Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
Jez
I WAS SURE I HADN’T actually slept for a week straight, even if that’s what it felt like.
After I’d come back to my senses, Gage had dragged me to his room and made me take a shower, followed by a hot bath.
He’d given me soup and crackers, along with an entire bottle of some kind of neon-blue sports drink, and then he’d let me fall asleep in his bed.
I didn’t really have a lot of experience with sleeping uninterrupted for long periods of time. Living on the street, sleeping made you vulnerable. And on those rare occasions when I’d crashed on someone’s couch, sleeping there too long made it feel like I was overstaying my welcome.
Most of the parts of my body that had been aching before were still aching—but it was a different kind of discomfort. Old and stiff, rather than fresh and raw. It was my brain that felt like someone had packed it in cotton wool, though.
My thoughts were slow and stupid. My eyes felt gritty and swollen. My neck and back felt like they belonged to someone three times my age, which was ridiculous since I’d been passed out on a nice fluffy mattress instead of on a park bench or in a concrete doorway.
As soon as I stirred, my stomach made it clear that tomato soup and saltines hadn’t been enough food after days spent in an artificial heat, burning through my body’s nonexistent reserves.
I was used to getting by on the bare minimum. But that also meant that I knew what it felt like when I was skirting the edge too closely.
I was skirting it now.
I’d refused food after Gage first brought me here and locked me in the attic, afraid it might be drugged.
When I’d finally started eating, half of it came right back up after the thunderstorm sent me into a PTSD episode.
Later, Gage had made me pancakes the night we’d slept together, but that had been days ago.
Omegas were designed to live off their body’s reserves during heat. Unfortunately, I’d barely had an ounce of fat to draw on.
Hunger cramped my stomach. I tried very hard not to be reminded of the other ways my body had cramped—with sexual need and emptiness—when I’d been injected with the heat-stim shot. I tried even harder not to think about what had come afterward.
The mental wall Heath had thrown up between us groaned and shifted with sudden strain.
Metaphorical chunks of concrete crumbled from the gaps.
.. but the barrier held. My stupid omega hindbrain whined at the enforced separation from my mate.
I silently snarled at it to shut the hell up.
I didn’t want to feel whatever Heath was feeling; just like he didn’t want to feel what I was feeling.
The bedroom door cracked open.
“Hey, kitten,” Gage called through the gap. “You awake? I heard you moving around.”
“Yeah,” I said reluctantly. “I’m up.”
“I want you to eat something,” he said, and my stomach gave an enthusiastic gurgle of agreement with the idea. “You can have another bath afterward, okay? But you really need to get some calories in you.”
“I don’t want to see Heath,” I said in a rush.
The door opened a bit wider. “He’ll steer clear. Honestly, I think he’s still sleeping.”
He wasn’t, but I didn’t say that aloud.
“Okay,” I agreed, knowing that if I didn’t eat some proper food, I was going to be completely useless.
Gage opened the door all the way. “Great. Come down to the kitchen. Do you like shepherd’s pie?”
I had no idea what shepherd’s pie was, but it didn’t matter. “It’s fine. I’ll eat anything.”
Gage’s borrowed terrycloth bathrobe was so huge on me that I had to roll up the sleeves and lift the hem so I didn’t trip on it. But it was warm, and soft, and it smelled like sweet Christmas bread as I wrapped it around me and padded down to the kitchen.
Shepherd’s pie turned out to be—surprise, surprise—a pie. But instead of cherries or apples, it had some kind of spicy ground-up meat and diced vegetables in it, with big poofy waves of browned mashed potatoes on top instead of whipped cream or meringue.
“Good?” Gage asked, as I shoveled down the generous wedge he’d put on my plate.
I nodded, swallowing. “I like it. Doesn’t taste like hamburger, though.”
He pulled out a chair and sat across from me. “It’s ground lamb. That’s why they called it shepherd’s pie. Drink your electrolytes.”
I paused, not sure how I felt about eating a fluffy little lamb ground up in a pie. Then I decided I was too hungry to care, and I went back to scarfing it down like a starving coyote—pausing every few bites to drink some of the sports drink, which was red this time.
As promised, Heath didn’t make an appearance. But as I was finishing up seconds, Knox did.
