Page 303 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

"I intervened," Valek says flatly. "Killed him."

A car passes on the road outside, headlights sweeping across the window and Valek's blank face before vanishing.

I reach across the table and rest my hand beside his.

His eyes flick to it, then meet mine again.

"I told you I'm a killer. Ivan wasn't the last."

He sets the spoon down carefully, right in the center of his napkin.

"There were three men on staff at the orphanage," Valek says. "Betas. They ran the dormitories."

His eyes don't leave mine, but something behind them has gone very far away.

"They had access to everything. Keys. Schedules. Which children slept where." His voice is level and detached, as if he's reading a police report about someone else, and his eyes are a dead gray. "They took advantage of that."

My hand is still resting beside his on the table.

He doesn't take it.

His thumb travels slowly across the inside of his opposite wrist, over the series of round cigarette burns there. I don't think he even realizes he's doing it.

But I see it.

And I understand, with a sickening clarity, that he's not just telling me what happened to the other children in that place.

The hot chocolate in my stomach settles more like mud and my vision blurs, but I blink hard and keep my eyes on him because he deserves it.

He breathes out through his nose.

"Ilya caught one dragging Cosima into a closet," Valek continues, flexing his jaw. "He went on a rampage. Beat him to death with his bare hands. The staff couldn't stop him."

The diner seems quieter than it was a minute ago. Suffocatingly quiet. It feels like I'm in a wind tunnel.

"Everyone was terrified of Ilya after that. More than before, anyway." Valek rolls his shoulders and folds his hands on the table. "And while the facility was in chaos dealing with the aftermath of a beta's brains splattered on the wall, I took care of the other two."

"How?" I ask.

"Rat poison." His lips thin. "In their drinks. It wasn't difficult. Nobody watches the kitchen during a lockdown. I sat in the dining hall and watched them drink it."

The cherry stem I didn't realize I'd chewed up sits in a tiny puddle of red syrup on my napkin. I stare at it, processing.

"Everyone assumed it was Ilya, of course," Valek says with a humorless exhale. He takes a sip of his tea and grimaces with regret, setting the mug back down. "The rampaging feral who'd already killed one of the staff. Sneaking poison into drinks wasn't exactly his methodology, of course, but nobody cared about methodology. They needed someone to blame, and Ilya was already the monster."

"What happened to him?" I murmur. "And Cosima?"

Valek shrugs, but there's nothing indifferent about the gesture. "I don't know. He wasn't arrested. But the facility was shut down. We were all scattered." He picks up my gnawed cherry stem and twirls it around in his fingers. "Nothing good happened to either of them. I'm sure of that."

The sleeping college kid in the window booth shifts in his sleep, his headphones sliding off completely and hitting the table with a thunk. The trucker at the counter signals for a refill, making a smarmy joke at the server, and she fakes a laugh as she pours it.

Life goes on around us like it always does, indifferent and ordinary, while the alpha across from me recounts killing three times before he was old enough to shave.

"I need you to understand something," Valek says.

I meet his eyes.

"I don't believe what I did was wrong."