Chapter 172 – The Alphas Contract Novel by Taylor West

Filed to story: The Alphas Contract Novel by Taylor West

Everyday I expected to feel a little better. Everyday I am wrong.

Cooper insists that the bag pumping liquid into my arm is keeping me alive and yet it made me feel like it was draining the life from me.

There’s a knock on the door and the same daily routine starts. A nurse comes in and checks the drip bag. She puts a towel down on the end of my bed along with a tiny bar of soap and a toothbrush. I’m expected to follow her to the showers, pulling my bag of medicine along with me.

I had tried twice to strangle her with the tube that connects the drip bag to my arm. Both times I had been punished with withdrawing me from the medicine just long enough to make me suffer. Repeatedly.

Cooper had them do it to me for days at a time until I was begging him just to let me die. He always answered the same. “How do you think those that you killed felt? You deserve to suffer.”

I follow the nurse to the showers. Most of the cells I passed are quiet. They had quickly learned that no one was coming for them. That screaming and shouting was a waste of time. But I always knew when someone new had been brought in.

Their fists would pound against the door. Their voices demanded to be let out until they grew tired. And after all these weeks, I still didn’t know what Cooper is trying to achieve. Why make us suffer? Why take our abilities away to only keep us locked up in here. It made no sense. Killing us would be much quicker and we would be less of a drain on resources.

And if it isn’t bad enough, I’m watched while I shower. Humilliation at its finest.

The old gown is taken away, and a fresh one is given to me before I make my way back to my room, where a measly bowl of porridge would be waiting for me and the nurse would leave. I had thirty minutes to eat it until the next nurse would come and remove the bowl.

Everything here was kept plain. Plain food, plain white sheets, plain white gowns. Almost as if it were a way of telling us we don’t deserve anything more. They even gave me a hysterectomy.

I think that happened after my first week here. Something about not wanting me to spoil the sheets and gowns.

Bastards!

It was a prison and Coop had anointed himself as the man in charge.

I was a million miles away from the life I knew. The life that I had worked hard for.

Ironically, I would give my left arm just to be able to link my mother or even hear fucking Neah. I just need to hear another voice that wasn’t my own or Coopers or someone begging to be freed.

Grabbing the bowl of porridge, I place it on the floor and curl up in the bed. Starving would be a better option than this.

The lock on my door is slid back. I feel a rush of warm air as the door swings open.

“Why are you not eating?” Cooper demands. I don’t bother to look at him. “This is the third day. Do we need to hold you down and force feed you?”

“I am not hungry.”

“It’s not optional.”

“I don’t feel well.”

“Impossible. Everything in that drip bag provides you with what you need to survive.”

“This is what you call surviving? Is that a fucking joke? If I had it my way, I would just rip this fucking shit out, but you always appear before my heart even gets a chance to stop. My eyes flash up to the camera. If we all had cameras and albdid it at the same time, who would he go to first?

“It’s the punishment you deserve. Why should I let you die, Blair Everwood?”

“This is some fucking weird shit you are pulling.” mutter and turn over so I don’t have to look at him. “I’ve met some fuckers with God complexes over the years, but this, keeping people alive for your own enjoyment is fucked up.” S

“It’s a tiny amount of suffering compared to the destruction you have left behind. For example, your poor mother.”

I sit up and glare at him. “You have no right to talk about my mother.”

“She tried to help you and you repaid her by doing something awful.”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“It turns out you caused her quite a lot of problems. You made her relive her horrible past because you couldn’t accept what was. You clung to this stupid idea of yours.”

“I deserve what is mine.” I growl and he laughs. A deep belly laugh

“Unfortunately, that is not how life works. Maybe things would met been different if your mother raised such a brat. Maybe you could have even gotten to know Neah.”

“I’m done with this conversation.”

He smiles. “You talk about Neah being your sibling, but she isn’t even looking for you.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about me!” She would be looking for me. Maybe not physically but she she had a reason to want me dead.

He reaches out and tucks a strand of my chaotic hair behind my ear. “I know so much more than you. But I think it’s time to get rid of this.” His fingers fist in my hair and he tugs my head back as he calls for someone.

The older woman from my first day here appears with scissors, a can of shaving foam and a new razor on a tray.

“Now you better sit still, or I might accidentally slice something I shouldn’t!” Cooper muses

He takes every strand of hair from my head. Cutting it as close to my scalp as possible. I watch as dark locks fall around me on the bed and could feel the tears burning the back of my eyes. I loved my hair, but I refused to cry for him and when I find a way out of this damn prison I am going to skin him alive.

