9. Talya
CHAPTER NINE
TALYA
I woke up to purring. For a few minutes, I thought I was home in bed, that the whole experience had been nothing but a dream, but then the rhythmic beeping of the machines mingled with Colby’s purr, and my eyes shot open. The room was dim, and I was certain we were alone. I sat up and looked at my alpha. To my relief, Colby smiled at me.
“My precious omega,” he whispered, his voice scratchy and quiet. Rough.
“Colby,” I whimpered, collapsing on him and wrapping my arms around his torso. Tears stung my eyes.
“Shh,” he hummed, wrapping himself around me. “It’s okay now.”
I felt like I should be the one comforting and assuring him since he was the one who’d been unconscious for so long. But right now, it took all I had not to start sobbing in relief. My alpha was finally awake!
“Are you okay?” I finally managed to ask.
“My head is a little wobbly, and I’m unimaginably furious, but yes, I’m okay.” His hands ran over me as he pulled me up. He cupped my face before falling all over me. “Are you hurt?”
I nodded, tears dropping onto my cheeks. The fear that I’d never feel him again boiled over and forced more tears from my eyes. “I was so scared,” I whispered. “I thought they were going to kill us.”
Colby brought my face down to his, kissing my lips gently. “I know. It’s good for them that they kept me drugged.”
“What were they doing?” I asked. “Why did they want us?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know for sure, but from the little bits that are coming back to me, they kept drugging me with different mixes, trying to make me obey them.”
Confusion made my brows knit together. “But… why?”
Again, he shook his head. “I have no idea, love.” He brushed a hand through my hair. “What did you hear?”
Tears sprang in earnest again. “They were trying to break our bond.” My voice trembled beneath my quiet words. My hand went to the scar of my bite. “They tried everything.”
Colby gently pulled my hand away to examine my collarbone. His thumb traced over my bite, his growl low in the air. His anger burned brightly through our bond, which was no surprise.
For omegas, bonds were a promise that was unshakeable. We were promised that they would always be there, tying us to our alphas. It never occurred to me that perhaps I might have taken it for granted.
I couldn’t help but think about how close we’d come to our bond being terminated. Not by one of their ridiculous attempts to break it, but by killing me for good.
I took a breath and laid back down, burying my face in his neck. “All I wanted was to find you,” I murmured.
“I’m here now,” he said, “And I will never be apart from you again.”
I could hear and feel the vow in his words. The promise as he swore that we would never be parted again. The security I’d always felt with him tightened around me again. I hadn’t realized our tormenters had loosened it until it secured me in a fierce embrace.
When morning came, Colby was awake and the doctor with the bite came back to check the machines and his vitals. He smiled at me when I opened my eyes.
“I trust that you were left alone last night?” he asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
He tipped his head at me in acknowledgment. When he was done with the machines, he brought the stool close to us again and sat, facing us. We were curled together in the small hospital bed for one. “The cops are chomping at the bit to come in and question you. I should warn you that they’re going to attempt to question you separately.”
“No,” Colby said, the tenor of a bark in his voice. “I will not allow my omega from my sight.”
The doctor nodded, his lips lifting slightly. “I assumed as much. Before I let them know that you’re awake, let’s talk about your health. Your blood panels have slowly been evening out as your body rid itself of the drugs in your system. How do you feel, Colby?”
“Better. My head is still swimming, and I think I need to remain lying down for a while longer, but I’m conscious again, in control, and with my omega.”
I smiled, rubbing my nose along his jaw. His purr rumbled through me, making me relax.
“One of the questions I’m sure you’ll be asked is why they targeted you. Based on how your roommate found your house, it was planned.”
Colby rolled his eyes. “I will make sure to tell them that I didn’t plan my own abduction so I can’t answer that question.”
The doctor chuckled.
“What was in my blood? Can you figure out what they were trying to do based on what you found?”
“None of the chemicals identified in your blood are lethal, not at the amounts detected. Together, they’re designed to reduce your ability to willfully respond. Along with the compounds we’re familiar with, there were an entire rainbow of components not recorded in modern medicine or science. It’ll take a while to figure them out.”
“But someone must have made them,” Colby said. “How can that information not be available?”
“If they were made by scientists, they would be. My guess is these compounds were made by a ‘mad scientist’ so to speak—someone who knows just enough to be dangerous. But without knowing exactly what they were trying for, we can only guess as to what they might want with you and your omega.”
“As you can imagine, they weren’t keen on telling me their plan,” Colby said. “Not that it would have mattered if they did since they kept me mostly drugged at all times.”
