33. Phoenix #2
Fox touches her breasts. It makes me sick. I swallow back bile and remind myself he’s a doctor — a good doctor. He’s one of the best because if he was anything less than perfect, his sire Grisham would ride his ass until he was.
Fox makes more notes. Then he starts running his hands lower on her abdomen. He presses a spot on her side, and she winces. Fox feels it again from a different angle. He types a note and goes to a cupboard.
“What’s wrong?” I snap, my chest fluttering that he’d double-check something.
Fox ignores me in the annoying ‘I’m your older brother’ sort of way and goes over and grabs one of the scanners and sets it up.
Honey tenses. He puts something cold on her skin, and she gasps. I try to move forward, but Zephyr’s and Lazarus’s hold on me is unrelenting.
“Let Fox work,” Lazarus whispers in my ear. He squeezes his arm around my chest, keeping me in place. “I know. I know.”
That’s when I realize there are tears in my eyes and my body is shaking uncontrollably.
Fox runs some kind of wand across her belly. He taps, and the screen flashes like it’s taking a picture. He does it a few times and shakes his head.
He sets it down and moves on. His fingers are just above her mound, and she’s biting her lips together. Every muscle twitch in her face communicates pain. Emotional or physical, I can’t exactly tell which.
Zephyr squeezes my hand.
Lazarus’s lips move against my hair as he prays. How did our dysfunctional pack end up like this?
Zephyr just squeezes my hand harder. Fox goes to another cupboard, grabbing gloves and other equipment.
Revenant looks at me over his shoulder. “Don’t think I won’t put you down. You may mean something to Fox, but you have a limit of the damage you can cause before I won’t forgive you.”
Fox moves over to Honey with a tray of things.
She looks at it and closes her eyes in fear.
Fox closes the board he had extended and brings up the stirrups she’s to put her feet in.
He doesn’t take his time letting her adjust. He just pulls her to the edge of the table and forces them in place.
Then he straps them in. Another strap goes across her shoulders, a lot like how Lazarus restrains me. And two more keep her wrists down.
Honey’s instincts are to flail. She does, pushing against the straps, trying to escape.
“No,” she whimpers.
The plea was so soft on her lips.
I struggle, snarling to be let go, but Lazarus is strong. His serpent shadow wraps around me, and the falcon of mine fights but can’t escape.
There’s a stutter, so slight, so uncharacteristic that if I hadn’t seen Fox my entire life, if I hadn’t spent years with him in the club, I would have missed it. His fist clenches and lets go. He nods a fraction but continues moving.
That’s some sort of remorse.
Honey takes deep breaths, but she’s near hyperventilating. He opens her pussy with a speculum, and I force myself to look away. If I don’t, I’ll break. I’ll fall apart.
Seeing that I’ve turned away, Zephyr narrates. “He’s taking a small brush, and I think taking a scraping. He put it in a tube and set it aside.” When Zephyr falters, it gets worse.
I bring my head back to watch as Fox pushes something into Honey. She gasps in pain, staring up at the ceiling, her lips moving in silence. Her chest frozen. She’s not breathing.
Fox pulls it out, and something sort of red, maybe pink tissue, is on the end, and my lips curl into a snarl.
Fox removes the speculum but then inserts gloved fingers into her pussy. Honey’s eyes are clenched shut, and she winces again.
That can’t be normal. I worry. She seemed fine when she was in her heat. And after. She didn’t complain of pain.
I turn my head to look at Lazarus. He tends not to worry, but this has his brows drawn together. My body flushes out the heat, and I get a cold chill.
Fox pulls his fingers from inside her and pulls off the gloves. He goes to the computer, and his fingers flex over the keyboard before typing something out. Then he curls a finger at Revenant. I can’t see the screen from this angle, and they’re blocking Honey’s view as well.
Revenant scrubs a hand down his face. “Finish the tests.”
Fox sighs loudly, and it’s obviously a disagreement. But he doesn’t type out a full argument. They’re probably arguing through their pack bond anyway. The imaging machine gets a new attachment, and it has a sanitary sleeve. He heads back between Honey’s legs, and he pushes it into her.
Startled, she gasps. Her chest heaves, and she rolls her head back and forth, trying to distract herself.
I reach a hand out, wanting to hold hers, a whole empty room between us. I’d concede. I’d let him do this without fighting if I could just hold her hand.
They’ll never allow it. They’re proving a point. She has to do this alone. Even if it’s to hurt us. Zephyr is being the cold one. I don’t like it.
Fox takes even more images this time. He cocks his head and squints at the computer. When he’s done, Fox hangs up the tools, types again, and shows it to Revenant. Maybe they aren’t talking through the bond, maybe hiding this from Evangeline?
Fuckin’ cowards. All of them.
“You’re certain?” Revenant is clearly in disbelief. He rubs his hand through his short blond hair. “Easy come, easy go. If the twins want her so badly, what’s the difference at this point?”
“What?” Zephyr and I question at the same time.
None of this is making sense. What do they mean?
Fox hangs his head and goes over to the sink, where he washes his hands, and then he unstraps Honey. She instantly closes her legs, and Fox tosses her a gown.
He flicks his head, and I assume it’s because we’re allowed entry into the room. I throw a glare at Laz for restraining me, his face drawn and guarded, before I sprint to Honey, wrapping my arms around her. She starts to sob. Zephyr takes to her other side.
A couple minutes pass before Fox clears his throat. He’s turned the monitor around so we can see, and there’s a blank screen up for us to read as he types. “Honey is, for all intents and purposes, to put it simply, worthless. There is no pack in the world that would buy her.”
Fox clicks with the mouse, and some images appear on the screen.
He circles one with the pointer and types again.
“I know this is difficult to hear, but her reproductive system is nonfunctional. This is her left ovary, and you have no idea what you’re looking at, but it’s a noncancerous growth.
Its only purpose is to cause pain, suffering, and infertility.
The right side has a similar mass. It’s probably why her estrus is so short. ”
The next image comes up, and Fox shows it to us. But he’s right, it’s black-and-white squiggles and circles. “For Honey’s safety and well-being, we should operate to remove the growths. There is no chance that she will ever have children naturally.”