28. Pack Breaker
Pack Breaker
E veryone was angry at each other. Once it was obvious River wasn't coming back, Orion and Kade started fighting over who was pushing River too far.
Archer snapped at them to shut up and tugged me onto his lap on the bed, out of the way of the two men facing off in the middle of the room.
And of course, River was furious with all of us, but especially me.
I'd never considered that I might want to go back to the ORC, but watching them all fight because of me had me wishing River had just taken me back that first day.
We'd all been better off thinking that the other designation was awful.
Then my heat had come along and suddenly a pack that seemed to be completely stable had dissolved into chaos.
The nurse came in at one point to remove my IV and told me I could leave with my pack. I nearly burst into tears as I explained that they weren't my pack.
"Then you will need to be signed out by someone who is in charge of you," she told me.
I just nodded. That would be River, but he hadn't come back for two hours and no one knew where he was. Archer tried calling, but the call went to voicemail.
The next knock on the door, my heart dropped. I knew who it was.
"I'm Jackson, here to take the runaway omega off your hands," a tall, slender alpha stepped into the room.
His eyes landed on me and he immediately strode across the rooms, clamping a pair of handcuffs onto my wrists.
"Let's go. Thank you, gentlemen, for protecting ORC property until I was able to get here. "
"Wait!" Kade stepped forward. "You can't just take her."
"Well, unless you've claimed her and have the paperwork, I think I can."
Kade's hands balled into fists and I held up a hand to calm him.
"It's okay, Kade. Just go fix things with River. I never meant to destroy your pack."
"That's what omegas do," Jackson snorted. "Let's go, omega." He jerked on the connecting chain to my handcuffs and pulled me out of the room.
The men stood there, obviously not certain about their next steps. Then Archer leaped forward.
"What if we do claim her?"
"You can't," I told him. "Your whole pack has to be in agreement and you know River isn't up for that."
"She's right. No random biting or you'll find that your whole pack falls apart." The agent practically dragged me down the hall, his long legs moving much faster than my shorter ones.
We burst out into the bright parking lot, my feet scraping on the rough salt spread over the concrete outside the doors. Then he was dragging me across ice and snow toward a huge black SUV.
Jackson didn't take me to the doors, but to the back of the SUV and popped it open. In the spacious trunk, there was a steel dog cage with a blanket spread on the bottom.
"Get in," he unlatched the door and gave me a shove.
"A cage?"
"You're not fucking me up like you did that pack," he said curtly. "I don't deal with pack breakers."
I looked around the parking lot, but there was no sign of River. Not that he'd do anything for me, but I wanted him to see what he'd done to me.
In the end, I climbed into the cage when Jackson alpha barked at me and I had no choice.
The cage door swung closed and locked with a click.
It was a keypad lock, so there was no hope of getting out.
Jackson shut the SUV back door and got into the driver's seat, then we were pulling away from the hospital and headed back to the Omega Reassignment Center.
In the cage, there was no way to stop myself from tipping over and slamming against the sides when Jackson took a corner or slammed the brakes.
After a few hard turns, I curled up on the floor of the cage with the bars biting into my skin.
I had only Kade's shirt to protect me, and it was too thin to help much.
By the time Jackson pulled into the enclosed garage of the ORC, I was covered in bruises and was stiff and sore from being crunched up in the small space.
He opened the back door but didn't open the cage until four beta guards arrived, each with their batons. They stood ready as he opened the door, grabbed my arm and pulled me out. the shirt caught on a bit of metal and ripped with a loud sound, making one of the betas snort.
"Come on, we don't have all day!" One of them growled, reaching out to grab my arm. The two men finished dragging me out of the cage and when I scrambled to stand, my legs gave out on me.
"Stop pretending to be weak!" A guard jabbed me in the ribs, right through the tear, and shocked me, sending me crashing to the cold concrete. If there had been any doubt, it was gone. I was back at the Omega Reassignment Center.
Jackson hauled me to my feet again and took off the handcuffs, signing a paper someone brought him. Then I was being shuffled toward the doors, my feet numb from standing on the cold concrete.
Inside, the center was exactly the same as when I'd left. Cold, sterile hallways and scurrying omegas with their heads down, trying to avoid any kind of issue with the many guards wandering the place.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked when they turned down a different hallway from the usual one.
"Shut up!" Another blast of electricity closed my mouth, and I stumbled after them, in pain. "You go where we tell you and you don't ask questions."
Where I was going was apparently down into the basement of the center.
I didn't even know it existed, but they shoved me through one of the doors that lined the narrow hallway down there and slammed the door after me.
It was a heavy metal door with a small reinforced window in the middle of it, just like I'd seen in prison movies when I was still back home.
Alone, I looked around the narrow space.
If I stretched my arms out, I could touch both walls at the same time.
There was a concrete ledge on one side that was just wide enough to lie on if you weren't heavyset.
In the back corner was a toilet with a sink in the tank.
It was metal and the only non-concrete thing in the space.
Worst of all, after all the heat I'd experienced over the past several days, I was cold. Concrete walls, bed, and floor made for an icy surrounding. They hadn't even given me a uniform or pajamas, which would have at least protected my legs and ass from the concrete.
Finally, I took Kade's torn shirt off, laid it on the concrete ledge and sat cross-legged on it with my arms crossed over my chest to try to stay warm.
It was quiet down here. I wondered if anyone else was in this strange section of the center. Once in a while, I could hear a door slam in the distance, but nothing that seemed to be in this hallway. To break the silence, I sang quietly to myself.
After what felt like days, the lights abruptly shut off.
I sat in the pitch dark, alone and cold.
No one had checked on me or left food, and I wondered if it was a power outage or if night had come.
It was impossible to judge time here. When the lights didn't come back on, I decided it must be night after all.
There was no way to fall asleep with nothing to prevent the cold from penetrating my bones, so I just sat there, nodding off and jerking awake every so often.
My thoughts roamed, back to the past few days with the pack.
It hadn't been the best experience ever, but aside from River, they'd all come around.
I missed Archer's jokes and Orion's stoic, protective personality.
But the fact remained, they hadn't stopped me from leaving.
First, they'd let River take me and then Jackson.
As much as I missed them, it wasn't based on anything real, I told myself.
I needed to focus on surviving this cold prison and then whatever came next.
Because it probably wasn't a pack if they had me down here. I had to face reality at this point.
"No one is coming to rescue you," I said aloud. "You're on your own now."
Then I put my head down on my knees and for the first time in years, I let my tears flow.