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A WIDESPREAD CLAIM was that a person learns by their mistakes. If something had happened once before, they'll recognise it the second time it comes around and put a stop to it -growth, they called it, which. . . was truly ridiculous. Leo had experienced growth in every definition of the word. He'd gone from scrawny to muscular. Boy to man. Peaceful to murderous and then to something in between.
And yet, here it was; a past mistake looming over him, only slightly rewritten.
Instead of an unhinged man with an army of sociopaths packed to the brim with firepower, it was a filthy bald woman with an entire pack of senseless idiots, wearing the faces of the dead, denying the hearts that thrummed in their chest cavities just to prove a point.
The common factor? Their hostage being the person Leo loved most in the world.
After Freya's insistence, he'd rushed outside and clambered up the metal ladder to the guard's post, squeezing his way through the small crowd that had gathered atop - Magna, Daryl, Tara, Kelly and Yumiko - to ensure that he could see the threat beneath.
His daughter's life.
Aria was glassy-eyed and trembling, held in place by calloused fingers with dirt sprinkled across every inch of the skin covering them.
The woman holding her was the only one not donning a mask. Leo assumed it was symbolic somehow, a demonstration of her power, a way to scare people into compliance.
Unluckily for her, Leo didn't scare easy. He wasn't going to back down until Aria was back within the walls that had kept her safe for the past five years. What it would take to get to that point; he did not care.
"My name is Alpha." Her words came out coated in a thick southern accent, stronger than he'd ever heard during his time in the South. Nobody reacted to her words, implication to Leo that she was repeating herself solely for his late arrival. "And I only want one thing from you people; my daughter."
Leo's brow tightened and his knuckles blanched around the sheet of metal serving as a wall. She wanted her daughter, the girl who had been accompanying Devin, but there was no mention of Devin herself. He didn't know what to make of that, and honestly, it didn't take precedence over his daughter's wellbeing.
"Let her go," Leo demanded, brown eyes burning into Alpha's icy blue ones. He scoured her face for a semblance of humanity and quickly realised that there was none.
"Of course," Alpha drawled calmly. "If you bring me my daughter, I see no reason not to."
She'd called a stalemate. If they complied and put their respective pieces back where they belonged - there would be no loss. But if they challenged her, started a new match. . . Aria would become a pawn in a game that bore no rules; a street fight.
