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  I needed protection until then. I’d been stupid in the chapel, letting Father Rivera do as he pleased. Yes, I’d found out crucial information, but maybe I could have obtained it differently, without having to debase myself. And I’d promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone. I was going to respect my promise, lest he’d take revenge on me and go all the way next time. He had the means, too. I believed Roz was right when she said there was something about him that pulled women in like flies to a sweet morsel of rotten cake. It must have been his Alpha pheromones.

  At lunch, I went to the cafeteria, but decided against standing in line to get food when I saw all the female inmates scowling at me, while all the male inmates gave me lecherous looks. I spotted Officer Stone and went straight to him. As I approached him, he sniffed the air in my direction and grinned.

  “I see you attended mass this morning? Has Rivera heard your confession? He must’ve been pleased, seeing how he gave you the Holy Communion.” There was a subtle inflection in his voice that told me he wasn’t thinking about the sacrament at all.

  I chose to ignore him.

  “I have a request. Maybe you can help me, Officer Stone.”

  He threw his head back and let out a short laugh. It sounded like a bark.

  “The mut has a request! Priceless! You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  He talked so loudly that now everyone in the cafeteria was staring at us. I caught a glimpse of Officer Bough from the corner of my eye. She seemed disgusted by me. I’d pleaded with her to take me to the chapel, and she’d thought she was being nice by doing me a favor. Then I walked out of the chapel reeking of Alpha seed, and proved I was exactly the filthy bitch everyone said I was. Now she probably felt like a fool for having tried to protect me from Officer Stone. She probably thought that I’d asked him to fuck me in the showers, and she’d interrupted a perfectly consensual situation. I felt sorry for having given her the wrong impression. Now, she didn’t trust me at all. I hoped that one day I’d be able to show her that I was nothing like that. I wasn’t a bitch, and I wasn’t a plaything that asked for it. I was just… confused. Lost. Alone. And I had only my Omega body to bargain with.

  “Please. I need to see him.”

  Once he saw that I wasn’t joking, Officer Stone went silent. He fixed me with his dark gaze, staring into my very being, as if he was trying to read my mind.

  “Why come to me? You could have asked any other officer to take you to the warden.”

  I did my best to hold his gaze. His eyes were so brown that they were almost dark, and I could barely distinguish where his pupil ended and his iris started. He had a demon’s eyes, yet I found myself mesmerized, unable to look away.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I feel like… you see me.”

  For a second, I thought he was going to laugh again. Instead, he leaned in. His rough cheek brushed mine, and his breath tickled the shell of my ear when he spoke.

  “You have no idea, mut. Yes, I see you. I see exactly who you are. A murderous slut who should have been in the pit by now, getting your wolf ripped out of you, burned to ashes before your eyes.”

  I whimpered in fear. I should have stepped away, turned on my heels, and ran from him. But I couldn’t. His words slashed at my insides, but his low, husky voice had me entranced. Addicted. It didn’t matter what he said to me as long as he kept talking and breathing in my ear.

  “Do you know how the death penalty is carried out? Humans get the chair or the lethal shot. Werewolves get the pit and a cocktail of drugs that induces a painful shift, so sudden, so powerful, so raw that once it’s done, they feel like their human side was separated from their body, and they’re floating outside of it, watching as the executors set their wolf on fire. And they burn, they burn… And all the while, they are perfectly aware, until the very last second.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I didn’t want him to know that Father Rivera had already told me I’d been on death row not twenty-four hours before.

  “Because that’s what you deserve, mut.”

  I swallowed heavily. “Will you please take me to the warden? Please…”

  He straightened his back. “Only because you beg so shamelessly. Follow me.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Warden Green

  I couldn’t sleep after I got the phone call. I did my job and ordered Stone and Rivera to stop the interrogation and put Sierra Carmine with the other inmates. But that didn’t mean that I liked it, or that I agreed with the Administration. The evidence was all there. She’d done it. She’d murdered her entire pack in a frenzy, then lied naked among the bodies for three days, until she was discovered by a Beta from a neighboring pack who called the authorities. No trial. Someone like her didn’t deserve a trial, but that was beside the point. There was not a single doubt about what had happened in the woods, on the Carmine lands. Her DNA was everywhere on the mangled bodies. Traces of her saliva had been found inside the gaping wounds, the Alpha, who was barely recognizable, had a fistful of her wolf hair stuck between his fingers, and most of her victims had traces of her skin and blood under their fingertips. She’d killed many of them before they even had a chance to shift. Yet, the Administration had pulled her off death row. They were reopening her case, and if new discoveries about what had happened three days ago were made, she might even get a trial.

