Chapter 175: Walter’s Ungrateful Ass

Lorali

I turned back to Vanessa, who was staring at me in shock. "I am pretty sure that half of the miserable packs who have walked out of your office with a ’one hundred percent success rate’ just pretended everything was okay because your sessions were taking them absolutely nowhere," I stated smoothly.

Vanessa’s jaw was practically resting on her lap. She looked between me and the rest of the pack, completely unable to process the total 180-degree shift that had just occurred in front of her eyes. I pushed myself off the floor, flicked my hair over my shoulder with a dazzling smile, and sat back down in my armchair, crossing my legs.

Vanessa swallowed hard, clearing her throat as she frantically tapped her tablet to reset her composure. "Okay..." She grabbed a marker and wrote something aggressively on the whiteboard behind her. "Okay. Let’s go back to basics. Simply put... how many of you here have been a victim of one of Lorali’s antics, like the one on set, or even worse?"

Instantly, every single male in the room raised his hand into the air. Torin, Walter, Oril, Kei, Augi, and Oracle. Even Vanessa slowly raised her own hand. I tilted my head at Vanessa, rolling my eyes hard. "That’s completely unfair. You’re supposed to ask why they were victims of those antics!"

Vanessa leaned forward, crossing her arms over her clipboard. "Okay, Lorali. Why don’t you tell us? Why was I just a victim to your antics?"

"Because you’re deeply irritating," I shot back without a second of hesitation. "And I hate you."

Oril snorted loudly from across the circle. "Oh, listen to the spawn of the devil speak! Let me tell you about her—"

"Whoa, okay!" Torin cut in loudly, holding up a hand. "I think we’ve had more than enough for today. Session over."

"This isn’t your session to end, Torin," Vanessa snapped, turning her sharp gaze onto the Alpha. "It’s only been five minutes. Let the girl speak."

"Thank you, Vanessa," I purred, leaning forward and resting my elbows on my knees. "These people deserve everything they get. You want to know why I act out? When I first stepped out of the Alma Academy, they called me a gold digger. They said I was only coming to their pack for money, asking why on earth an Omega would pick a pack that already had one."

I pointed a sharp, accusatory finger directly at Torin’s face. "It was especially that one’s mother," I hissed, glaring at Torin, "and that one right there," I pointed at Walter, "who would constantly tag-team against me! They were so utterly convinced I was a gold digger! Well, newsflash for you idiots, I am an Alma-trained Omega. If I was a gold digger, best believe I wasn’t choosing the Spade Pack! There were other packs available that were ten times richer and better than Spade! I had options! But I chose Spade because I genuinely believed it was fated, destined love! I know how stupid that sounds now."

I let out a harsh, bitter laugh, my voice rising in pitch as months of built-up poison poured out of my throat. "And these people had the absolute audacity to make me their live-in, unpaid maid! That one," I pointed a finger at Walter again, cause damn he was the devil behind all my suffering "always had some bratty, ungrateful attitude every single day. Nothing I did could ever satisfy him!"

I swung my finger over to Oril, who stiffened in his seat.

"And this one! I don’t understand why he has this mad, macho energy going on right now, because for six whole months while I was being abused in that house, he was completely indifferent! He didn’t care at all! Now he’s acting all righteous and noble, but back then? He was nothing more than the devil’s quiet accomplice!"

Oril flinched, opening his mouth to argue, but no sound came out. I snapped my glare over to Kei. "And him! I would spend day and night cleaning that massive penthouse, only for him to trash it over and over again! I would iron his clothes until they were perfectly pressed, and he would step on them so I’d do it again!"

My gaze moved to Oracle, who was sitting near the other edge, his body completely still, his eyes fixed on the floor. A cold, lethal fury settled into my chest.

"That one," I whispered, my voice dropping into a deadly, vibrating rasp. "Oracle... that one deserves a very special, customized place in hell. Because I’m telling you, if it wasn’t for specifically him, none of this nightmare would have ever happened. I would have returned to Alma, become a teacher, or started a brand-new life afresh with a normal pack. But no... he just had to ruin my life. He just had to."

Vanessa blinked, looking confused. "What do you mean?"

"Do you know what a venomous bond is, Vanessa?" I asked quietly.

"Yes... vaguely," Vanessa murmured.

"Let me educate you," I hissed, leaning into the center of the circle. "I cannot go anywhere without this person, and if I even entertain the intention of leaving the Spade Pack, I will die of agonizing organ failure. Thanks entirely to this guy right here, who marked me, bonded with me, and then violently rejected me before the bond could settle, creating a permanent venomous anchor!"

