Page 39 of Bite

Their movements come nearer and nearer until I’m forced to silently shuffle down the row I’m in, moving further into the darkness. Just when my hand feels the end of the row behind me, I trip over something on the floor, causing a thud that echoes the length of the building.

Everything is deadly quiet when the echo calms, and then the air breaks with the deafening howl of Biters. With no other choice, I run.

Grand Prairie Compound

Days Since Last Attack: 2

The rising sun warms my face in a soft caress as I stalk through the compound looking for her. My dreams last night were monstrous conglomerations of my father’s abuse, the day River found me, bonding Raine, and all of the things I only dare to fantasize about while unconscious. For the first time, my deepest desires included someone other than Raine, and it didn’t scare me. Then it was all taken away by a Biter that freakishly resembled me.

Chased from sleep by the horror, I woke up in the midst of a panic attack. My heart pounded in my ears while my lungs wheezed, desperate to pull air into my paralyzed lungs. I can still feel the salty stickiness of the dried tears that had rolled down my cheeks and into my beard. When I finally came out of it, gasping for air so forcefully that I nearly vomited, there was only one thing on my mind: finding Raine.

I checked the guest cabin where the delegation had been staying, but no one answered the door when I knocked. I sprinted past the dining hall, but her scent wasn’t among the crowd, and she wasn’t at the archives building either. Then I remembered the tiny tether that stretches between Raine and me, grabbed hold of it, and tried to use that connection to feel where she was.

I follow that tether now, the one that feels like soft rosy skin and smells like home, until I come to the hole in the wall slowly being patched by residents. River shouts out orders, organizing everyone, but I stare at the ever-closing gap as my heart breaks into a million pieces, and the tether in my chest stretches thinner and thinner, threatening to snap.

She left. They both left.

River looks over his shoulder and notices me standing here, trying to learn how to keep going without a piece of my soul. “Ferris?” he calls out. “What’s going on? I thought you were going to be organizing supply runs to replenish Doc.”

“They left?” I croak.

River’s eyebrows draw together and I finally notice how awful he looks. Dark purple smudges paint half-moons under his red-rimmed eyes, making me wonder if he’s slept at all since the attack. I think to ask, but as he looks at me, his scent takes on that dominant, angry edge. “Yes, about an hour ago, right at first light.”

I missed my chance. The scent of rotting tea leaves pours from my body in waves of devastated disbelief. My mate, my fucking scent-match, is gone, and now I’m stuck here, staring into eyes the same color as Raine’s but different in every way that counts. I’ll have to see her in him every day for the rest of my life.

“Ferris,” River snaps. “What is going on with you?”

In this moment, I realize that every little thing holding me back from being with Raine no longer matters. River can’t exile us when she’s already in the Wilds, on her way to a new home. He can’t punish me when I’m already halfway gone. I’m free of the burden that is my obligation to River.

“I bonded Raine,” I say, my voice full of shock, like I can’t believe it myself, like I’m only now letting the truth sink into my soul.

River growls, face contorted with anger. “What did you just say?”

“I bonded her the night of the breach. That bite on her neck? It’s mine.”

River advances toward me, his eyes full of vitriol. “You’re fucking lying. Why would you say that?” His scent darkens into bitter cloves, the alcoholic undertone becoming stifling with his dominance pheromones. I release a sardonic chuckle; he’s actually challenging me.

“You know why,” I hiss. “You’ve always known why, and that’s why you wanted her gone! Your own fucking sister, and you sent her away at the first opportunity!” I’m screaming by the end, emotions taking over my body in a flood so strong, I’m nearly swept away. I’m angry at River, I really am, but I’m angry at myself too. No better than him, I sent her away too.

“Not. Here,” he grits out, forcing his pheromones on me, trying to bend me to his will.

“Then where?” I ask, arms spread wide. I’m on a mission to implode my life, it seems, so might as well blow everything to smithereens. “Where would be a good place for me to tell you that Raine is my scent-match?”

Gasps slice the air around us, and River’s body vibrates with barely restrained rage. “Shut up. You’re going to ruin everything for an omega that didn’t even want you. She left!”

“Only because I’ve been bending over backward to make you happy since the moment we met! I denied her for years, River. Destroyed both of us from the inside out because I thought I was doing what was right by keeping you in power, by not rocking the status quo, by hiding and stifling myself, and for what? For you to be so far up your own ass that you can’t even see that the two people closest to you are fucking miserable? Or did you know and just not care?”

River seethes, his scent choking, but for the first time, I do not bend. “Ferris, this is your last warning.” Then he does the one thing he promised he never would and barks at me. “Stand down.”

I break. All the loyalty and friendship I’ve ever had for River dissipates in hot anger and resentment. All the hours of contorting myself into someone I don’t want to be, all the denial, and the hurt that I’ve caused, building to this point. His compulsion bounces off as my pheromones surge, darkening my scent into something nearly unrecognizable. I never flex my dominance on others, not after growing up cowed by the overbearing dominance of my father, and never after the last time I did and got carried away. I’ve spent my whole life trying to never be like him, but right now, I’m ready to take my life back, and River has never experienced my dominance like this.

His green eyes widen, shock and regret shining in their depths, but it’s too late. It was already too late the moment I sank my teeth into Raine’s neck, but I will never be controlled by an alpha again. I’m done.

“I’m leaving,” I rasp. “And I am never coming back.”

“You can’t,” River says. “We’re pack.”

“You don’t know the meaning of pack,” I yell, enraged and hurt. “Neither do I, but I intend to find out with people that actually care about me, even when they had no reason to give me the time of day.”