“They weren’t forthcoming with me, either. I wasn’t even a person,” I said.
My explanation made Colby growl, and his arms tightened around me.
After a minute passed, he’d gotten his growl under control. “Outside of forcing compliance, did the results shed any light on what their ultimate goal might be?” Colby asked.
The doctor shook his head. “Even knowing what some of these drugs are commonly used for, there are enough unknown chemicals mixed in that we can’t make an educated guess quite yet. It also seems that they didn’t wait until one attempt was worked out of your system before giving you a shot of another, so we don’t know what the exact breakdown would be for even one dose.”
Colby shook his head in agreement.
“I’m going to bring you something to eat, then I’m afraid we won't be able to hold the police off much longer,” the doctor told us.
“Fine,” Colby said, frowning. The beeps on the machine quickened, giving away his anxiety about the upcoming argument. I was not going to be taken away from Colby. We would both make sure about that.
Unsurprisingly, the two policemen that entered our hospital room were betas. I didn’t recognize them as those who had taken us from the place we were being held, but given how hysterical I was at that point, I wasn’t sure I would recognize those who’d rescued us at all.
They introduced themselves as Officer Hendricks and Officer Daniels. After going through the simple introductions and nicety questions, Colby decided to start off the conversation.
“The only way we’re going to be interested in speaking with you at all is if you accept that we will not be split up. I don’t give a shit about what laws and pieces of legal paper you present. I will not be separated from my omega again.”
There were heavy laws and penalties against a civilian alpha using a bark on law enforcement officers of any designation, so Colby was careful not to put a bark in his tone—but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one right under the surface.
Hendricks and Daniels frowned at Colby for a minute before one of them nodded.
“At some point?—”
“No,” Colby said. “We’re the victims, and at no point will we be treated otherwise. We will not be separated, not now nor in the future. We can end this conversation now if you can’t accept that.”
Neither of the officers agreed, but they moved on to their seemingly endless list of questions, repeating them in different forms. I wasn’t sure if they disliked our answers, or if they were trying to make us trip and change our answers. What they thought we might be hiding, I had no idea.
Eventually, I sighed and laid against Colby again, letting my alpha deal with the policemen. Yes, this was their job, but I was wondering if they were pleased to see that an alpha and omega had been tortured for a while. We were spoiled, special people after all. I was beginning to think they’d forgotten that we weren’t the criminals.
The door opened, and the doctor stepped inside with another officer, this one an alpha. At first, Colby stiffened, but then we both took a relieved breath.
“Outside,” the alpha officer told the betas.
Hendricks and Daniels frowned at the alpha before leaving the room, their shoulders tense. The alpha watched them leave, and when the door shut, he turned to us with the doctor leaning against the door.
“My name is Officer Mikel Andrew. How are you feeling?”
“Outside of being badgered by your men, we’re tired and cranky, thanks,” Colby said. I smiled slightly, turning my face further into Colby’s neck to drown myself in his scent.
Officer Andrew chuckled. “They mean well.”
Colby grunted.
“I’m going to ask you a few questions, maybe repeated, so please bear with me. When we’re through the questions, we’ll talk about your options for when you leave here.”
I shifted my head to look at him. What did that mean? Weren’t we going home? The tension in Colby suggested he felt the same uncertainty now.
“You were taken in the night from your home?” Officer Andrew asked.
Colby nodded. “I don’t think I even looked at the time. Our roommate was at his parents’ house, so I knew that the noise I heard inside wasn’t him. We didn’t even have time to speak to 911.”
“What do you remember after that?”
Colby shook his head. “For me, it was a lot of blurred flashes of light and pain. Panic and fear from my omega. Rage that they were hurting my omega.” His words were emphasized by a growl. “Otherwise, there were needles being stuck in me over and over and a stupid beta trying to order me around.”
“What kind of demands?”
“Anything. ‘Get up.’ ‘Open your eyes.’ ‘Tell me you want me.’ I swear, something more infuriating came out of his mouth every time.”
Andrew smirked and shook his head, then he turned his attention to me. “And you, omega?”
“They tried to take my bond away,” I told him. I spent the next few minutes repeating what I went through. By the time I was done, Colby sounded like a bear. Even the officer was stiff and fighting a growl. You just didn’t treat an omega that way. An alpha couldn’t help but become defensive.
When the alphas had calmed themselves, Andrew began his questions again. “In the time you were held, what conversations did you overhear? What information did you glean from your situation?”
