Chapter 2 Bianca #2
There’s something deeply unsettling about Dr. Montgomery that goes beyond the obvious mad scientist vibe.
He never loses his composure. Never shows a crack.
Only that one time in the tunnels when he found Whitney and me—that brief flash of something dark and unhinged before the mask slipped back into place.
That’s the only time I’ve seen him scared.
“You are free to move about your room and request reasonable accommodations,” he says, gesturing to the stark white space around us, “provided you do not attempt to harm yourself or others. The collar will be implemented only when necessary.”
I keep my face carefully blank, years of practice serving me well.
Inside, though? Inside, I’m a nuclear reactor approaching meltdown.
If I could somehow harness this rage, I’d have enough fuel to blow the entire Montgomery estate into the stratosphere.
But I force my breathing to slow, my muscles to unclench.
I’m not eager for another demonstration of the collar’s abilities.
I reach for Weller through our bond, pushing against whatever’s muffling our connection. Can he feel me trying to reach him? Is he reaching back? The silence from his end is deafening.
Dr. Montgomery clears his throat. “Now, we need to discuss your options.”
“Options?” I let out a harsh laugh that hurts. “You mean besides being imprisoned with a shock collar? Please, enlighten me about all these wonderful choices I apparently have.”
“Your family is quite concerned about you.” His tone shifts subtly, and every muscle in my body tenses in response. “They were informed you had a mental break after returning home and are receiving the best care available.”
“You told them I’m crazy? They’ve been through hell with Winston’s car accident, and you told them I’m back in a mental hospital?”
“Given your history—” He adjusts his glasses again, a gesture I’m beginning to hate with every fiber of my being.
“—and the fact that your mother was understandably concerned after the spa incident, it was quite believable. I didn’t even need to mention you breaking into Whitney’s home and shooting her with an arrow. ”
He references what I did to his daughter so casually. No anger. No outrage. And now he uses it to manipulate my family into believing his lies.
My nails dig into my palms so hard I feel skin break. The pain is grounding, keeping me from launching myself at him despite knowing what would happen. The collar seems to grow heavier around my neck, a constant reminder of the consequences.
“What do you want from me? What’s the endgame here?”
Montgomery leans forward slightly, his eyes never leaving mine. “Your cooperation, Ms. Quinn. That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.”
Cooperation for what?
I force myself to breathe through my nose, counting each inhale and exhale. Four in, four hold, four out. The technique Ezra taught me at the refuge when the panic threatened to overwhelm me.
Ezra. Megan. It’s been two weeks without a check-in. Are they looking for me? Do they think I went rogue?
“Now, about your future. I’d like to discuss an offer with you.”
“What kind of offer?” I keep my voice neutral.
“The basic idea is this: one year of clinical observation under my care. Regular blood tests, imaging, behavior analysis, psychological profiling—nothing you haven’t done before.”
I stare at him, processing his words. A laugh bubbles up, starting as a chuckle and growing into something that borders on hysterical. The sound bounces off the stark white walls, making the room feel even more like a padded cell.
“You must be fucking kidding me.” I shake my head, wincing as the movement makes the collar tug against my neck. “I’m not your personal little science experiment. Why would I ever agree to this?”
“Your heat is coming, Ms. Quinn.” He turns the tablet toward me, displaying medical charts with colored lines that spike and dip in patterns I don’t understand. “Your awakening and your first heat after being suppressed for so long. I’d like to document it. For science.”
“Suppressed because of you!” My voice rises despite my best efforts to stay calm.
“You lied to me, and you fucked up my life.” A thought hits me, something my mother mentioned before about knowing Dr. Montgomery.
“Do my parents know what you did to me? My mother mentioned once that she knew you before I was born. How?”
For the first time ever, something soft flickers across Montgomery’s face—a hairline crack in his perfect mask. “That’s correct. We dated in college.”
I blink, momentarily stunned into silence. Of all the things I expected him to say, that wasn’t even on the list.
“But she met my dad in college...” The words come out slowly as my brain tries to connect dots I never knew existed.
“Yes.” His voice is emotionless and flat as he adjusts his coat. “She did.”
The pieces click together like a fucked-up jigsaw puzzle. Dr. Montgomery is a beta. “Oh my god. She met her scent match and left you?” I sound hysterical. “You’re torturing me because you’re bitter? Because my mom chose her scent match over you?”
“Nothing quite so dramatic. And I’ve never hurt you. Your mother signed consent forms for a breakthrough birth control, new to the market, with the added benefit of preventing various diseases that typically develop in an omega’s teenage years.”
My blood goes cold, turning to slush in my veins. “And this birth control is what prevented me from awakening?”
Silence hangs between us.
“You’ve been experimenting on me since I was a child.” My voice drops to barely above a whisper, the kind of quiet that comes before a storm. “You’re a monster.”
