Chapter 6
They’d left him alone for hours. He’d complain about having nothing to do but sit alone with his thoughts, but the discomfort in his body prevented him from worrying about possible boredom.
Elm clutched his midsection and groaned for the millionth time.
The cramps had started late last night, maybe three or five hours after the Leviathan had gone.
He’d been foolishly thinking about how the quiet was kind of nice, a change from the chaos that’d hounded him ever since he was drugged and forced off of Glyph.
The events since standing by that fountain, waiting for Sky and Shiloh to arrive, were a whirlwind, and if not for the changes in his body, Elm might believe he’d hallucinated half of them.
The cramping had gradually gotten worse. In the morning, Fiora had arrived and asked Elm to take his own vitals, slipping the cuff through the bars. She’d set it on the floor and retreated, even though he hadn’t growled at her like before.
Her smell still bothered him, but it hadn’t been that bad. Tolerable, and not really affecting his mood. He’d figured if he did as she asked, maybe she’d be willing to answer a few of his questions, but she’d gotten a call shortly after and had left right away.
She hadn’t even taken the cuff, mentioning it could operate remotely and for him to leave it on the metal table once he was done.
That’d been his only visitor.
He was hungry and thirsty by noon, then annoyed. Even if they insisted on treating him like a test subject, surely they understood he’d die without sustenance?
Elm wanted to go home.
And some, secret part of himself, regretted that he’d ever hated being beta.
His skin felt too tight, the air in the room constricting.
He’d been given a pair of shorts, but those were already soaked through with sweat, and another sticky fluid he’d only just started to produce a few minutes ago.
Based on his knowledge of omegas, it was way too soon for him to be going into heat again, but…
Clearly Levi and the others didn’t know much about how his new body worked. The whole reason they’d locked him up was to find out, and while that absolutely sucked, Elm’s current wishes and theirs happened to align.
If that video they’d shown him yesterday was to be believed, in his current state, Elm was a danger to society. Even if he did manage to find a way to magically slip through metal bars and run, there was no telling what his pheromones could accidentally do to someone out there in the world.
If he was trapped here, he may as well make the best of it and use them the same way they were using him.
Allowing himself to think on much else, to let his mind wander to Kian, or Sky, or the project half-finished in their shared studio, only made him sad.
He couldn’t do anything with that emotion at the moment except to wallow, and wallowing would do him no good.
His body seemed in agreement there, because it provided the perfect distraction in the form of pain.
It took effort for Elm to peel his eyes open when he heard the sound of the door on the other side of the room opening. The moment he did, he caught sight of a man who seemed vaguely familiar, though he struggled to place him.
Before he could, the smell carried, hitting him in the chest hard enough to have breath whooshing out of his lungs.
Elm was sitting up, hissing like a madman in a flash.
“Relax,” the alpha said, holding out his palms as he stepped up to the bars. “I’m here to make you feel better.”
“You smell awful,” Elm growled. And he meant it. Like someone had dumped a bottle of perfume over roadkill in a shitty attempt to mask the stench of decay and death.
“That’s odd, you smell pretty good. Now that you aren’t making my skin feel like it’s catching fire.” He took him in. “You remember me at all?”
“No.”
“We met at the fishery warehouse.”
Elm got a flash of that day, a brief image of this alpha stepping aside while his head lolled over Levi’s arm. “Ah.”
“Koah,” he introduced himself. “Some people call me—”
“The General.” Elm might not be a part of this world, but that didn’t mean Kian had left him in complete darkness.
Between him and Sky, they’d made sure Elm was at least up to date with names and titles, that way he’d know who to avoid if danger ever came to Glyph.
He caught onto an earlier comment and couldn’t help but ask, “What do I smell like?”
“Unique.”
“All omegas smell unique,” he stated. “Alphas too.”
“Yeah,” Koah chuckled. “That’s true. You smell like a lot of things. Citrus and honey,” he sniffed the air, “a warm floral, and hint of bitterness. But a pleasant bitter, like freshly ground coffee. It’s nice.”
Elm did not want to smell nice to this alpha.
Hell, he didn’t want to smell nice to any of them.
“Don’t,” he said the second Koah reached for the keypad.
“Gotta follow orders,” the alpha replied, typing in the code and then opening the door. He took a single step inside, but paused. “You aren’t attacking me with aggressive pheromones this time, so that’s a start. Getting the hang of things?”
