9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
Leah
I stumble into the bathroom and slam the door shut behind me. My fingers brush over a lock and I gasp. An actual lock. Privacy. I twist it hard, stumbling back as though the door might bite me. I clutch the flimsy couch cushion to my chest as though the fabric could shield me from anything.
Stupid fucking Omega instincts.
My body shakes. Sweat slicks my palms and soaks the collar of the t-shirt I wear. I can’t believe I shouted at three Alphas who could have pinned me down with a simple flex of a bicep if they’d wanted.
But they didn’t. They didn’t threaten me. Didn’t bark.
I don’t have words for the mess of relief and confusion flooding my senses.
The fever is growing stronger, threatening to consume me.
Every inch of my skin stretches tight. Arousal spirals through me in sickening waves.
I need to cool down fast, or the fever in my blood will drag me under completely.
I’ll be screaming out for cocks and knots and everything that will bond me to the Alphas out there.
My gaze lands on the bathtub. Clean, white, shining. It’s been so long … All I’ve had for years is a bucket and rag every week to scrub off grime as best I could. This is luxury I’d forgotten existed.
I jam the stopper into the drain, crank the cold as far as it’ll go and climb in without waiting for the tub to fill. The first splash of water is a shock, biting cold that makes me gasp, but I’ll take anything that might help bank the fever burning me alive.
I reach for the hem of my t-shirt to strip it off, but my fingers freeze. It smells like him . Smoked vanilla that makes my mouth water. I’m so, so tired of fighting. I let the water fill around me, still wearing his t-shirt and clutching the cushion.
I know what I look like. Pathetic. Crouched in freezing water and clutching a stupid couch cushion like it’s a life raft.
I'm not a child. I know every reason for why I'm like this.
Years of Haven. Of Hardwick at the facility.
Lessons drilled into me by Hugo and Lars.
Punishments that live under my skin. Scars woven into my being.
Knowing doesn’t mean I can stop.
My mind loops. My own thoughts attack me. I screamed at three Alphas, for fuck’s sake. I broke every rule that keeps me safe. I drove them away when all they did was offer a nest.
And I want that nest. Gods, I want that comfort so badly my bones ache, yet I can't trust it. Can’t let myself have it, even when it's freely given, with no visible punishment waiting.
Shame burns as hot as the burn twisting my gut. I know I should act differently.
But I can't escape the grip of the past.
Something in me is broken beyond repair .
A knock on the door startles me back to the present. Water sloshes dangerously close to the edge of the tub as I jerk upright. I slam the taps off. For a second I think someone’s coming through, but it’s only a shadow shifting under the door.
I’m shivering hard, teeth chattering, arms locked tight around the cushion. But it’s better than the burning, the way heat claws from the inside out. I’ll take the numb sting of cold over that searing wound any day. Maybe even frostbite if I have to choose.
"Leah?" It’s Ronan. "You okay in there? If you need anything. Help, I mean. Just tell me."
An ache fills my throat, but so does anger, hot and untamed, swelling beneath the shame.
He’s kind, too kind, and I can’t take it.
Tears and rage crash together, nerves strung so tight I want to scream at the door or curl up so small I disappear.
I bury my face in the cushion, blinking back the flood.
"I'm not asking you for help," I snap, louder than I mean to. "If you really wanted to help, you’d give me the code for the front door and let me leave."
Fury threatens to shatter me into a million pieces.
Perhaps that would be for the best. Simply turn into Omega dust and not have to worry about heats.
Or Alphas. Or scents that make me want to surrender and wish for forever.
Perhaps I could find a flat rock and bury myself beneath it.
I could become one with the earth and the worms. Would it be colder than I am now?
Heavy silence stretches between us. I wait for a bark.
An order. The slam of a palm on wood. My skin prickles with expectation, braced for the fallout.
Instead I hear rustling and the drag of a large body sliding down the door and settling onto the carpet outside.
There’s a second thud as another Alpha settles outside of the door, but not a third.
"Leah, do you want to know why we were at the gala?" Ronan asks.
His question catches me off-guard. "What?"
Jax’s voice rumbles through the wood, deep and steady. "Do you remember when we said we do security and protection work? "
Even with my mind scrambled by heat and panic, I do. The words circle back. Military, bodyguards, mercenaries. It takes a moment, but I nod even though they can’t see me. At least now I know it’s Ronan and Jax outside the door, not Gabriel.
