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Instead, my heart hits my throat, because Marta stabs that fucking doll before I even see the glint of a blade. There’s a collective exhale in the room that assures me I’m not the only one who was caught wildly off guard. Violet, the only one of us not surprised, gives Marta a bland look, as Marta slices the doll’s leg clean off. Marta immediately starts arguing animatedly, as though her crazy-bitch-switch is on overload tonight and freshly re-flipped. Violet just continues to stare at her, unimpressed, as the threads in the room come to life, and the leg is stitched up much quicker.
“The bloody doll is a timer for how long Marta is allowed to be a raging bitch,” Emit—the village idiot in a lopsided toga—points out. “Marta was denied more time.”
“Violet being a pureblood Neopry means she’s just naïve and capable enough to not look away from an alpha’s eyes,” Emit murmurs. “She even does it with us.”
“Anyone else a little creeped out about watching her play with a doll her mother gave her?” Emit notes. “So long as she’s over twenty, it’s just wrong enough for me,” Damien answers distractedly,
Marta takes the knife, and I watch with the other breath-holding alphas, as Violet chatters animatedly. Marta does that pointless trick of stabbing the spaces between Violet’s fingers at a rapid, hard-to-follow pace, as though she’s a traveling freak show. Violet just carries on talking, as Marta focuses all her attention on not hitting Violet’s hand. Violet leisurely relaxes, still chatting like she’s making idle conversation, or filling her mother in on some less tense things. Marta rolls her eyes, never missing a beat with the blade, and stops abruptly when Violet stops talking.
“I may not can get rid of you just yet, but you will never be able to get rid of me, so long as my daughter is in your lives. Think about that,” she tells us very darkly. Not the most warming thought.
I perused diamond rings on my damn phone, just curious what’s popular on the market these days, and Violet is under the impression we’re simply making the effort to get to know her. I wasn’t planning to propose just yet, not with everything that’s going on, but it’s still a harsh gap in mindsets…
“No one fucks up a potion better than I do. If I fuck it up enough, less power will be needed to raise them,” I go on, smiling over at Emit…who is just staring at me like he’s confused. “But it’s the exact right ingredients,” he says warily, as he stands.
“They’re already chasing Idun, Violet. They’ll say it’s to find her before she finishes scheming whatever it is she is or isn’t scheming, but at the end of the day, either they’re chasing her, or she’s chasing them. Forever and always…until the infinitive end. Their story will never end. You’re simply another pawn who will be crushed under their weight. The very second they cared about you—if they truly cared for you at all—they would have walked away. But they didn’t, even though they know they’re bound to eternal misery by Idun’s hand. You’re just more collateral damage in their undying
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“Most disappointingly, she’s right. At the end of the day, I’m not meant for all four of them. I get too attached to the one I’m with and start drifting from the others. It’s harder to be with four men than you probably understand. The romance of it sounds wistful and downright fantasy-approved, but the reality of it is harder, especially when they can’t seem to agree about much of anything. No longer do they even agree about me in most cases, and it’s starting to feel like we’re all working too hard for something that just simply isn’t meant to be.”
“And then I bore an impossible child after I fell truly in love with a man for the very first time in my life.” I almost don’t believe the words out of her mouth, because Marta would never confess something to make her that vulnerable. Not when Tom is already a sore topic for Arion.
She’s a magnet—she tempts death and attracts it. Her life was set up to deliver her to this very moment. Now that her job is done, the universe will cast her aside, and you’ll ruin her just to spite me.”
Alliances shift with each new agenda. The rules get made up as we go. The secrets double. The paranoia spreads. The suspicion mounts. Everyone is on edge. I say nothing as Arion backs away, but I don’t have to say it. The smell of war is in the air. We all know it too well. All the players just have to pick a side before it can begin.
“We’re monsters, Emit. We always do the terrible things we’re not supposed to. It’s how we became monsters,” I tell him as I turn and walk away. I’ll not fucking give her up. As Emit trails me, I hear him mutter, “And so it begins.”
AM I SECRETLY AN ALPHA? Ha! Sorry. I just wrote this for a good laugh. It’s been a shit few months.
