true nature

Soren’s POV

"How pathetic." Veyron sat next to me even though I had shifted away. "One would think you're not a soldier, the way you're acting like a pussy."

I ground my jaw and held back my retort. His eyes had that flat, restless look they got right before he found a reason to hurt something. He wasn't here to listen. He was here to bleed.

He chuckled, low and bitter. "Not you being the first to actually make me feel the thrill of expecting a pregnancy, and you're a recessive."

I shifted back again as he leaned closer, until my spine hit the wall and there was nowhere left to run to. I braced for him to say something worse. Instead he just looked at me, those eyes painful and full of hate, and for one long second I thought he meant to finish what he'd started the last time. Then he stood and walked out, and I let the breath go that I hadn't realized I was holding.

The doctor came back not long after. He wrote me a new set of prescriptions, then hesitated with the pen still in his hand. "Your body rejected the knot. I didn't tell the alpha this, because he could..." He stopped himself. He didn't need to finish it. I already knew what Veyron would do with that information.

"Try to accept him," he said instead. "Maybe you stand a chance. Maybe we get a miracle."

His advice met deaf ears. I would never accept Veyron, not with a gun to my head. My own body was already fighting him harder than I was, rejecting him after what he'd done to me.

I didn't see him or hear from him for the next week. It was the longest week of my life, and it started the moment the guards walked me into the west wing, the part of the mansion I'd only ever heard whispered about.

It was grander than I expected. Gold trim, white marble, mirrors on every wall. The sweet, flowery scent of dominant omega hung so thick in the air I could taste it. This was where Veyron kept the rest of his collection, bred and displayed like livestock with good bloodlines.

Each of them had their own room. At first, being led down the hall, I thought they all looked the same, soft and pretty and interchangeable. It took less than a day to learn how wrong that was. There was a hierarchy here, and the favorites, the ones who'd proven the most fertile, sat at the top of it. I felt their hatred before a single one of them spoke to me.

I stayed in my room for two days. Pink, fluffy, suffocating, exactly the kind of room built for someone they wanted to break slowly. Two days with no food, no water. On the third day, hunger won, and I stepped out, straight into the sight of an omega intercepting the maid who'd finally come with my tray. He took it from her hands and told her he'd bring it to me himself.

I was standing right there. The maid didn't even glance at me. She bowed to him and left.

He was smaller than me, leaner, softer in every visible way, dressed like something that couldn't hurt a fly. It was the eyes that gave him away. He walked straight up to me, smiling ear to ear. "Are you hungry, almighty omega capo?"

"Too bad." He let the tray fall. It hit the floor and scattered. "Eat off the ground like the dog you are, traitor."

My fingers curled at my sides. I made myself breathe, made myself kneel, and reached for the water, which was all I actually needed. As I rose, something warm and wet hit my cheek. He'd spat in my face, and he was still smiling when he did it.

We had an audience by then. I clocked one thing in the crowd without meaning to: the omega who looked the most like me was the only one nobody had gathered around.

None of them expected me to do anything. That was their mistake. In one motion, I slammed my forehead into his, and he dropped, blood already running from his nose before he hit the floor unconscious.

The crowd gasped as one. Except for him. Kin. He just started laughing, and a second later the rest of them laughed with him too.

Then he stepped forward and did exactly what the one now bleeding on the floor had done.

Something in me said hold back. It wasn't fast enough to stop my fist from finding his face.

He went down laughing. That was when I understood what the joke was.

The guards were already moving before he hit his knees.

"Get off me." I fought them as they dragged me into the courtyard and stripped my back bare in front of everyone.

The guard raised the whip. It cracked through the air.

I was tied bare to the post in the middle of the courtyard.

Everyone watched.

They jeered, spat insults, called me every name they could think of, yet no one bothered to tell me what I'd done wrong.

The lashes went on until time lost all meaning. It could've been three hours. It could've been forever.

When they finally stopped, my back was a ruined, bleeding mess. Every breath burned. Every heartbeat sent fresh pain tearing through my skin.

"Kneel before your senior and apologize."

The guards forced me onto my knees in front of Kin.

The bastard looked smug, a bag of ice pressed against his swollen cheek where I'd hit him.

"You still think you're a leader, don't you?" he sneered. "Still think you're better than us."

He laughed.

"But guess what, you recessive piece of trash."

He spat the word recessive like it was the filthiest insult in the world.

"Here, you're nothing but a pathetic breeder. Stripped of your title. Hated by the entire pack."

The guards shoved me forward until my forehead hit the ground, pinning me there while Kin planted the heel of his Chelsea boot against my face.

"The alpha spared your life," he said, grinding the sole harder into my cheek, "but that doesn't make you invincible."