“No, Ms. Quinn. I’m a scientist, and I had consent.”
“Sure thing.” I roll my eyes, ignoring the throbbing pain in my head. “So now you want to watch me go through heat as the next phase of your unauthorized experiment? That’s sick, even for you.”
“Not watch. Study. Due to your unique skill set, it would be conducted outdoors, in a more... primitive setting. Natural, if you will.” He pauses, letting his words sink in. “You would be released on a preserve during your heat. Three thousand acres of wilderness.”
I stare at him like he’s grown six heads. My brain struggles to process what he’s suggesting. “You want to dump me in the woods by myself during my heat?”
“With participating alphas, of course.” His tone is so matter-of-fact he might as well be discussing what he had for breakfast. “The study would be to see how you respond to them. You’ll have the opportunity to evade them and even fight back. Or refuse altogether.”
“You mean I’ll be hunted like an animal. And raped by strangers.”
He actually flinches like that’s preposterous.
“Consent is required for participation. Your safety will be taken seriously. You’ll be given basic hunting gear—knife, supplies, everything you need. The alphas will have to find you, and you can run, hide, or fight back. Whatever your instincts tell you.”
“Jesus Christ. Do you just sit up in your office and jerk off to this shit?”
Montgomery’s face actually turns red, a flush creeping up from his collar to his cheeks. I’ve managed to embarrass him.
“I study outcomes and behavior patterns,” he says stiffly, shoulders going rigid. “This is purely scientific.”
“And if I tell you to eat shit? What happens then?” I lean forward, ignoring how my muscles protest the movement. “You just... let me go? Or keep me here under the false pretense that I’ve lost my mind?”
Montgomery’s eyes narrow slightly. “Well, Mr. Dashwood’s father has asked me to explore options for medically breaking your bond with his son.
It goes against the contract we have in place.
” He pauses, letting that sink in. “And for the others who remain bonded to Whitney, we have promising new bond compounds in the works. Due to recent data about natural bonds overlaying chemical ones, we can make them much stronger than before.”
The threat is clear as day. Cooperate and get fucked or don’t cooperate and get fucked.
“And are you saying that if I agree, that won’t happen?”
Montgomery steeples his fingers. “I’m open to negotiation, Ms. Quinn. I’m not unsympathetic to your situation.” His lips curve into what I think is supposed to be a reassuring smile. “If you are agreeable, I will not tamper with your bond, and the remaining three will be released from Whitney.”
Released from Whitney? Permanently? As in Whitney and her trolls can’t touch them ever again?
I stare at the ceiling. The impulse to scream is so strong. “So let me get this straight. If I play along with your sick little Hunger Games scenario, they’ll be free for good?”
“Entrusted to their fathers’ secure care, but essentially, yes. Our contract will be considered complete.”
I let my head fall back against the pillow, the thin fabric doing nothing to cushion my skull.
A year ago, I would have laughed at the threat of being dumped in a forest with a bunch of horny alphas.
Now, I’m thinking about it like a calculus problem: what are the odds I walk away without doing something I can’t take back?
I’m no stranger to surviving in the wild, but I’ve never done it while my own body is actively trying to sabotage me. I’ve never tried to survive a heat while resisting the urge to jump on the nearest available cock.
The way my heat will hit me after years of being denied, after years of training my body to ignore every biological impulse and everything that made me soft or vulnerable or anything less than lethal is unknown.
I don’t know what to expect. I studied heat cycles in school when I was younger—hell, I’ve had to help omegas through it at the refuge, seen them writhing in their bunks with glazed eyes and sweat-drenched hair, clutching at the walls and each other, begging or screaming or both.
The toys offered never seeming like enough.
This feels like a trap. A trap I’m seriously considering walking into.
And fuck.
What will the alphas think when they hear about this? I can already picture their looks of horror perfectly in my head. And I have a mate now. What happens to Weller if I fuck someone else because I can’t help myself?
They’d be disgusted with me, wouldn’t they? Even if they understood why I did it…
“If I...” I pause, seriously wondering how the hell I got here. “If I do this, I want to see them first. All four of them. To confirm they’re free from Whitney and that any terms I set have been met.”
“That can be arranged.” He’s already standing, gathering his tablet, as if our entire exchange were nothing more personal than a sales pitch for a timeshare in hell.
“I’ll leave you to think it over,” he says, pausing at the door for just a moment before leaving, and the door closes behind him.
Once he’s gone, I let my fingers drift to Weller’s mark, tracing the edges of the tender bite.
I press my fingers into his mark, feeling a dull throb that resonates somewhere deep inside me. I silently beg Weller through the bond to tell me the right answer, to give me some sign that he can feel me trying to reach him.
Even though I already know his answer.
And it’s definitely not the one I’m considering.