It would be madness to compare myself to one of those, but admittedly I felt charged in a way that the comparison made sense. Honestly, it was odd, because as far as I understood Jay’s explanations and descriptions, he always felt exhausted after a transformation. So, why didn’t I? ...Probably because it lasted too short, and I hadn’t used any of my strength yet.
However, I just realized that the power and strength of a beast wasn’t its biggest weapon. It was the terror it could bestow on its victims by the mere sight of it.
Val still hadn’t answered my demand, but then again it hadn’t exactly been a question. Still, I wanted a nod from her, any gesture or sound that made sure she had understood what I wanted from her.
“Val?” I asked, my voice sounding familiar to me once again. “Did you understand what I’ve said?”
There was still the possibility that I had comprehended my own sounds without realizing that they were incomprehensible to a human being.
“I... I’m sorry,” Val eventually managed to find her voice. “It won’t happen again. I... I don’t know why I kept that from you, it simply didn’t come to my mind that you might need that information. I’m sorry, Meghan.”
I frowned at her before I could stop myself. Her behavior was ridiculous; then again, she had just met a beast that was in complete control without having bars keeping her safe. So there was that.
“If you really want to make amends and find a cure, you and me need to work together,” I explained and she instantly nodded. “As a team.”
Val moved her head almost panicky to assure me. “As a team. Yes.”
I could sense that I stood differently from before. There wasn’t any uncertainty in my bones left, not an impulse to make myself smaller, hoping that anyone would be caring or merciful. I had shed that uncertainty when I had become a beast for the first time.
Knowing that you can protect yourself, even more, that you can harm whoever crosses your path with a base motive, was an emotion, a sensation which was completely new to me. And yet, it felt as natural as breathing at that moment, and it hadn’t stopped yet.
Now, sitting alone on my bed after Val had left, who had come back to take the blood samples, that I didn’t care about as much anymore, and left again, I still feel sort of pumped. The reasonable part of me tells me to keep my cool and be careful, and I know that acting like that is the right move. If I want to free Jay and bring White to his righteous fate I need to be patient. Nothing about that has changed. Apart from that, I don’t worry about Val finding out that I am pregnant. She might still want to lock me away in this room so that we both are protected from White, but it’s not her call anymore and she knows it.
Having any kind of reins in my hand; finally not feeling completely powerless, is the best frigging sensation I have ever experienced. I could tear down dozens right now but it wouldn’t get me any further. No, I have to exercise; I have to make sure that keeping my cool today wasn’t just a fluke.
More importantly, from now on I will have to do my exercises somewhere safe where I don’t get monitored all the time.
When I was Jay’s mating partner they brought me to a gym regularly, so, I will have to ask Val if I could get access to another one. That might also mean that I will have to go back into White’s territory, but I don’t really mind. Somehow I feel more confined with Val than I have with White. But that might just be me right now.
XXX
Val was less than happy with my request and I was just relieved that she didn’t have the results of her blood tests right now. I wasn’t sure if I could trust her with my plans. Even though she had made it pretty clear to me that she regreted her role in White’s experiments. Still, I couldn’t figure out her ulterior motives and as long as she didn’t fully trust me, I wouldn’t trust her either.
We had spoken about potential plans to get me out of here, but it had been nothing more than ideas, daydreams, and nothing specific. And as long as she didn’t prove to me that she was trustworthy, they would be nothing more than that.
“I will not be able to help you when you return to White’s area. I have no authority there, just as he has no authority here,” Val explained, looking terribly pale, while she was worrying her hands down to her bones. “Meg, please reconsider. I’m sure that I can work out a schedule when you can visit the gyms in his territory.”
“I need him to believe that he has the upper hand and that I have no other choice than to submit to him, and you know that,” I told her, not meeting her glance.
The last thing I needed is to find excuses for my plans.
“Meg, please...” she sounded like she had a whole speech ready in order to persuade me, but the way she behaved right now it seems as if she knew that it wasn’t her place.
“I need you,” she eventually said and – honestly – completely surprised me; and that was the first time I looked at her.
“You are the only one I can trust and the only one I can get samples from that will actually help,” she felt encouraged to explain to me.
There was undeniable hope in her expression, as if there was a chance that her words would make me rethink my decision.
“I am so close to a cure,” she continued. “But I need you here. I need access to your blood. You are the key. If I can heal you, I might be able to heal them!”
“You mean reverse engineer the gene mutation Severin has been working on? The very same thing that turned good soldiers into mindless beasts?” I asked, fully aware of the judging undertone of my voice.
“Yes,” Val nodded. “I might need some more time, but I will be able to cure you and then those who have been changed more dramatically than you and...”
Valerie cut herself off, but it was already too late. At that very moment I knew that it wasn’t about me for her. She did this for someone else and I would find out whom.
“And who?” I asked her, knowing that I was pinning her in place.