My fork clattered to the plate as my shoulders stiffened abruptly in surprise.
He came in and pulled out a third chair, sitting down and making himself comfortable as though he owned the place. Which, in his defense, he did.
“Hello again, Jez,” he said. “I apologize for interrupting your meal. There are some logistics we need to discuss, though.”
The mouthful of shepherd’s pie I’d been chewing suddenly tasted like dry cardboard. I had to force myself to swallow it down.
“What... kind of logistics?” I asked cautiously. He still didn’t seem mad... but he should be mad.
“We’re all kind of working on the assumption that you’ll choose to break the mating,” he said, without any detectable judgment in his tone.
“Which generally means a glandectomy. That, in turn, means finding a good surgeon and getting sucked into the medical system. For most people, that wouldn’t be a problem. But for you...”
He trailed off.
“What about me?” I demanded, unable to keep the defensiveness out of my voice.
“Do you have any sort of legal identification?” he asked. “Birth certificate, social security card, state ID, passport?”
I scoffed. “Of course I don’t. As far as the authorities are concerned, my life ended when I was thirteen. And that’s the way I like it.”
“I’d figured that might be the case,” Knox said. “And while that’s certainly your choice, it’s going to make scheduling a glandectomy challenging, to put it mildly.”
I huddled back in the chair, wrapping my arms around myself protectively. “I can find someone to do it.”
There were always people for stuff like that... just like you could find someone to stitch up a wound or do a clothes-hanger abortion, if you knew who to talk to.
“You are not letting some back-alley butcher hack out your mating gland,” Gage said, seeming to grow taller and broader in his chair as he puffed up with alpha indignation. “Jez. What if they miss part of it, or they use dirty tools and you get an infection?”
I didn’t want to think about this. I didn’t want to think about letting someone cut out my mating gland, period. Whether it was in some sterile operating room that cost tens of thousands of dollars, or in a shady back room that cost a couple of grams of cocaine.
The barrier in the back of my head rumbled ominously again.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I told Gage tightly.
“That’s understandable,” Knox said. “Nevertheless, I’d like you to consider letting me get you set up with legal documents and a new identity to ease the way.
The fact that you’re mated to one of us simplifies things, but I’m afraid it will still take some time to arrange.
Even so, I think you’ll find using a licensed doctor much safer and less traumatic than the alternative. ”
An image of the back-alley hack job I would otherwise have to endure wavered in my mind’s eye, urging me not to dismiss the offer out of hand.
“I’ll... consider it,” I said warily.
Knox nodded. “That’s all I ask. There’s just one other thing. I know you’re still recovering physically, but you and Heath need to talk to each other sooner rather than later.”
“No,” I said immediately.
“Not yet,” Gage amended, and I glared at him.
“Soon,” Knox said, with the implacable certainty of a pack alpha. “In the meantime, the pack will provide you with anything you need. Just make a list.”
Stubbornness made me want to refuse the offer out of hand. How the hell had we gotten from me trying to kill this man, to him offering to buy me stuff?
For now, I bit my tongue.
He seemed to take my silence for agreement.
“Good,” he said briskly, pushing away from the table.
He, at least, looked like less of a two-day-old corpse than he had when I’d come out of my heat. Maybe I’d slept longer than I thought? I should probably ask what day it was.
An electronic chiming noise echoed through the house. I tensed for a moment, before identifying the sound as a doorbell.
Knox frowned. “Are we expecting anybody this morning?”
Gage got up. “Yeah, maybe. I’ll get it.”
I sat in uncomfortable silence with my would-be victim, while Gage’s heavy footfalls retreated to the front door. Low voices filtered back to the kitchen, the words unintelligible. A few moments later, Gage reappeared. Behind him, a slender, dark-haired figure hovered in the doorway.
“Hi,” Tony said sheepishly. “Um... Jez... would it be okay if we talked for a bit? There’s some stuff I should probably tell you. About, uh... me and Heath.”
I blinked at him for a moment, trying to switch mental gears. What did he mean, him and Heath?
“Sure,” I said, painfully aware of the way I’d fucked up the friendship I used to have with this sweet and gentle beta. “We can talk.”