Chapter 2 #2
I squint through the rain at the street, weighing options. Run? I’d make it three blocks before passing out. Hide? In my condition, I’d be found dead by dawn. Fight? Against Aaiden? I’m good, but my instincts won’t let me hurt him.
“Fine,” I mutter, hating the surrender. Hating that he’s right.
Hating how some small, broken part of me is relieved that he tracked me down when I tried to run.
Leather and Aaiden’s pheromones saturate the car. I slide across the seat, leaving behind a smear of blood and rain for the driver to clean up later.
Aaiden follows me in, closing the door.
“The scouted exit had no cameras and no witnesses,” he says as the car pulls away from the curb. “Taking a public route left you exposed and vulnerable.”
I press harder against my side, red seeping between my fingers. “I’m not one of your employees.”
“No,” he agrees. “You’re not.”
What I am, he doesn’t say. What I am to him has always been the question hanging between us. Family, but not family. Protected, but not claimed. Valuable but untouchable.
As the car accelerates, I try to stifle the flow of blood while I hold on to the door handle as if I might fling it open at any moment. The car glides through streets I don’t bother tracking. What’s the point?
Blood seeps warm and steady between my fingers, but I ignore it. I won’t show weakness in front of the Alpha whose scent fills the enclosed space, stirring traitorous instincts despite all of the times he’s rejected me.
Aaiden sits opposite me, his long legs crossed, his ankle over his knee, every inch the composed business executive. The raised privacy partition seals us away from the driver, so it’s only the two of us, in our own little bubble of tension.
I stare out the window, but my reflection stares back, pale, rain-soaked, a ghost haunting the glass.
Beyond it, the city rushes by in streaks of light and shadow.
Each streetlamp we pass flashes across Aaiden, illuminating the angles of his cheekbones, his jaw, and those green eyes that give nothing away.
He doesn’t speak, doesn’t lecture or scold or ask how bad the injury is. Instead, he scrolls on his phone, the blue glow casting eerie shadows across his handsome face. The silence stretches between us, a living thing with teeth.
I shift, and pain streaks through me. I can’t help the small intake of breath or the momentary bow of my head. When I lift it again, I find Aaiden watching me. But in the same heartbeat, his attention returns to his phone.
“Do you need pressure bandages from the compartment?” he asks without looking up again, as if he’s inquiring about the weather.
“I’m fine.” The words come out harsher than intended. A child’s stubborn reflex.
He doesn’t argue or insist. Just continues whatever he’s doing on that damn phone.
I hate his calm, his distance.
Eight months ago, I was captured, and when I was rescued, he still didn’t claim me. Just used it as another excuse to ignore what’s between us.
Instead, he placed himself as my handler. Near enough to keep tabs on me, but never to touch.
We pass another streetlight before the car is plunged into darkness, and in the reflection from the window, I glimpse what holds his attention.
On his screen, a medical monitoring app displays vital signs in real-time.
My vital signs.
My heart lurches, and the display on his phone spikes. He’s not only tracking my location. He’s monitoring my bodily functions.
“What the fuck?” With a snarl, I rip the small communicator free from under my nape guard, ignoring the sting as the adhesive tears from my skin, and throw it onto his lap. “I’m not your fucking science experiment.”
“The monitoring is for your safety.” Aaiden picks up the device and slips it into his coat pocket. “It’s standard protocol for all field operatives.”
“I’m not an operative or your employee.” Each word comes out clipped, edged with rage. “I’m a person.”
“A person who’s bleeding in my car,” he says, his jaw working. “A person I’m responsible for.”
“You’re not responsible for me!” The pain in my side is nothing compared to the fire in my chest. “You don’t own me. You don’t even want me.”
Emotion flickers across his face, too quick to interpret before he locks it away. “This isn’t about wanting. It’s about duty.”
Duty. Of course. Always fucking duty with him. Duty to his family. Duty to protect the poor, damaged Omega. Never about desire. Never about the claim he refuses to make.
He sighs, the small sound conveying both irritation and resignation. “Your wound needs attention.”
“So now you care about my wound?” I laugh, and it hurts both my side and something deeper.
“Where was this concern a year ago when I begged you to claim me, and you said I was too young to know what I wanted? So instead, I got taken and passed around as a party favor, too drunk off the pheromones of strangers to be able to fight back?”
The muscle in his jaw twitches. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” I lean forward, ignoring the fresh warmth spreading beneath my palm. “Fair would be treating me as a person with choices instead of damaged goods you’re obligated to keep around. Fair would be acknowledging what’s between us instead of monitoring me from a distance.”
Aaiden’s phone buzzes in his hand, and he checks it. “Your blood pressure is dropping. We need to treat your wound.”
I stare at him, incredulous. Even with the monitoring device removed, he’s still tracking me somehow.
“There’s a secondary monitor in your watch,” he says, answering my unasked question. “Redundancy is standard procedure.”
“Of course it is.” I slump back onto the seat, all the fight draining from me to leave only an empty ache that’s become all too familiar. “Heaven forbid you lose track of your investment.”
Instead of arguing with me, Aaiden presses the intercom button to speak to the driver. “How long until we’re at the safe house?”
“We’re pulling up now, sir.”
The car slows as we approach a narrow two-story townhouse wedged between identical neighbors, the kind of forgettable place designed to disappear into the city.
As the garage door rolls up, Aaiden studies me. “Are you going to fight me on getting you medical treatment?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
“I’ll do what’s necessary to keep you alive. Even when you’re determined to resist me every step of the way.”
That’s the problem, isn’t it? He keeps me alive, but he won’t let me live.
And the worst part is how the broken, pathetic pieces of me still crave his approval and hope for the day when duty will give way to desire, and he’ll see me as more than a burden to bear.
That hope hurts me more than any knife wound ever could.