Page 4 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

Because Blaise really is dead, and that’s for the best. He'd only hold me back.

My knife is still in its sheath. I feel the weight, steady and patient against my thigh. My favorite little problem solver.

The Beta sees my hand drift toward it, and she starts shaking her head.

Oh, now she wants to communicate.

I crouch beside her, close enough that I can smell her rancid, thin terror beneath all the blood.

"Don’t look so scared," I tell her. "I’m not doing this to you. You did this to me."

Her lips move.

I lean in. "What was that?"

"Please," she whispers.

I blink at her.

Then I laugh.

It bursts out of me wrong, too loud in the medical tent, bouncing off canvas and metal and Prime Alpha’s silence. It doesn’t feel like laughter. It feels like a wound making noise.

"Please," I say in a falsetto, mimicking her pitiful words, delighted, furious, and sick down to the marrow. "That’s precious. Really. But you can do better than that."

Prime Alpha is staring at her without blinking. He's barely breathing, just staring. It makes me feel as if I'm alone. But that's not right, because with the bond, I'm never alone in the darkness anymore.

Except the bond is gone, just a sucking hole in my chest where light and love used to live.

I close my eyes and imagine her purple eyes watching me from the dark. I try to imagine her scent with it. The lavender, ozone, and warm Omega sweetness that used to sink claws into the worst parts of me and drag them back. I can picture her standing there with her hands on her hips, calling me a cockwomble and telling me, 'For fuck's sake, Blaze. Stop being dramatic.'

I open my eyes.

She isn’t there.

Of course she isn’t there.

My Sparkles is dead.

My pretty, brave, ridiculous Omega is dead, and the bond is gone. Shattered and torn from my chest. My stupid Alpha keeps reaching for it anyway. Again and again, like a stray dog returning to an empty bowl with hope despite all evidence to the contrary.

I press my thumb into the fresh bandage on the murderer’s hand.

She screams.

Still nothing.

Still nothing.

Still fucking nothing.

"Why isn’t this working?" I ask her.

She can’t answer through all the hyperventilating. So inconsiderate.

My pulse is hammering. I turn to pace, trying to think of a way to make it work. To make the pain break.

I grasp at my hair, my fist pulling as if it will make my thoughts stop skipping, catching, and skipping again.