Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
I stretch out in the chair in Atlas’s room, the hissing and sputtering of the machine an unwelcome symphony in my head. We’ve been here a few hours, and both Atlas and Athena have stayed asleep since before we got here.
Dr. Knight says it’s to be expected, but I don’t like it. I wish I could look in their eyes and see that they’re okay. The nephrologist said that this is a common procedure, and we don’t need to stress out, but that’s easy for him to say.
It’s not his Omegas that are suffering from a mysterious illness after being experimented on. How can I sit here and just wish for a good outcome?
I need to keep my mind busy.
Maybe imagining what the Hawks are doing to those two men who made my Omegas lab rats will help.
I’m lost in the fantasy, imagining them begging and pleading for the release that they denied Atlas and Athena, when the monitor measuring Atlas’s heart rate alerts with an increase in tempo, before going into full alarm.
Atlas sits up in the bed, eyes wild and skin sallow, staring at his arms where the tubes that are hooked up to the machine snake out. His hands shake, and tears track down his face.
“It was a dream,” he cries, curling in a ball, his broad back heaving with pained sobs and whines. “A dream. Only a dream. I’m back. I’m back.”
Charles is in the doorway, his hand over his mouth, staring at our Omega as he cries and rocks back and forth. I try to soothe him, but Atlas pulls away from my hand, whining.
“Please let me go,” he begs. “Please, I can’t be here. My Omega needs me. Please.”
“I’ll get the doctor,” Charles says, his voice shaky, and leaves the room. I hear the low tones of his voice saying something to Wyatt and Sebass in Athena’s room, and it’s only moments before they join me.
“What’s going on?” Sebass asks, staring down at Atlas’s desperate, shaking body.
The Alpha’s round features are pinched with worry.
“Atlas, buddy.” He tries to touch the Omega, but Atlas throws himself off the bed, ripping the vascular access tubes from his arms and nearly getting tangled in the heart monitor wires as he goes.
“I won’t let you have her,” he says, crawling toward the door. “I won’t let you do it again.”
Icarus appears in the doorway with Charles behind him, his face lined as he looks down at the crying Omega on the floor.
“Shit,” he breathes, which feels unprofessional coming from the doctor but also somehow comforting.
He crouches in front of Atlas, who scurries backward into the corner of the room at his proximity.
“Atlas, you’re safe now. You’re not there anymore.
Athena isn’t there anymore. You’re safe. ”
Before anything else can be said, a pained wail from the other room shocks my system.
“Fuck!” Icarus says, leaving Atlas without a second thought and running out of the room to his sister.
I can’t blame him for putting her above Atlas, but it does nothing to help the four of us.
We’re frozen, with one Omega screaming and the other sobbing, unsure how to comfort them both at the same time.
“Icarus is with Athena,” Sebass says. “He’s a doctor. He’ll help keep her safe and get her calmed down. We’re all Atlas has.”
“But she needs us too.” Charles’s voice is tight, and he’s got one foot out of the door. “We’re her Alphas. We can’t leave her alone.”
“She’s not alone,” Wyatt reminds him, dropping to his knees and holding a hand out to Atlas. “She’s also more accepting of being an Omega than Atlas is. He’s going to fight this. It’ll take all of us to get him calmed down.”
In the corner, the Omega is curled up, hugging his knees to his chest. He’s sobbing and whining, flinching any time one of us moves toward him. It’s ridiculous that none of us saw this coming when we brought them here. Of course, they would have medical trauma.
We’re fucking stupid.
None of us considered how scary it would be for the two of them to wake up hooked up to machines eerily similar to those at the lab in the warehouse.
I scrub my hands across my face, the scarred side barely registering the touch because of the damaged nerve endings, before turning to my packmates.
“They have medical trauma, and we didn’t think to account for that.
” Atlas whines, and it makes my chest ache, momentarily causing my mind to blank.
“We don’t know what they did to them, but we all saw those machines they were hooked up to.
They didn’t look much different from these. ”
Athena’s screaming in the room next door has calmed down, replaced by soft whimpers. My chest loosens knowing that she’s okay, comforted by her brother.
Siblings are a pack of their own until they meet the ones they’re drawn to. I imagine Icarus’s Alpha is still in ‘protect’ mode around Athena, especially now that she’s an unbonded Omega. I’m glad she has him. We’d be floundering without his guidance.
I don’t know a lot about Atlas because he always kept his cards close to his chest, but from what I gathered, he doesn’t have strong family ties.
I know that Will and Crystal Manson are good friends of his, but that’s where it stops.
I wouldn’t even know who to call in a situation like this, because Will is his emergency contact, and we all decided it was best for him and Jordan to head home when we left for the hospital.
