Chapter 7 #2
I don’t speak. My stomach knots.
“Very uncommon for one of you to have a visitor in here. And a potential buyer at that.” His ugly smirk turns into a sneer. “Very interesting.”
I swallow hard and drag myself to my feet so he will have easier access to my arm. I hold one out in front of me. "Just… give me the shot," I say.
"You know what happens if I don't?" He tilts his head.
"Your heat breaks through in, eh, four to six hours.
And your little alpha friend gets to experience what an omega in heat smells like in a ten-by-ten concrete box with no ventilation.
" He glances at the camera in the corner of the ceiling. "Might be fun to watch."
My heart skips a beat. For a scary second, my thoughts scatter. "Give me the shot. Please."
"Nah." He pockets the syringe. Shrugs his thick shoulders. "Think we'll skip tonight. See what happens."
He winks at the camera.
The door closes. The lock buzzes.
I stand in the middle of the cell. My hands are shaking. My breath is coming too fast—shallow, tight, the beginning of a spiral.
"Max." Bane's voice. Slurred but present. He heard everything. I can see it in his face—the sedative haze burning off just enough for understanding to break through.
"You know what this means." Not a question. My voice is thin. Shaking. "You've smelled me at the estate. I’ll be…" I shake my head. “You’ll–”
"I know." His jaw is tight. His pupils are already wider than the sedative accounts for. "I've been smelling you since I walked into this cell, Max. Even through the blockers. Even through the drugs."
"Then you know it’s only going to get worse. And there's no way out of this room." I twist, looking around me at the concrete walls. My feet take me to the door that I know is locked, and still I try it–my fingers desperately searching for any way to trigger the buzzing lock and run.
Out of here, away from him.
Where no one can find me.
"Max. Come here."
“Bane, you don't understand—when it hits, I–I won't be able to think clearly. I'll—my body will—" The panic is rising. My chest is tightening. The room is shrinking. "I'll want things. I'll beg for things. And you–. It's not—I can't—"
"Max." Firmer. "Come. Here."
I don't move. The panic has my feet rooted to the concrete as I sink back against the door. My vision is narrowing. My breath is a thin whistle through a closing throat.
Bane pushes himself up from the wall. Sways. Crosses the cell on unsteady legs and wraps his zip-tied arms over my head, pulling me against his chest.
"Breathe."
"I can't—"
"You can. In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Feel my chest. Match it."
I press my face into his shirt. Feel his ribcage expand. Contract. Expand. Slow. Steady. I try to match it. The first three breaths are ragged. The fourth catches. The fifth holds.
The sixth falls apart again.
The panic surges back—a wave that tightens my chest and steals the rhythm and I'm gasping again, fingers clawing at his shirt.
"Stay with me." His voice is low. Close. Not a command—a lifeline. "You're right here. Feel my hands. Feel the floor under you. You're not somewhere else. You're here."
His bound hands press flat against my back. The zip ties dig into my spine but the pressure is grounding—solid, real, something my body can anchor to.
"Tell me five things you can feel," he says. "Anything. Doesn't matter what."
"Your—your shirt. The concrete. It's cold. Your heartbeat. The—the fluorescent light is buzzing. And your hands. On my back."
"That's six." His chin settles on the top of my head. "Overachiever."
A sound escapes me. Not a laugh. But close enough. The knot in my chest loosens a fraction. Then another. My breathing finds his rhythm again—slow, deliberate, in through the nose, out through the mouth—and this time it holds.
"There you go," he murmurs. "There you go. I've got you."
The panic recedes. Not gone—crouching in the corner, waiting—but manageable. I can breathe. I can think.
"Talk to me," Bane says. His chin rests on the top of my head. "Tell me what you're scared of."
"I don't—" My voice cracks. "I just… still don’t understand everything, and I’m scared.
Last time—during my heat at the house—I couldn't stop.
I was begging. For hours. Nothing was enough.
No matter what you—" I press my face harder into his chest. "I don't understand my own body.
I don't understand what it wants or when it stops or if it stops.
I just know I couldn't think and I couldn't control myself and I—"
"Hey." His bound hands press against the back of my skull. Gentle pressure. "Can I explain something to you?"
I nod against his shirt.
"Your body wasn't broken during that heat.
