survival instinct was still intact.
Had she really misjudged the alpha so completely? Olivia had been so sure that he'd gotten over his plans to punish her, but there was no denying now that she was in trouble. The look on his face, combined with the sharp blade in his hand, could only mean one thing:
He'd run out of patience and was about to slit her throat and put an end to her bitching once and for all.
Olivia made it farther than she had any right to expect. By the time the alpha wrapped his arm around her waist and hoisted her up against his chest, she'd managed to open the door and set one foot outside.
But that didn't change the fact that he'd caught her. Olivia flopped and flailed like a fish on a hook, and once again, it didn't do a damned bit of good. The alpha absorbed every kick and blow like her desperate efforts were nothing.
This alpha could probably get into a bare-knuckle brawl with a grizzly and come out the winner. Though Olivia hammered at him as hard as she could with his fists, it probably felt like the beat of butterfly wings to him.
But rolling over and giving up was not an option. Accepting defeat had never been in her nature when she was a beta—and it sure as hell wasn't now. Defiance like she'd never experienced before surged in her and kept the blows coming. If this prick really wanted her dead, then by God, he was going to have to work for it.
"Get your hands off me!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, though she knew there wasn't a soul around who could help her. "Let me go, you sick son of a bitch!"
The alpha didn't respond, even as she went through every curse and epithet she could think of. If these were her last words, so be it—though there might not be enough room on her tombstone for "Let me go, you bastard, or I'll chop off your dick and feed it to a mountain lion."
Eventually, the alpha lost patience and flipped her around so she faced him. Before Olivia registered what was happening, he had pinned her arms and legs to the floor. She glared up at him, expecting rage on his countenance—and finding none. There was only a look of intense focus in his strange purple eyes.
He was staring at her like she was a lab specimen, with no warmth at all. She obviously was still nothing to him but a threat, all that time he'd spent with his cock inside her already forgotten. Without warning, Olivia's eyes flooded with tears that spilled down her cheeks and into her ears.
Goddammit, this wasn't how she wanted to die. She always hoped to live to be old and grey, and when the time came, she'd die in her own bed, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. Maybe even her great-grandchildren if she were lucky. All of them would sob as Olivia slipped gently away in her sleep.
Instead, it looked like she was going out in a pool of blood on the floor of an alpha's cabin.
She had one gambit left. "If you kill me right now, I swear I will haunt you," she shouted up at him. "I'll destroy everything in your house and rattle those kinky-ass chains of yours all night long. You'll never sleep again. I'll—"
The alpha's colossal hand clamped down over her mouth, instantly silencing her.
Trust me, he mouthed slowly and clearly, never taking his eyes off her.
Trust him? Was that some kind of sick joke?
Olivia didn't have long to figure out the answer because a second later, the alpha pressed the tip of the knife into her upper arm, just below the shoulder.
The puncture was more shocking than painful, especially as he'd only stabbed a few millimeters deep, but Olivia howled anyway. Or rather, she tried but managed only a muffled moan as the alpha carefully cut deeper into her flesh, every muscle in his jawline visibly tensing.
A thin stream of blood trickled from the wound, down her arm to her elbow. She tried to fight, but the alpha just held her tighter, completely immobilizing her. Remarkably, the only emotion on his face was determination.
What the hell was he doing? If he was going to stab her to death, why didn't he get on with it? If he was trying to torture her, he wasn't very good at it—while the cut stung, it didn't come close