When he’s done with the razor, he grabs my face, his is centimetres from mine. “In future, make sure you eat.”

“You shaved my head because I didn’t eat?! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He smiles and walks out the room with the older woman. The door is slammed shut and the bolt is pushed back into place. My hands go to my head. It’s perfectly smooth, not a single strand left behind, like Cooper had done this a hundred times before.

I hated it. I hated him. I hated what he was turning me into.

Staring up into the camera, I wish I could rip it from the wall. It’s to high for me to reach and the bed is bolted down so it couldn’t be moved. I continued to stare, hoping that he was watching me. Hoping that he could see the hate that had been building inside of me.

He was the first person to truly outsmart me. I hated him more than I hated Neah. But I couldn’t help wondering what she would think if she knew someone like him existed. Would she kill him? Or would she be grateful for him punishing us?

I had a feeling she would want him dead.

My eyes shift from the camera to the door. Something is happening just outside. I couldn’t hear properly. Cooper had taken that away from me. Muffled sounds echo along with footsteps. Some running, some seemed to be skipping?

An alarm goes off. A big red beacon above my door flashes as the noise fills the room. The bolt on the door is pulled back and my door partially opens. No one comes in and I hear more footsteps. I glance at the drip bag attached to my arm. I had maybe twelve hours at most unless I could find another one. Either way. I was getting out of this place.

Quietly I pull the door open. There are already bodies littered in the corridor, all of which do not have a drip bag attached to them. They hadn’t learned or maybe they hadn’t been told. They had made it out of their room only to drop like a dead horse.

I look up and down the corridor. Every single door is open. Someone had broken out or someone was overthrowing Cooper. I didn’t care which way around it is.

I dip into one room and quickly tie off what’s left in the drip bag before making my way into the opposite room and find an almost full bag That’s twenty four hours. I had roughly forty hours in total, but I had to move now. I had to get out of this place.

The building is like a maze. I try to remember all the areas that I had been taken too and map it out in my mind. I pass some other escapees, but they don’t stop and it looks as if they are doing the same thing I am, collecting drip bags to make sure they survive.

One stops to look at me, his eyes move up to my shaved head and then to the bags in my arms.

“Don’t fucking try it.” I snarl. I needed enough to let me find a witch, that was all I needed.

“FUCKING FIND HER!” I hear Cooper roar and duck into someone’s empty room.

As soon as he passed, I race in the direction he had come from. Pushing open every door until one leads me outside.

The sun is so bright it burns my eyes. Being kept inside in a windowless room had altered my vision, but I didn’t have time to stop and kept moving.

As fast as my legs would carry me, which turns out, without a Lycan, I’m pretty slow.

Raven

“You really couldn’t find anything?” I mutter in confusion. It had been twenty four hours since the fire.

Dane shakes his head at me. “We’ve looked but there doesn’t seem to be anything that caused the fire. Whoever did it, covered their tracks.” “No scents?”

“The after smell of the fire is still strong, it wiped out any leftover scents.” Damien adds. “I expect whoever is responsible, set it and then legged it.” “So there is still a chance it can be Blair?”

“We are not ruling it out.” My brother tells me and then he smiles. “It’s nice to see you involved in pack stuff again.”

I shrug my shoulders. “Jenson is dead, I have to be useful somewhere.”

“You know that is not what I’m saying! What I am saying is I’ve missed having you hover around the house, finding you in random places eating ice cream. Neah misses you too.” He smiles at me, though I don’t return it.

I sigh. I had missed a lot of what had happened with Neah. Usually she would tell me everything, but we had barely spoken since I had been at my brother’s bedside. I had missed watching the twins learn to walk too. “Well, I’m here now. When is the funeral?”

“Tonight. It’s a full moon and I think it’s the perfect night to say goodbye to him before we go on a packrun.”

I hadn’t been on a full moon run in months. “Are the Lycans taking part?”

“Some of us.” Damien confirms, “But there are many, like the Everwood crew that don’t do it.”

“Blair’s family?” I wanted to check that I knew who they were talking about. I still thought it was weird that they were here, but apparently Hunter Abraxas had verified them. “Is that wise?”

“Eric’s not going. He will be staying in the house with Mallory, Neah and the twins.”

<< Previous Chapter

 

Next Chapter >>

---