6. Colby
CHAPTER SIX
COLBY
M ore than anything, it was Talya’s internal screaming that had me waking from the drugged state they were keeping me in. Screams of pain. Screams of terror. I awoke in a rage, growling and attacking like an animal.
There were men that fought to keep me down. When it was clear that I had chosen violence and was not entirely mentally present, they resorted to more drugs. In all honesty, I was surprised they didn’t kill me with the amount of drugs they kept pumping into me, especially since the fury-fueled adrenaline from being separated from my omega continued to burn them off.
Through the little bit of conversation I could recall in my dazed state, in the end it wasn’t Talya they wanted. Not as the primary goal, anyway. It was me. Which was probably why they hadn’t filled me so full of drugs that I’d die.
Talya was always my first thought when I came out of my daze. The times she was subdued and quiet, I remained perfectly still to listen to my captors.
“How’s Roger?” I heard a voice say.
“He’s going to die,” another answered. “We’ve had to inject so many doses into him.”
“His violence is… intense.”
“And that’s while he wasn’t even sane!” a third said. “He took down four of us in his anger.”
These idiots didn’t understand bonds, and I wanted to spit that at them. A drugged alpha forced away from their omega while one or both of them was being hurt wasn’t going to end with a comatose alpha. It was an enraged, feral alpha that they’d be dealing with.
I wanted to tell them how useless betas truly were if this was the kind of shit they resorted to. It was no wonder alphas grew to be indifferent to betas.
A memory of Fenton drifted through my tired head. I supposed that wasn’t an entirely fair conclusion, nor was it fully accurate. I didn’t hate betas at all. I knew many, and they were usually great people.
It was just hard not to have a bitter taste in my mouth about their designation as a whole right now, not when I realized we weren’t the only ones they were doing this to, but I could adjust my thoughts to strictly reference the betas who had abducted me and my omega.
“At least we figured out how to make it stop.”
“We should have known that from the beginning—alternate the experiments so that the other is drugged and can’t interfere through their bond. Seriously, it should have been routine.”
“Yeah? And how many bonds have you had that we might have learned that from?”
“Stop bickering,” one of them snapped—a new voice. Not one of the three who were freely talking. “We have another ten minutes before the omega is fully sedated and three more cocktails to try on the alpha. Save your fucking breath.”
I wasn’t sure what their end goal was. Only that they were using drugs to try to get there.
“I have some serious doubts this is going to work.”
“There’s not much that can’t be done with the right science. All we have to do is find the right combination.”
“It works on betas and omegas, but alphas are incredibly different.”
“I’ve said it all along—we need to focus our time on studying alpha make-up in order to get this to work.”
“There’s nothing to study. The only one an alpha will obey is a stronger alpha.”
Careful not to show that I was awake, I mentally frowned. Why were they trying to get an alpha to obey?
“Think about how successful this would be if we could break bonds!”
“Which is counterintuitive to the overall goal. Maybe it’s best if we don’t break bonds. Otherwise, this entire thing is pointless.”
Silence followed that declaration while they seemingly agreed. After that, their conversation died down, and I was left with this puzzle. They’d given away a lot of what they were doing—trying to break my bond with my omega. The other piece was getting an alpha to obey someone.
“It’s time.”
I sighed in irritation and opened my eyes. Whatever they saw made their progress toward me pause, but these betas weren’t like every other I’d known. Despite their fear and hesitation toward me, there was a deep, desperate, pathetic desire when they looked at me.
Their craving for an alpha wasn’t about a particular alpha. It wasn’t about attraction and compatibility. It wasn’t even about making a home and life.
It was strictly about the bond and pack that only an alpha could provide. They wanted it more than anything.
I glared at them, pleased when two of the three took a nervous step back.
Before I could completely focus on them, I turned inward to study Talya. She was asleep, most likely, though not a natural sleep. She was too still and silent for that, and I could taste her fear and lingering pain.
A low growl filled the room as I brought my attention back to the betas.
“I got it,” one said, and I turned to him. He froze again before forcing himself to come toward me. He picked up a syringe and read off the lot number. In my peripheral vision, I could see one of the others write it down before turning back to watch.
My arms were strapped to the bed, but even so, the beta trembled as he came closer. His pulse raced in his neck, his eyes bright with fear, yet there was still that pitiful desperation for what I represented. What I could facilitate.
He didn’t inject the contents of the syringe directly into my skin but through a PICC line.
At this point, I’d had so many things pumped into my body that even my veins hurt. The substance burned as it entered my bloodstream, and I swore I could almost feel it pumping through every limb. My vision clouded. My muscles shook. My jaw clenched.
But my mind was clear. I already knew that whatever they were after, this wasn’t it.
“Alpha, close your eyes,” the beta said.
I turned my attention to him. He flinched, taking a step back.
“Close your eyes,” he said more firmly.
This time, I laughed. As if I were ever going to take orders from a beta .
“Speak,” he tried again. “Say ‘I want you, beta.’”
The sound that escaped me was derisive laughter, and oddly enough, the reaction I got from the beta was sadness. He looked like I’d just rejected him for a prom invite. Turning away, he shook his head at the other two.
“How long before it wears off?”
“I think these doses were made for ten minutes, but we can give him twenty just to make sure.”
As my body slowly came down from the burning effects of that drug, I contemplated what I’d just learned. This was a pattern. They’d drug me then attempt to demand some action from me—usually something stupid, as was just done. But why? What was their end goal? So they could play house while an alpha was drugged and be lied to about being wanted?
