Beta

by Reine, SM

  Deirdre was an idiot. She was naïve and a fool.

  She couldn’t believe she’d thought Stark might not be worthy of hatred, even for a millisecond.

  “I wish you hadn’t made me Beta,” Deirdre said. “I never would have agreed to help you if I’d known that it meant throwing children to the Winter Court!”

  He lifted a hand.

  Deirdre flinched, prepared to be struck.

  But Stark only pushed her aside so that he could step into the hallway. He wasn’t rough with her, but the brush of his hand made her shoulders explode in chills. “I expect to see you at the group training session this afternoon,” he said. “Do whatever you need to prepare. We leave for the Infernal Blade after that.”

  He left without striking her.

  Deirdre watched him leave from her doorway, sick and cold and trembling all over.

  He hadn’t punished her for insolence this time.

  Why did she feel so unsafe?

  The shooting range at the asylum was in the cellar. Someone had hauled tons of gravel downstairs and piled it against the wall to stop bullets—probably not Stark, but someone he disliked strongly enough to subject them to manual labor. Deirdre had an easy time imagining a hapless peon carrying that stuff through the sewers bucket by bucket.

  Flimsy wires suspended sheets of paper at the far end of the range. They were the kind of targets that anyone could buy at a gun store, some with vague human figures, others with silly cartoon zombies, and still others in the shape of werewolves.

  The werewolf targets were popular among gun enthusiasts. Many people believed that gaeans would turn on the mundanes eventually, attacking them in their homes and slaughtering them as they slept. Why not practice shooting at an image of the real thing?

  The OPA didn’t promote anti-gaean laws as frequently as they used to, but prejudice festered in America’s heartland.

  They should have been afraid. Mundanes outnumbered gaeans for the time being, but mundanes were also weak.

  And Deirdre was feeling very unforgiving at the moment.

  Gunfire chattered through the cellar as Deirdre shot, fully automatic rifle braced against her shoulder. She tried to spray a pattern within a narrow circle but her shots went wider than she intended.

  She released the trigger, let out a breath, and reloaded.

  Deirdre was testing some of Stark’s arsenal—an M2 Browning machine gun and an M16 at the moment. She was good with her tiny Ruger despite its big kick, but she’d never had a reason to use bigger guns before. She could kill with them, sure, but anyone could. Just aim and fire.

  She wanted to be able to kill well.

  If she’d been able to find ammunition that fit Melchior’s revolver, she would have brought that down, too. But it took bullets the size of her thumb that she didn’t recognize. They were some kind of weird metal, something that shimmered with magic. Probably something crafted by the sidhe.

  Deirdre hoped she’d get an opportunity to test that gun on Melchior himself.

  For now, she stuck to the M16.

  She was so focused on shooting that she didn’t notice Niamh enter the range until her friend appeared at the edge of Deirdre’s vision.

  “Hey, girl,” Deirdre said, pulling off her protective headgear. “What’s up? Want to shoot some hapless paper with me?”

  “I was just coming to get you for the training session,” Niamh said.

  “I’m not planning to train today,” Deirdre said. She removed the magazine on the M16, double-checked its chamber, and then set both down. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

  Niamh’s eyes were pinched at the edges. “This isn’t an invitation. It’s an order.”

  Her hand froze on the scrub brush. “Stark?”

  “Stark,” Niamh said.

  A familiar chill settled over Deirdre. It was the feeling of dread that she always got right before Stark did something terrible to her.

  She’d known that he would punish her for the argument they’d had in her bedroom, and for what she’d done with Melchior. But it had only been a few hours since he had left her. Deirdre had been hoping that he would wait a few days before punishing her. She still felt weak from the lethe leaving her system.

  Deirdre put trigger guards on the guns and mounted them on the wall with some of the others. She was tempted to take the M16 with her, but she wasn’t confident that even an assault rifle would be enough to take down something like Everton Stark.

