8. Day 29 – Max
Day 29 – Max
“C an’t we move her somewhere else?” I turn to Joanne again, parroting the same questions we’ve asked a dozen times in the last week.
Our liaison sighs. She’s not… unkind. She’s an overworked caseworker with too many lost causes under her belt to have any faith in this plan at all. Not that she’s voiced it, but I can see the pity in her eyes whenever she looks at us. “We talked about this, Max. Kennedy still needs to be in a safe environment. Even Abrams agrees that there isn’t anywhere better set up for her needs at this stage. If anything changes, we can reassess. But this is what we need to work with right now.”
Safe . My mouth twists as I take in the room in front of me. A thick pane of safety glass – reinforced to stop any vicious ferals breaking through – separates us from Kennedy’s living area. Like she’s an exhibit in a fucking zoo. “I just… I don’t see how we can help her from here.”
How the fuck are we supposed to help her when we’re separated from her?
My eyes latch onto the figure curled up in the corner, on the hard cement floor.
Kenny ignores the bed directly in front of us. That this is her favored position, in the furthest reaches of the white-walled room - as far as she can get from our window, doesn’t escape me. “She’s not comfortable here, Joanne.”
I wonder if Oscar will get through to them today. If the Board will agree with us that she needs more than sterile walls and bright lights. I don’t know how she can fucking survive in there, let alone thrive.
She’s a fucking omega. She needs to be treated like one.
I press my fingers lightly against the glass. It feels cold beneath my touch.
Not fucking right. Not good enough.
This – every fucking bit of it – hurts . “It’s not warm enough in here. Get her a blanket.”
“She destroys them. You know that—,”
My voice lowers. “Get her a damn blanket. Please .”
It feels as though they’re setting us up to fail, and we’re only a week in. A week of silence, of watching a feral Kennedy through a wall of glass as she curls herself into any small corner she can reach.
She’s hiding from us. While we have to beg people who don’t know her for the smallest scraps to try and bring her back.
This isn’t going to work.
Frowning, I lean in again. Her arms are wrapped around her knees, the simple thin cotton grey top and trousers they dress her in – under sedation – not hiding the black gashes in her skin.
Bite marks.
I can’t bear looking at them. Every single time, realization hits as if it’s the first time. No wonder Theo can barely look at her. Can barely look at himself, his own reflection a reminder of the fucker who did that to our mate.
My stomach turns over. Kenny isn’t the only one we’ll lose if we can’t make this work. “A blanket, Jo. She’s fucking shivering in there. Come on. Work with us here.”
She sighs, leaning forward to press the call button for one of the Center staff. “You know how this is going to go.”
Maybe. But I can’t fucking stand here and watch my mate shivering .
I’m the only one who can bear to stand here at all. “Jake’s back tomorrow.”
“Hopefully better behaved this time.” She mutters the words as she turns back from the uniformed staff member, a blanket in her hands. “Here you go.”
My fingers clench on the thin, rough material. Not even close to decent. “You can’t blame him for losing his temper. Our mate is in that room, and she’s cold and fucking hurting, and we can’t get to her . There’s a wall of glass and bureaucracy between us. It shouldn’t be this fucking hard to get her the bare minimum.”
My voice lowers, turning to gravel in my throat before I swallow it down.
I have to fight every moment to stop myself doing the same as Jake. We don’t need another of us banned from visiting. Oscar is focused on building the case to help her, working with Abrams. Theo is… somewhere .
One of us has to be the nice one. Polite, and bland, and unthreatening. To try and get her anything extra we can.
Like a fucking crappy blanket that itches the palm of my hand as I turn to the tiny steel window built into the glass wall. A sliding slot with a small keypad for a numerical code that Joanne types in briskly, her shoulders angled so she thinks I can’t see.
My eyes slide away when she glances at me, tugging the steel aside to open up the small hole. Swallowing, I step up to the open slot, my eyes peering through the otherwise soundproof glass. “Kenny? Baby?”
She doesn’t move. But I see the way her shoulders tighten.
“Max,” Joanne murmurs. There’s a nudge in her voice. A nervousness, as she lingers at my shoulder.
“She’s not gonna do anything from there,” I mutter. My voice raises. “Kenny? It’s cold in there, sweetheart.”
A low snarl is my only response.
I push the blanket through, wedging it into the small space, my mouth opening. But Joanne slams the slot shut before I can say anything else, and my lips press into a thin line.
Don’t bite.
Instead, I wait. Joanne disappears, muttering something about other visits as she leaves me to it. Folding my arms, I lean forward, waiting.
Come on, baby. You know you’re cold.
She unfurls herself slowly. Her head twists toward the tray below the slot where the blanket now sits. And I hold my breath, drinking in every movement as she edges toward me.
But she can’t see me, not through this fucking one-way glass.
Kenny reaches for the blanket, her head tilting as she examines it.
Those lethal canines, sharp and extended, appear as her lip curls back. Kenny tears into the blanket, shredding it until only thin ribbons of grey scatter the floor around her.
Her head lifts, brilliant scarlet irises examining the glass, as if she can see me. My breath catches—
But she only snarls softly, a warning in the back of her throat before she lopes back to her corner and curls up.
I can see her shoulders trembling.
“I don’t blame her.” Oscar’s words are a sigh as he appears next to me. “Those blankets are fucking awful.”
Agreed . “How’d it go?”
He runs a hand over his face. “We can bring in our own stuff for her from an approved list. They won’t give us any extra funding – said they can’t afford it. Abrams will work pro bono. But they’ve agreed to work with us. Maybe work up to some direct contact. But we’d need to sign a shitload of fucking paperwork so we can’t sue them.”
“Fine,” I say immediately. At least we can get her a decent blanket . “What about care duties? Feeding?”
Oscar frowns. “No. Not yet. They want to see some progress first. The Center staff will manage it for the time being.”
He sounds as if he hates the idea as much as I do. “But we can stay here in shifts around the clock. One of us can always be with her, but we’ll have to make do out here until we fix the access.”
“Good job.” It’s a hell of a lot more than we had this morning, with our allocated two hours of visiting time.
He snorts. “They didn’t give up a single fucking thing, not really. It’s like they don’t want this to work. Abrams said the same.”
This has to be some sort of cash cow for them. In and out. Bare fucking minimum and charging the earth for it. Worry stirs at me. “She’s got eight weeks left here, right?”
Eight weeks fully paid, because Brett’s father tried to bury her in this place without saying a single word to us.
He doesn’t say anything. But his shoulders tense. “We’ll work that out. She’s not going anywhere else.”
Like it or not, this place is the most decent of the bunch. “But they’ll let her stay as long as she needs? If we pay for it?”
“Yeah. They don’t have much choice, really.”
She has to be somewhere secure. But if it’s not here, it’ll be the public Center more than an hour away.
Neither of us mention out loud how the hell we’re supposed to cover the fees for a place like this. But I know he’s thinking of it too.
“We’ll make it work,” Oscar says finally. “That's all we can do.”
We have to.