Chapter 27 – June
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
JUNE
“I tried so hard to get to you before your heat.”
Fuck, did someone run me over with a truck?
“The designation center wouldn’t let me in, my application wasn’t valid.”
My head is spinning as I squint up at a bright light above me.
“Luckily, I had a tracker on your car. I knew when you moved it, when you drove it from Virginia to Rochester. I had to take this opportunity when it presented itself. You were so smart to step away to the back office again.”
Am I at the fucking dentist?
“You make such a pretty little omega for me, baby girl.”
I don’t remember making a dentist appointment. Arin would have reminded me if I had.
Memories hit me in a one-two punch — the book signing and the water bottle.
“I tried three times to reach you in London. First, I called your parents. It was easy when they were listed with the member registry of their club. They told me I could have you. I went to the center, but they were hesitant to let me see you because I didn’t have a pack.” The man comes into view, just as slimy as I remember him being in the grocery store. His hair is slicked back, eyes shifting rapidly as he rattles a medical tray next to him, adjusting the tools on it. “You’re supposed to be open to pack life. So I called back and told them I was your brother, but you were already gone.”
I lift my head, fighting nausea as I stare at the tray, realizing I’m strapped to a bed and one of the tools is a goddamn speculum.
“What —”
He shushes me, petting my hair like I’m a dog. “Don’t move too much, you’ll make yourself sick. I don’t want you to choke on your own vomit, baby girl.”
I snarl, even though I want to throw up on him , snapping my jaws at his hand when he gets too close to me again. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
He pulls his hand back, eyes softening, “Juniper, baby girl .” My blood runs cold as he gathers himself, standing a little taller. “Please stop or I’ll knock you back out. The suppressants make your perfume stop.” He frowns. “And I really like your smell, you smell so sweet, like spun sugar.”
It’s honey . I want to snarl again, but I stop myself, forcing myself to swallow fear and bile as he picks up a scalpel that shines under the harsh lighting.
“What are you doing? Why am I here?”
The man looks over at me. “Don’t you remember when we met?”
My mind wracks. “The… grocery store?” What the hell could I have done to make one insignificant run-in with this man spiral to being strapped to a goddamn hospital bed in what looks like an abandoned apartment building? There’s mold on the walls and trash along the baseboard, speaking to the level of cleanliness I have to look forward to if any of those tools get near me.
His face shutters, closing off as his eyes darken. “No, baby girl, your book signing.”
Try as I might, nothing comes to mind. He grows angrier, clutching the scalpel tighter as he steps back over to the side of the bed. “For your first book , June. You were just a local author, signing at a card table in the front of the store on Main street.”
I remember .
It was mortifying. No one knew who I was and no one came. It was me sitting at a table for hours while a couple booksellers took pity on me, letting me sign the store’s stock. A couple people from the cafe next door walked over and made polite conversation. One man, startlingly awkward stepped up to my table, but he had shorter black hair, he didn’t look this unkempt —
“I bought two copies, remember?”
He did. And when I thanked him, feeling a rush of genuine gratitude, he’d fumbled with them and said. “ You could thank me by recreating a scene or two from your book, or I could do it even better. You owe it to me. I just bought your books, you could at least be grateful. ”
I’d recoiled — and I flinch when he nears me again.
“Don’t touch me.”
The man frowns. “I know this may be overwhelming, but this is fate , June. You were such a pretty beta, but you couldn’t have taken my knot back then — now you can . I just want to see it myself. I have to.” He grabs my arm and I strain against him, shrieking as the scalpel slices across the meat of my forearm.
Blood wells from the gash, and under the light it drips down my arm, red — but with a golden sheen coating it.
The cut stings as I suck in a heaving gasp, panic lancing through me as he presses at the wound with his fingers. The man smears my blood with his thumb, holding his hand up and twisting his wrist, watching the shine under the light with wide-eyed curiosity.
“You were made for me. You emerged for me when I was at your London signing.”
Adrenaline makes my heart take off. I’m going to vomit. I’m going to throw up everything in my stomach — maybe even the organ itself — because he lifts his thumb and then licks my blood from it, humming and moaning.
“I was all ready to follow you on your book tour, but then it happened .” He turns to look at me, eyes bright with madness. “You were an omega , I smelled it the moment I walked inside, but that stupid bookseller stopped me and you ran off.”
He moves around, dropping the scalpel onto the tray with the other tools. “I’m a good alpha, Juniper. I’m going to be so good to you, baby girl. No more pack. You’ll be it for me, you’ll have all my attention and we’ll be together for life. I could tell you were unhappy in that interview, crying out for me, and I couldn’t wait any longer.”
His fingers hesitate as they brush the speculum.
