6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Leah
I shudder awake, drifting in a haze of warmth and the most intoxicating scents I’ve ever breathed. They swirl around me, thick and tangling with the unrestrained ache beneath my skin.
The first is deep, enveloping. Fresh pine and damp earth, threaded with fire. The weighted-blanket scent immediately calms my nerves, whispering that nothing can touch me. Nothing can hurt me.
Then another. Brighter. Citrus and clove cut through the fog in my head like sun slicing a storm. It’s untamed laughter spilled across sunlight, the flavor of something meant to lift me up and pull me back to the surface no matter how far under I’ve gone.
Then the last rolls in. Vanilla and wild grass, sweet and familiar, cool against my skin. It’s warmth in the quietest hours, everything safe, everything unwinding. That gentle presence seeps into me, soothing the panic that lives under my ribs. I ache to fold into it.
Fear flares in my chest as I surface but the pull slices through it. My Omega arches into the blend, greedy for comfort, but something in me— the real me —screams to stay alert.
I try to open my eyes, but my eyelids are too heavy.
Everything is too heavy. Need rolls under my skin so thick I could drown in it.
My bones are pulverized, and a deep ache is buried deep within my abdomen.
I’m tired. Worn down weary. Skin sticky with sweat.
I recognize the signs of my heat, but this time it’s different.
I’m not alone.
I blink, and shapes form from the haze.
Three Alphas, massive and real, take up the little space around me. They’re slumped in sleep and so close the air stirs with every slow, even breath. They’re the Alphas from the gala who chased after me.
One sits on the edge of the bed on one side of me.
He’s propped against the wall, legs out front, his body curved toward me as if he meant to shield me even while unconscious.
He’s dark and broad across the shoulders.
A barely discernible scar slashes his jaw with the kind of roughness that says he’s seen dark places.
Another sprawls on my other side in a similar posture, long limbs tangled, auburn hair sticking out in unruly tufts. Freckles paint his nose and cheeks. His mouth is parted, a burr of stubble shadowing his jaw, and even in sleep he looks half-amused, as if he’s waiting for a punchline.
The last, all muscle and patience, leans next to the closed door with his chin on his chest. Tattoos wind down both arms, dark against his mid-brown skin. Even knocked out, he looks ready to spring up, to put himself between me and anything that so much as twitches wrong.
I’m in a small room. There’s warmth here, blankets and pillows piled soft around me.
I’m not in my prison. There’s no bleach or steel restraints for one. There’s silence without screaming or crying from prison mates I’ve never seen.
I shouldn’t trust anything Hardwick told me about scent-matches, but nothing else explains the way the Omega in me arches toward them, longing and warning colliding in the center of my chest. But bigger questions crowd my head.
How the fuck did I get here?
And where the fuck is ‘here’?
An IV is taped to my arm, the line trailing to a nearly empty bag of saline hooked on the wall above me with a shiny metal retractable arm.
Hardwick has taken so much blood from me in the past, I recognize the clear liquid.
Bandages are wrapped neatly around the cannula in the back of my hand.
My skin’s clean, and there’s no fresh bruising over my already mottled skin, which is unusual.
Someone dressed me in a t-shirt so large it slips off my shoulders, soft and warm, saturated with charred sugar.
My eyes snap to the dark Alpha. He’s missing his shirt so there’s nothing to stop my gaze roving over acres of bare smooth skin.
His chest and stomach are cut with thick, hard muscle, every line and curve on display.
My belly twists as an electric hunger blooms. That’s…
different to the sick dread that normally wells when there’s an Alpha near me.
The sight of him is obscene in its comfort, a promise of strength I don’t want to want.
I fist the borrowed fabric I’m wearing, tempted and unnerved by how much I desire to touch him.
I can’t let myself fall for anything an Alpha represents.
Can’t forget that in the end they’re all alike.
That I’m biologically programmed to do their bidding, to be their slave.
But eventually all the care in the world will mean nothing because they will use that power against me.
I try to piece together how I ended up surrounded by these alphas.
This isn’t my cell, with its sour mattress and piss bucket.
I’m lying on the softest mattress, wrapped in blankets fluffier than anything I’ve known.
Part of me wants to press my face into the fabric, to pull every inch of material tight around my body and burrow deep like my Omega craves, but fear keeps me stiff.
I remember Hardwick’s face and her manic eyes as she plunged a needle into my arm, sending me into the heat she promised would kill me.
Aroused delirium had sliced through me straight away, burning out my veins as I writhed on the hated gurney, while Wallace stood dispassionately over me before everything turned to static.
Then sudden confusion in the back of a moving car.
Big and careful hands trying to soothe me as faces swam in my vision.
Voices spoke to me, gentle but fierce. I’d fought.
Tried to claw my way out of the lucid nightmare, terror and heat snapping at my heels.
The most beautiful sound resonated through me and then darkness swept me away again.
I don’t understand how I got from hell to this.
I don’t know how I can trust what’s real.
But I do not trust the sleeping Alphas surrounding me.
Every instinct screams I’m prey, caught in the middle of a predator den. I’m surrounded by muscle and heat and fire that isn’t just in my skin anymore. It’s crawling through my veins, thoughts turning sticky and confused.
They’ve made me a nest .
