Chapter 9 #2
Bane is handsome the way a storm is handsome. Something about the tension between what he shows the world and what lives underneath. The sharp jaw and the soft mouth. The hard eyes and the way they go completely defenseless when he looks at me.
My thumb traces along his cheekbone. Down. Along the line of his jaw. The stubble is rough under my fingertip—two days of growth, maybe three. He hasn't shaved since he walked into this place. Hasn't done anything except hold me and feed me and bandage my wounds and try to make things easier.
His lips part slightly. A soft exhale. His face turns—just barely, just a fraction—into my palm. Seeking. Even unconscious, even drugged, his body reaches for my touch the way a plant reaches for light.
My chest does something painful and sweet and complicated.
I lean down. Press my lips against his forehead. Let them rest there. His skin is warm. His hair smells like sweat and soap and, underneath it all, amber.
"Thank you," I whisper against his skin. For the bandages. For the blanket. For the jokes about blindfold hygiene. For making my stomach flutter.
For being here.
His breathing deepens. Steadies. He's under.
Whatever they gave him this time was stronger than before. Designed to keep him docile. Manageable. To make sure the man who walked into a trafficking facility voluntarily stays exactly where they put him.
They know what he is. They're making sure it stays buried.
The afternoon drags.
Time in this cell has no edges—it's just the hum and the light and the slow migration of shadows under the door.
Bane sleeps. Wakes. Sleeps again. Each time he surfaces, he's groggier.
More disoriented. He calls me Max once and then, twenty minutes later, calls me Atlas, and the confusion in his eyes when I correct him makes something cold settle in my stomach.
I sit beside him. Let him lean into me. His head on my lap, his breathing slow and drugged, his bound hands limp next to my thigh.
I think about last night.
Not the sex—not the physical mechanics of it, not the heat and the need and the sounds. I think about the moment after. The knot holding us together. His mouth on my neck, right on the spot, the bonding gland, and the tension in his jaw—the effort of not. The choice he made. For me.
Not here. Not drugged. Not in a cage. If I ever—if that ever happens—I want you to choose it.
Is that something I would want? To be bitten? To be claimed?
I thread my fingers through his where they rest against my thigh. His hand twitches. Squeezes weakly. Holds on even in the fog.
We're quiet for a long time.
Through the wall, Wren's lullaby drifts. Thin. Sweet. I press my free hand flat against the concrete and feel the vibration of her voice.
I still plan to keep my promise about getting her out of here.
But then the lullaby fades. The silence comes back.
And before I can process–footsteps, a lock buzzing.
Not ours. Wren's cell.
Shit.
I press my ear harder against the wall. Footsteps inside her room. Heavy. Male. A voice I can't make out—low, clipped, giving instructions. Then Wren's voice, small and trembling: "No—please, I don't want to—"
A sound. Sharp. The unmistakable crack of an open hand hitting skin. My stomach lurches.
Silence.
Then screaming.
High. Raw. The kind of scream that shreds a throat—not the controlled cry of someone bracing for impact but the wild, animal shriek of someone being hurt in a way they didn't know was possible.
It goes on. And on. Rising in pitch until it splinters into something breathless, then drops into a wail that I feel in my teeth.
I'm on my feet. Palms flat against the concrete. "WREN—"
The screaming stops. Not tapered. Cut. The way it was cut that first morning—mid-sound, severed, like someone pressed a button or put a hand over a mouth.
Then crying. Faint. Muffled. The sound of someone trying to be quiet about it, trying to swallow it down, trying to make herself small enough that whatever just happened won't happen again.
“Wren?” I call out again, my hand against the concrete.
More crying, whimpering. Jagged starts and stops and then a grunt and my heart sinks.
Oh God.
Finally a door closes. The lock buzzes. Footsteps retreating down the corridor.
I stand against the wall with my hands flat on the concrete and my forehead pressed into the cold surface and I can't breathe. The crying drifts through the wall—thin, broken, punctuated by wet hiccups that sound like a child trying not to wake a parent.
Fuck this is so fucked up.
"Wren." I keep my voice low. Steady. Even though nothing inside me is steady. "Wren, can you hear me?"
Nothing. Just the crying. Quieter now. Fading into whimpers.
"I'm right here. I'm right here, okay? I'm not going anywhere."
But she doesn’t respond. And I don’t hear the lullaby again.
