Chapter 4

**Jade POV**

The conversation I had been hoping to have with Emma after we’d finished everything was still not to be had. After making and cleaning up dinner, Luna Krista had made her way down to the kitchen, making sure to look at all of us as if we were the dirt beneath her high priced shoes, and told us we hadn’t “earned” sleep because we’d clearly “half assed” our way through our responsibilities, and she demanded we clean the entire pack house all over again. That took several hours, and since then we’d been hard at work in the kitchen to make the perfect scones for breakfast, the perfect 5 tier cake for the party, to fold the napkins perfectly into swans, to polish the silverware perfectly, and above all to make our pack house appear grander than it really was. It was just past lunch time and quite honestly I wasn’t sure how we were going to get through the next several hours. We were all running on crappy coffee and adrenaline from Luna Krista periodically bursting in to scream at us about productivity and doing our jobs. We’d probably work faster if she’d stop scaring the life out of everyone, but I guess she didn’t have much else to do.

Emma and I were bringing bottles of wine and champagne up from the cellar when the kitchen door swung open to reveal alpha Victor this time. We all came to a complete and utter stop, unsure what would happen next. 

“It’s come to my attention that you all have seen fit to make our pack a laughing stock by doing as minimal work as possible on the night of a very important celebration. Every time I think the lot of you can’t sink any lower, can’t disgust me any more, you all find a way to do it.” He sneered, turning his gaze all over the room and making a moment of eye contact with each and every one of us. I watched as everyone else seemed to avert their eyes, and I wondered why I couldn’t do it too. It was like something inside of me was literally refusing to allow me to do that now. Alpha Victor lingered for one moment as he looked at me before turning his attention to someone else.

“Here’s the good news: I’m willing to be a merciful alpha and only punish one of you today. I will let one serve as an example for the rest that if you don’t work to the standards of this pack, there will be hell to pay tonight. Understood?”

“Yes, alpha” we all said in unison. I could feel the fear creeping overall of us. It filled the atmosphere so quickly that you could cut it with a knife, each of us quickly losing sight of how exhausted we were and only able to look around at each other in pure terror. I watched in horror as alpha Victor searched the crowd to look for a suitable victim. 

“Let’s see, who of you is most deserving of punishment,” he continued to scan the room and seemed to land on Chelsea, a pregnant omega who’d been an unlucky victim of a wolf she didn’t dare to name to any of us. “You. Two for the price of one I see. Come here, omega.” Victor’s lips turned up smugly and I began to sweat. I couldn’t imagine what he was getting ready to put her through especially with her being pregnant. I began to think about her poor pup just trying to survive. Just like their mother. Just like all of us.

“I know that look and whatever you’re thinking, it’s a bad idea.” Emma whispered out of the side of her mouth.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was that we all hadn’t eaten since we’d been given a roll each after dinner. Maybe it was the leftover pain after Andrew had attacked me for no reason. Maybe it was the way Victor…. “Alpha” Victor had watched this happen and his only concern was his breakfast being late. I couldn’t honestly say which factor caused the rage to build up until I could feel it in my chest, burning all the way up to my throat and practically demanding that I do something.

I couldn’t do this anymore. I was DONE with all of this. Without even so much as taking another breath, I took the champagne bottle in my hand and threw it to the ground. It smashed into 100 pieces. I heard terrified gasps fill the room and I was suddenly fueled by my rage in a way that I’d never been before.  “Get off Chelsea this instant!” I yelled, fire burning in my chest as I watched Victor’s black eyes focus on me. “You starve us, you belittle us, you give us backbreaking labor and when we don’t do it to the speed you deem acceptable you beat us as well. Unacceptable!” 

Rumbles of agreement began to filter in. Whispers of affirmation. 

“You steal away childhoods and force your orphans into slavery. You allow your wife and your daughter and your weak, disgusting,  VILE son defile us. You yourself take advantage of our women and you kill our men, thinking we forget them the next day. We don’t forget and I don’t fear you! But trust me when I say that you should fear me. You should fear me to your dying breath. Your undoing is imminent and it will be those you stepped on who deliver your reckoning!” I realized halfway through that my wolf, Astrid had taken over for me. She had spoken the words that I could not and revealed a future for Victor that I had not seen. 

For a split second, Victor actually looked frightened. His sadistic grin had faded and his eyes were wide and unblinking. He looked like a child afraid of timeout. As quickly as his face had fallen, it changed back to the cold and deadly alpha I had grown to hate. This time, his venom was aimed straight at me. Emma gripped my arm, digging her nails into me almost willing herself to not let me go when he inevitably came for me. 

Quicker than I imagined was possible, Victor stalked over to me and ripped me off the floor. He slung me over his shoulder and easily flung open the back door. Once we were outside, he threw me to the ground as hard as he could. I coughed from the impact, feeling the wind fully knocked out of me. “I’ll teach you to speak to me that way, you little mutt!” He shouted as his foot crushed one of my ribs. I rolled onto my stomach to try and protect myself but that only made him angrier. He grabbed me up by my hair, flipped me over, and threw me back to the ground, punching me in the nose, the eye, and the throat in rapid fire movements.

It felt like hours laying there in the cold autumn rain as Victor continued to hit and kick me. I began to see a light but then everything went dark.