Chapter 13 Ten
Ten
Lin
My wrist ached. It’d been cuffed to the bedframe for the better part of three days. I assumed that was how long we’d been here; I’d taken to marking the days by each meager meal I was brought. Three meals, three days.
Presumably.
The shackles weren’t long enough that I could rest my arm comfortably on the bed. It stayed propped up near my ear, against the headboard. Each day, the ache had progressed. First in my shoulder, then down through my twisted elbow, and finally now to my wrist.
Would it explore new lands in my neck or chest over the coming days?
Maybe it would join up with the sharp burn in the back of my jaw, where Taryn’s plan hid.
I’d barely had time to look at it. Dumb luck was all that had kept it hidden through the cold shower and escort to separate solitary cells. As one guard had kept his gun trained on me, soaked and shivering in the itchy scrubs they’d gifted us, the other had cuffed me to the bed.
The absolute dumbest of luck.
In the dark of night, when I hoped I had the most cover from the domed eye in the ceiling, I’d examined it with my fingers. A small rigid square, half an inch long, if that. Rough corners, but flexible, like it was shrink-wrapped.
What are you up to, Omega?
With my face turned into my pillow in my best approximation of innocently sleeping because the abduction business sure is exhausting, I’d shoved the tiny square into my mouth, behind the fleshy hinge of my jaw.
I’d once gotten a fish scale get caught there.
Hurt like a motherfucker, scratching my gums and cheek, but I worried less about biting or swallowing it there.
At the very least, it hurt enough that I’d know the moment it disappeared and relieved the pain.
What to do with the goddamn thing, I didn’t have a clue.
A series of muffled beeps from down the hall whispered through the thick steel door.
I counted to fourteen, sitting up as best I could, and my door clicked and swung open on fifteen.
It shut with a heavy thud and another mechanical beep of a lock engaging.
The black-clad guard set the tray on the end of my bed, just like they’d done every other day.
I stretched out with my other arm to pull the tray closer. Two slices of white bread with a few rounds of thin lunch meat between. A cup of water.
Breakfast of champions.
The guard stood at attention, back to the door, just like every other day.
They’d stay there for five minutes, or until I finished the sandwich and water.
They’d say nothing else. Hadn’t yet, anyway, no matter how many times I asked about Taryn and Caine.
So I’d stopped asking and started watching.
Taking mental notes. Searching for even a hint of a weakness I could exploit.
“Keep eating. Don’t react.”
So much for predictability.
Suspicion prickled my skin, even as I fought to follow his instructions.
“The omega passed you something,” the guard continued. “I need it.”
My heart pounded, a cold sweat dewing on my neck. “You think if I had anything useful, I’d be here?” I rattled my handcuff—which forced my left arm to stretch a bit behind me as I ate—to punctuate my point.
“Like you could lock pick your way out of here with a bobby pin?” the guard replied, face and posture unchanging. “She didn’t give you something to help you get out.”
“Then what did she give me?”
He swallowed, the first indication of any tension. “Something that will help us get in.”
What did that even mean?
“Take a bite of your sandwich,” he prompted.
I heeded his command, studying him as I did. Beta, not quite as tall as I was. No scent that I could detect, but that was likely neutralizers. Dirty blonde hair, cropped short on the sides but longer on top, slicked back to stay in place.
Eyes? Harsh.
Muscles? Tons.
Weapons? Gun on one hip, nightstick on the other.
Chewing bought me seconds, but they slipped by like water through my fingers. Was he on our side? Had he discovered Taryn’s scheme somehow and was just looking for confirmation before following through on the doctor’s grotesque threats?
Do I trust him?
What the fuck else was I gonna do? How many cameras and security locks and guards and bullets stood between me and my packmates, between us and the exit?
Just thinking of them, that fleeting image of the two of them in my mind, was enough to have my alpha howling, ready to strike and fight.
It was an unusual sensation. So rarely did my alpha act out or lash against my steadfast control.
I’d never needed to assert dominance before; it was always self-evident.
Here, though, isolated and impotent, he was raring for a brawl.
“We have ninety seconds left,” the guard said, tone flat.
“If I give it to you,” I said softly, index finger drumming on my thigh, “I want the three of us housed together.”
“Out of the question.”
“Then Caine and me,” I countered before taking another bite of the tasteless sandwich. I spoke around it. “I want the two of us housed together, unshackled, and your word that you’re not in the process of fucking us over.”
The guard cut his eyes in my direction, a motion invisible to the camera but sharp enough to send ice through my veins. “It’ll take a few days to get that arranged.”
“Well,” I said as I finished the last bite of sandwich. I emptied the water cup in one gulp and slid the tray back toward the end of the bed. “You know where to find me.”
A microchip.
My omega had smuggled a microchip into a multimillion-dollar conglomerate's illicit research facility.
Here I was, telling her to keep fighting, and all the while she'd brought a rocket-launcher to a gunfight.
She was kind of my hero.
Three more pitiful sandwich trays made their way to me before the chatty guard returned. Good thing there were no vampires in the vicinity; they’d have clocked my sky-high pulse and blood pressure the moment I recognized the guy.
