Page 11 of Scapegoat

This is why I was allowed to keep it. My phone brought all of the boys to the yard, and in the end, that was more important than punishing me. But as I stared at the screen, seeing notification after notification pop up, I wondered. I tended to keep my mother’s abuse to myself. I wasn’t even sure why, except I always had, and to go against that felt wrong somehow. More wrong than her laying into me. I blinked as I saw that the questions and expressions of support ceased and then a request for a video call came through.

If I accepted it, the boys would see and… I didn’t think much further than that, tapping my finger on the screen.

“Kai…”

The boys were all crowded around one phone, staring at the screen. Jay’s, it looked like, his eyes hardening first.

“What the fuck did she do?”

“Nothing—” I began to reply.

“Don’t say it’s nothing.” Atlas shoved forward, his eyes bright, bright silver on the screen. “Don’t.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I replied tightly. “I was going to say nothing she hasn’t done before.”

“She…” All of the Campbell brothers were golden boys, but Xavier seemed like the most golden, seeing the best in people and not accepting the worst. I watched disbelief, fear, concern, then anger flash across his face but I just felt so damn tired. I couldn’t come with them on this emotional rollercoaster, not when my journey was done. “Your mother fucking hits you?”

“Of course, she does,” Jayden spat. “I told you. I fucking told you.” His eyes jerked back to me. “We’re coming for you. We’ll grab one of the dads’ cars and be around—”

“No.”

I might not have been able to use the voice of command on my mum, but I could with them. That didn’t make sense, because the boys’ dominance, that feeling of power that throbbed inside them, it was far stronger in them than it was in Mum. The difference was that I wasn’t scared of them. My attention was pulled back to downstairs, because I could hear Mum’s voice getting louder and louder in volume, Dad shouting back, things smashing, crashing. Then the sound of Anna running upstairs, her footsteps stopping outside our bedroom door.

She shoved the door open, shooting me a dark look before collapsing down on her bed.

“This is your fault,” she said, stabbing a finger towards the hallway, the sounds of our parents fighting getting louder. “It’s always your fault. You…” Her gaze narrowed, her whole body coming to attention when she saw the phone. “Is that the Campbell boys?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer her before she came rushing over to my bed, reaching to pluck the phone from my grip.

“Piss off!” I hissed at her.

She jerked her hand back, eyes narrowing as she stared down at me.

“You only get to keep that phone because of me. You only get to talk to them because of me.” She launched herself at me then, my reflexes delayed by post-fight soreness. Her eyes lit up when she got it out of my hand, then her whole body stilled when she realised she’d interrupted a video call.

“We’ve got nothing for you, squirt,” Jayden told her and I watched her go pale as a result. “We’ve told you that before. I know your mum has ideas, but we—”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence, because my sister’s face transformed into a vicious snarl, right before she pegged the phone at the wall.

The screen cracked, right before it went black.

“What the…?” I got to my feet, approaching it slowly, picking up the broken phone and staring at it, then holding it out to her. “What the hell did you do?”

“They’re my mates.” Anna stood as tall as she could, the small tremble in her body betraying her true feelings as she repeated the same thing Mum had told her over and over. “In a week they’ll win the dominance fight with the alphas and then I’ll become their omega. Mum said I won’t have to go to school anymore, that I’ll move into the alphas’ residence and learn how to be a good mate from the alphas. And you…” She sneered at me then, all that golden beauty souring into something ugly right as I just stared at her. “And you’ll be made to work as a maid in my house.”

“Fuck off,” I said, flopping back on my bed. Mum had said the same things too many times before. Anna’s words couldn’t hurt me. Right. So why did I turn around, roll into a tight ball and pull the covers over my head as I tried to go to sleep?

It took some time, the sound of my heartbeat too fast and too hard in my ears. But at some point, the quiet, the stillness, the exhaustion from everything that had happened hit me and I dropped off to sleep.

Chapter 8

“Get up.”

I’d barely heard the order, my eyes struggling to open, the dream I’d just been having still playing in my brain, when a hand reached in under the covers, grabbed me around the upper arm and dragged me out of bed. Mum stood over me, eyes shining, teeth bared, ready to go for round two when I was struggling to remember round one.

“You need to cook breakfast for everyone, now. Your father has to get off to work and your sister is going around to a friend’s place.”

Leaving no witnesses to whatever she had planned for me. Nice. I blinked, my brain coming online with an almost audible snap, as I stared at her.

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