Page 20 of Stolen By the Alpha Hunter
And I know for a fact that I’m never leaving.
Even if Iwas born here, the world I wake up in isn’t home.
There’s no hot breakfast waiting at the community center.
No laughter and soft voices.
No omega bathhouse where we’re safe and isolated.
No kind words, no tea with Charlotte, no visiting the clinic with Maggie for her checkup…
This place is cold, bare, broken.
I lie still on the cot, my arms aching, my whole body shaking. I’m not cut out for this. I’m not tough, I’m not strong, I’m not brave.
I was picking flowers in a field in Texas and now I’m here. Alone…afraid.
I sit up at the sound of someone coming up the metal stairs, my eyes trained on the door. There’s nowhere to run and hide even if I wanted to, sending my prey instincts into overdrive. I should be stronger than this, I should be hardened to it all?—
The door swings open and my father and brother appear at the door, Ephraim lurking behind Gideon like his little lackey.
Just like it always was before I left.
“Good,” Gideon says. “You’re awake.”
“What do you want?” I ask, my voice so weak I can barely hear it myself.
“To make sure you’re fed, clothed, cared for…” Gideon sneers. “It’s my duty as a father, after all.”
I don’t know how to respond. I’m too scared to speak, and I can’t tell him he’s a liar even though he is. I don’t have a voice here—not on the Rig.
“Please let me go,” I ask.
“Not just yet, Esther,” he says. “Ephraim—bring her here.”
Ephraim barges past Gideon and grabs me by the arm, hauling me to my feet. I’m filthy and still trembling, my body shaking so badly that I almost fall down when Ephraim grabs me. His freckled face glares down at me, and it makes it all the worse how much he looks like me.
I hate being here. I hate these people. I hate them, I hate them…
“Get her downstairs,” Gideon says. “We need to get her ready.”
“Ready for what?” I ask as I stumble past my father.
He doesn’t say anything. He just watches and laughs.
Ephraim practically carries me down the stairs, back toward the sitting room where I saw my father’s mates last night. The fire still crackles in the hearth, the heat from the flames making my skin itch as we walk past it. There’s another room off to the side here—an opulent bathroom that reminds me of the bathing pools at home in the Austin den.
Ephraim tosses me inside.
“Clean her,” he says. “Bathe her. Get her ready.”
A meek voice comes from my right, a woman I didn’t even see standing in the corner. She’s small with short dark hair, her pale blue eyes darting around like she’s afraid someone might leap out of the shadows. “Yes, my lord.”
What…? He never did this before I left.
Gideon never made his mates call his sons stuff like this.
What have I done?
