Page 73 of Beta Lies and Cursed Lives
I don’t know how many Cursed are left in the world after so many years of slaughter and denial of procreation, but I do know we are going to fight to free every last one of them.
Colt drives fast but steadily along the icy roads for over two hours until he says, “Hang onto your butts,” over his shoulder, and cuts the wheel. We plough through a high snow bank and into a wooded area off-road.
Rai is in the front passenger seat, fiddling with some tech, attaching wires with his bare fingers. He slips something on over his gloves and wiggles his fingers a few times, nodding to himself.
Miranda is beside me in the first row of back seats, her coat and gloves on the seat beside her. My Omega isn’t as affected by the cold as the rest of us, and seems more comfortable without the constraints.
She looks at her bare hands, clenches and unclenches her fingers, and a pale blue glow surrounds her palms. Her eyes narrow, her brow draws together, and tiny shards of ice spring up from her skin. A frown plays on her lips, and she closes her hands. When she opens them again, the ice and the glow are gone.
Her head tilts.
“Testing your power?” Calling it that and not a curse is becoming less difficult pretty quickly, just as using the term “pack” has been.
She turns to me with a small smile. “I’m a bit scared of what we’re about to do, but part of me is also kind of excited. To let go, you know?”
I do know. So do Rai and Colt.
Since we’d all bonded our Omega, there have been changes inside us. Not just our powers, but it’s like an emotional connection has started forming.
I can feel them.
“Me, too, brother.” Colt chimes in, still driving along the treeline. “I have totryand read your minds now. Can you believe that shit?” he laughs, and it’s happy. “But I feel you guys, here,” he places a hand on his chest briefly. “Like, your emotions.”
“I do as well,” Rai says.
“Yeah, me, too.” Miranda turns to me in the dim moonlight, and I see the question in her eyes.
“What is it?”
“You love me.”
I let out a huff of laughter. “I’ve told you I do.”
“Yeah, but…” her fist rests on her sternum. “It’s different to feel it, knowing that it’syourfeelings, after—well, you know.”
I frown in spite of myself. “I was a fool, Miranda.” I look to the other Alphas. “Colt, Rai. I apologize to all of you.” I sigh and look back at Miranda. “I thought that I was saving us all by denying our connection. I didn’t want us to get hurt.”
“I know,” she says. “I always knew, but that assembly…” her head shakes, and she looks down into her lap. “They murdered that pack as an example to all of us, the same day they were going to take you away.” She looks at me again. “I both understood why you did what you did and knew that we had to get out of there at any cost.”
I take her hand in mine, the skin cool to the touch. “When they made me demonstrate my power to the buyers, I shouted your name.”
She startles, eyes large.
“Nearly blew down the place.” I grin at her, and she lets out a laugh dangerously close to a giggle. That sound makes the beast in my chest purr with delight. It had been dormant since our mating, satiated, I guess.
“This is our stop.” Colt slows to a halt and cuts the engine in a spot where the trees form a canopy. In the distance, floodlights and area lights illuminate what looks like a prison. Tall walls with barbed wire along the top, guard towers at every corner hovering over everything. The gate in the wall is solid metal, riveted, and definitely thick. The wall itself isn’t much different.
Spotlights swoop around the interior and exterior grounds, and it puts me on edge. Is this how it always is, or are they expecting trouble?
“Either way, we have to move,” Colt whispers aloud, reading my mind.
We meet at the back of the SUV and start gearing up. Miranda didn’t take her coat from inside the car, and while I worry for her, I trust her to know her limits.
We all layer bulletproof vests beneath our coats, Miranda over her thermal shirt. Colt and I equip ourselves with assault rifles under our arms and on our backs, shoving magazines of ammunition into cinching loops at our thighs, then we all take sidearms. Miranda and Rai only arm themselves with 9mm handguns and clips.
The four of us have done our best to plan for this siege, and all we can do now is move forward, trusting each other to do their part.
When we’re all geared up, I look to each of my packmates in the virtual darkness and nod at them before saying, “Let’s go.”