It took her quite a while to utter her response and even longer to look at me: “Peter.” That was her answer, and so many things dawned to me that I couldn’t and wouldn’t write them down. “It’s my fault that he did it,” she explained, expecting me to know what she was talking about. I did. Valerie was pointing out that someone specific voluntarily became a beast because of something she did or didn’t do, and there was only one person I could come up with who actually injected himself with the gene re-coding virus: Peter.
I didn’t say anything. I just looked at her, trying to take on a neutral expression, because I honestly wasn’t sure what to think of it. And I was the last person to judge.
“You know Peter,” Val said, looking at me as if I had some power to grant her forgiveness – maybe I had, after all, I was becoming a beast now, too – but that didn’t make her stop talking. “He was so hell-bent on getting his brother’s approval. He would have done anything to just get a nod from him.”
“And that hasn’t changed,” I added, looking at her straight, reading her facial expressions.
If there was one thing there was guilt written all over her features. She obviously was blaming herself for something.
“Peter and I...” Val was searching for words. “We had a thing.” She locked her eyes with mine. “But I was just too consumed with work, too fascinated with what Severin was achieving. Personal feelings were unimportant.”
Val was looking at me as if I was her judge and executioner.
“I could have stopped him from infecting himself, but I didn’t. I could have made him happy, but I didn’t. I was blinded by his brother, blinded by the fame this could bring and the money, and I lost him over it. I lost him.”
Hearing her talking about the one brother that could still be saved that way opened my eyes about him; Peter. It explained so much. Why he was willing to try everything just to be in my good favor, for a chance of me falling for him. I didn’t know whether to pity him or to be repelled by him. And I felt the same about Val.
“It’s my fault,”
she told me, pressing me to believe her, “I was blind, egoistic...wrong.”
I felt as if in that moment, she bared her soul to me, as if I had the power to forgive her, and I wouldn’t give it to her even if I could. I didn’t really believe that Peter’s fate had been in her hands. He had made the decision to infect himself, in order to win his brother’s good will. It had been his decision to try and win me over in order to win his brother’s approval. There was nothing, no explanation that would have made his betrayal and lies any less despicable. And Val wouldn’t change that, either.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked, being openly incredulous. “There is nothing I could or would say that will make anything that Peter has done any less despicable. He tried to make me fall in love with him, in a pathetic effort to find a twisted kind of salvation. And now you are telling me that you could have prevented all of his actions? Do you really think that this would change anything?”
“I have to,” Val gave back, all her confidence deflating from her, and I didn’t know how to feel. “I just need to know that I can save him now when I failed him then.”
“You really do believe that, don’t you?” I asked her, stunned by what I just had learned.
“I have to, Meg,” Val almost pleaded. “It’s my fault. I was too consumed by ambition, fueled by Clay. If I just had a tiny wee bit more empathy, like you have, I might have been able to prevent any of this.”
I looked at Val for a very long time, without the attempt to feel for her or understand her. I just needed to let all those words just sink in and imagine how different the whole experience would have been. Then again, I had to ask myself whether Peter really might have had feelings for Val and it had been her misled ambition that had sent him down the wrong path.
Eventually, there was no excuse for Peter’s decisions, and I expected Val to be aware of that. She could blame herself as much as she wanted, but Peter was a grown up, he should have been aware of what outcome his decisions would create. Maybe it was just an easy excuse to blame herself for Peter’s actions, because he wasn’t actually a poster child in anything.
I had experienced it firsthand. And the way he acted, as if it had been up to me what he would decide, was absolutely pathetic. It always had been his choice. Thinking that he would have chosen me if I had truly fallen for him was ridiculous. However, both weaknesses, Val’s and Peter’s, could be of use to me. No one was innocent; no one was a victim, so I decided that it was okay to use them.
“When am I going to see Jay again?” I asked her, taking her by surprise.
“It’s not in my powers to arrange a meeting,” Val answered cautiously, but she told me more with what she wasn’t speaking out loud.
“So, you haven’t been informed about when we will be together again?” I inquired and was aware of how I sounded.
I’ve had enough of playing nice; with anyone. The only person for whom I will keep up the act of the meek, scared girl is White, because I need him not to know who I have become. Everyone else can bite me now and I will snap back at them. It’s enough.
Val didn’t answer me but shook her head, she reached out to touch me but I slapped her hand aside.
“I need to see him,” I gave back to her.
She looked at me as if she was on the verge of saying something, but she didn’t. Still, I knew what she was thinking about. Jay was part of White’s territory and he knew that I would want to see him, just as he would want to see me. He was punishing Val through punishing us. The only way I would be able to see Jay was when I was back in White’s grasp.
“Transfer me.”
It wasn’t a question, nor a suggestion, but not an order either. It was a statement, something that already had been decided and put to action.
“I won’t be able to protect you,” Val pleaded.