  Worse, she wasn’t confident that she’d want to pull the trigger if she had the opportunity to use it on him.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Niamh escorted her to the training room. Deirdre could hear fighting from the hallway. The thumping of flesh against flesh echoed wetly, reverberating through the walls, punctuated by occasional cheers and cries of dismay.

  She shouldered into the training room to find that it was packed. The asylum’s occupants sat and stood in a ring around the walls. Only two people were currently on the mats.

  Both of them were drenched in blood.

  Deirdre didn’t even recognize the fighters. They weren’t friends, or allies, or anyone else that Deirdre would care about. She suspected that at least one of them had come from the detention center.

  Yet she felt a peculiar wrenching in her gut at the sight of them pounding on each other. The way they fought was graceless and brutal.

  They weren’t training. They were out for blood.

  The shorter of the men was obviously losing. He grew weaker with every punch that landed on his face or under his ribs. He swayed on his feet.

  Deirdre noticed Stark among the crowd against the opposite wall. His golden eyes were focused on her from across the room, piercing and hateful.

  What was the hate for this time? Because he’d dared to be vulnerable with her, sharing his history with Melchior and Rhiannon? Because she had been angry with him for sacrificing the shifter children to the Winter Court? Or because she’d kissed a dragon whom he loathed?

  It was probably all of the above.

  “This isn’t training. What is this?” Deirdre asked Niamh under her breath.

  “Hierarchy establishment,” Niamh said. “I’ve only seen this once since I signed on with Stark. He does it to see who’s the strongest and figure out who he wants to take on missions. He must have something big coming up if he’s trying to pick out a team.” She sounded upbeat about it, but the haunted look in her eyes told another story.

  She’d done a fight like that before. She must have won, since Stark regarded her highly enough to leave the asylum in her charge while he was on a mission. But her expression said that Niamh regretted whatever she had done to emerge victorious.

  A cry from the ring.

  The shorter man staggered. He hit his knees, planted a hand on the ground to balance himself.

  That moment where he faltered was a massive show of vulnerability. The other shifter came upon him in a rush, slamming his fist into the side of his head and dropping him to the floor.

  The victor stood, bloodied but strong, with his fists raised.

  And everyone cheered.

  Everyone but Stark.

  “Take him to the healer,” he said.

  Colette moved forward, grabbing the loser’s ankles. She was a slight woman, but she didn’t struggle in the slightest as she dragged him out the door to the hallway, leaving a trail of blood and sweat in his wake.

  The victor stepped back into the crowd. People patted him on the shoulders in congratulations. Gave him water. Dried him with towels.

  Stark raised his voice to call out the names of the next fighters.

  “Tombs and Niamh,” he announced.

  The cheers went silent quickly.

  Niamh gave a nervous laugh. “Really, Stark?” She made it sound like they were sharing a joke, and others laughed along with her.

  Deirdre swallowed hard. She knew that Stark wasn’t joking. He intended Deirdre and Niamh to fight with as much vi
gor as the last people had. And if they held back, the punishment would be surely worse than if they refused to fight at all.

  This was the line Deirdre couldn’t cross. This was the one thing she couldn’t do for Stark.

  She had already shot Gage in the head. She wasn’t going to kill another of her friends to prove her loyalty to him.

  The swanmay’s eyes were wide. Her freckles stood out like spots of ink on her cheekbones. She licked her lips, glanced at Stark, back at Deirdre.

  “No way,” Deirdre started to say.

  Niamh interrupted her, speaking loudly enough to drown Deirdre out.

  “Okay,” she said. “Who’s got a water bottle?”

  She moved out onto the floor, received by cheers.

  Deirdre wanted to tell her to stop. To not play Stark’s game. To let Deirdre take whatever punishment he’d mete out for her defiance.

  But Niamh almost looked excited by the idea of the fight. Her cheeks were flushed, her smile broad, her arms open to the crowd. It was well known that Deirdre and Niamh were friends; after all, Niamh was one of the few people in the house who didn’t dislike Deirdre for being an Omega, and that friendship made her fractionally less popular by association. If Deirdre let Niamh beat her, surely it would do favors for her friend’s reputation.