“I do need to take out your birth control.” The man looks up at me. “I’m glad you had it for your heat with them — I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out of that townhouse, I sat there, night and day, waiting outside, but they kept leaving you with that meathead alpha. I could’ve taken the beta, but not him.”
Theo .
The thought of one of my alphas makes me choke — tears welling in my eyes as he smoothes out my hair, cooing at me.
“It’s okay, I forgive you for it. You will have my children and my children alone. We’ll get rid of these bonds they’ve forced on you.”
I freeze, a deer in headlights. The fuck you will .
My mind runs a mile a minute, cataloging the room, what I could do to get away from here. The traffic noise outside is minimal, and clearly no one came running when I screamed — but the bed is rusty. I might be able to break the cuffs he has me in — but I need a distraction. I need him not in the room with me as I try to get my half-drugged body to cooperate.
My voice is raw as I look up at him. “Please, don’t do that here. Don’t you have a nest for me? I’ll want you” — bile burns in my throat — “as soon as it’s out, I’ll want you.”
“I do have a nest, oh baby.” He grabs my face suddenly, and I only smell cloying chemicals on his skin as he whispers, “We have to finish this before we go. If we get the implant out, we’ll leave it and this city behind. Your next heat will set in and we can spend it together. I’ve been taking accelerants — to make my alpha stronger for you.”
The smell makes sense now and my nausea returns with a vengeance. I’m in a dress — white with a wide, loose skirt — and strapped to a table. I’m painfully aware he can have it up and be between my legs in seconds. The panic makes me flinch when he touches my jaw, tilting my head back and forth, his tone tinged with a growl.
“We can break these bonds. I’ll bite over them, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll burn them off. They’ll break if we scorch your skin deep enough.”
Tears overflow as I’m reduced to begging sobs. “ Please , please don’t do this.”
“Let me get you something for the pain and the anxiety.” He fumbles as he steps away, like he’s not entirely used to his own body. “I know you have trouble with that so hold on. I have something.” He steps away from me and the gurney. My hands shake as I writhe on the bed, trying to make it rock, to fall over, for anything to give me a way to get out of here.
Then I feel it.
My chest sparks, like my heart is by an open flame. The adrenaline makes my focus laser in on it, the slowness in my limbs and mind fades as the anxiety overrides it — for once in my life, the panic response is forcing my heart to beat faster, my systems clearing away the medicine quickly as it fights for me. Sheer panic hits me — but it’s not mine, and the man rushes out of the room as I let out a loud sob.
I turn my head back and forth, whispering, praying. The bonds are obnoxiously loud in my chest — they have to be close to me, but I don’t know how to let them know that I’m here .
I love you .
Closing my eyes, I breathe in and out, sawing gasps as I hear footsteps.
Seth. Bennett. Theo. Arin. I love you.
The door creaks as I open my eyes, but in the other room, a BANG! makes both the stranger and I jump. The old door flies out of his hand as he whirls toward the noise, a bottle of something rattling in his hands.
His eyes widen, and then blood sprays out the back of his head.
It’s so quick. Two more hits collide — it’s like an action movie. Blood sprays. The alpha’s body falls. My chest aches, hyperventilating as someone in all black rushes up to the body, checking the side of his neck.
“Dead.” The voice is female. She rises, ripping off a balaclava, revealing long black hair, looking at me. “Cyrus! She’s here!”
“Apartment clear!” A male voice this time — and he’s big — he fills the room when he enters it with the woman. The smell coming off her makes me jerk and she gives him a look. “I’ve got her.” He moves fast, holstering his gun as he approaches me to get the cuffs off. “Seth Harding sent us —”
The man smells like nothing as he touches me — no perfume, no spray — just… absent. I strain against the bed, gasping out, “Did you kill him?”
The woman — an alpha from the smell of her — glances over at the body again. “Definitely dead.”
I collapse back to the gurney, breathing hard as the man unstraps my arms. Flinging up, I fall almost immediately. He catches me, the female alpha grabbing my arm, slight and lithe, but strong .
The man, Cyrus, frees my ankles, then he moves up. “I don’t think you can walk, let me carry you. Your pack is outside with our boss.” His eyes find the alpha next to me, an unspoken conversation flying between them before he picks me up.
I hiccup, my eyes finding the speculum on the floor, the tray overturned, my blood still dripping from my arm. “He — he was going to.. The…”
The female alpha’s eyes drop to where I’m looking. She follows us as Cyrus steps over the man’s body, carrying me out of the apartment. The woman pauses for half a moment, eyes meeting mine as she lifts her foot and slams her heavy boot down on the dead man’s groin — disfiguring him for me.