“No!” Sophie screams. “Please, no! I’ll do anything!”
The head alpha smiles at her. “You already do everything I ask, little dove. But your sister needs to learn her place.”
He turns back to me.
“It’s time for your punishment.” He snaps his fingers, and the pack’s beta medic approaches with something in his hands. “I’m a fair alpha, so I’ll give you a choice. Since you’re so eager tospread your whore legs, perhaps we should put that enthusiasm to good use. Starting with me. Then whoever else wants a turn.”
Stuart’s grin widens. The crowd goes quiet.
“Or,” the head alpha continues. He holds up a needle, and the beta beside him lifts thin strands of dark wire. “We ensure it never happens again.”
“Wolfsbane wire,” the beta medic explains. “Woven with the toxin. It won’t dissolve when you shift, and it’ll hurt every day until a medic professionally removes it.”
Some gasp. Others look away. Not one of them steps forward.
“Your choice, little bitch,” the head alpha says, his breath hot on my face. “Be the pack whore, or we’ll sew you shut until I decide you’re worthy of being opened.”
Sophie lunges forward, but two betas catch her. “Please!” she screams. “She’s just a child!”
The head alpha doesn’t look at her. His eyes stay on mine.
“Choose.”
I look at Sophie. Tears streaming down her face.
“The wire,” I say.
“What was that?” He cups his ear, mocking.
I lift my chin and meet his eyes. “I choose the wire.”
His face darkens. He wasn’t expecting that. Nobody in their right mind would choose the wires.
“So be it,” he snarls. “Hold her down.”
They force me onto my back on the stone floor. The cold of it shocks through my spine. I fight, thrashing and screaming, but there are too many hands pinning my wrists, my ankles, pressing my hips flat against the ground. Someone’s knee is on my chest. I can’t breathe.
They spread my legs and hold them apart. The entire pack is watching. Every person I have ever known is here, and when the head alpha notices some of them are deliberately looking away, he commands them to watch.
“Stop! Please!” Sophie’s voice is ragged, shredded. “Take me instead! Please!”
Alpha Mark ignores her. He puts on gloves, takes the first wire from the beta’s hands, and threads it through the needle. His movements are slow. Deliberate. He wants me to see every step.
“You’ll regret your choice, omega.”
The first prick of the needle pierces the most sensitive skin on my body. I scream. Not a word, not a curse. Just a sound ripped from somewhere, animal and deep, a sound I didn’t know I could make. White-hot pain tears through me, and my body arches off the floor so hard the guard on my chest has to press down with his full weight.
“Open your eyes,” the head alpha commands. “I want you to watch.”
The alpha command washes over me, and my eyelids snap open. I see the needle. I see his hands. I see my own blood on the wire.
“This is what happens when omegas forget their place,” he announces to the crowd as he pushes the needle through again. “This is what happens when I am not obeyed.”
I bite through my lip to keep the next scream inside. Blood fills my mouth, hot and copper, and I swallow it because screaming is what he wants. Each stitch is a separate agony, a fresh pierce followed by the slow, burning drag of wolfsbane through raw flesh. My body tries to shift, to heal, but the alpha commands me to stop. My wolf howls inside me, trapped, unable to do anything but feel what I feel.
Seven stitches. I count them because counting is the only thing keeping me from losing my mind.
Through tears, I see Sophie on her knees, sobbing. Her hands are reaching for me even though the guards won’t let her move. Our eyes meet across the hall.