Brittany’s P. O. V

My head throbbed.

The vile taste of bile and partially digested food filled my mouth and a matching smell assaulted my nose. The whole combo made my face twist in pain and disgust. I tried to raise a hand to my head but found I couldn’t move it from where it was behind me.

“Oh, you’re up.”

My eyes snapped open.

It didn’t take long for my sight to adjust to the dim room. The bitch Alpha was just a few feet away from me, leaning on a table with tools and knives on it. Besides the table, the room was bare, just an expanse of concrete.

“Welcome back to the land of the living. Literally. We had to keep you from choking on your vomit.” She smiled, “Couldn’t let that be what kills you, after all.”

I tried to stand and the sound of chains rattling made me look down. I was chained to a metal chair that was bolted to the ground. My shackles were sturdy, barely giving me an inch of leeway to move my arms that were bound behind me, no matter how hard I strained against them.

I looked back at her with a fire in my eyes, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Let me go!”

She tsked, flipping her brown hair over her shoulder as she shook her head.

Wait, brown?

Her hair had been black at the Mate Ball. Her looks were so obnoxiously obvious that I definitely wouldn’t have missed it if her hair had been a wig.

“Now Brittany, is that any way to speak to an Alpha?”

I laughed, “As if you’re a real Alpha. Once my pack comes for me, you and your play pack are gonna get what’s coming to you. You have no fucking idea what you’re dealing with.”

She cocked her head, “What makes you think they’re coming?”

James was likely in the same situation, but that didn’t matter. It hadn’t just been the two of us that had made the journey here. I’d had the idea to take someone with us that would remain outside the territory, in case we needed to get away quickly or something went wrong. I hadn’t actually expected anything as bad as our captivity to happen, but I thanked La Luna that I’d bothered with the extra precaution.

If more than a day had passed since I’d lost consciousness, then our reserve agent would alert the pack of our situation.

Then they’d fucking know.

“Oh, is it cause of Hannah?” She chuckled like it was a silly notion.

Panic bubbled in my still queasy stomach, but I did my best to keep it off my face. Even without Hannah’s useless ass, I texted daily updates to Beta Howling. In the chance that they got into my phone to text him as me, he’d hopefully be able to tell it wasn’t me.

As if reading my mind, she pulled my phone out of her pocket, “By the way, Callum’s dad says you shouldn’t overdo it with the wolvesbane poison. You need to let us get a bit better before making it worse. Makes it seem more natural, you know?”

My stomach dropped.

“Nice touch trying to frame Timothy for it.” She fingered an empty vial on the table, the same one I’d left in Tim’s room, “Spreading dissent towards the absent Alpha and setting the overlooked Beta up as the saboteur? Smart move, it probably would have worked on a different pack. I guess Kirstin was right about you not being as dumb as I thought.”

Kirstin?

She’d run off a month before the Mate Ball. It had annoyed me cause she hadn’t been a complete dead weight before she left. Kylie had been uncharacteristically chipper and Harry uncharacteristically dull that day, but all I’d cared about was the fact that she’d been the only semi competent person working for me and she’d just disappeared.

So, she was the reason everything was going wrong. All her encouragement and whispering in my ear only for that snake to turn around and stab me in the back. Now I was sure she’d become jealous of me from spending so much time together and couldn’t take it.

“She came to you, didn’t she? She was jealous and probably hates me so she betrayed me by telling you everything, right? Where is she?! I’ll kill her!” I rattled against my chains.

The bitch just rolled her eyes, “Of course, you’d come to that conclusion.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?!”

“Sure, she grew disgusted by you after spending so much time watching what kind of person you are, but Kirstin isn’t the one that hates you here.”

“Then who does?”

“Why, me, of course.”

“What? Why?”

Why would she hate me? We hadn’t interacted at all during the Mate Ball – this was our first time even having a conversation.

Her gaze turned cold, “After everything you did to me, why wouldn’t I?”

What was this bitch on about, “You psycho, I don’t even know you!”

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She placed a hand on her chest, feigning hurt, “Oh Brittany, you’ve forgotten me so soon? Nothing about me seems familiar to you?”

I looked at her again. She had glowing green eyes and brown hair that fell in curls down her back but besides her annoying beauty, the only unique things about her were the tattoo around her wrist and the smaller one on the side of her neck. Her scent was vaguely familiar but didn’t ring any bells.

“Really? Nothing?”

Was this psycho really holding me here for no reason?

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! Let me go, I don’t know you!”

“You think you’re so much better than everyone but you’re not. You’re just a whiny bitch. Simple as that. There’s not much I have to say to you, really. You put me through hell and when I get back, I’ll do the same and then some. You will beg for mercy when I get a hold of you. Good luck - you’re gonna need it…” She recited.

I frowned. Where did I know those words from?

“With hate and vengeance, the former omega.”

My eyes widened.

It couldn’t be; the bitch was dead. She’d run away and been killed by a bear like the weakling she was. She hadn’t even been a real Werewolf in the first place.