He didn’t have a tray in hand, but instead gestured to another guard who stepped up to my bedside. My return visitor said in a strong voice, “You’re being relocated to Cell 23-G.”
The cuff opened around my wrist and my arm fell away. I groaned at the sharp sting of a million tiny needles digging their way out of my muscles. He then hoisted me up by my sore arm and marched me from the room.
I did as well as I could to take in my surroundings—cold metal, no windows, sterile lights too bright to look at.
I hated the thought of Taryn in a place like this.
“Your compatriot,” my maybe-ally continued, “has proven himself to be a handful. If you can’t get his alphadrenaline episodes under control, we will.”
I swallowed. Was this part of the guard’s front for bringing us together, or was Caine really struggling so much?
?Por qué no los dos?
We took a right turn and then a quick left before Maybe-Ally unlocked the door and the secondary guard shoved me through it.
And there was Caine, shackled to the bedframe as I’d been, wrist red and bloody from having pulled at it.
Black scrapes on the floor showed where he’d dragged the bed out of place in his rages.
Even now, he was covered in a sheen of sweat, the brown waves of his hair stuck to his temple, and his eyes were frantic, the eyes of a caged animal.
Which, to be fair, we both were.
“Caine,” I said, rushing to his side without any further inducement. I placed my palm against his cheek. “Breathe, Caine.”
He stopped struggling, his head collapsing back against the railing of the bed.
I looked back to Maybe-Ally. “Has he eaten anything?”
The man’s jaw clenched. “His last two trays were tossed across the room.”
I rubbed soothing paths over Caine’s cheek and neck. The fight left him breath by breath, practically tangible beneath my fingers, like a cold front moving in. He sagged completely, absolutely spent. I narrowed my eyes at the guard. “I’ll keep him calm. Now uncuff him.”
The secondary guard looked to his superior for permission, but the head guard stepped around him.
He bent with his back to the door—and the other guard—and pulled out a crowded keyring.
As he appeared to be jangling through it, he hit me with a sharp look before looking to the space of mattress beside Caine’s limp pillow.
I sat on the edge of the bed, stroking Caine’s hair with one hand. The other, I leaned on the mattress. To support myself as I leaned forward to kiss my packmate on the forehead. When I sat up straight and moved my hand away, I left the chip behind.
And prayed to every being that could hear me that I’d trusted the right person.
Caine
Breathing was finally getting easier. One excellent part of being an alpha: the fucking fast healing and recovery. Though my eye was still swollen, my nose sore from being broken, my ribs no longer felt like they were stabbing into my lungs with every breath.
Not that it did me any good. I was still too damn weak to do anything other than rest my head against the pillow, my arm shackled to the bed.
My stomach had stopped rumbling with hunger days ago. Even as my injuries healed, hopelessness and lack of nourishment kept me limp and motionless.
So when one of the limpdick motherfuckers holding us captive had told me days ago to start throwing some alpha tantrums, I’d nearly laughed in his face. Even assuming that one more alphadrenaline spike wouldn’t be my death knell, I had enough energy to exist…and not much else.
Do it, he’d said as he picked up my untouched tray, and I can bring your friend to you.
No other options before me, I did as he said. Wasn’t hard. I just thought about my omega. Imagined her in a room like this. Looked at my own handcuffed wrist, wondered if they’d chained her to a bed too.
That usually set me off pretty quick.
And the limpdick motherfucker kept his word. Lin sat here—unless I was delirious—stroking my hair and soothing me through the bond.
Talons of pain sliced down my arm when I could finally move it again. I groaned, turning away from the others.
Limpdick stood and rejoined his comrade. “Any further episodes will not be tolerated. Understood?”
“Yes,” Lin answered from above me. “Understood.”
The door closed. Lock engaged.
“What,” I growled into the pillow as Lin folded himself around me on the bed, “the fuck is going on?”
Lin whispered so quietly into my ear I could barely hear it. Hopefully any cameras or mics in the room wouldn’t either. Told me all he knew from the moment Taryn had smuggled him a fucking memory card to Limpdick Motherfucker appearing to retrieve it, to Lin’s demand we be housed together.
My mind spun. Partially from lack of food and rest. Mostly, though, it raced in circles to make sense of it all.
Taryn had been captured with a piece of equipment someone on the inside wanted. Someone who, by all measures we currently possessed, was actually an ally.
I nearly laughed. My fucking sunshine daredevil. I was going to kick her ass for this.
And if Brooks had known about this…if he’d helped her Trojan Horse her way into this hellhole…
“If I break your beta’s nose when we get out of here,” I grumbled, “sorry.”
Lin’s spark of pleasant surprise in the bond was the last reaction I expected. A grunt was my only question, but he knew me too well. His grin came through in his voice. “You said ‘when.’”
When we get out of here.
This apparent plan, however idiotic and ridiculous and dangerous it was, whatever it was meant to do—it had given me hope.
No. Determination.
We would get the fuck out of this place. We would find Taryn and get her out.
And I would put a brutal, unequivocal end to all who’d touched her.