Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
Heath
NO. JUST... NO. I dragged my gaze away from the small form huddled in the corner, wrapped in a dirty blanket. This couldn’t be what it looked like... what it felt like.
I was buck-ass naked. My entire body ached like I’d gone ten rounds in the boxing ring with Jack Dempsey. Dried sweat crusted on my skin as though I’d been feverish. The sour scent of old blood and infected wounds turned my stomach.
And the small, alien presence tucked inside my head was—
No.
I wasn’t thinking about that yet. I did my best to wall off that soft presence, pushing it away from the rest of me so I could pretend it didn’t exist. Because, if it existed, that meant—
I shook my head sharply, even though the movement made my brain slosh around like the last pickled egg in a jar of brine.
Stop.
Instead, I focused on the other impossible thing in the room; doing my best to ignore the little whimper of distress that came from the corner. A familiar hand clasped my forearm. The clean scent of smoky cedarwood pierced through the funk of blood and jizz and sickly-sweet omega stress pheromones.
“Knox?” I asked, hating how small and raw my voice sounded—like my throat had been scraped into sandpaper from screaming.
“I’m here,” my pack alpha said. “Everything’s going to be okay, you two. Although there’s likely to be some rough patches between here and there.”
Cautiously, Knox let my arm go. Without that grounding touch, it became harder to block out... everything else. Memories clamored for attention.
A metal table.
The wide, terrified eyes of a baby omega jammed against the metal bars of a cage as he tried to get as far away from me as possible.
The feeling of another alpha’s vertebrae snapping beneath the force of my grip.
In the corner of the bedroom—and inside my head—soft sobs tore at me like dull knives ripping flesh. I clenched my jaw and built the walls around that presence thicker and higher, until I thought I might collapse under their weight.
“I...” Jez’s voice, thick with tears, wavered alarmingly. “I need Gage. Please get Gage.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, but that only meant that the images of her in Gage’s bed—in my bed—grew more vivid.
Like an unwanted VR slideshow, pictures of her moaning underneath me alternated with close-ups of Tony Scalise’s haggard face as I buried my nose in his dark hair and sniffed along the side of his throat.
Oh, god. Tony had been there, while I’d been out of my mind with lust? Please tell me I hadn’t—
“All right,” Knox said, breaking into my spiraling thoughts. “Stay put. I’ll get him for you.”
I sat frozen in place, afraid that if I moved, I’d lose the tenuous grip I had on myself. Despite my best efforts, I was hyperaware of the small figure curled into a ball across from me.
“Oy! Gage!” Knox shouted from the open doorway. “Can you come in here, please? Jez is asking for you!”
He stepped back inside, and within seconds, my other packmate arrived. Bare-chested and bleary eyed, Gage stumbled into the room. His shoulder knocked clumsily against the doorframe as though his brain was still half-mired in sleep. His pajama pants hung low around his hips.
His stupid face lit up with relief when he saw me. “Heath! You’re both okay now?”
I stared at him. “How the fuck do you come to that conclusion?”
Gage’s hazel eyes moved to Jez as though drawn there by a magnet. She made another small, stifled noise, and his face fell.
“Aw, kitten,” he said softly—because apparently, we were giving Knox’s attempted murderer pet names, now. “You’re a mess after all that. Can I help you clean up and get you some food? Maybe some soup and crackers?”
I ground my teeth together until my jaw creaked, mentally bracing my full weight against the imaginary wall in my head; as though I could prop it up through sheer force of will.
“Gage,” Jez choked out, reaching up toward him with both hands.
A vein throbbed in my temple as Gage tutted and crouched down, scooping her into his huge arms, blanket and all. She clung to him and buried her face against his neck. I got a glimpse of the red ring of tooth marks decorating the top of her shoulder and quickly dragged my gaze away.
“I’m gonna take her to my bathroom and make sure she doesn’t have any injuries we don’t know about,” he told us. “C’mon, kitten. I’ve got bubble bath you can use. You’ll like it, I promise.”