The hours drag.
I'm sitting on the floor against the wall when I hear more boots.
Two sets. Heavy. The rhythm wrong—not the measured pace of a shift change or a medical round. Faster. Looser. The cadence of men who aren't on the clock. Men who are here for themselves.
My body goes cold.
The lock buzzes.
The door opens and I know him immediately.
The guard from last night—the one who pocketed the suppressant syringe, who winked at the camera.
Thick neck. Nasty smirk. He fills the doorframe the same way he filled it before—with the casual ownership of a man who's spent so long controlling bodies that he's forgotten they belong to anyone.
The second guard is new. Shorter, broader, a face like a shovel blade. He's carrying something—a small bag, nylon, like a packed lunch. Except the shape is wrong. Too many angles. Too many hard edges.
"Evening," the first guard says. Steps inside. The smirk is wider tonight. Hungrier. His eyes move across the cell—Bane unconscious on the mattress, me on the floor—and something in his expression shifts from amusement to appetite.
I stand. My legs shake but they hold.
"The cameras caught quite a show last night," he says. Conversational. Like we're discussing the weather. "You and your boyfriend. The whole control room was watching. Honestly?" He tilts his head. "Best thing on the monitors in months."
My face burns. The shame hits like a physical blow—everything from last night, everything tender, everything chosen, stripped down to surveillance footage and passed around a control room for entertainment. Men in chairs watching me get deep fucked by Bane on a prison mattress.
Watching me come. Watching him knot me. Watching us hold each other after, foreheads touching, breathing the same air.
They saw all of it.
"But here's the thing." He steps closer. The bag guard flanks left, positioning himself between me and the mattress. Between me and Bane. "Watching's one thing. And we've been watching you for days—the heat, the slick, those pretty sounds you make. But watching only goes so far."
My back hits the wall. I didn't realize I was retreating.
"Don't touch me."
"See, that's what I like about you." He reaches out.
His hand finds my jaw—not grabbing, just holding.
Fingers pressing into the hinge, tilting my face up.
The same grip the shaved-head guard used on my first day, but slower.
More deliberate. "All that fight. All that no.
" His thumb drags across my lower lip. "Makes the yes so much sweeter. "
I jerk my head sideways. His hand follows. Tightens.
"We've got about three hours before anyone checks this wing." His voice drops. Lower. Closer. I can smell him—black coffee and stale sweat and something sour underneath. "Your alpha's dead to the world. The cameras on this corridor are on a loop. It's just us."
The second guard unzips the bag. I hear the clink of metal. The snap of something elastic. My brain fills in the gaps before my eyes can confirm and the terror is so complete my vision tunnels.
"If you scream," the first guard says, "we gag you. If you fight—" He glances at his partner. "Well. Fighting's half the fun, honestly."
His hand leaves my jaw. Drops to my collar. Fingers hooking into the neckline of my scrubs. I feel the fabric stretch. Hear the first thread pop.
"Bane." It comes out strangled. High. My mind is moving faster than my voice can keep up with. "Bane, wake up—"
"He's not waking up, sweetheart." The guard tugs the fabric. Another thread pops. Cool air on my collarbone. "We made sure of that. Double dose. He couldn't open his eyes if the building was on fire."
"BANE—"
The guard backhands me. My head snaps sideways and the wall catches the back of my skull. Stars. The pain blooms sharp and bright and for a second the room tilts. I taste copper. My knees buckle.
He catches me by the shirt before I fall. Pins me against the wall with his forearm across my chest. His face is inches from mine—close enough to see the pores, the stubble, the flat nothing in his eyes.
"Last chance to do this the easy—"
A sound.
Low. Subterranean. Not a growl—growls have edges, beginnings and ends.
This is something deeper. Something that starts in the floor and rises through the concrete and fills the room like a pressure change before a storm.
The fluorescent tube flickers. The air gets heavy.
Dense. Like the oxygen has been replaced by something older.
The guard's head turns.
Bane is standing.
Upright, rigid, his chin lowered, his eyes open and fixed on the guard's hand where it pins me to the wall.
His bound hands hang in front of him. His chest rises and falls in a rhythm that isn't drugged.
Isn't slow. Deep, measured breaths—the breathing of a predator that's stopped running and started hunting.
"That's—" The second guard steps back. "He shouldn't be standing. The dosage was—"
"Get your hand off him."