  It was a waste of everyone’s time. She deserved to be dead. Worse. But there was nothing worse than death, unfortunately.

  Neither Stone, nor Rivera had managed to get a confession out of her. They’d worked her hard last night, and when I barged in on them as Rivera was spanking her mercilessly and Stone was holding her down, I was shocked to see that they hadn’t even gotten close to breaking her. On the contrary. I’d noticed a blush on her pale cheeks, and the cell was flooded by the delicious scent of her arousal. It had taken me a moment to compose myself. I hadn’t told Doctor Sylvan to give her something to forget because I was afraid she’d tell someone about the torture she’d endured, but because I was almost certain she’d seen the weakness in my eyes. And the last thing I needed was for the murderous Omega to know she had the slightest power over me. I could fight my Alpha instincts. I wasn’t a slave to my animalistic needs, nor to my emotions. It was just that… The look in her big, purple eyes and the smell of her slick had taken me by surprise last night. I’d sworn to myself it would never happen again.

  I knew Alaric was bringing her to me before he knocked on my door. My nostrils flared, recognizing her intense, unique scent the moment they entered the building to my office. That gave me enough time to compose myself. I hadn’t thought I’d see her so soon after I’d ordered her torturers to cease abuse of her enticing body. Yes, she was enticing. Her very Omega nature made her special, especially in this dreadful place riddled with jacked-up Alphas and Betas. No one who ever ended up an inmate at Dark Moon Prison was pretty. Some females were acceptable, since my male guards were willing to fuck them, but the Alphas were ugly motherfuckers covered in scars and tattoos, with rotten teeth and thinning hair. The door opened, and there she was – beautiful, young, looking so innocent. Deceitful. Alaric had told me this morning that she wasn’t mute anymore. She spoke, although she wasn’t exactly saying what we wanted her to say.

  “It’s all right, Officer Stone. Wait by the door.”

  Alaric furrowed his brows. A growl started in his chest, and I stared him down until he swallowed it back. He was an Alpha, but I was his superior, both in rank and in strength. I was bigger than him, and his wolf could not compare to my wolf. There was a reason why I was warden and he was just an officer. He followed my order grumpily, closing the door behind him. It didn’t mean much, since he could hear everything, but I didn’t care. All I really wanted was to stare freely at the blond beauty before me without another Alpha watching my every move.

  I stood up, rounded the desk, and came to stand in front of her. She was so small and fragile compared to my massive frame. She had to crane her neck to look at me, and I could see it in her eyes that she hadn’t expected me to be so tall and big. I couldn’t tell whether she was afraid or relieved.

  “You wanted to talk to me.”

  “Yes.”

  Her voice was sweet and melodious. The night before, I hadn’t thought I would ever hear it. When she was brought at Dark Moon Prison, tied up and unconscious, she looked like a spent rag doll. She woke up later, and she was mute. But we had her file, we had declarations from members of the neighboring packs that said Sierra Carmine was a normal young Omega, with no disabilities, no record of any strange behavior, no nothing. On paper, she was impeccable. What had made her snap and kill everyone could be anyone’s guess. How she’d managed to kill everyone when an Omega’s powers were close to non-existent, that was… a different story. One that we hadn’t even begun to unravel.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m listening.”

  She averted her gaze, looked around my office for a minute, then finally gathered her courage.

  “Warden Green, I don’t know why I’m here. I’m telling the truth, please believe me. I can’t remember anything.”

  She touched her temple, and I found myself entranced by her slow, elegant gesture. My senses were on high alert, ready to pick up anything coming from her. Every inflection of her voice, every deep breath, ever small sigh. She smelled like Garrett fucking Rivera, unfortunately, but if I just focused on her gorgeous eyes and soft, translucent skin, I could live with that for now.

  “I’m not even sure… what my name is.”

  And there it was. The confirmation that Garrett fucking Rivera had already told her what she was asking me now. Whatever. I could play this game. Was she testing me? Was she testing him? Did sh
e want to know if what he’d told her was true?

