Page 107 of Scapegoat

“No, Mum,” my sister said, her voice clogged with tears. “Please.”

What the fuck had happened? Usually, precious baby Anna was pandered to in all things.

“God almighty, you girls are so weak.” Mum rolled her eyes and then stormed out of the room, only to return with a grisly burden.

My growl faltered the moment I saw Greg, or what was left of him. Blood was clotting along a wound across his throat, his shirt was matted with it and so was his beard. Those eyes that had watched me grow up, crinkled when he smiled, now stared blankly, filmed over and cloudy with death. Mum tossed the body before me, smiling when I jerked back.

“You want to snarl at me, young lady? You want to disobey me?” Her voice always took on a different tone when she was berating me. It wasn’t just the abject loathing that broke my heart, but this. I couldn’t question what she was saying, or dispute it, which is why when I rebelled, I slipped out the back door without a word. I couldn’t stand up to her. Not when she was pummelling me over and over with every bad thing she had to say about me. She’d knock me down over and over until I lost the will to get up.

Like right now.

No one was coming. She’d deliberately brought me out to some place far from everywhere else. There would be no passersby that stumbled upon me, no accidental saviour. And the guys would find my decomposing body in one of the many old, abandoned cottages around the district.

If they even bothered.

Why would they? The heat in my blood called out to them, but each moment it went unanswered, something died in me. The wolf whined, nosed at me, tried to keep me upright, but I collapsed down onto the floor, just staring into Greg’s empty eyes.

I’d be the same, she’d made that clear. Whatever life I tried to build, she’d be there to rise up from somewhere and take it away. Mum would always have the last word. And what she wanted was the future she’d always dreamed of for her golden child, because even now she held my sister to her chest, stroking her back as Anna cried.

Mum had never done that for me. This little tableau, it was a perfect illustration of the hidden dynamics of our relationship. Anna being comforted and me shoved in a cage, drugged in order to make me hurt all the more. It was hard to understand, how a parent could feel one way about one child, demonstrate that they could be a good and decent parent, and then utterly fail with me.

And that’s when I started to let in the thoughts I’d fought so hard to keep out.

The only common denominator, here, was me.

I was the one that inspired this kind of antipathy. I was the one she couldn’t love. She treated Anna perfectly well, but couldn’t even muster up a kind word for me. I worked harder, tried harder, did more, but even that somehow made me more unlovable. That hungry beast that lived in my heart only made her laugh. It was tempting to tar and feather her, to make her the bad guy, but when the whole town seemed to be still in contact with her, still thinking she was worth talking to, what did that say about me?

Every person who had looked me over when we returned to town, had expressed rampant disbelief on their faces when the guys said I was their mate. I searched the guys’ faces in my mind, wondering if I had missed it. Were they with me because they liked me, or were we bonded just because I was their omega? Maybe without that instinctual chemistry we would have had nothing.

These were the thoughts I had tormented myself with every night over the two years before I found my mates again.

Because when so many bad things happen to a person, especially a child, it’s hard not to assume you’re the cause of it. That you’re the bad seed, contaminating everyone else. I stared at Greg’s dead face, as if it would give me the answers I needed, as the tide in my blood rose higher.

“What do you want?” I barely ground that out. “What will it take for you to leave me the fuck alone? I did what you wanted. I ran out of town, rather than stay and fight you and Anna for the guys. I moved on month after month, never staying in the one place for long, just to try and avoid them.” I shifted then, moving towards the bars. “You won.”

“But just like before, you only did what was right for a while.” Her eyes narrowed and her grip on Anna tightened to the point that my sister started to squeak. “You had to disobey, over and over—”

“Mum?” Anna’s voice made clear she was in pain. “Mummy, please—”

But whatever else she had to say, it was cut off by the roar of several cars and the sounds of doors slamming.

“Stay here,” Mum commanded Anna, pushing her to one side. “I’ll sort this out.”

Anna shrank back against the wall as Mum swept out of the room, then we heard the sound of the front door slamming, the muffled sound of her voices and then those of my mates making my whole body quiver with tension. But what I hadn’t expected was for Anna to slide over to my cage and start working on the lock.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, shrinking back.

“Mum’s bug fucking nuts,” she said, gritting her teeth when the lock refused to budge, then looking around. “Like it made sense beforehand. You were always such a bitch, so Mum had to discipline you.” My teeth sank into my bottom lip as I bit back my response to that. “But this?” Anna paused then, looking at Greg’s body, her brows knotting. “He was my dad…” My fingers wrapped around the bars closest to her. “I didn’t even know it. I thought we had the same dad, but…”

Her head whipped around, her eyes meeting mine.

“…They’re my brothers.”

I nodded slowly, not sure how it’d taken her this long to put two and two together, but encouraging her to make that leap. “She wants me mated to my brothers…?”

“It’s not about you,” I said with a sigh. “This is her getting what she wants. If she could’ve seen herself mating the three of them, I’m sure she would’ve, but that was a step too far for her. So she focussed on you, despite what you might want.” We both flinched as we heard a crash outside. “If you help me out of here, you can work out what that is, without her interference.”

Time seemed to come to a standstill as I watched her mind tick over. I could see that she was weighing it up, trying to work out what she would get out of the situation, but when she met my eyes, I somehow knew she’d decided I was her ally now.

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