Alexandra was certain she had cried out every last drop of moisture in her body as she sobbed hoarsely into the cushioning of her bed. Her dark hair was matted with anxious sweat, her limbs ached from almost every angle, and her extremities were cold enough that it made her cringe to touch them to her burning forehead, though she had no idea if it was from the temperature in the room or simply the byproduct of all this insanity.
She couldn’t imagine a time in her life she’d been as frightened, save for the events immediately preceding her meeting Bridget for the first time. Every Omega she’d ever met had treated her with the utmost respect, some of which she assumed came out of piteous sympathy over the well-known sacrifice she’d made at the age of ten, but nonetheless, she had lulled herself into a complacent sense of security over the years. Nothing could touch her.
And now, in the span of a single morning, she’d been ripped from her home with no real explanation, placed in a cell for ninety weeks, and subjugated under her best friend and essential adoptive sister’s relentless toes, with the promise of it being made even worse unless she took ownership of an event so sadistic it made her sick to imagine it ascribed to anyone, let alone herself.
In fact, if she hadn’t just spent the last hour of solitude weeping herself dry, she was sure she’d have to crawl over to the toilet and heave into it as a side effect of the physical trauma she’d endured beneath Bridget’s muscular soles, but primarily for the toxic realization that was slowly but surely creeping its way to the front of her mind.
No one was going to help her. Not Aegis, not those Betas who had apparently fingered her as the culprit, and certainly not the most important person to her on the whole planet.
The leaders of the world had unanimously taken a look at whatever evidence had been present and stamped her as a pariah before passing her off into the hands of someone for whom she was to be merely a shrieking exercise in Omega justice for the better part of two full years.
There would be no second chances, no questioning, no opportunity to go before them and beg with her face to the ground that they take a closer look.
She was alone, and she finally knew it wholeheartedly.
“Have you cleaned yourself up yet?” Bridget asked with sedation as she padded back into the room. Her curly hair had been tied back behind her head in a messy bun, and her skin was slightly rosier than when the pair had parted after the session. Her cheekbones seemed even tighter than before, as though she was biting the inside of her lips, but at this point, Alexandra had stopped giving into to such paranoid searches for mercy in her friend’s face. It was very clear what she was going to do, regardless of any cloying doubts Alexandra tricked herself into recognizing.
Barely tilting her gaze to the side enough to see through the glassy cell wall, Alexandra shook her head wordlessly.
“It doesn’t matter. This next part is actually your choice, anyway,” Bridget announced as she stood back over the box and hung her fingers over the edge, tapping at the surface gently. “These conversations are entirely optional. It’s to your benefit to participate and impress me with your answers, but it is up to you whether you stay in there now. What do you think? Are you ready to talk, Lexi?”
With a heavy gulp, Alexandra nodded in the affirmative, knowing this was important without even understanding fully how. They could put her in a box. They could hand over her rights to someone. They could lock her up and throw away the key.
They would not take away the truth from her, even if she was the only one on earth who believed it.
“Good. I figured some fresh air might make things a little more relaxing after… earlier, so if you’ll just hold still for me…” Bridget continued calmly as she reached into the case and curled her fingers around Alexandra’s limp form.
A shiver ran up the Omega’s arm to experience the feeling of her friend’s body sitting so lifeless and defeated in her powerful grip, but she stiffened back up immediately afterward.
Cupping the Alpha into her palm and no longer constricting her in the coiled skin, she sauntered out to the porch past the sliding door and took a seat in a chair, resting her elbow on the arm of it while her charge pulled herself into a reclined position against the flattened fingers.
Despite her fear, Alexandra had to admit to herself she felt infinitesimally better being able to simulate a more normal seating arrangement with her titanic friend. She gazed out at the massive expanse of the backyard, an entire ecosystem unto itself, and in her desperation for something hopeful to latch onto, caught sight of the creek that babbled over loose stones and logs. Merely glancing at it brought on enough bittersweet memories of the pair of them playing alongside it as children that she had to force herself to look away again.
“Here’s how these… chats will work, Lexi. I’m going to ask you some questions. Answer them as honestly as you can, and at the end, you’ll have the chance to say something yourself. Clear?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. If we can get started, then, I… want to know what you say happened last night after you finished your shopping.”
Noting this as a startlingly positive sign, Alexandra nonetheless didn’t allow herself to perk up as she answered, though because of her less threatening position in Bridget’s open palm, she managed to get the words out without much more difficulty than a weary croak lingering after the earlier tears. Her confidence in the preservation of her personal dignity, if nothing else, made it easier to speak: “I paid, I took my things, and walked outside and back to my car. Didn’t talk to anybody.”
“There was a security feed showing you stopping on your way out of the building near the front, then turning around and doubling back to the alley instead of going down to the parking area. Why?” Bridget pressed with practiced flatness.
“I realized it was faster to go the other way, even though I had to go through the alley. So I went back,” Alexandra said.
“The camera didn’t have footage of the alley. How long were you walking through it?”
“How… how long?”
“Yes.”
“I… I don’t know. Maybe thirty seconds. I just walked like normal.”
“I see,” Bridget answered, her brow furrowing slightly as her lips pursed. “Another feed showed you coming out on the other side almost five minutes later. Are you sure you didn’t stop to go through your bags?”
“I didn’t go through my bags,” Alexandra said. “I… can’t think of anything that happened in there. I just walked.”
“And what about your shoe?”
