Page 135 of Psycho Pack

Then again, my father would be so disappointed.

He would loathe what I've become.

He was even disappointed in me when I cried about one of my brothers dying during an experiment. Said I was a little bitch. The new me that pines and wallows over losing the fucked-up family I've somehow found would be utterly disgusting to him.

Perhaps caring isn't so bad, then.

I hope he's watching me from hell.

I move deeper into the guest wing, my footsteps silent despite my unsteady gait. The white walls seem to go on forever, each corridor identical to the last. Like the endless maze of hallways in the lab.

But these are different.

These don't echo with screams.

I thought I was doing the right thing when I took Ivy. Thought I was giving her the choice I never had. The freedom to decide her own fate.

But I was wrong.

Not about the choice—shedidneed that—but about how I went about it.

I may have opened her gilded cage, but when the little bird didn't fly free, I reached in and grabbed her. Tried to force her to do something she didn't want to do, like every other scum of the earth beast who's tried to trample her spirit. Thought I knew what was best for her. Thought I had the right to make that choice for her.

I hurt her.

Betrayedher.

And for the first time in my life, that bothers me.

A lot.

I deserve to be cut out of the pack.

Cut out of her life.

It's only justice.

My hand finds the wall again as another wave of dizziness hits. The drugs are still working their way out of my system, making everything tilt and spin at random intervals. But my mind is clearer than it's been in days.

Clear enough to understand what I've done.

Clear enough to feel something dangerously like guilt.

Guilt and regret and shame.

Is that what this hollow ache in my chest is?

How fascinating.

Never thought I was capable of that.

Then again, I never thought I was capable of love, either.

But here I am, my black heart beating for a fierce little omega who hates me. Who has every right to hate me. Who should execute me by her own hand for my pathetic, self-serving betrayal.

And by God, I'd let her.

I'd even let her hang me.