Chapter 3
The moment the car stops moving, I’m out the door before Aaiden can issue another command.
Pain slices through my side the instant my boots hit the concrete, sharp enough to steal the air from my lungs, but I force my legs to keep moving. The air in the garage is choked with oil and the hot clicking of the engine. The overhead lights are too bright after the rain-slick darkness outside.
“Jade.”
Aaiden’s call follows me across the garage, calm and still in too much fucking control. Irritation spikes, pushing me to ignore him.
I make it three steps into the townhouse before he catches up.
“Let me see the wound.”
“Fuck off.”
I dump my weapons on the entryway table before I stumble down the hallway toward the nearest door, already knowing where it leads from the handful of times I’ve been dragged through this safe house before. The bathroom light flicks on with a harsh click as I step inside.
“Jade—”
With a kick of my boot, the door slams shut behind me. Before Aaiden barges his way in, I snap the lock into place, leaving bloody fingerprints on the polished chrome handle.
Aaiden pounds on the door. “Unlock it this instant.”
“Make me,” I snarl, knowing he would never dare.
I fumble with the zipper of my jacket, my hands sticky with congealing blood.
The leather peels away from my skin with a sick, wet sound, and I drop it to the floor where it lands with a heavy thud, crimson droplets splattering the pristine white tiles.
The vest comes next, the buckles fighting me, followed by my shirt, soaked through and clinging.
I hiss as the fabric pulls away from the wound, reopening what had started to clot.
“Shit,” I mutter, twisting to get a better look at the damage.
The gash runs four inches along my side, deeper than I’d admitted to myself. The edges are angry red, with swelling already setting in. I probe the ragged edges, wincing at the hot pulse of pain. No vital organs hit, at least, but it needs stitches.
A strange warmth ripples through me, starting in my belly and radiating outward, and my breath catches as I recognize the sensation.
When Omegas are injured, our bodies sometimes trigger Heat-adjacent responses, the evolutionary quirk designed to attract an Alpha’s protection when we’re at our most vulnerable.
Perfect fucking timing.
I clutch the edge of the sink, knuckles white on the porcelain as another wave washes over me. My scent will be changing, sweetening. Calling. And the one Alpha I both want and often hate is right outside this door.
“Get it together,” I growl at my reflection.
The pale, shivering thing in the mirror doesn’t look like a killer. It looks like prey.
My hands shake as I reach for a washcloth, wetting it under the tap. The cold water stings my overheated skin. I press it to the wound, and a clarifying pain whites out the edges of my vision. I focus on it, use it to push back the unwanted warmth, the unwanted need.
Behind me, a scrape comes from the door handle, and the damn thing swings inward before I can shove my foot out to block it.
Aaiden fills the doorframe, his coat now off to reveal his suit, still immaculate despite the night’s chaos. In one hand, he carries a compact trauma kit, the kind military medics use in the field, while the other holds the slender screwdriver he used to break into the bathroom.
My throat tightens. “Where’s the doctor?”
“Handling another situation.” Aaiden’s eyes sweep over me, assessing the wound without a flicker of emotion, though his nostrils flare as he scents the change in me. The vulnerability. The need.
I don’t try to hide my bare chest. I grew up in Rockford Manor, and Aaiden’s seen all of me more than once, sometimes by design in my younger years of infatuation, when I hoped I would tempt the older Alpha.
Silly, foolish me.
Aaiden sets the kit on the counter and flips it open to reveal gauze, antiseptic, surgical tape, a suture kit, and a bottle of local anesthetic.
He gestures to the closed toilet lid. “Sit.”
I remain standing. “I’m fine. Leave the kit and go.”
“You can’t suture your own side,” he says in a reasonable voice that makes me want to be unreasonable.
“I’ve done it before.”
“Not with your hands shaking.”
I look down, betrayed again by my own body. My fingers tremble, whether from blood loss, adrenaline crash, or the Heat-adjacent response, I can’t tell. All I know is that I despise the weakness and him for being here to witness it.
Aaiden sighs. “Sit, Jade. Please.”
The please throws me. Aaiden doesn’t ask. He orders. The unexpected courtesy catches me off guard, and I sink onto the toilet lid before I realize I’m obeying.
He crouches beside me, still maintaining the same careful distance he’s kept for months.
As he opens the bottle of antiseptic, the fumes sting my nose.
“Lift your arm,” he instructs.
I comply, turning on the seat and raising my arm to expose the gash, and I bite back a hiss as the wound stretches.