  “Sierra Carmine,” I growled. She seemed startled by the menacing tone of my voice, and I cleared my throat and forced myself to be gentler. There was no point in scaring her off. Officer Stone had probably frightened her by now, and God knew what the priest had done to her in the chapel. In light of all this, maybe it was a good idea to play the role of the good guy. “Sierra, you are here because you’ve been accused of killing every member of your pack. It happened three days ago. You were found lying in the forest, naked, and almost unconscious, running a fever, and unable to remember anything. Doctor Sylvan has run some tests, and he’s concluded you’re suffering from temporary memory loss. I’m not going to lie to you. Your situation is not great. But I believe it’s improving, because last night, word came from above that your case is being reopened, and that the Administration is looking into it, trying to figure out what really happened. Of course, it would help us tremendously if you tried to remember.”

  She sighed, relieved. My gentle voice had calmed her down. She shook her head. Tears shined in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall.

  “I can’t. I’ve been trying so hard. It’s all… blank. I get flashes from my childhood. My mother is the only one I remember, but even her face is… vague. And I can’t remember what happened last night, either.” She blushed cutely, and I knew either Alaric or Garrett had told her something about that. Maybe both. “All I know is that I woke up this morning in a cell, with no recollection of how I got there. And then…” She sighed. “Everything is happening so fast. Roz says I’m in trouble…”

  “Who’s Roz?”

  “My… my cellmate.”

  For a second, she looked so lost and confused that it crossed my mind she now probably thought Roz was all in her mind. I smiled.

  “Rosalind Marsh. Yes, I remember her. Burly Beta, talks a lot…”

  She nodded eagerly.

  “And why does she think you’re in trouble?”

  She shrugged and shook her head. Okay, so she wasn’t going to tell me.

  “Sierra, help us help you. Try to remember as much as you can, and when you do, come straight to me.”

  “You want me to confess,” she swallowed heavily.

  “We want you to tell us the truth. Tell us what happened, how it happened, and why. If you’re innocent, tell us. If you’re guilty, well… yes, a confession would clear all this up, and we’d know what to do and how to move forward. It’s up to you. All of it. You decide your own fate.”

  She bit her lip, and I took a step back, leaning against my desk. I could feel my cock hardening at the sight of her white teeth digging into the plump, rosy flesh of her lip.

  “I don’t know about that. My fate has already been decided. I’m locked up in here, aren’t I?”

  “For now. Someone from above has decided to give you another chance. In your situation, that’s no small thing, Sierra. Take advantage of it while you can. Remember.”

  “Remember and confess,” she whispered.

  I nodded. There was nothing else to say, so I called Officer Stone. As the Omega left my office, I leaned in to whisper in Alaric’s direction: “Keep an eye on her in the yard.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wisteria

  Inmates from both cell blocks were allowed in the yard, twice a day – the ground floor before lunch, and the first floor after lunch. I hadn’t eaten anything yet, and I was starting to feel weak. My only hope was that being outside, in the sun, would give me some strength, and shifting would get my mind off the hunger, the suspicious soreness in my muscles, but especially off the three Alphas who seemed to rule my life now. The second I’d stepped into Warden Green’s office, I’d felt that unmistakable pull in my chest. I’d seen him the night before, too. Had he done something questionable to me too, like Officer Stone and Father Rivera? Had he taken the liberties they had taken? He didn’t seem to be the kind. He’d been nice and honest. He was the first who’d hinted to the fact that he wasn’t one hundred percent convinced I’d done it. I felt like I could trust him. All I had to do was remember what had happened three days before and prove to him that he was right to give me this second chance. I hadn’t told him I was almost certain I was being framed. I needed some sort of evidence, first.

  “You saw the warden,” Roz said as she approached me. “Did he tell you why you’re here?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. On the one hand, I wanted to tell Roz the truth. She was my cellmate, and maybe the only one who could stand up for me in case the female inmates who were currently throwing me murderous looks decided to do something. On the other hand… I was being accused of a very serious crime. What if Roz turned against me? I couldn’t afford that. So, I shook my head and shrugged.

  “No. He said I’m supposed to remember on my own. He said that he could tell me, but he thought it’s in my best interest to not know, so it wouldn’t influence my memory recollection. Something about psychology and how my brain would latch onto the information and assimilate it without verifying whether it’s real or not.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna have to stop you right there, fancy pants. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about with psychology and bullshit and whatnot. I just wanted to know if he told you or not.”

  “He didn’t.”

  She rolled her eyes. “This mystery is starting to get boring. The other inmates don’t know anything about you, either. And the guards don’t want to talk. I tried to bride Officer Bough to spill something, anything, but she doesn’t seem to be in the mood today.”