“I don’t need your protection,” I got up from my bed and stepped away, crossed my arms and turned my back towards her. “Make it happen.”
Her whole pitiful story and hopes for redemption just had made everything easier for me. It had hardened me. Every single person in this godforsaken place seemed to turn to me in hopes for salvation, as if I was a savior who only would have to say or do something and they would be redeemed; all in their own personal way. But I am not accepting this role. I am not that person. Only Jay understands that. Only Jay wants to save me and not be saved by me. He’s the only one.
Day 158
It didn’t even take the day. Val left and she did what I had demanded. She probably realized that if she wanted my help in redeeming herself she needed to do my bidding. And I will have good use of that.
I was moved into my new room within White’s territory. Now, as I am writing, I am sitting on a Queen sized bed in a large room which is actually a cage, just like the ones when I had first met Jay and then met Nina, and I will probably meet even more. I’m not sure if White wants to tell me that I’m now one of them, by putting me in here, but then again I would have been put into that much smaller cell that’s through the door to my right.
The bed is standing right beneath the large rings. Usually chains are pulled through and have the shackles that are able to hold a beast, but they have been removed. As have been the bars that divide this room into two parts: one for the subject and one for the scientist. Along half the upper end of the wall to my right are small, foggy, and barred windows, actually directly opposite to the monitoring glass front. And there’s sunlight coming through. Beneath those windows is another door, and I’m sure it leads outside to the ‘training area’.
XXX
Val was less than happy with my decision, especially when she got to take a look at my lab results. She had me taken to her, which already had made me mad, because first: I expected to be taken to one of my ‘students’ and second: she was risking drawing White’s attention to me.
“Meg,” she said, worrying her hands and continuing to walk a track into the floor of her laboratory, but she only picked up speaking when we were alone, stepping towards me, reaching out to grab my shoulders; and I moved out of her reach. “You are pregnant.”
Not speaking loudly as if she believed someone might be eavesdropping at the door, she dropped her hands, torturing them with her fingers. I looked at her blankly needing a moment to realize that she had no idea that I knew. She was thinking that she was dropping THE bomb, probably hoping that I would call off my decision to join White’s ‘staff’.
“Do you understand what I am saying?” she repeated, because she didn’t get that I wasn’t surprised.
“Yes, I do,” I gave back reprehensively. “I know.”
“How?” She asked, her face taking on a very ridiculous expression of confusion and disbelieve.
I simply shook my head and closed my eyes for a brief moment, allowing the new information to sink in and allow her to connect the dots on her own. It was obviously a beast thing.
“Oh,” was all she uttered.
“Do you have any idea how much you are risking me being exposed when calling me in like that just when I left your care to work under him?” I scolded her, feeling annoyed and she still needed to process the fact that I was aware of my state and still decided to leave her care.
“You didn’t tell me because you knew I wouldn’t allow you to leave,” she figured.
“And he would have found out, now I’m at least a little while safer and I can pretend to be a normal human being until it’s clear that C is safe,” I continued, hating the fact that I had to use that letter for the unborn life I was carrying. “I need to make sure that it stays a secret until it grows stronger, so I will not lose it. Not being prodded and probed is one thing that definitely will help. And the beasts that I am meeting with will treat me differently. Especially if they realize that I’m their leader’s mate.”
“What are you talking about?” Val was shocked and I knew that I had spilled too much, but it was too late anyway, becoming a beast was obviously making me more impulsive and more passionate
.
“If you really want to help me and redeem yourself, you will not share this with anyone and we will stick to the regular examinations,” I told her, scowling at her. “I need to make sure that Jay and I see each other.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
This was a question I hadn’t thought about. If he knew, he would try to do everything to protect it and White would instantly know. I would end up being confined to a hospital bed again and we might never have a chance to escape.
“No,” I spoke out my decision. “Not until we have left this place.”
I didn’t know until that moment how wide Valerie was able to tear her eyes open.
“I will tell him about my infection,” I explained. “He will think that his senses are catching on that and you will continue working on a cure.”
“It might not work,” Val answered quietly. “On so many levels. It might cure you because you are the host of the mutated virus and not fully changed yet. It might take months and regulars injections, too. I only started when you joined us and I need more time, there are so many...”
“Stop,” I brought up my hand and cut her off. “I don’t care about all that, just tell him that you are working on a cure, so that he will not torment himself to death for infecting me. And now, I need to go to work.”
I turned around and knocked against the door, knowing that Grey was there waiting for me. After all, he was my very own guard. If he likes it, I don’t know, I can’t read his face and I don’t really care.
XXX
When I returned after working with Nina and being brought to meet Four, whose name turned out to be Daniel, I found my cage to be changed.
There was an actual nightstand next to the bed, a long cupboard above it stashed with my books, my lamp, a soft looking bedside carpet and a dresser. It was still a cage, but it was a bit more homely.
The Beast In Us (The Beast And Me Book 3) Page 11