Aaiden works to clean around the cut, removing dried blood with antiseptic wipes. Each stroke is careful and impersonal. He might as well be repairing a piece of furniture.
“Breathe,” he says, and I realize I’m holding my breath.
A shaky breath escapes as another wave of warmth rolls through me. My scent thickens in the small bathroom, sweet and inviting, in a desperate, primal call.
I’m hurt. Protect me. Claim me.
Aaiden’s jaw tightens, but he continues to work. “This needs stitches. The local will sting.”
Before I can respond, he swabs the area with a cold liquid that turns to fire.
I grip the edge of the sink counter, my knuckles white. “Fuck.”
“Hold still.”
I study him as he works, searching for any crack in his perfect mask. He remains focused on the wound, his hands moving with the certainty of someone who’s done this before, many times.
How many bodies has he patched up or put down over the years? Caleb is the killer in the family, but he’s not the only Rockford to get his hands dirty.
I tremble as the numbness spreads across my side. Not from pain now, but from the awareness of how close my Alpha is and how much the broken pieces of me want him to stop being so damn careful. To touch me somewhere, anywhere, without being forced to by this wound.
“How bad?” I ask, needing to break the silence.
“Deep, but clean.” He threads a curved needle, still not looking at any part of me that isn’t bleeding. “Eight stitches, minimum.”
The first puncture of the needle brings no pain, only a strange tugging sensation. I study the top of Aaiden’s head, the way his dark hair falls forward as he bends to his task. I’ve never touched it. Never run my fingers through it. Never pulled it in passion or anger.
Another wave of heat pulses through me, and I clench my teeth. My instincts scream to lean into him, to bury my nose in the spot behind his ear where his scent will be strongest. To beg for the comfort of his claim.
Instead, I dig my nails into my palms until pain cuts through the haze.
“Your body is responding to the injury,” Aaiden says without raising his head, still so maddeningly calm. “It’s normal.”
“I know what it is,” I snap.
He never falters as he places another perfect stitch. “It will pass once you’re treated and resting.”
As if it’s that simple. As if the problem isn’t his presence, his scent, his refusal to acknowledge how my body recognizes his as safety.
I hate my weakness. Hate my need.
And worse, how even after the kidnapping, the rapes, the rescue that came too late, my treacherous body still wants him to be my Alpha. Still thinks he could protect me when he’s already failed once.
By the time he finishes the last stitch and cuts the thread, I tremble all over with a combination of blood loss, suppressed rage, and desire. He tapes a clean bandage over his handiwork, his fingers never once touching my bare skin.
Clinical. Distant. Safe.
I’ve never hated safety more.
My weight shifts, body leaning into Aaiden’s space as he applies the final strip of surgical tape. My bare shoulder brushes his arm with the first intentional contact between us in months.
It’s a test, a challenge, a desperate bid for some reaction beyond this maddening distance. The touch lasts less than a second before Aaiden sways backward, maintaining the invisible barrier he’s erected between us.
Always just out of reach. Always so careful not to touch the damaged goods.
“Keep still,” he murmurs, his focus on the bandage instead of on me.
Never on me.
I search for any crack in that perfect composure. His jaw remains tight, his breathing measured. It’s like trying to read emotion from marble.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, reaching for the antiseptic again.
“Everything hurts,” I answer, the double meaning clear to both of us.
He doesn’t acknowledge it as he continues cleaning around the edges of the bandage. The antiseptic stings as it seeps into smaller cuts I never even noticed.
I don’t flinch this time. Pain is an old friend now.
I lean forward again, this time letting my knee brush his thigh. Again, Aaiden adjusts, shifting his weight back far enough to break contact without it being an obvious retreat, while his hands continue to work.
Such beautiful hands, long-fingered, strong, capable of violence and, I imagine, tenderness. Though I haven’t seen the latter in far too long. He touches the bandage, the gauze, the tape, but never my skin. As if I’m radioactive. As if I’ll contaminate him.
“I need to check if you have any other injuries,” he says.
Angry defiance flares within me, along with a desperate need to force a reaction from him, and I stand abruptly.
Aaiden sits back on his heels to give me space. “What are you—”
He cuts off as my hands move to the button of my jeans, still damp from the rain and stiff with blood.
He sucks in a breath before he controls his reaction. “I can step out—”
“Why?” I cut him off, popping the button free. “You’re playing doctor, right? Be thorough.”