“We weren’t a chance abduction,” I told him. “We were targeted, but I wasn’t their object of interest. They wanted Colby, and they wanted him without our bond. So while they tried to break the bond on my end, they were using drugs on him in another room, trying to make him obey stupid commands.”
“I knew even less. I was so lost in a drug fog that the only thing I was hanging on to was my bond,” Colby said.
Andrew’s lips dipped in a slight frown. “I would have liked for the team to have closed in during daylight so the main players would have been there, but that’s not what they’re trained to do.”
“So the people responsible are still out there?” I asked, fear making my voice higher.
Andrew nodded solemnly. “Very much. And I’m sorry to tell you that those who were calling the shots had never been there at all. It was their minions conducting the experiments that would possibly—eventually,maybe—lead to their desired outcome.”
“Do you know what they wanted? What they were trying for?” Colby asked.
Andrew considered us for several beats before he answered. “There’s a drug that is being developed. Word on the street says it’s called Obey. When given to an alpha, it renders them pliable. When they’re drugged, for a brief window, they can be commanded and must obey as if they’d been barked at.”
I stared at him for a long time, trying to figure out how this fit in with what we’d been through.
“Are you saying they were trying to find the right mixture with me?” Colby asked.
Andrew shook his head. “No. It works, at least on unbonded alphas. If I had to guess at why you, specifically, were targeted, it’s quite simple and even more barbaric than what is already happening underground in the world—unbonded alphas being targeted by wealthy betas who are desperate to have the pack bond that they crave. They’ll be able to buy a bite, so to speak. But this, based on what they were trying with you, sounds like they’re trying to broaden their market, making every alpha susceptible. If they can break a bond, that frees up that alpha for sale, not to mention adding another viable omega to their ‘stock.’”
“Over and over again,” Colby muttered. “That’s disgusting.”
“I’m relieved to hear that it’s not been figured out yet,” Andrew agreed. “Furthermore, your circumstances might have made you a more valuable target. You’re bonded, yes, but not with an entire pack. In theory, a single bond to work with would be easier to break than three or four.” He paused, and I could feel Colby’s guilt settling like a lead balloon within our bond. He was convinced that I didn’t have a pack because of him, and now, he was adding our abduction to the list of things he felt responsible for. “Now, we must talk about your options upon discharge.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked. “Transportation?”
Andrew chuckled. “No, omega. Everyone we’ve recovered will likely be hunted by these people, if for no other reason than you know things you shouldn’t about their operation. Even if it's something trivial that you haven’t remembered to tell me, they might see it as worthy of capturing you again.”
“I won’t let anyone take my omega from me again,” Colby growled.
“I understand,” Andrew said. “That’s why I’m telling you that your option is to walk away from your previous life as if you were dead.”
I stared at him in horror. “But—my mom?”
Andrew shook his head, sympathy in his frown. “I’m sorry, Talya. It’s not just for your safety but the safety of all of your friends and loved ones. If they believe you’re dead, then those coming after you cannot use them as bait because they’re not hiding anything.”
“Is this like a witness protection thing?” Colby asked.
“Yes. We’ll give you a new identity. You’ll both need to use suppressants and?—”
“No,” Colby said, shaking his head. “I’ll agree to faking our deaths to keep my omega safe. Fine. But no, we won’t pretend to be something we’re not. You think that we want to parade around as betas?! No. It’s going to be on you to find us a place that’s safe.”
Andrew smiled. “I already have a place, and like you, the pack there is equally as stubborn.”
“There’s already a pack there?” Colby asked, hesitation in his voice.
I felt it echoed in my core. Every experience we’d had with packs was not a positive one. In fact, I could count on one hand when they’d been somewhat pleasant.
“Yes and no. They’ve formed a pack, but they were all victims of various circumstances that required their disappearance from life.”
“And you put everyone in one house. That sounds safe,” Colby said.
Andrew chuckled. “No. We rotate and decide, depending on what we’re removing you from, where we will place you. This location is the safest for you two specifically, based on what you’ve been through. But before we send you, you both need to be completely committed to vacating your lives completely. No weakness. No contact with anyone. You cannot sign into a single account of yours anywhere, not even social media that you haven’t used in years. You will be brand new people. Do you understand?”
I swallowed. Colby looked at me, cupping my face with his hand once more. He stared into my eyes, reflecting my fear and sorrow in his. With a frown, he finally nodded. “Yes. Whatever it takes to protect my omega.”