“My shoe?”
“Yes. You were putting it back on as you left the alley. Why?” the Omega continued, struggling to keep her successive questions from sounding like demands.
“Oh. I… I remember. Yes. I… I stepped on a piece of gum on the path. It was fresh, so it stuck and pulled my shoe partway off.”
“And you stopped for five minutes to put it back on?”
“No. Maybe a few extra seconds. I didn’t even stop walking. Someone could go to my house and see it. I scraped most of it off, but there’s still some left on the bottom,” Alexandra responded floridly, managing to keep a stiff upper lip through it all as she steadily retaught herself to look Bridget in the eye. As uncomfortable and painfully weak as it made her feel, another side effect of the session, she knew it was necessary if she was to have a single strain of hope in her words being taken as genuine.
Bridget seemed to consider the suggestion and nodded. “I’ll make sure someone checks it out.”
“Thank you,” Alexandra said simply, fighting back a sigh of intense relief, despite the victory being so small. She knew it would mean almost nothing to anyone, given the circumstances, but it gave her a flutter in her heart to hear Bridget at least acknowledge something she’d said rather than tossing it aside like an outright lie.
“But you had to have seen them there,” Bridget continued abruptly, seemingly shifting gears, having recognized the relative softness of the moment and apparently disapproving of it. “You had to have seen the Betas walking through. That path is chest height for you. They passed in just a few minutes before you.”
“It was dark, and I was looking straight ahead. I don’t even think I looked at the Beta path. I don’t remember anyone there.”
“At a walking speed, you still would’ve left the alley sooner, but the issue is that we saw them on the feed go in first and then never come out, after you passed through and fixed your shoe. No one else went through except you. It happened in that window. You have to see our problem with that, Lexi.”
“I… I do…” Alexandra whimpered, her confidence wavering for just a moment, knowing she was steadily beginning to lose an uphill battle now. “I do see it.”
“So how can you explain that? How can we believe that you didn’t see them? There were six of them, close together. You probably would’ve at least heard them talking.”
“No.”
“Nothing,” Bridget said disbelievingly for confirmation.
“Nothing,” the Alpha repeated with a gulp.
“I just have one last question for you, Lexi,” Bridget said with a defeated sigh. “And then you can say whatever you want.”
“Okay.”
“Why?” the Omega hissed desperately with a rattle in her throat. She leaned her face in a few feet closer until Alexandra could feel each resigned exhalation wafting against her legs. “Why?”
“I don’t know why it happened. I just know I didn’t do it. I would never touch a Beta without asking, and I would never, ever think of-”
“Just get it over with!” spat Bridget venomously, her hands shaking now as she fought back the trembling in her voice. Alexandra was nearly spilled from her palm as the massive fingers curled inward slightly like claws. “You’re making this so much harder on yourself. Why can’t you just-”
“BECAUSE IT’S THE TRUTH, BRIDGE!” screamed Alexandra, crawling forward in the palm and propping herself up on the heel of Bridget’s upturned hand. Both young women flinched in the immediate wake of it, though the Alpha quickly crossed her arms defiantly. “Yes, I know. Enforcer Cade or ma’am. Do what you have to now.”
“No,” grumbled Bridget with a frown. “I’m not going to this time. But I don’t know what you think I’m supposed to do here. I’m trying to make this as easy as possible for both of us, and you won’t stop fighting me.”
“Figure out what happened, like you always do. That’s what you’re supposed to do. I shouldn’t be here, and you know it.”
“Lexi… just tell me, if this… all of it… was about something else. Anything.”
“No.”
“Look, we both know you’ve had a… history with Betas. That’s not a secret to anyone. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and…”
“No.”
“Or maybe a way to finally make things… even. For your…”
“Don’t,” Alexandra spat with steely abandon, dredging the strength to make it clear.
“…for your mother.”
“Don’t you dare…” the Alpha cried, her voice cracking with every syllable in tandem with the quaking of her limbs. “…talk to me about her.”
A fractured silence followed, with neither girl surrendering to blink or break their taut concentration on one another. At long last, though, Bridget bit her lip and conceded.
“All right. Those were all my questions. Do you have any-”
“No,” Alexandra answered immediately, still not quite caring what the reaction for interruptions would be. “I’m done.”
Bridget leaned her chin down a little lower, unable to meet her friend’s gaze for a few seconds and clearly impacted by the gravity of the moment. If nothing else, she knew she could believe Alexandra on this final point.
“Lexi, if you… want to spend a little more time outside right now, for a few minutes anyway, you could… I mean, it would be all right.” Bridget continued, only partially able to hide her guilt over having felt the need to broach that final subject. Her eyes, too, passed over the expansive backyard and couldn’t help but be flooded with pleasant sensations that seemed too distant to ever truly reclaim.
She remembered wading through the creek with Lexi safely cupped in her hands and kicking the waves up into the sunlight, the pair of them giggling at the splattering display.
She remembered plucking berries by the bushel between her fingertips and gingerly lowering crimson handfuls of them toward her friend to share, who would smother herself in their purple juices for the pure hilarity of it while Bridget doubled over with adoring laughter.
She remembered planting tree in the soil around the house while Lexi set down tiny flowers around the bases, lighting them up with vibrant color that only grew louder when people walking by took the extra time to examine them.
“No,” Alexandra whispered at last after considering it by replaying the exact same sights in her mind. “Just take me back to my cage, please.”