My stomach dipped and rolled as a wave of unwanted jealousy washed through me like acid. My fingers tightened painfully in the mussed bedding as I fought the fucking psychotic urge to leap up and wrestle Jez out of my packmate’s arms.
I waited until they’d disappeared through the door, Gage’s footsteps retreating down the hallway in the direction of his room. My muscles trembled with exhaustion, combined with the irrational need to run after him and take back what was mine.
Knox came and sat on the bed next to me, reclaiming his earlier spot.
I couldn’t look at him, even though I knew I should be over the goddamned moon that he was home and safe.
“I need a drink,” I whispered hoarsely, knowing there wouldn’t be a single drop of alcohol anywhere in the house. My recovering alcoholic ass had seen to that personally.
“Too fucking bad,” Knox said, his tone matter-of-fact. “Get up, get in the shower, and slather some antibiotic ointment on those scratches when you’re done. We need to talk about what happened.”
My grip on the bedding tightened. Four-hundred thread-count Egyptian cotton ripped beneath my ragged fingernails.
“Shower,” Knox repeated. “Now. You’ve got drying spunk in your hair, and I’m not currently equipped to deal with that fact. Not on top of everything else.”
As though his words had been the catalyst, I was suddenly overcome with shuddering revulsion at myself. I staggered upright and lunged for the en suite bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I barely made it to the toilet before I was retching up bile.
It’s the drugs they gave me, I told myself. I remembered the needle jabbing into my neck... the slow descent into madness while locked in a cell with some poor, innocent kid. It's just the drugs.
When the convulsive heaving finally subsided, I straightened.
My eyes fell unwillingly on the mirror, revealing something from a low-budget zombie flick.
I’d clawed my own face and neck bloody in an attempt to maintain control, during the long hours before Jez had broken into my cell and let the omega kid escape to safety.
I tilted my face from side to side. Some of that shit was going to scar, too. A permanent reminder of the worst fucking day of my life.
She saved you. The internal voice whispered the words like a secret. If you hadn’t scented her while you were trapped in the cell, you wouldn’t have been able to hold on as long as you did.
I whirled away from the mirror before the temptation to put a fist through the glass grew too great to ignore. My balance wavered, and I caught myself on the vanity, breathing deeply. Jez’s presence in my mind had quieted, her initial horror receding as Gage fussed over her.
Kitten.
He had a fucking pet name for her. Why couldn’t I seem to get past that?
Working solely by muscle memory, I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand it and stepped inside. Stinging drops of water pelted me, turning rusty brown as they ran down my body and disappeared into the drain. I stood there for a long time; one arm braced against the wall.
Eventually, I roused myself enough to scrub at my hair and body, trying to physically remove the last few days with the power of shampoo and body wash.
Maybe it worked. At least, I felt marginally more like a human being by the time I emerged.
My pale skin had been scrubbed pink and raw.
Reluctantly, I swiped a towel across the mirror, clearing the steamy condensation.
I still looked worse than Knox, and he’d just walked out of the hospital a few hours ago.
On autopilot, I pulled a tube of ointment out of the medicine cabinet and dabbed it over the scratch marks that still looked inflamed. My beard needed a trim. My fingernails were broken and ragged. I couldn’t deal with either of those things.
Knox had come in at some point and deposited a pile of clothing next to the sink. I put it on, hating the fact that I could feel Jez calming down under Gage’s care.
You should be taking care of her. Not him, said the little voice. My headache started to throb more insistently. I put the ointment away and grabbed three ibuprofen pills from the bottle on the bottom shelf, swallowing them dry.
For a long moment, I leaned against the vanity with my head hanging and my eyes squeezed shut. Then I pushed upright, squared my shoulders, and stepped back into the bedroom.
Knox was waiting for me, sprawled in a chair across from the bed. He looked exhausted.
“That’s better,” he greeted. “Now, which are we talking about first—Jez, or the kidnapping?”
My mind shied away from the subject of Jez like a nervous horse.
“The kidnapping,” I said.
He nodded. “Okay. Tell me everything you remember. I need names, if you have them.”
I took a deep breath, opened my mouth, and started from the beginning.