Vash stopped soaping the sponge. “I’m leaving the pack,” he said. “For now. It’s only temporary.”
Wren’s heart jumped with a tremor. Sharp distress held down her body. “Remove these chains at once, so I can slap you,” Wren exclaimed.
“He needs to go,” Lucas interrupted. “The two of us will guard the nest, but Vash is the only one who can find Cassian.”
“He kept me alive for a reason,” Vash said. “I need to know why.”
“It’s a trick,” Wren said.
Vash lowered his forehead and remembered the moment he left his brother. What Cassian said to him: I will keep your misery visible.
At the time, Vash didn’t know what to make of his words. Now, he thought he understood what he wanted.
“If he wanted me dead, he would have raped me before I left him. He would have cut my heart out and kept it on display.”
Wren jerked forward and cried out, “You can’t leave me alone like this!”
Vash focused on the fractured tiled floor. Nothing was going to stop him. He was going back to those barracks despite the omega’s tears.
“They will be with you,” Vash explained.
Wren’s pupils shrank into a thin and infinite prick. “I have done everything for you,” she snarled.
A twinkle ran across the white of his eye. “What is it that you really want?” Vash asked.
Wren opened her mouth, but the words caught on the edge of her vocal cords. Did she want freedom? She understood that true freedom lay in the bodiless. The dead. But she no longer wished to fade into the earth.
“I want to take over Cassian’s operations,” she whispered.
The words fell from her mouth unexpectedly, but she quickly realized their truth. The men, however, held wary and skeptical looks.
“You have done so much, Precious,” Killian whispered against her ear. “There is a limit to what someone can accomplish.”
Wren smiled and envisioned the inside of the Omega Unlimited nightclub. “Yes, I think I’d like to walk in there and tear out the throats of all the men in my way,” she said.
Carefully, Vash removed the chains from her sore wrists. He noted to loosen the hold after the bath. “You will not go into his establishments,” he said.
Wren stepped inside the warm water. Eyes closed, she sank and reappeared
in her happy place, her father’s garden. Well, the man was not her father. Just another false memory.
She blew out against the steam rising from the surface of the water. “You worry too much about the pregnancy. It will go as planned. You will have three daring alphas to carry your legacy,” Wren said.
She felt them. The babies. They were kicking.
“I have no doubt you could kill every men in that building,” he said.
“Then why won’t you let me go?” she asked. “I can feel it. I’m connected to that place somehow.”
The men rolled the sponges over her naked body and cleaned. “Tell me,” she said.
He cleared his throat. “That the women in that place are your copies? Does knowing make you feel any better?”
Wren sank deeper into the water. “And?”
“You’ve never seen your duplicates before,” Killian said. “Not sure it would be easy to handle.”
“I handled you,” she said.