency of appearance, but it’s hard to keep up with all of it. The stress riding our pack bond is making it very difficult to concentrate on anything but Nathan’s growing desperation and mine and Trent’s response to it. I also keep feeling my bond with Jasper flickering more urgently. It feels more like flashing than flickering, and I don’t know what to make of it.
Seth is going back and forth between a nearly catatonic state and a manic state of useless word vomit. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s apologized for his part in this. I’ve already decided that I won’t be his judge and executioner in this situation. I’ll bag him up and cart him to the council and they can deal with him.
Out of nowhere I feel the floor vibrate almost violently and the alphas in the room shoot glances between themselves and the door.
“What was that?” one of them asks.
None of them know, but one of the alphas tells the rest of them to stay put while he goes up to check.
I shoot Trent a look and he shrugs, “it sounds like an explosion. Maybe somebody fucked up.”
Derek barks at him to keep quiet and Trent flips him off.
The scent of gasoline filters through the room and everyone is looking around wildly for a source.
“Somebody definitely fucked up,” Trent says with a grin.
“Shut. Up,” Derek hisses, but he doesn’t sound very sure of himself anymore.
Another minute passes and I look over at Seth.
He’s staring at the ceiling behind me, his singular eye growing wider and wider. He soundlessly saysShhhhand his fists start clenching and unclenching. It takes all I have not to turn around.
I catch Trent’s eye and put a finger over my lips. I really hope I can count Seth as an ally right now.
I turn around just in time to see a mess of glossy black curls hang from the ceiling air vent, then a pair of blazing green eyes that bounce around the room. Those eyes are counting targets. Jasper is coming through the ceiling to rescue us. I don’t know if I should be relieved, terrified, or impressed. Probably all three.
He disappears back into the ceiling just as one of the betas walks in that direction.
That beta very conveniently, and very stupidly, stops right under the air vent.
Jasper’s torso lowers just enough to slip something that looks like a zip tie around the beta’s neck before I can blink, and another around his hands when he reaches up to grasp at the plastic noose. Then he pulls a syringe out of nowhere and sticks it into the beta’s neck. He holds the beta’s weight by his arms so that he falls to the floor instead of crashing, then Jasper disappears back into the ceiling. He did all that in less time than it took the other alpha in the room to finish pacing to the other side of it.