I shook my head, “There’s no way…”

“Is this how you welcome your sister back from the dead?”

“Half-sister.” I snapped.

Oh Luna, it was her.

Her grin widened, full of wickedness and promises of pain.

I stifled the fear creeping on me and raised my head. The omega had been weak, barely a Werewolf. Not once had anyone seen her shift. She was probably putting on a front and Tim was the real Alpha, just offering his help to exact her stupid revenge. I probably didn’t even need to wait for the pack to come for me. Once I got out of these chains, I’d deal with her myself.

I sneered, “So just cause you found another pack you think you’re all that? You’re still the weak piece of shit you were back then. No wonder Tim didn’t mind doing all the work, you’re probably not even the real Alpha. Just wait till I get of these chains, you bitch. I’ll teach you a lesson myself, just like old times.”

Smack.

The entire left side of my face exploded with pain. My head had whipped to the side, and the blood pooling in my mouth was drooling out because I couldn’t seem to close it.

“That was from Hailey and Timothy.” She said curtly, “Hailey didn’t appreciate you trying to sleep with her mate and Timothy hated being in the same room as you. Said he had to take another shower after the whole thing. I really hated having to ask them to do that, you know.”

Tears gathered as I blinked against my swimming vision. I’d been looking right at her and hadn’t seen her even move. I dreaded to see the damage her punch had done to my face and the fear I’d been stifling grew unhindered.

This wasn’t the same omega.

Natalia’s P. O. V

She was still reeling from the punch, her blinking rapid and her head lolled to the side.

I’d asked Hailey if she’d wanted to deliver the blow herself, but she’d simply shaken her head.

“I don’t even want to be near her. You can do it for me, and for Timothy. He really hated being so close to her.” She’d told me then they’d gone to spend time together.

“Oh, by the way, did you know that Hailey is also our half-sister? From a completely different woman though, and she has a twin sister but she’s not a Werewolf. And frankly, I don’t like her. She kinda reminds me of you, a slightly tamer version but still.”

“Huh…?” She groaned.

I sighed, “I know, right? Clark really doesn’t know how to be faithful. I guess that’s where you and Harry got it from.”

She groaned again.

I probed her leg with my foot, “Is that really all you can take? You were all talk just a moment ago. Said something about teaching me a lesson just like old times.”

She spat a mouthful of blood on my boot and a tooth bounced off it.

My lips pulled back in a grin.

There she is.

I grabbed a fistful of her hair and jerked her head up, then bent so I could look her dead in the eyes, “Keep fighting, Brittany. I want breaking you to feel worth it.”

“You’re not gonna get away with this.” She wheezed, “Even if it’s not now, they’ll know something’s wrong when the mission takes too long then they’ll come for me.”

“Don’t worry,” I told her, “I plan to take the fight to them before that happens.”

She threw her head forward in an attempt to headbutt me. I moved my face backwards just enough to avoid it and tightened my grip on her hair.

Then I set it on fire.

She didn’t comprehend it at first, so it took a second before the screaming began. She thrashed about, trying to get her head out of my grip as the smell of burning hair and flesh filled the room.

When I let go of her, she was in tears and there was a fist sized burn right at the top of her head where her hair should have been.

The laugh that came out of me almost sounded maniacal “Oh, don’t cry yet, we’re just getting started.”

I ran a hand down her cheek and she recoiled.

“I thought long and hard about what I would do to each of you.” I told her, “On the nights when I couldn’t sleep cause of the nightmares of your abuse, I would wonder how I could pay you back for everything in a fitting way.”

Her eyes were locked on my hands, wide with fear and watching for signs of them bursting into flames again.

“You’ve always been so pretty. Or at least, you thought so anyway.”

I didn’t think her eyes could get any wider, but they did, nearly bulging out of their sockets as she shook her head frantically, “No, no, please! I’m so, so, so sorry for everything I ever did to you! Please, just- No, I’m begging you.”

Werewolves could heal from almost anything, it was just a part of being one. Almost all cuts and bruises faded into oblivion at a relatively quick rate and few things would leave a scar.

Fire was one of those things.

And not slight burns from holding a kettle or something like that. No, you couldn’t scar a Werewolf with fire unless you gave one third degree burns.

I held a finger up, a single flame dancing above it, “I’ve really gotten a handle on my precision but I still need a bit of practice with temperature control. You’ll help me practice, won’t you?”

She shook her head in frenzied terror, already sobbing. Her cries became more desperate as the flame turned from red to white.

I grabbed her chin with my free hand and yanked her face to the side. Taking my time, I wrote the word ‘mercy’ on her left cheek. I traced over the word again and again, revelling in her struggles and screams. When I finished, I took a step back and admired my work as she sobbed uncontrollably.

I’d traced the word so many times that it looked less like a word and more like a patch of burnt skin. The bottom of the ‘m’ had melted through her face, so her teeth were visible. Some parts skin looked charred while others were an angry, bloody mess. Because there was a hole in the side of her mouth, her sobbing resembled the wailing of an animal gurgling its own blood.

And that sound made something in me sing.