Chapter 7
Diego
It’s hard to sit still while Gage applies antiseptic and steri-strips to the scratches on my face. Normally Olly would patch me up, but he’s off to face the omega, armed with nothing more than a syringe full of suppressant and an unnatural amount of confidence for a beta.
“She got you good,”
Gage murmurs as he takes off his gloves and tosses them in a trash can. “You’ll still be pretty, but you might scar a bit.”
“At least I didn’t get kneed in the knot,”
I counter. “That’s gonna give you a limp for days.”
Gage growls and yanks open the freezer. He pulls out an ice pack and plops down on one of the infirmary cots with his long legs spread eagled. The ice pack gets applied directly to his groin, and he hisses in a sharp intake of breath as the cold, hard pack makes contact. “I didn’t have a knot yet, thank God, or I’d be in a much worse mood.”
“Did you see her scars?”
I ask in a hushed voice, changing the subject.
Gage raises a brow at me. “Scars?”
I nod and draw imaginary lines on my arm with a fingertip. “All over her. Some were likely from putting up a fight like she did tonight, but some were too … clean. Too sharp, too straight, too even.”
“What are you thinking, Diego?”
“Well, I’m no Olly, but it seems suspicious. Those scars looked clinical. Surgical. I can’t fathom why someone would do that to an omega. What condition could she have to make them operate on her so much, and all over her body? It’s barbaric.”
He scrubs his face with his hands before answering. “Fuck. You’re certain?”
“Sí. She’s someone’s experiment. I’d bet my life on it.”
“Ugh. As if this job wasn’t complicated enough already.”
I lean forward. “We can’t give her back to the Orions, Gage. There’s no chance they didn’t do this to her.”
“And there’s no chance this has something to do with wanting to keep her for ourselves?”
His intense gaze lands on me. “You didn’t get a whiff of cinnamon and peppercorn and suddenly change your mind about the mission, did you?”
Much as I love Gage, his accusation stings. “This isn’t about how good she smells. It’s about right and wrong, about protecting an omega in distress.”
Silence drags on as he ponders my words. I can tell he’s teetering on the verge of agreeing with me, but he needs one final push, one tiny tip to the scales in my favor.
“I know you’re bonded to her, Gage. I know because I feel it, too. I’m sure Em feels it, and for fuck’s sake, I think even Olly feels it. For whatever reason, she came into our lives because she’s ours. She belongs here with us, where we can keep her safe.”
“Yeah, well, you ask her, and she’ll say we suck in the safety department.”
Gage and I turn to see Emmett standing in the doorway. His neck has red marks on it, almost like a handprint, too small to be Olly’s, but … what omega would try to choke an alpha, especially during her heat?
“Are you kidding me?”
Gage rolls his eyes. “We fucking saved her ass.”
“Well, and this is a direct quote, ‘safety is not a fucking cage.’ She’s super pissed, and she’s got a grudge against all alphas, apparently.”
None of this makes sense. A pack of alphas harming an omega to the point of scarring her, an omega who runs from alphas and attacks them … It’s crazy. How did we get mixed up in this?
“Did you get any info out of her?”
Gage asks. “Any clues as to what the fuck is going on?”
Em shrugs. “Not much. The gist of what she said is this: Alphas are bad. Cages are bad. Everything except our fucking beta is bad. If Olly’s not within her line of sight, that woman is possessed. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
An omega imprinting on a beta when there are three available bonded alphas around? I scratch my chin in thought.
“Diego? You look like you’re cooking something up.”
“Well, Gage, I’m just wondering if there’s any way we can stall the Orions. Get them to give us an extension on our deadline for returning Auryn.”
“Why would we do that? We extend the deadline, and they’ll delay payment.”
“True, Em, but I doubt they’ll pay us anyway. In fact, I think we should do everything we can to keep Auryn away from them. They hurt her, Em, I’m sure of it. Did you see those surgical scars?”
He frowns. “I might have been a bit distracted.”
Gage takes the ice pack off his lap and sits up. “Let me guess, Diego. You want to investigate our benefactors.”
“Yeah. I think we should find out if they’re even worthy of any omega, let alone Auryn.”
I tap my hand over my heart. “I may have spent the least amount of time with her so far, but I can’t deny mi corazón. The second I touched her in the cave, something snapped into place. I don’t care if she scratches me a thousand times. She could even gouge my eyes out. What matters more than anything is protecting her, and that means we can’t hand her over to the Orions without ample evidence that they won’t be a threat to her.”
“If we’re really all bonded to her, we can’t hand her over anyway.”
Gage sighs and stands. “Okay. Sounds like we’re in for a rough ride.”
We discuss our strategy for a couple hours, so caught up in planning that we forget about Olly. Finally, Gage stops mid-sentence and looks towards the hallway.
“Emmett, are you sure she wouldn’t hurt Olly?”
Emmett scoffs. “He’s probably the only one of us who can come out unscathed. Why?”
“Because he hasn’t come back yet.”
My stomach churns at the thought of calm, quiet Olly being hurt because we were careless. “You don’t think she did something to him, do you?”
