Page 80 of Beta Lies and Cursed Lives
One look at Mira, and I know everything. Our minds are one as our thoughts meld.
He’s a Cursed Alpha. Willow’s mate.
It’s not long before my pack is back to back, soldiers pouring in on us as we attack in every way we can, firearms and power. There are more soldiers than I ever imagined. More than there’d ever been at the academy before.
Then the helicopters come, and I can feel the thoughts of hundreds more soldiers.
Also, Councilman Ivanov, whose dark thoughts I’d recognize anywhere, even if I can’t understand the words he’s thinking.
We have incoming,I push into my pack’s minds, then push harder to reach as many Cursed minds as I can.We havea lotof incoming!
I can feel all kinds of emotions, from fear to resignation to determination.
My pack is exhausted, all turning to their firearms to defend when the helicopters start landing outside the wall. I stop counting after five land as soldiers rush in through the broken gate, wielding guns and collar control boxes. I don’t know if they’ll work when the main control unit in the academy has been shut down, but I don’t want to find out.
Aubrey and I run out of ammo first, then Rai throws his handgun at a soldier’s face hard enough to knock him out before Mira, breathless, turns her empty gun into a dagger of ice and shoves it into the nearest soldier’s eye. When he drops, we’re surrounded.
Throughout my life, I’ve been scared many times, most of which were during my childhood. Fear of the voices in my head, of being abandoned before it actually happened, of being put into the system where I’d live the rest of my life. But the fear that grips me now is on a level I’ve never experienced.
My pack. My Omega. The people I love more than anything in this world.
I won’t let them die.
There’s movement at the gate, and I feel Ivanov there, his foreign thoughts smug, but I also pick something else out of his brain. He’d sent his Cursed soldiers away. He did it so they couldn’t see our uprising.
He’s scared the rebellion will spread.
Something shifts in my chest, the beast that used to feel foreign but is now a part of me. It growls with me, and my brain is on fire. My gaze sweeps over the nearest soldiers, and they’re frozen mid-movement, eyes wide and vacant. I push harder with my mind than I ever have, reaching for as many of these Beta pieces of shit that I can, and finding them. Finding so many of them all over the grounds and inside the academy walls.
It’s like the world has stopped spinning, all their movements halted in the middle of whatever they’d been doing.
Then, with all those minds firmly in my grasp, I whisper three words.
“Kill each other.”
Silence. Then, two soldiers in front of me face one another, aim their guns, and fire. A hot mist covers my cold face.
Four more heads explode. Six more. Gunfire and more gunfire with increasing speed and quantity, reaching further away, the sound of bodies dropping all around us.
People scream.
Chaos explodes all around and then stops just as quickly.
One sweeping gaze confirms a sea of black-clad bodies on the grounds, blood pooling everywhere.
My head snaps to Damir Ivanov, his expensive suit covered in gore, his face ashen, eyes wide with delicious terror.
He doesn’t know real fear. Not yet.
I step closer to him, slow and easy, not taking my eyes from him. He wants to step away, his eyes flicking nervously, his mouth twitching, but I hold him in place with my power.
I control your mind,I tell him softly. Calmly.So I control your body.
A sound rises from his throat, but I don’t care what he has to say. I can see it all now. I can understand it all, as though I were born speaking Russian. Our minds are at one, and his is a mind I don’t want to spend much time in.
I knew he was a bastard, power-hungry and hateful, but I had no idea how much influence he had over the Beta Council. He’d been instrumental in so many barbaric events other than the executions here just days ago.
I prod and pry, the whole time he whimpers, unable to move a muscle. My probing is painful. I can feel his distress. I could end the pain, but I don’t.
