Page 1 of Ruin Me Knot
Chapter One
Leah
Hardwick’s fist knots in my hair, yanking me off balance as she drags me from the violence that explodes around me and into the corridor they used to bring me here. Her nails bite into my arm, digging deep enough to leave crescent-shaped welts. Keeping me hidden from the world, of course.
Can’t have the honored Senator Evelyn Hardwick’s name linked to these kinds of crimes.
This type of depravity.
The hallway is a faceless stretch of worn carpet and high narrow windows letting in splodges of golden light from the spotlights outside.The light both hides and teases depending on which side of corruption you’re on. The air is cold. Filled with chemicals and rot. Fear and pain.
Just like the place Hardwick kept me before I was brought here.
Home, sweet home.
What I wouldn’t give to take a breath of fresh air. To look across an open field of fresh grass and wildflowers, a wide blue sky and gentle sun. To not be locked into someone else’s space. Or be ordered to do someone else’s whims. After all this time, those experiences are distant and unreal. Echoes from a dream rather than memory.
Doors line the walls, some open, some closed. The quick glimpses I catch color in this horror story with shades of blood. Metal cots bolted to the floor display stained mattresses and twisted sheets. Chains snake from the bedposts to open shackles scattered on the floor.
My head throbs from where my jailor hauls me by the hair, but I twist as much as I dare, searching for the others left behind in the melee. Hardwick even left her pack Alphas Kylie and Sean behind. Not that I give a shit about them; they can rot in the seven layers of hells for all I care. A furious roar thunders through the soundproofing. An Alpha, by the sound of it, powerful and enraged enough to rip them apart limb from limb. I hope he does.
Skylar though. My heart bleeds for their Omega left behind in a room full of Alphas I don’t recognize. I can only hope that she escapes. That Kylie and Sean don’t bring her back with them. I hold nothing against her, even though Hardwick forced her to help experiment on me. She’s seen me broken more times than I've said my name. Hardwick barked at her not to speak to me when they locked me down on the gurney, but her gentle touches told me everything I needed to know. Senator Evelyn Hardwick was as much a sick bitch to her Omega as she was to me.
We left Aubrey back there, too. I hope the commissioner suffers the same fate as Kylie and Sean for everything he’s done to that poor male, and the many other vulnerable Omegas he’s profited from. I must believe in some sort of retribution. A higher force that judges good and evil. It’s the only thing I can do.
Hardwick yanks me and my bare feet scuff and slip. "Move faster, you little whore."
I would if I could, but years of confinement, torture and twisted experimentation in a three-by-three cell didn’t come with a fitness plan.
As for the whore part? So far, my cell hasn’t magicked up any dick for me to sit on. Not even when I screamed for it. She knows as well as I do that none of the agonizing heats she forces on me have been ‘eased’ by an Alpha. Not that I’d call for one unless delirious, writhing in misery and lost to the depths of heat. That’s the only way I’d let one touch me.
Other than that, I’m Alpha-free all the way. The way Mira, Emma and I had vowed to one another we’d stay, after the horrors at Haven. The Alphas we were to be sold to wouldn’t give a damn about our welfare. But I was snatched up by the biggest and baddest of them all before any of that could happen.
I prayed to whatever Gods still listening that Mira and Emma survived better than I had. That they’d found their freedom, unlike me.
Shock still ripples through me because after all this time, I saw Emma.
I really saw her.
Somehow our eyes met. Hers a vibrant, shadowless blue, wild with hope and free from the bruises that always marred our skin. I thought our luck wasn’t all bad. I always held onto hope that Mira and Emma survived our escape from Haven. That out of the three of us, two made it. That hope was the only thing that helped me hold onto sanity past Hardwick’s endless torture.
Emma hadn’t come alone either. Alphas encircled her, closing ranks as if nothing would get past them. They moved like they’d kill for her. My stomach flipped watching them shield her with their bodies. One of them bared his teeth with no play in it.
But it was the other Alphas who stole my attention. Three of the biggest Alphas I’ve ever seen filled the room, a wall of muscle and menace, every inch of them built for violence. Tall. Broad. Powerful. They’d stretched the stitching of their suits to the limit. Their bodies carved out the surrounding space just by existing.
Then their scents hit me.
Alpha scents usually make my stomach pitch, my throat tighten, a full-body recoil shudder through me, but these are different. They weave through the thick Alpha stench in the air and slide right through me with startling clarity, each individual note distinct and vivid.
The crisp tang of pine needles crushed wet, undercut by soft moss and the fresh fall of rain. Bright citrus peel sparking with spice, sunlight tangled in wild grasses. Warm, smoky vanilla layered over the grounding fragrance of fresh earth and grass. I don’t understand how I know what those scents are, but they pass through my skin and bone, burrowing deep and humming with electric sparks in my veins.
The Alpha with the deep olive skin, sized big enough to block a Godsdamned doorway, looked at me like nothing else in the room mattered. His stare hit me so hard my knees went weak. Then, in a voice that resonated up straight from the center of the earth, he bellowed that I was his mate.
Fuck. That.
I will never,ever, belong to any Alpha.
Behind us, another roar vibrates through the hall. The door Hardwick shoved me through crashes to the wall behind us, shaking grit from the ceiling.They’re coming after us. My heart punches at my ribs, quick and stupid because hope is something I never allowed myself after my failed escape attempt from Haven. After that, Hardwick locked every door.
