So one day, a year after perfuming—after being denied the injection—I’d stared into the mirror to see my eyes hadn’t turned gold at all.
They’d gone crimson.
After that, a nightmare had followed. One in which I desperately dreamed of the experiments. Of anything that would mark me one of the normal gold packs—like Two, or Three, or the others.
Anyexperiments would have been better.
I’d spent forever in a dim room, going insane.
Forgotten.
Unwanted, even for the world's most cruel experiments.
I don’t know how much time had passed before they threw me down here like forgotten trash.
I was no one.
I had nothing.
But I wasn’t ready to die, and I wasn’t ready to be some pack’s slave.
Cornered to the back of the boiler room, something had happened. With twelve alphas facing me down—and a dark bond in my future… I’d lost it.
Even as the memory manifested, that part became blurry…Crimson splatter. Screams echoing…I lay panting, shivering, among a pack of bodies… Blood soaked my clothing, seeping across the floor.
I remember pushing back, breath catching in fear…
Then the door opened.
“Edward…” The voice trailed off. It was the first time I’d ever heard Holden.
I knew little of this place, but what I knew was that I was looking at the ally of the pack I’d killed.
Holden stared at me, drenched in blood amongst unidentifiable bodies.
My breathing was ragged and wounds upon my body ached, but if they were scratches, knife wounds, or gunshots… I didn’t know.
“What happened here?” he asked. I could see him calculating. “A… pack brawl?”
I… didn’t know. My eyes scanned the bodies strewn across the floor, my own memories flickering in and out. I’d been here, but I didn’t know…
How could I not know?
Was this two packs?
I thought it was just one.
But then… how had they died? And so horribly?
I was ripped from my delirious thoughts as I heard his footsteps cross the room, squelching into the blood as he stepped over bodies.
They were ripped to pieces…
How…?
But then I was being dragged up by my neck, and I was looking into the cruel eyes of another cruel alpha.
“Looks like we’re in luck,” Holden murmured. “Next in line, shall we say? We get an omega—and we aren’t even dwellers yet.”