It was doing exactly what it's designed to do.
" His voice drops. Low. Steady. The vibration of it travels through his chest into mine.
"An omega in heat needs to be knotted. That's what the ache is—the emptiness, the cramping, the feeling like nothing is enough.
It's your body asking for a knot. Not just sex. Not just penetration. The knot."
I'm quiet. My face burns.
The fear and tension in the room coils deep in my belly at his words.
"When an alpha is inside you and his knot swells—it locks. Twenty minutes. Sometimes longer. That's what your body is chasing. That's what makes the heat ease. Without it, the cycle just keeps building. Keeps cresting. Keeps demanding."
"So when I was—at the house—when I kept begging—"
"You were in agony because nobody knotted you. Your body was screaming for relief it wasn't getting."
The realization moves through me like something rearranging. All those hours. All that shame. The begging, the crying, the insatiable more more more that made me feel broken and monstrous. It wasn't madness. It was biology with an answer nobody gave me.
Bane pulls me closer and blows out a breath. “Of course you would be terrified, Max. Nobody taught you any of this.” He shakes his head and inhales my hair. “I should have known.”
I lean into him harder, letting his strength and deep voice anchor me. I can’t get enough for some reason.
"There's something else you need to know.
" His voice changes. Quieter. More careful.
"During a knot—when an alpha and omega are locked together—there's an instinct.
To bite. Right here." His bound hands shift.
His thumb brushes the junction of my neck and shoulder, and every nerve in my body ignites.
"The bonding bite. It creates a permanent connection.
Psychic. Emotional. You'd feel what I feel.
I'd feel what you feel. For life. It can't be undone. "
His thumb traces the spot again. Slow. My breath stutters.
"And if you knot without biting?"
"Then it's physical. The knot releases. The heat eases. No permanent bond. No connection beyond what we choose."
I let that sink in for a second. He runs his finger along my pulse point again and I can’t help but lean into the touch.
"What about you?" I ask. "What happens to you. When my heat hits." I keep my face buried in his chest, too afraid to see his face.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean—" I search for the words, breathing him in. "I know what happens to me. I lose my mind. But what happens on your side? What does it feel like to be an alpha in a room with—" I gesture vaguely at myself. "This."
Bane exhales. Slow. Controlled. The kind of breath someone takes when they're deciding how honest to be.
"Your scent right now—even with the blockers still partially in your system—is the best thing I've ever smelled.
It's been driving me out of my mind since I walked through that door.
Every instinct I have is telling me to protect you.
To hold you. To—" He stops. His jaw works and I can feel it against the top of my head.
"To take care of you in ways that aren't appropriate to say out loud in a concrete cell. "
I blow out a slow breath.
"Say it anyway."
And then, somehow, I find the courage to meet his gaze.
His eyes darken. "My body wants to serve yours.
That's the simplest way to put it. Everything in my biology is wired to respond to an omega in heat—to give you what you need.
To make the pain stop. To fill you and hold you and keep you safe while your body does what it needs to do.
" His voice has dropped to something barely above a whisper.
"When the heat hits fully, your scent is going to flood this room and I'm going to feel like I'm being torn apart from inside.
Not because it hurts. Because every cell in my body will be screaming at me to touch you and I'll be fighting it with everything I have unless you tell me not to. "
"Unless I tell you not to?"
"I won't touch you without your permission. I don't care what my biology says. I don't care if it feels like my chest is caving in. You say no and I'll sit on the other side of this room and white-knuckle it until the walls come down."
My throat tightens. "You'd do that?"
"I'd do worse than that for you." The words come out raw. Unvarnished. Like the sedative stripped the last coat of lacquer off whatever Bane usually hides behind. "I'd endure anything. Any amount of pain. If that's what you needed."
I stare at him. At the hazel eyes and the sharp jaw and feel his zip-tied hands tighten along with the absolute certainty in his voice.
This is Bane Graves—the youngest brother, the one who called me nothing, the one who kissed me in my room and walked away like it didn't happen.
Standing in a cell making promises that cost him everything to keep.
"And the knot," I say quietly. "What does that feel like? For you?"
Something shifts in his expression. Softer. More vulnerable than I've ever seen him.
"I've… never knotted anyone."
The admission sits between us.