Anarchy Found (18 page)

He kisses me on the mouth.

Hard and soft at the same time. His hands wrap around my face, pulling me towards him. And then he withdraws and I am so stunned, I cannot move.

“I saved you, Molly,” he whispers into my mouth, trying to kiss me and talk at the same time, grabbing my face like he can’t bear to let me go. “I saved you even though you’ll kill me if you ever have the chance.”

“Stop,” I say, pushing him away, tears streaming down my face. “Stop!” I scream it this time. I kick my feet up and even though I’m trained to take down men twice my size, I am powerless as he looms over me.

“You can’t make me stop, Molly. But don’t worry. I can’t really hurt you. It’s how they made us.”

“No,” I say. “No. Everything you’re saying right now is a lie. I want you to get off me. I want you to let me go. I want to go home, Lincoln. I want to go home—”

Chapter Twenty-Two - Lincoln

Chapter Twenty-Two

Alpha #3

Prodigy School

Fifteen years ago

“Tell me what to do, Alpha.”

The little girl looks at me with her wide hazel eyes and swallows down her fear. She is one of only a handful of people I should be afraid of. But I love her more than anything. She is the only good thing in my life. Even in this place filled with hate, and greed, and cruelty she makes me feel love.

If I were following orders she’d be dead right now. Lying in her bed in a pool of her own blood. The other Alphas have already finished. They are waiting for me so we can escape. But the other Alphas don’t have little girls as their Omega. The other Alphas don’t feel the way I do.

“You have to run, Omega.” I wish she had a name. I wish so much I could give her a real name. But it’s too late now. She’s leaving my life—dead or alive. One way or another, the time for naming is over.

“Don’t leave me, Alpha,” she pleads in that little-girl voice that makes me love her even more. “Don’t leave me here.” She whispers the last part, a tear trickling down her cheek. Her face is so pale in the bright moonlight shining through her bedroom window.

“I have to. But listen,” I say, pulling her up, so she’s sitting on the side of her bed. “Listen to me, OK?” She nods as I shove her boots on her feet and thrust a coat in her hands. “You have to run. And you have to do it alone.”

“No,” she whimpers as quietly as she can. She’s still afraid of being heard at night. She doesn’t realize we’ve already killed everyone but her.

There’s a loud bang from the floor below, and we both go still as the dead and look each other in the eyes.

The seriousness of the situation is written all over my face. She understands now.

I take her hand and pull her up so she’s standing, then hold her coat open. She slips her arms in automatically and pulls it tight around her chest.

“Run,” I say, leading her over to the window and lifting the sash up. It’s cold, windy, and it’s snowing. And if the other Alphas see her footprints, they will hunt her like a rabbit. But the wind is strong enough to cover up her tracks and I think she can get away. “You go that way,” I say, pointing into the woods. The opposite direction to where I know we will be going. “You go that way, Omega, and you never look back. You run until you find someone. And you never, ever tell them about this place. About me or the other Alphas. Or what we did here.”

She starts to cry again. And what did I expect? She’s eight years old.

“You can never talk about this place again or they will kill you.”

I wait for her to acknowledge my order. She should be the one ordering me, but she’s always looked to me for guidance. The administration would’ve figured it out soon. They’d have figured out she’d never be able to control me and had her eliminated.

That’s why I agreed to escape tonight. To save her.

She finally nods, giving in, or giving up, or both. So I lift her up until she can swing her legs over the side of the windowsill, and then I push her and she plops down into a snowdrift.

She looks up at me one more time, the tears on her cheeks already freezing. And she says, “I’ll find you, Alpha. I will. One day I’ll find you.”

Then she turns and instincts kick in. She runs and she never looks back.

I take a deep breath because her words mean more than she knows. They are the words of my killer. My death. My demise. Because that little girl is the only person left in the world who can hurt me.

And I just let her go.

Chapter Twenty-Three - Molly

I do as I’m told. I start running and I never look back. And every time my feet crunch into the deep snow, my long flannel nightgown gets pushed further up my legs. It gets wetter and wetter. And so heavy I feel like I’m dragging a dead weight.

I pump my arms, pleading with my legs to take me under the cover of the trees before someone from school sees me outlined against the stark whiteness of the valley.