Atlas’s heart monitor is slowing down, but his eyes are still wild, and tears track down his handsome face. He’s staring at the wall, and I don’t think he even realizes we’re here.
That’s when he talks.
“I’ll do whatever you need. I’ll be whoever you need me to be if you let her go. You don’t need her if you have me. Just let her go. I won’t fight anymore, I promise. I promise. I promise. I promise.”
“Fuck,” Sebastian hisses. He looks like he got slapped, his mouth wide and eyes watery. “I don’t know how to help him. We… we need to do something.” He pulls at his hair, yanking by the root as he stares at the ceiling. “What did they do to our Omegas?”
Atlas is still babbling, his eyes unseeing but fixed on the door. “Bring her back, please. Please. You don’t need her. Let her go. I’ll do whatever you need. Please. Please. Please.”
“I can’t handle this anymore,” Wyatt says, reaching out and grabbing Atlas tightly. The Omega thrashes, yelling and fighting to get out of the large Alpha’s arms.
But Wyatt doesn’t let him go, even though he is being hit in the face and chest by Atlas’s elbows.
“You’re okay, Atlas. You’re okay. You’re not there anymore. Breathe.”
I can’t keep away from Atlas any longer, dropping to my knees beside my packmate and placing a hand between our Omega’s shoulder blades.
I purr, hoping it’ll calm him down. Charles and Sebass jolt out of their frozen states and join the three of us on the floor, our purrs a calming melody that I hope can bring him out of this flashback.
“Breathe,” Wyatt says again, stroking Atlas’s dark hair. “Athena is okay. We have her. Your Omega is okay.”
It takes longer than I would have liked for Atlas to come out of his flashback. I can tell the moment he does, because he launches himself away from us and jumps to his feet. He’s shaky and barely stays upright, having to use the bed to keep from falling to the floor.
“Where am I?” he says, voice scratchy. “Where’s Athena?”
“You’re at the hospital,” I tell him, leaning back on my heels. “You and Athena got sick, and her brother came over. He said something about thick blood. We had to bring you two here for treatment. When you woke up, you…”
“You thought you were back in the warehouse,” Charles finishes for me.
Atlas looks around the room, gaze catching on the machine that was removing the plasma from his blood. “You had me hooked up to that?” he shouts. “Athena must be freaking out. That’s what they used on us there.”
“It’s not quite the same,” Sebass says, pushing his large body to a standing position. “We saw the machines. But it’s close enough that you woke up and saw it and the tubes and wires and assumed you were back there.”
“Where’s Athena?” he asks again, rubbing his chest. “The bond feels weird.”
“She’s in the room next door. We couldn’t all fit in one room. She woke up minutes after you, screaming. Icarus went to help her while we handled you.”
“You left her alone?” His eyes flash, and he tries to push past Sebass, but the Alpha stands immobile. “How could you leave her alone?”
“She’s not alone,” Wyatt says. “She has her brother. You had no one.”
“I apparently had all four of you!” he spits. “And you left her alone. I don’t care that her brother was with her. He’s not the one who is constantly telling us he’s our pack. There are four of you, and all of you sorry excuses for Alphas came to me and left her on her own.”
Oh shit.
Oh shit.
We fucked up.
We really, really fucked up.
Atlas doesn’t let us get off easily, either. Not that we deserve it.
“She has been abandoned so many times. Harvey, you sat with her while she told you about her old pack choosing an Omega over her. And you chose me?” He swings his head to glare at Charles.
“And you? Where is your Alpha training? Your superior instincts? You were okay leaving your Omega in distress?”
“You both were distressed!” he shouts, throwing his hands up. “How am I meant to know who needs me more? I couldn’t even decide which room to be in! I don’t know how to do this with two Omegas. I’m trying my best.”
Atlas ignores him, looking at Sebastian with disdain. “And you? What’s your excuse?”
“I don’t have one,” he says, shrugging. “I was with her until I heard you wake up. That’s why I came in here.
By the time she woke up screaming, Icarus was in here with you and took off toward her room, so it made sense for him to help her.
I mean, he’s her brother and a doctor. He knew what to do. ”
Atlas doesn’t give Sebastian a response. Instead, he turns his ire onto Wyatt.
“I expected more of you, Wyatt.” Wyatt’s face falls at his words. “I expected you to step up and be the pack lead. What’s the point of the title if you’re not going to take care of your pack? What good are you if you can’t help us both?”
Atlas pushes past us, disappointment radiating from him. “I’m getting my Omega.”
I’m a fucking failure, and I know it. We made a call, and it was the wrong one. Now that Atlas has pointed it out to us, I can’t believe we ever thought leaving her with only her brother was a good idea. We can’t go back and change it, but we can hope to hell that we can make it up to her.
A crash from the room next door and a furious shout have us running from the room and into Athena’s.
Athena’s empty room.