These musings took me up until the same beta silently filled my PICC line with another concoction. This one had the opposite feeling, like sending ice into my veins. My sight dimmed to something bleak and cold.
I shivered, the buckles on my restraints rattling. Those around me weren’t nearly as cold as I was. They weren’t shaking uncontrollably like I was. This feeling of freezing was chemically induced by whatever they’d pumped into me with the last injection.
Though I could hear the beta’s voice, I couldn’t make out his words. My mind was too focused on freezing to death, and it was that thought that sent my heart racing. If I died, my omega would be alone. And though being strapped to a bed wasn’t proving that I was worthy of my omega, that simply wasn’t an option. I knew what would happen to her.
I was concentrating so hard on my determination not to die that I missed when the drugs wore off. I was left panting, staring at the ceiling. None of the drugs were pleasant, but that one sucked.
“It would be helpful if he’d tell us what was happening to him,” one of the betas said. “That’s probably useful information.”
“Yeah, but we just need the end goal. That’s our job.”
Deciding I was going to ignore them entirely, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sounds they made instead. Their voices as they discussed what they observed. Footsteps coming toward me. The dull tug on my arm when they shot something else into my PICC line.
This time, my entire body went numb, including my mind. It felt like I was floating, and my thoughts were too slippery to hang on to.
“Look at me, alpha.”
Something in me thought I should, but fuck him. He wasn’t strong enough to make me look at him—not when he put more force behind his words, and certainly not when he slammed his hand on the rail of the bed and demanded I pay attention to him.
Who did he think he was?
The strange part was that I could feel the whisper of an urge telling me to do as he said. To listen. To take the command.
A lesser alpha—a beta —would have listened, but I wasn’t either. The last time I found an alpha with a bark louder than mine was just as I was developing my own.
And this pathetic beta didn’t have a bark.
The effects of this drug lasted longer than the other two. I listened to the quiet voice try to convince me to do as I was told, and I felt my face move as if I were staring at the voice like it was an idiot. Stupid fucking moron thought I was going to listen to anyone, much less a beta.
When the voice began to fade, I turned my attention into concentrating on my bond. I sighed. At least she was there. They hadn’t succeeded in stealing her from me, wherever she might be. She was still my omega. Still alive and fighting. So brave. So much courage. My perfect, sweet omega.
Somehow, I would get back to her. I had to. And then I would grovel for forgiveness. I clearly was not worthy of an omega if I couldn’t protect her. What kind of alpha was I to have allowed us to become lab rats?
Maybe the removal of our bond was what I deserved so she could find a pack that wouldn’t let this happen.
Movement caught my attention. Shuffling feet. The quiet slide of wheels on the tile floor. A door opening then closing again. I didn’t open my eyes.
“How did it go? Any promising results?” a woman’s voice asked.
“It went,” a beta answered. “And no. The first dose, he was just laughing at Gary. The other two, he couldn’t hear us at all.”
She sighed with frustration. “Not the goal.”
“I bet these would work differently if he didn’t have a bond to begin with.”
Another moment of silence followed this, and I had to think that he was probably right. My driving force, the thing that kept me fighting more than anything, was knowing that my omega was hurt. That I was separated from her.
But if I didn’t have that bond? If I didn’t have an omega? What would I have left in me to keep me fighting aside from my defiance? And how far would that actually take me?
“The omega?” one of the betas asked.
“It doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to break the bond,” she said dispassionately. “At the moment, it appears that it’s a surreal connection. Magic.” She spat the last word as if it were poison.
“What if you cut her open?”
There was a pause before the answer came, a pause in which my heart raced wildly. Anger began to fill me at the thought. They best not be cutting my omega open.
“There’s nothing to see inside her, physically. It’s attached to her life itself. Her consciousness. I suspect, based on articles, that the only way to break a bond is through death, and from the few alphas I spoke to who have lost their mates, it’s not fully gone even then. The bond turns silent and empty, but it’s not completely gone.”
A wistful sigh followed her report.
“As long as she’s alive, there will be a bond.”
“It appears that way.”
“What if we bring her to death and back again? Do you think the bond will die?”
Silence followed this question, and my eyes opened. Adrenaline began pumping through my veins once more, making the edges of my vision dark and angry as I stared at the betas who were considering murdering my omega.
One word, and if it was the wrong one, I’d be up off this bed and putting some heads into the concrete walls.
The woman who I hadn’t seen before was thoughtful as she considered this possibility. There was a frown on her face, and her hands were tucked in her pockets.
“I don’t think that will work, but it might be worth a try. Nothing else has been successful.”
“Only putting our alpha in a rage.”
“True. So, perhaps I’ll see what I can?—”
That was the last I heard before I surged to my feet with the roar of a lion. The straps around my wrists stopped me for a second, and although my vision was compromised by the fury spreading through me like wildfire, I could see the relief on their faces when they assumed the restraints were going to keep me from them.
And then their fear as the one on my left broke, followed shortly by the one on my right. I went flying across the room as I snarled, teeth gnashing, hands curled like claws. Unfortunately for them, I got my hands on one of the male betas who couldn’t get away fast enough.
By the warm, wet substance on my hands, I’d caused some damage before the lights went out again as the drug-induced fog settled in my head. I continued to fight, my adrenaline and rage working against them, but eventually, I succumbed to it just as I felt my omega regain consciousness.