Thirty Eight

GIVE ME MY BODY BACK, I screamed, and every wall I'd been carefully maintaining inside my head came down completely. I don't care about being wise, I don't care about any of it—GIVE IT BACK YOU—

I pushed harder than before. Harder than I'd pushed for anything—with the last of whatever I had left that wasn't venom and pain and exhaustion—with the rage and the grief and twenty-two years of being told I was nothing—I pushed.

And yes, I got through.

I reached for my own voice and tried to form words, but what came out wasn't mine entirely.

It was all five of them layered underneath me, speaking through the same throat simultaneously, strange and overlapping and nothing like any voice I had ever heard from myself before.

"What. Are. We."

The whole room went completely still, and just as I had forcefully taken over my body, that was when Marcus—who had been dying from loss of breath—suddenly exhaled and inhaled a large amount of air into his lungs.

He was panting really hard, his whole body drenched in sweat. His entire face and eyes were swallowed up by fear.

"You're okay, breathe, breathe, relax—it's over," Nathan said, calming the extremely terrified huge guy. The girl in front of him was scary and crazy. Before he could even make a move, just because he had talked at the wrong time, he had almost died.

The worst part of it all was that she didn't even make a move. She just spoke, and somehow her voice was a command he couldn't disobey, even when he was dying.

What else could be more terrifying than that?

Aiden stared at Marcus and saw that he was okay now, although completely shaken. Then his eyes landed back on Nathan.

"Escort him out. It's not safe for him anymore. And Marcus—make sure you pass on my order: no one should come close to this room. The consequences will be severe. Lastly, not a word about what happened here."

"Yes, Alpha."

Marcus nodded and bowed slightly as he stood up and ran as fast as he could before he got himself killed again.

After Aiden was done speaking, his eyes moved back toward me.

I had regained control of my body, but I was still finding it hard to regain my balance and vision. The pain hit me as hard as ever, and I almost lost my footing. I ran toward the couch to sit down, but I had barely taken a step when I moved at super speed and crashed down on the chair.

"Arrggh fuck, damn it, Zara!"

Aiden's head turned, following where I had just super-sped to. Concern arrived first, and then underneath it, something else pushing through.

Fascination filled his eyes and his entire face as he walked toward me.

"You," he said slowly, quietly, like a man arriving at the end of a very long calculation, "are the most interesting thing I have ever seen. I wasn't wrong about you."

Nathan had stopped moving entirely. He stood with his hands at his sides and his eyes fixed on my face, and he wasn't doing the thing he always did—calculating, assessing, looking for the angle. He was just looking.

He was looking in a way like he was battling disbelief and amusement. It was like he was witnessing something he'd been told about his entire life and genuinely never expected to actually see standing in front of him.

His mouth opened once. Closed. It opened again. He wanted to speak so badly, yet he was speechless.

Zara finally turned her attention to me.

I didn't know you were quite this bold and willing to die. You know, of all the hosts I've been with, you're the most miserable, but you still look promising, she said inside me.

"I'd rather die myself than die with you in control of my body. I can't believe you—you only just came out and you almost killed that guy!"

"Well, he should have shut the hell up. And what do you care? He's useless, and it's not as if he's close to you."