But Haven’s lessons are drilled into my psyche.
Panic ratchets tight under my ribs and I shove my Omega back down into her darkness when she hisses her hunger.
Heat. Nest. Alphas. Claim.
Run. Fucking run!
My body jolts, sending a heavy, unsteady thud through the mattress connecting us. The Alphas jerk awake and three sets of eyes snap open. Their sharp and animal-bright focus instantly zeroes in on me.
My pulse spikes. Instinct screams through my bones.
Move .
I scramble onto my hands and knees, the blankets tangling around my legs.
I aim for the door and the dubious safety beyond, but the massive, tanned Alpha jerks to his knees.
I fly backward and slam into the wall behind me instead.
The sudden thump does nothing to slow the panic.
I’m too exposed, hemmed in by their bodies, by the heat spiraling through my limbs and the hunger in the air that’s mine and not mine.
The flame-haired Alpha moves fast, coming at me on his hands and knees.
My palm flies up on pure instinct, a pathetic shield against two hundred pounds of dominance. Like that would ever stop him. "Stay away from me!"
He stops. Immediately. His light hazel eyes lock onto me. "I’m only trying to help. You’re going to rip the cannula out of your hand if you’re not careful."
Nice words, but I don’t buy them. Why does he even care?
The room's closing in. The tantalizing air makes my head fuzzy. My thighs press together helplessly as arousal spreads, molten and insistent. The part of me that still cares about survival screams to run before my body betrays me. "I want to get out of here."
The tanned Alpha with the chocolate eyes frowns deep and turns his harsh gaze to the redhead. "Gabriel, remove the IV so she can stand."
For a beat, I just stare, not comprehending. Did he say I can go? My heart pounds, waiting for the trap, for the snap of command or threat. The auburn-haired Alpha—Gabriel—offers a slow, languid smile, sunlight breaking through storm clouds. A smile that would weaken knees in a different life.
Gabriel keeps his palms up. "Can I touch you? Just to get the line out, Sweetheart. I’ll be quick. Promise."
I can’t trust anything these Alphas say, but the door is within reach, and freedom glows at the threshold. I need the IV gone so I can leave. I extend my arm to Gabriel, liquid dread replacing the blood in my veins, and brace for the hit.
It doesn’t come.
Gabriel unwinds the bandages. He moves slowly, so as not to tug on my raw skin or touch where he doesn’t have to.
I keep waiting for his grip to slip, for impatience or irritation to show, but he glances at my face every few seconds.
There’s a carefulness in him that feels foreign.
Impossible. My pulse drums in my ears as he peels back the tape and gently slides the cannula from my skin.
He presses a folded square of gauze against the spot, holding it there until the bleeding stops, doing exactly what he said he was going to do.
I don’t trust it, but I want answers. I swing my gaze to the big, tanned Alpha before he turns. "Who are you? Where am I? How did I get here?"
"I’m Ronan." He gestures to the dark-skinned Alpha sitting against the wall on my other side. "That’s Jaxon."
The Alpha’s focus never falters. "Jax works."
"Gabriel took your cannula out." Ronan leans forward, keeping his hands wide on his thighs.
"As to how you came to be here? We followed you after the gala to that…
facility." His mouth tightens with what looks like regret. "I’m sorry, Omega. We got there as fast as we could, but we were too late to stop Hardwick from hurting you. You’re safe here. "
I say nothing. I don’t know where to put apologies from Alphas, or how to believe them, so I press my lips tight and turn back to what matters.
"How am I safe here?" I glance at all three Alphas.
Ronan’s unyielding gaze meets mine. "We’re ex-marines.
The three of us run Hawthorne Security, mostly mercenary work, rescue, protection.
We work high-risk contracts and provide sanctuary for vulnerable people, which is why we were at your trade-off.
We were hired to protect you, but we didn’t expect you to be our scent-matched mate.
This apartment is one of our safe houses.
We have controlled access on every level, a private elevator, and security cameras. No one knows you’re here except us."
"Hardwick got away from us. She triggered a full shutdown and poisoned the whole place to erase the evidence. We made the call to save you instead of chasing her." Jax’s eyes never leave mine. "It doesn’t mean she’s off the hook.
We’re not done. She’s only bought herself time. Right now, you’re what matters."
His words tumble through me, but they don’t stick.
I can’t make sense of them. Nothing fits.
How did they know I’d be at the gala? Their voices, their regret, the idea of me being something important.
All I feel is sweat dripping down my temples, heat pulsing between my legs, a frenzied throbbing at my center that won’t let me concentrate on anything but the mind-stealing arousal of heat coursing through me.
For one heartbeat, I just stare at the line of Jax’s jaw, the sincerity in his eyes. Then survival takes over because if I stay in this nest, I’m going to be begging for their cocks. They will claim me.
And I won’t be owned.
The tube in my hand is gone.
I lunge, scrambling out of the heap of pillows and snatch at the door handle with sweat-slicked hands.
My heart thumps so loud I hardly hear their voices rising around me.
I rip the door open and spill out, running as fast as my weak body will let me.
Out of the heat, out of their reach, desperate for freedom and air, for anything but the cage of three Alphas, and the hunger incinerating my free will.
The Omega in me claws toward them. But I turn my back on her and bolt.