The room was suffocatingly quiet. "And then," I turned my head, locking my eyes onto Torin, "there is Torin freaking Spade. Who ran away! The only reason I even picked this pack in the first place was because of a dance I shared with him at the gala, a single, real moment, and he ran! I entered this pack, and he left me alone with that devil called Yurena Spade!"

I smirked viciously. "I got my revenge on her, though. It’s so funny where she ended up now. But beside the point, that woman was pure evil, and she was taking all her bitter anger out on me because that one"—I jabbed a thumb toward Torin—"is a little..."

I paused, catching myself before I spilled the non-blood secret. "You know what? I won’t even speak about that. But she took her anger out on me because of something Alma’s Headmaster did to her, which was totally, completely justifiable! She was so furious with me that she literally whipped me! Every single time Walter went into heat, I dreaded that week, because she would beat me and I still had to drag my bleeding body into the kitchen to cook up and down for Walter’s ungrateful ass!"

Oril’s head snapped up, his face going entirely pale. "Wait... what?"

"Oh yes! You didn’t know?!" I laughed hysterically, looking at Oril’s horrified face. "Sorry, Oril! That’s what I accused you of! But no, Torin, it was your mother! That woman was pure evil! So go ahead and remind me why I shouldn’t want that boy dead!"

I gestured vaguely toward Augi, who was slouched in his chair, looking thoroughly uncomfortable. "And then there’s Augi. Not much to say about him other than he was a quiet spectator. He wasn’t that bad, though."

I sat back in my chair, breathing heavily, my eyes scanning the frozen, horrified faces of my packmates.

"So excuse me that I hate the Spade Pack!" I shouted, my voice echoing off the walls. "Excuse me, I want every single one of them to suffer! Excuse me that I slashed Walter’s face! Frankly, I should have gone straight for his neck! Maybe then he’d be dead, and I would finally be free of him!"

Vanessa looked utterly shell-shocked, her stylus trembling slightly over her tablet. "Um... you know..."

"You know what?! I’m NOT done!" I interrupted, slamming my foot against the floor. "Then these people find out I’m actually their fated mate, and suddenly—magically—I’m seeing some care! Suddenly they want to change! They want to do this differently, and fix that, and apologize... but ONLY because I’m their fated mate! Torin played with my emotions for the longest time, and now he only wants to make amends because he wants to live out the little fairy-tale fantasy everyone is promised when they find a fated bond! Walter is only begging for forgiveness because I’m his fated mate! It’s a bunch of pathetic excuses!"

I stood up from my chair, pacing the edge of the rug like a caged panther.

"They say ’we were all lost at the time’—I was NOT lost! I was ready to live out my life as a second Omega, but you guys made it so damn difficult! And now that they are the ones suffering, suddenly we have a big problem! Suddenly I’m ’crazy’ and things have to be sorted out!"

"Lorali, that is a very powerful point—" Vanessa tried to interject.

"NO! AGAIN, I AM NOT DONE!" I screamed, turning on them with wild eyes. "The funniest thing is, when my name was cleared when Torin came back from the goddess knows where, there was STILL zero change in their behavior! Walter was still a terrible human being! All of them were still awful! The only time things shifted was when they realized we were fated! That says everything about who they actually are, and they deserve every single piece of hell that is coming to them!"

"Okay, Lorali, you need to calm down—" Vanessa started.

"I’m sorry," a broken, choked voice sobbed from the other side of the circle.

I froze, turning my head. Walter was sitting in his armchair, tears streaming freely down his face, soaking into the white bandages covering his cheek. He was sobbing uncontrollably, his shoulders shaking. I rolled my eyes so hard I scoffed out loud. "There it is! There go the crocodile tears again! Always the crocodile tears!"

"I know we were wrong!" Walter wept, clutching his knees as he looked up at me with a shattered look in his eyes. "Me and my pack... we were so wrong, Lorali! I’m sorry! There is nothing we can do to excuse what we did to you! I deserve all of this! I deserve everything that is happening to me! I know I may never deserve your forgiveness, but I will do everything I can for the rest of my life to earn it!"

"Walter, don’t you get it?!" I snapped, my voice dangerously sharp. "You’re NEVER getting it! You don’t deserve it!"

"I KNOW I don’t deserve it!" Walter sobbed back, his chest heaving. "You can do anything to me, you can slash my face again and it still won’t balance out what I did to you, or how I lied on your name! But I’m willing to try!"

"Oh, that’s it," I growled.

Without thinking, I reached down, ripped my heavy, sharp-heeled designer shoe off my foot, and in one swift, lightning-fast motion, hurled it straight across the circle.

CLACK!