Chapter 227. Tracker
Maisie
My blood rushed to my head and it took so much effort, much more than I currently had, to keep my merciless act together.
That was what they replaced my letter with? Fury coiled in my gut and I swallowed hard, blinking away the tears I felt stinging my eyes, and when I spoke again, my words were laced with bitterness, making the utter shit that came out of my mouth believable enough to hurt.
"This is an ego thing, isn’t it?" I said. "The thing where you find it inconceivable that I am a person with autonomy, who can decide who she wants to be with and who she doesn’t want to be with. You find it inconceivable that I never liked you in the first place. And you were always right. And I was, indeed, just a slut."
Soren flinched.
I leaned in, "I was drowning in poverty before you came along, Soren. Of course I was going to latch on to you with everything I had, to steal everything of yours. It just irritates you that you fell for the innocent girl act. And you liked fucking me way too much for your own good."
Mercer snarled at me.
I blinked at him. And did not care. Or at least, that was the front I put up.
In truth, my Lycan was a needy bitch in heat and all I had been thinking about since he tackled me into the snow was running my fingers through his hair. Smelling him. Burying my face in his neck. His skin–
"You were pregnant," Mercer said.
The words hit me right in the gut and I flinched from the exact words Gruer had said to me all those months ago. You were pregnant. How could they possibly have found that out?
"We pulled your records from Munich," he answered, reading the shock on my expression before I could mask it. "In spite of your shit letter and the truth staring us in the face, we looked for you. We took every lead, upturned every city, anything that sounded like a lead, it didn’t matter if it was true or false, we took it. We were sure you were hurt. Taken. Surely, there had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything."
His expression morphed into something deeply hurt and bitter. "The whole time we were losing our minds trying to find you, you were in fucking Germany, getting a procedure to get rid of it."
Heat rushed to my head, my breaths coming out hard and fast. My heart twisted like someone had torn a hand into my chest and crushed it.
I couldn’t sit there anymore, couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t take any more of it. Couldn’t look at them as they waited, waited, because underneath all that justified rage was fear.
And time may have passed, but I could read it in Mercer’s angry green eyes. The silent plea he would never bring himself to say. Tell me I’m wrong. Say something, Maisie. Tell us none of this is true.
I opened my mouth. Dug my nails so hard into my knee, I was sure I had ripped something. I exhaled and met Mercer’s eyes, "If I couldn’t stand your hands on me, what possessed you into thinking I wanted a child with you?"
My voice cracked at the end of the statement and I hoped it all passed off as my ’hatred’ for them.
It did, because Mercer took a sudden step forward. "You–"
He was stopped by Soren and Jericho, who were instantly out of their seats, holding him back with their hands pressed hard to his chest. "Back the fuck up," Soren snarled.
Mercer’s face whipped towards Soren. "Easy for you to say because it wasn’t yours!"
"You don’t know that–"
"And thanks to that tiny little–" Mercer choked off on whatever names he had to call me. And settled on, "witch". "--we’ll never know."
Mercer definitely wanted to rip my head off.
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood and managed a bored expression. "Are we done here? I assume this is the part where I get handcuffed and taken to a cell or something. Can you tell how excited I am by this?"
All three of them looked at me like I was insane.
I had grossly underestimated my ability to piss people off, because Soren stepped away from Jericho and I saw something of that cruelty I’d once witnessed in his eyes before as he walked back to the desk and opened a metal box I hadn’t noticed before on the desk.
And then, he said without looking up. "Hold her down."
I barely had time to react before Mercer and Jericho were on me. "What the hell are you doing?!" I yelled, thrashing and kicking hard, but they had me by my shoulders like they knew if I could just get my hands free, I could dislodge their grips.
And I cried out as they shoved me forward, slamming my chest against the cold surface of the table.
Soren picked out a pair of surgical gloves and it smacked against his hands as he pulled them on. "You’ve always been a runner. Always threatening to leave." He plucked a pair of tweezers from inside the box and lifted a tiny capsule from the box.
It was a microchip. It had to be a real, swear-to-the-goddess human tracker. The kind that did major type of damage when you tried to take it out.
I’d heard of it before, but I didn’t even think it was real.
I began shrieking.
"I should have taken you seriously the first time you threatened to leave, should have done this when you were out of your senses in my bed. My mistake, I suppose. Still, better late than never," Soren said coldly.
"You don’t get to do this to me! You can’t do this!"
Jericho scoffed. "Sure, we can. Under every law that exists, you are still ours. Body. Mind. Soul. It’s either this, or we mark you again forcefully. Honestly, I like the second option better. It’s been so long since I had my teeth in your sweet, soft skin. Who knows, I might forget it’s you and tear out your jugular."