“Olly wouldn’t know what to do with an omega in heat, anyway. I’m sure his chastity is intact.”
The thinly-veiled rage in Em’s eyes tells me something more happened in the cell than he’s letting on.
“I don’t think Diego’s worried about her violating Olly like that,”
Gage says. “I think he’s more concerned about his physical safety.”
With Gage at the lead, we trot down the hall to the holding cell. Gage throws open the outer door, and I brace myself for the worst.
I shouldn’t have worried.
The cell door sits wide open, but to our surprise, Auryn’s not gone. In fact, she’s curled up against Olly’s side on the bed, and both of them are out cold.
I sniff the air, testing to see if our charge is still in heat, but it seems the suppressant has taken hold. Her scent, while still intoxicating, isn’t as strong, not as enticing as before. I still want her, still feel drawn to her, but it’s not a biological imperative at this point.
Em’s jaw drops. “She fell asleep? She was wound tighter than Olly’s asshole when I left.”
Gage pinches the bridge of his nose. “Seriously, Em? You couldn’t find a better way to phrase that?”
“What are we going to do with them? We can’t lock Olly in here, but we can’t leave the door open for her to just roam about when she wakes up.”
I shudder to think what might happen if she wakes up before Olly.
Gage shoves Em into the cell. “As the least-injured of us, you get to carry Olly out. We’ll watch her in shifts. Diego’s on first.”
“And if she wakes up and loses her shit again?”
He levels a glare at me. “Then find Olly. Until we can convince her that we’re not going to hurt her, he’s our go-to for calming her down.”
Emmett picks Olly up and carries him out, and I close the cell door as Gage follows them out. Auryn still slumbers, but she whimpers a bit in her sleep, like her subconscious knows her beta has left.
For the first hour of my turn at watch, nothing much happens. I busy myself with tidying up the observation room and gathering fresh clothes for Auryn for when she wakes. We don’t have anything her size, but even if the sweats I grabbed for her are a bit baggy, they’ll surely be more comfortable than the torn, ragged dress she arrived in.
The lock on the cell door clicks softly as I take the pile of folded clothes in. I planned on leaving them at the foot of the bed, but as soon as I walk through the door, Auryn opens one dark eye. Her body tenses, and she keeps her gaze trained on my every move.
“Hola, Auryn. I have fresh clothes for you.”
“You’re a liar.”
The accusation is bold, blunt, and a little confusing. “How have I lied to you? I’ve said ‘hello, princess.’ Perhaps you don’t think you’re a princess? If that’s the case, then I’m afraid you’re lying to yourself. I stand by what I said.”
“You’re an alpha. Alphas lie.”
Since she’s not rabid at the moment, I decide to play along. “Okay. You don’t like alphas. Noted.”
I shut the door behind me, typing a code into the keypad to lock it. “I’m sure you also don’t like wet, dirty dresses. These are a little too big for you, but they should be better than what you’ve got on. Go ahead. I won’t look.”
Not one to take unnecessary risks, I toss the sweats across the room. Auryn catches them midair and clutches them to her chest. Her eyes dart back and forth between me and the clothes for a moment, then she freezes. Unfolds the sweats. Holds them up in front of her. Tears glisten in her eyes, and she finally rewards me with a look of awe and wonder rather than the contempt she defaults to.
“Pants?”
Does she not know what pants are? “Yes. Pants. They go on your legs.”
There’s that contempt again, accompanied by suspicion. “I know what pants are. Why are you giving me pants?”
I shrug, trying to act calm and casual. “I thought you’d want clean clothes. I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s just us guys here. We don’t have dresses, but if that’s what you prefer, I can send someone to the store for you.”
Auryn holds the pants behind her back, like she’s afraid I’m going to take them away. “No! No dresses.”
She scoots back on the bed until she’s backed up to the wall. “I’ll wear the pants. But you can’t look.”
“Of course not. If you want, I’ll even leave the room.”
Her gaze shoots over to the large mirror in the wall. “No. You stay. I don’t trust you not to look if you’re behind there. I want to see your eyes closed.”
Fair enough. I guess the mirror’s not fooling her. “All right.”
I close my eyes, but I’m not an idiot. This girl’s a firecracker, and if I relax too much, she’s liable to attack me when my guard’s down. My posture may appear lax, but inside I’m ready to move at a moment’s notice.
Fabric rustles across the room while I patiently wait. Finally, she clears her throat.
“Okay. You can open them.”
I open my eyes and look at Auryn, and the sight of her tiny frame in the huge sweats tugs at my heartstrings. She looks deceptively vulnerable, like a porcelain doll that might break if handled too roughly.
“Thank you,”
she says, “for the pants.”
“De nada.”
I jerk my chin at the balled-up remnants of her dress. “Do you want us to wash that? It’s pretty torn up, and none of us are seamstresses, but we can at least get it clean again for you.”
An unreadable expression crosses her face, and she crouches back on the bed. “Burn it.”
I get the feeling this is about more than just clothing, but unless she deigns me worthy of knowing her secrets, I’ll have to take things at face value. “Okay. Consider it burned.”
With the tattered dress in hand, I unlock the door and exit the cell.