“Not even slightly, which is why you need back off.” Elm got to his feet, standing on the mattress with his back pressed to the cold concrete wall.
Logically, he understood he should be scared because this was a strange man who was a member of the mafia.
And that was all well and good. But his reaction didn’t feel like logic.
It felt like something in his hindbrain screaming and clawing to be free, and it was making him dizzy.
“Look, kid, I get you’re frightened. Try to relax for me, yeah? I promise, I’m not here to hurt you.”
“This time.”
Koah at least had the decency to shrug and not deny it. “Sorry. Nothing personal.”
“Kian being my older brother and the reason I’m here feel extremely personal, actually.” Not that he blamed Kian. Elm didn’t. He would never. “He’s going to find me, and when he does, he’s going to burn this hellhole to the ground.”
“Pretty confident in big brother’s abilities.”
“He’s the best.”
“He’s a psychopath.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“You’ve met her.”
Elm frowned and then his eyes widened slightly. He’d only met one female that he could recall. “No way. The Butcher?”
“Pain in the ass, isn’t she?” Koah smiled despite his words and shook his head fondly.
“Let me get this straight, your sister takes people apart for a living, and you’re trying to tell me I’m weird for liking my brother? He’s a psycho, but—”
“Please don’t follow that up with some nonsense about how he would never lock an innocent up in a dungeon and experiment on them.” Koah rolled his eyes. “You seem smart. Don’t ruin it with bullshit.”
Elm glared. That wasn’t at all where his sentence had been going, because even though they were different, he knew Kian. The two of them had grown up together, after all. But this alpha no longer deserved to hear what he had been about to say.
“It’s rude to interrupt.” He sneered when Koah took a step closer. “Stop.”
“I was told to get you adjusted to other alphas. Fiora thinks your system is rejecting them because it doesn’t understand the changes yet.
You’re not used to pheromones. It’s more than just smelling, you know?
It’s like a substance, invisible, but there.
It coats your skin and seeps into your pores to infect your bloodstream. ”
“Even if it’s akin to poison, and you want me to microdose to build up a tolerance, my answer is still back the fuck up.” Elm felt a prickle of something at the center of his chest and instinctively latched onto it. A wave of pheromones burst forward, hitting the alpha hard enough he paled.
“Damn it,” Koah growled. “The faster we stabilize you, the sooner you can go home. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Liar.” Elm didn’t think for one second it was going to be that easy.
“You assholes might not be the ones who did this to me, but you haven’t helped either.
Everything you’ve done has been to satisfy some sick curiosity of yours.
” He probably shouldn’t have said it, because the alpha lost his patience.
Koah stormed forward, shoving against Elm’s shoulder to pin him to the wall. He didn’t use his pheromones to attack, but he made sure they could be smelled, snorting when Elm gagged.
It was even more awful up close…at first.
Taking a risk, Elm leaned his head forward a bit and sniffed.
“How is it?” Koah asked, sounding smug as hell.
“Not…terrible. Less like rotting trash.”
He looked offended. “Is that what I smelled like before?”
“Still do, just…not as much. It’s…getting better.” Elm’s lower cramps panged again, followed by a rush of wetness between his cheeks that had him turning red and trying to shove the other man away before he could notice.
Koah didn’t budge. “Did you just slick yourself?”
“Shut up.”
“You did.” He chuckled. “Huh. I guess that means it’s working.”
“Let go.”
“Why? If you adjust to me, it means you’ll have someone else to help look after you.” Koah frowned. “You’re burning up. Does it feel like—”
“Heat,” Elm confirmed. “Cramping is getting worse. Leave.”
“You sure? I’ve got what you’ll need.”
Elm scowled. “I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last alpha on the planet.”
“Ouch.”
“You smell…wrong.” Even if it wasn’t as bad as before, it still wasn’t pleasant.
Elm’s body wasn’t producing slick for Koah, it was merely entering another damned mating period.
“If…” he didn’t want to ask but couldn’t see a way around it, “I go into full blown heat, will I sleep with you even though I don’t like your smell? ”
“If I’m the only option, yeah.”
“I don’t want to.”
Koah sighed. “Full disclosure? I’m not really feeling you either, but neither of us really have much of a say. If we’re ordered to do it, that’s what will happen.”
Elm frowned. “It’s not like you’re a captive too.”
“No, but I’m a good little soldier.”