  What would Stark to do Deirdre if she didn’t prove herself to be the strongest person in the house?

  “Don’t do this,” Deirdre whispered to Niamh, quietly enough that nobody else would be able to hear them. “I’ll take the fall for it.”

  Niamh wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Let’s get ready to rumble!” she said, addressing the crowd.

  They loved it.

  What was she thinking? Was she insane?

  Deirdre could still feel that small hit of lethe Stark had given her earlier in the day. It filled her with heat that brewed in the core of her belly, warm and liquid. It kept the fear from becoming overwhelming. And it made her mind clear. Deirdre knew exactly what she needed to do.

  Whatever the cost, Deirdre needed to win against Niamh.

  The swanmay had obviously decided she needed a victory, too.

  She walked out into the middle of the floor, rolling out her shoulders, loosening her stiff muscles.

  “Ready?” Deirdre asked, lifting her fists in front of her face.

  Niamh nodded.

  Deirdre visualized Stark’s face replacing her friend’s and unleashed her anger.

  She expected to land the first hits, so she wasn’t prepared for the sheer force of Niamh’s blows. The swanmay’s elbow drove into her gut and emptied her lungs of oxygen. She slammed her forehead into Deirdre’s face hard enough to make her stumble, dazed.

  The pain of it made Deirdre’s survival instincts roar to life.

  The urge to let Niamh win vanished.

  Anger followed quickly.

  Deirdre trapped a fistful of Niamh’s ponytail and used the grip to throw her to the ground. She snapped her heel into Niamh’s face.

  Niamh’s nose broke. Blood flowed.

  The swanmay sank her teeth into Deirdre’s calf. Pain brought Deirdre down, and Niamh rolled both of them, trying to get on top. Trying to get the advantage. They were a tangle of limbs. A grunting, screaming mass of violence.

  The swanmay used her fingernails with deadly abandon. She scratched, she kicked, she bit.

  She was so much more vicious than Deirdre expected.

  Niamh wanted the victory. Bad.

  Deirdre should have let her have it. Losing to Niamh might mean that she would die—Stark would never accept a Beta who looked so weak—but at least she could stop punching her friend, stop making her bleed, stop eliciting those cries of pain from someone she cared about.

  Truthfully, Deirdre would have been far stronger to choose death.

  She couldn’t lose.

  It was no surprise how loudly people cheered on the fight. Jacek’s quarter was loudest of all, stomping thunderously to egg them on. Niamh’s name was on their lips. Encouraging her to kill Deirdre. Take her down. Destroy the Beta.

  Nobody cheered for Deirdre.

  She was a mass of bruises, shaking from the healing fever, but somehow she got on top of Niamh. She pinned her down. And she punched her, again and again, beating until the other woman stopped fighting back.

  Deirdre was beyond thought, beyond feeling.

  All she knew was the crack of her fists against Niamh’s face.

  Then Niamh went limp.

  It took Deirdre a moment to stop punching. Her mind registered Niamh’s unconsciousness long before her reflexes caught up with her.

  Deirdre had to force herself to stand and back away, sweat dripping down her neck, fists sore.

  The swanmay didn’t get up. She was a crimson lump smeared across foam mats.

  She had beaten Niamh. She had beaten her bloody, taking the victory that Niamh had so obviously thirsted for. And for what? To prove that she was stronger. To make all those cheering voices fall silent. To show Stark that Deirdre could leap any hurdle he put in front of her.

  But at least it was over.

  Deirdre turned to look for a towel, a bottle of water, a bullet to plant in her own brain.

  Before she could leave, Stark said, “Tombs and Colette.”

  Her head whipped around so she could stare at him.

  Pitting her against Colette was just as bad as putting her up against Niamh in many ways. Colette was a sweet girl—as sweet as anyone in the asylum could be. She was also strong. Her upper body strength was far better than Deirdre’s, which said a lot, considering that Deirdre used her arms for parkour.

