+15 <b>BONUS </b>
<b>Chapter </b>237
E
I waited.
And waited.
And… waited.
One by one, the other women in the room were called for their interviews. Slowly, the room began to drain, leaving me behind. Even Sophia got called before I did, strutting out of the room with her head held high and a triumphant smile on her face.
Meanwhile, I was left to rot.
I waited for so long that the exhaustion of the past few days finally began to catch up with me. Sitting on the plush sofa that I had once spent afternoons reading letsurely on made me realize how ufortable the cer room was, and the crackling fire in the firece began to lull me to sleep.
Soon, I was beginning to nod off right there on the couch.
I fell into dreams of blood and death.
I dreamt of crimson liquid gushing from between my legs, washing my baby away in a red tide. I reached for him, trying to save him, but it was toote. He was drowning, being pulled beneath the bloody ocean by dark hands.
By the time I made it to where he had been, he was gone. I dug through the thickening blood, so thick it was almost like mud now, but he wasn’t there. Soon, those hands were pulling at me too, but pulling me
away<b>. </b>
Away from my son.
Away from Lucien.
And into the abyss.
A mirror floated in front of my face, revealing silver eyes and burgundy hair. A face that was my own but not quite stared back at me. I screamed, wing at it until the flesh fell away to reveal another face.
My old face. But not the one I remembered seeing in the mirror–rather, one that wasying in a casket with her hands folded over her chest. Everything about it was slightly off.
I pulled at my hair, realizing that it was nothing more than a blonde wig that fell away the moment I touched it. Only thin wisps remained beneath. I wiped at my skin, peeling away theyers <i>of </i>thick makeup until I found the true color beneath.
<b>1/3 </b>
Pale. Pallid. Green.
Rotting already.
+15 <b>BONUS </b>
Worms began to wriggle beneath my skin. I felt it at first rather than saw it, but then one poked its slimy
head out from behind my eye, sending a milky blue eyeball rolling off into the bloody mud around me. I opened my mouth to scream, but only maggots fell out.
I was decaying already. The mud was burying me alive, six feet deep, too deep for anyone to hear my
cries.
This time, there were no hands. Only the hard interior of a coffin, the wood splintering and cracking to let the earth and the bugs in, the cool, musky dampness bing the perfect environment to fester in.
And then came the smell of a fire. The sound of crumbling timbers. The echoes of a baby crying beyond the mes. Behind my eyelids, I saw strong arms in a ck suit carrying my son away, away, away. The mes engulfed them.
By then, all that was left of me was a locket. And soon, that, too, would rot.
I woke with a start. Part of me hoped that I was back in my bed–my real bed, not a sofa or a cer or a coffin in the ground, but my bedroom just upstairs. For a second, I actually thought that I had dreamt all of this and that I would go back to the day before Alexander locked me up.
But I was still on the sofa. And Alexander’s new young Beta, whose name I didn’t know, was standing
over me.
“What are you still doing here?” he barked. “The interviews ended hours ago.”
“Huh?” I sat bolt upright and scrubbed my hands over my face. My flesh was still intact, not rotting or bug- infested. “But I never got called for my interview.”
“We called you, but you never answered.”
“You could have woken me.” I stood and folded my arms over my chest.
The Beta scoffed. “And why should I? You’re not even a member of this pack, just a rogue who could have bitten my hand off if I tried to wake you. You should have done your due diligence and applied to be a pack member before showing up here.”
X
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