My Omega, it says. This is the last time, I promise. It’s not what you think. It’s a new start and a way to forget the past.
I bend my head until my chin bumps up against my coat collar, and I cry.
My Alpha.
I cry for him. I cry because of him. I cry for the times he hurt me and I cry for the times he didn’t. I cry because I’m an Omega and the only reason I exist is to hurt him back. I cry because if I do what my Alpha says, if I leave this place and use that drug, I will never be his Omega again.
I will stop. Everything will stop. And even though each time he drugged me in school I begged God to make the pain go away, I never want it to stop.
Chapter Twenty-Four - Molly
I wake up surrounded by darkness, with his name on my tongue. Not Lincoln. Alpha.
“Shhh,” he whispers into my neck. His hush is a wave of warmth that floats across my skin and then pools in my belly. His arms are wrapped tightly around me and we are lying on a bed, somewhere in the dark.
“Where did you go?” he asks.
“Back to that day in the snow.”
“No. Where did you go when you left me?”
“I didn’t leave you. You made me go.”
“It was let you go or kill you dead, Molly.”
“Omega,” I say, a sob coming out with my name. “And I died anyway.”
I see it in my head. I feel the cold freezing my body from the tips of my toes on up. It burned so bad. And maybe I wasn’t old enough to understand what frostbite was, but I knew if I did not get somewhere warm soon, I would fall down and stop existing.
“I found a town.” It wasn’t really a town, but the modern-day version of gypsies. “Of circus people. They had a collection of trailers and one was unlocked. It had all these dirty blankets. Thick, quilted cotton blankets. And they smelled like engine oil and transmission fluid. But once I stacked half a dozen over top of me, they were warm.”
“Did anyone see you use it?”
He doesn’t say what he’s talking about, but I know. “No. I was all alone when I pricked the needle into my neck, the same way you pricked me dozens of times before. And when I woke up, I was nobody.”
Chapter Twenty-Five - Lincoln
I have never let myself imagine this moment. I have never pretended that there was anything in my future but revenge and death. Warm summer days filled with planning. Cold winter nights filled with stalking. No matter what day it was, no matter what time it was, no matter how many times I wished things could be different, I have never let myself imagine this moment.
Molly starts trembling so I squeeze her tighter. She’s crying, but trying hard not to. And if I give in, if I stop being Lincoln for just one second, I might break too. “I missed you the second you turned your back to run.”
“You have no idea how that felt for me. How terrified I was.”
“I don’t know what it was like to be you. But I know what it was like to be me. I know what it felt like to inject you with those drugs at school and watch you go insane. Watch you try to scratch the skin off your body because you were hallucinating. I know what it was like to be the reason you banged your head against a wall until you were bloody. I know what it was like to hold you tight, have you spit in my face, call me evil, call me monster, call me devil. So maybe making a little girl run into the dark woods in the middle of the night wearing a nightgown was a pretty horrific thing to do, but it was a lot better than hurting you for the rest of your life.”
She turns around, reaching for my bare shoulders, gripping them tightly and shaking me as she stares into my eyes. “You’re not listening. You don’t get it. You ripped me in half, Alpha.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?” she challenges. “That’s who you are.”
“That’s not who I am, it’s what I do. And I don’t want to hear it from you, Molly. I can’t even take it.”
She sighs, giving in on that point. “You were mine and I was yours and that’s the only thing I knew to be true back then. And then you threw me out like trash.”
“Thomas was gonna make me kill you, Molly. We had a discussion and this was the only answer. I’m sorry, but you have to believe me, I did my best. I swear, Molly, I did my best.”
She starts breathing hard, her chest rising and falling faster and faster as the seconds tick off. “So you chose them over me.”
“I chose you, Molly. I—”
“Stop calling me that!” She screams it and her words echo off the ceiling of my bedroom cave. “Molly is made up! Molly is the name they gave me when I was eight. Molly is that girl who grew up with them. I’m Omega.” She stares daggers into me. “I’m your Omega.”
The rage and pain inside her make me want to close my eyes and beg God for help. Help me make her understand.
“I’m…”