Jax goes on. "We were hired by Pack Blackwood. Adrian, Cole, and Zane."
He pauses, as if those names should mean something. They don’t. I know nothing about packs, nothing about who matters in the world outside Haven or Hardwick’s cages. I can only stare at the tiles, resentment and curiosity twisting together.
After a breath, Ronan speaks. "We guarded Mira, Kitten. We were part of the team that kept her safe.”
That name stops my breath. “Mira?”
“She’s the reason we were at the gala. That’s why we were there when you surfaced." His words hang there, as if they’re waiting for it to click, but it’s only more proof that the world has kept turning while I was buried alive. "We knew you’d be there. We were hired to bring you back."
Shock tightens around my throat. They were hired to bring me back? My arms clamp down around the soaked cushion, squeezing until my knuckles ache. The edges of the room blur. "How?"
Jax answers, every word heavy as stone. "After Emma escaped, her Alphas, Asher, Phoenix, and Soren, helped her uncover what was coming. Turns out, Commissioner Turns and Hardwick were working together. They arranged to trade you as compensation when Emma’s previous owners refused to hand her back.”
My gut hollows out as horror crawls up my spine.
I never knew any of this. Hardwick just yanked me from my cell and shoved me in her SUV with her juiced-up Betas and told me she was getting rid of me.
I had one more job for her, as useless as I was.
That’s all I was to them. Something to be traded away.
A thing. Not a person.
They know them. Mira and Emma. My friends who kept me from breaking completely in Haven's basement.
We'd forged something unbreakable, the way only people who share nightmares can.
I remember our desperate escape, the mad dash through forest until hunting dogs made us split up.
Running alone, then freefall down a ravine in the dark, hitting bottom with my hope shattered.
"You know them? You know Emma and Mira?" I press my forehead to my knees, wanting answers but scared of what comes next. All I want is the truth. All I’ve ever wanted is not to be forgotten by the only friends I ever had.
Ronan’s voice is gentle when he answers. "They worked with us to rescue you. Mira went into a heat just before the gala, but Emma refused to stay behind. She was determined you wouldn’t be left. They never stopped fighting for you, Kitten."
"They’re bonded Omegas now. Both found their scent-matches.
Real packs, a real future. Mira and her Alphas brought down Mercer.
Adrian tore her apart with his own hands for everything she did.
" Jax’s words don’t hold triumph, only justice.
"Emma and her pack ended Commissioner Turns. They’re gone, Leah. They can’t hurt you anymore."
Mercer is dead. The thought collapses my mind to nothing. After all her horrors, she’s…gone. It’s too good to believe. That all three of us are free of her.
My voice slips to a whisper. "Are they happy?"
A body shifts against the door and Jax says, "Emma lives by the beach. She has sun, sand, freedom."
The memory of Emma painting word pictures about waves and salt-air sharpens behind my eyes. She made it real.
Ronan chimes in. "Mira started an Omega rehabilitation center at Pinnacle Therapeutics. A place just for Omegas like you, like her. Survivors who need time and safety to find their feet again."
That name stings, confusing and sharp. "Pinnacle?" Hardwick constantly cursed the company. They manufacture the suppressants she wanted to stop from reaching the people who needed them.
"Mira’s Alphas own it. Adrian’s the founder and CEO. They’re making real progress with the Mortalis Strain, too. Adrian’s always wanted to fix the Omega birth problem at the roots, but now he finally can."
The words swirl, too big to grasp .
The Mortalis Strain. The nightmare in my veins.
Cold numbness spreads from the center of my chest because the Mortalis Strain was the first thing Hardwick injected when she dragged me from that ravine. I’m her biggest success. The Omega who survived when so many others didn’t. Both a quandary and a reason to keep experimenting.
I’m infected with the virus that killed countless Omegas and doomed my future.
I always wondered why she would work on a virus that exterminates Omegas when, being an Alpha herself, she should want more Omegas born. There’d be no need to fight over Omegas. No need to covet or control.
If I lived in a world like that, I might never have known the hells of Haven. The terror of the facility. Endless heats, the agony of my body being pulled apart month after month.
I shouldn’t be alive. And yet I am. I survived it all when so many others didn’t.
The truth slams through me.
No matter how soft these Alphas speak, how much hope they promise, I can never see Emma or Mira again. Not ever. The strain lives inside me. And if I’m near anyone I love, I’ll send death to them, too.