I expect to be shot in the back with every passing moment. I expect a yell, telling me to, “Get your ass back here,” and then the sharp crack of a rifle and the scream of a bullet into my spine.

But I gather up all my strength and leap from the deep snow into the scant dusting under the pines. I slip, skid, and fall down on my knees.

The air is rushing in and out of my mouth in long heaves. My chest is burning, my throat is burning. I feel like I might die right here and now. Of fear, or exhaustion, or sadness.

I grab fistfuls of snow because there is nothing else to cling to, and the burning from exposure winds its way from the tips of my fingers to my palms. In a few minutes it will pass my wrists and run up my arms.

I shove my hands into my coat pockets, desperately wishing I had Alpha’s gloves and the heat of his hands to keep me warm.

But I don’t get either of those things from my pocket. My fingertips bump into a slender tube of plastic. A chill of fear runs through me, because I know what this is. Every time Alpha had to use it, he showed it to me first. He said, “I’m not the one hurting you, Omega. This”—he’d hold the syringe up—“this is what hurts you. Not me. They make me do this, Omega. I have to do it. But what happens after?” His face was always calm and his words were always soft. “Tell me,” he’d say.

And I’d say, “You take care of me.”

Every time I said those words he’d smile and say, “That’s right. I have to give you the drug, but I always take care of you after. I will never leave you, Omega. You’re mine and I’m yours. And we take care of each other.”

But he made me leave him, and that’s the same thing as leaving me.

I’d always nod. Because as soon as I was better, after he’d cared for me for days, and sometimes weeks, as I pushed the drug through my blood, I’d have to hurt him too. And they never let me take care of him. They only made me watch him writhe in pain, alone, on the other side of a glass window that he couldn’t see through.

The syringe in my pocket comes with a note. It’s wet from the snow and a little bit smeared. But I rub my wet hands on the inside of my coat, smooth out the piece of paper, and the words form in my head. I hear them in his voice.

My Omega
, it says.
This is the last time, I promise. It’s not what you think. It’s a new start and a way to forget the past.

I bend my head until my chin bumps up against my coat collar, and I cry.

My Alpha.

I cry for him. I cry because of him. I cry for the times he hurt me and I cry for the times he didn’t. I cry because I’m an Omega and the only reason I exist is to hurt him back. I cry because if I do what my Alpha says, if I leave this place and use that drug, I will never be his Omega again.

I will stop. Everything will stop. And even though each time he drugged me in school I begged God to make the pain go away, I never want it to stop.

Chapter Twenty-Four - Molly

I wake up surrounded by darkness, with his name on my tongue. Not Lincoln.
Alpha
.

“Shhh,” he whispers into my neck. His hush is a wave of warmth that floats across my skin and then pools in my belly. His arms are wrapped tightly around me and we are lying on a bed, somewhere in the dark.

“Where did you go?” he asks.

“Back to that day in the snow.”

“No. Where did you go when you left me?”

“I didn’t leave you. You made me go.”

“It was let you go or kill you dead, Molly.”

“Omega,” I say, a sob coming out with my name. “And I died anyway.”

I see it in my head. I feel the cold freezing my body from the tips of my toes on up. It burned so bad. And maybe I wasn’t old enough to understand what frostbite was, but I knew if I did not get somewhere warm soon, I would fall down and stop existing.

“I found a town.” It wasn’t really a town, but the modern-day version of gypsies. “Of circus people. They had a collection of trailers and one was unlocked. It had all these dirty blankets. Thick, quilted cotton blankets. And they smelled like engine oil and transmission fluid. But once I stacked half a dozen over top of me, they were warm.”

“Did anyone see you use it?”

He doesn’t say what he’s talking about, but I know. “No. I was all alone when I pricked the needle into my neck, the same way you pricked me dozens of times before. And when I woke up, I was nobody.”

Chapter Twenty-Five - Lincoln

I have never let myself imagine this moment. I have never pretended that there was anything in my future but revenge and death. Warm summer days filled with planning. Cold winter nights filled with stalking. No matter what day it was, no matter what time it was, no matter how many times I wished things could be different, I have never let myself imagine this moment.