  It would be a hard fight. And she was already tired.

  A couple of the feline shifters grabbed Niamh by ankles and wrists, lifting her off of the floor, body sagging between them as they carried her to the healer.

  Deirdre set her jaw and lifted her fists as Colette stepped out.

  This was her punishment for everything. Embarrassing him in front of Melchior, defying him in private, daring to be kind to people rather than the cruel bastard he wanted her to be.

  No wonder Stark hadn’t been beating her up as much. He’d gotten a lot cleverer about his sadism.

  Deirdre shot him a look, and she didn’t hold back any of her emotions. She let every ounce of her hatred show in her face.

  Stark turned and walked out of the room.

  Seven fights.

  Deirdre had been forced to go up against seven other shifters before Stark returned to tell everyone that they were done.

  And somehow, she’d survived. She wore so much blood that she didn’t know what belonged to which of her victims anymore. Her body was struggling to heal the various cuts and bruises that had been wreaked upon her. She was too weak for that much fighting, too slow to heal.

  Yet she had survived.

  “I’m not going to heal you,” the healer said when he came around to her bed. “Knowing you, you’ll just be back with your face busted up again in an hour.”

  “Fine with me.” She hopped off the bed and winced at standing upright.

  Deirdre hadn’t really wanted the old witch to work on her anyway. She’d only gone to his infirmary because Stark had told her to, and she didn’t want to deal with the outcome of refusal.

  The healer moved on as Deirdre limped toward the doors.

  Niamh caught up with her in the hallway. Through a combination of shifter healing and the witch’s efforts, she looked as good as new, aside from the dried blood flaking off of her face.

  It seemed wrong that their fight shouldn’t have left an impression, even a temporary one. It had hurt to fight Niamh. Shouldn’t both of them have shown that pain on their bodies?

  “Heading to the showers?” Niamh asked, jogging alongside Deirdre.

  The idea of getting back into those showers, naked and vulnerable, pushed Deirdre in just the wrong way.

  She stopped in front of Niamh. “What the hell was that? It seemed like you wanted to fight
me.”

  Niamh rolled her eyes. “Dee—”

  “We used to watch each other’s backs. You and me against the world—or, at least, the other girls at the boarding school. But as soon as Stark gave you an excuse, you tried to kill me!”

  “He would have killed both of us if I hadn’t,” Niamh said. “I was doing you a favor. I figured you’d understand.”

  But Deirdre was on a roll. She couldn’t stop. “It’s not just that. It’s—it’s everything. You’re so bloodthirsty and hateful and when Stark got you involved in his plans for the town hall, you didn’t even tell me. You didn’t share anything with me. I have no idea what’s going on between us anymore, but it doesn’t look like friendship.”

  Niamh was stiff-backed, taking the verbal assault with the look of someone who smelled something foul. “I don’t get what you’re complaining about, Deirdre. You beat me harder than I beat you today. By a lot. If anyone should be angry, it’s me.”

  “You made me do that to you,” Deirdre said.

  She lifted her hands. “Stop right there. You’ve got issues, Dee. I’ve been patient with you since I know you cared about Gage and all, but this is stupid. I’m not the problem. You’re taking it out on me.”

  Deirdre opened her mouth to argue—but then Stark came up the hallway, and the sight of him killed her words instantly.

  “We’re leaving in an hour, Beta,” he said. “Get ready.”

  —XII—

  The team that Stark assembled to retrieve the Infernal Blade was unexpected. From what Niamh had told Deirdre, she’d thought the winners of the fights would accompany them on the mission, but his choices included many of the losers.

  Niamh was there, despite her rapid loss against Deirdre. So was Colette. Bowen and his wandering hands had also been selected. He hadn’t lost any fights in the training room that day—but that was because he hadn’t fought, which meant he hadn’t won anything, either.

  And no Jacek.

  The team wasn’t composed of the strongest members of the pack. They were the ones who were small and light, the people who would be likeliest to enter a secure area without detection.