Chapter Twenty-Five
Alexi
I held her fragile body, so vulnerable and delicate, as she panted in my arms. I could’ve hurt her, broken her. Ruts are dangerous, but this flared through my system like fire. It wasn’t like any rut I’d experienced before. Building rapidly, without warning, and burning out even faster. Fuck.
If she’d been hurt, if she’d died, everything I’d spent my life working for would be gone. My purr stuttered as the thought of losing her rocked me to my core. I would never let that happen.
My lips lingered at her throat, hovering above the slowly blooming bruises. I’d been too rough, but she’d seemed to like it. Her perfume thickened in the air, and her body gripped my knot, begging for more.
“Greedy omega,” I chuckled ruefully against her skin. She was going to be the death of me. Who else could ride out a rut, abbreviated as it was, and still want more?
That thought… It had me considering another option. We could push her into heat again. Her scent was already shifting. It wouldn’t take much after what she’d been through.
No.
We promised to give her time. She should make the decision herself. But holding back was easier said than done. Every minute I kept myself in check, my control thinned.
I’d always been the leader in everything I did, and this was no different. But, in some ways, it was. She was my queen. I’d find a way to bow to her.
My teeth grazed the delicate skin where her shoulder curved to meet her neck. I could taste her honeyed scent on my tongue. She moaned, tipping her head to the side, daring me to finish what I’d started. The urge to bite down, draw blood, and make her mine was a heavy weight on my subconscious mind.
I had more control than that, even if she didn’t want me to. I had to. Maybe if I kept telling myself that, my instincts would start listening, and my hands would stop shaking with need.
I sucked on her skin, trying to sate the drive to mark her. She arched and squirmed beneath me. It wasn’t helping me regain my already diminished control.
A rough hand fisted my hair, yanking my head away. A snarl ripped from my throat. I was pissed, but I was grateful, forced to look into the glacier blue eyes of Axion.
“Grey is on his way. You need to stop before you do something we’ll all regret.”
My nostrils flared in fury, biting back the angry comment teetering on the tip of my tongue. One I wouldn’t be able to take back. Something was wrong. This wasn’t me. Alphas were driven by instinct, but I was riding the very edge of my discipline with no reasonable explanation.
Valyx lounged against the headboard without a care in the world, entertained at my loss of composure. He’d seen me in rut. He knew something was off, but he’d rather let the world burn than stop the thing he wanted, no matter how dangerous it might be.
I had an idea of how to get it, our bond, but an unplanned frenzy was not the way.
Saphyra batted Ax’s hand away from my hair with a pout on her face. She wanted the same thing we did, but did no one else understand? If what my father said was true, and it went wrong, she could die, and we would follow her to that end willingly.
She must have noticed something on my face because she started running her hands along my overheated skin, pulling me closer. She nuzzled against my neck and the softest of purrs rattled in her chest, joining mine.
Fuck, she was going to be the death of us all. I cradled her tight against me. Drinking in the soft sound. Letting it strip me bare of the built up tension. I had no idea omegas could purr, but I wasn’t complaining.
The look of shock on Valyx’s face was priceless.
“Is she… are you purring?” Ax asked from where he was unbolting the door in anticipation of Grey’s arrival. Saphyra just nodded and buried her face against my neck again.
We lay like that, still connected, purring, with her completely relaxed in my arms. Valyx moved down to cocoon her from the back, and we waited for the doctor to arrive.
When Grey finally walked through the door, he looked like death. Shadows loomed under his glassy eyes and his sunken cheeks were stark in the electric light.
By then, I’d found time to change my ruined slacks for a pair of Axion’s sweats. Saphyra was tucked into the bed dozing, with Valyx purring at her back.
Before the doctor had time to wonder why we’d summoned him, I jumped in to explain. “Something pushed me into rut, but it ran its course faster than I’ve ever seen. Do you know of anything that could do that?”
He dropped a medical bag down on the table and ran a hand over the back of his neck as if it were sore.
“There are a few things I know of that they use on the Hive to induce rut. Altering an alpha’s chemical balance is incredibly dangerous, though. Do you think someone would be foolish enough to risk that?”
“I don’t know, but we need to find out.”
Grey opened his med-kit and pulled out a small, hand-held device. He seemed unsure what to do with my shirtless torso, too many options perhaps, so I held out an arm in offering.
With more skill than I expected—having never seen him perform any medical tasks—he held the device against the inside of my elbow, and after a little pinch, he was done.
“It’ll take a moment to analyze. Does anyone else need to have their blood tested?”
“Test everyone,” I said without hesitation. If someone did this to me, we needed to be sure they didn’t do it to anyone else.
Grey made his way around the room, collecting samples. Ax hissed like he’d been shot by a plasma rifle, and Saphyra was barely roused, just slinging her arm in Grey’s general direction as if they’d done this many times. It occurred to me that they probably had before we’d freed them both.
The doctor busied himself with his instruments, but I watched him. He was acting strange. Even the smallest task left him winded. Along with everything else, that was concerning.
Even more concerning was when what little color Grey had left in his skin leached away.
“What is it? What did you find?” I did my best to keep the sharpness from my voice. Whatever he saw was scaring the beta enough already. He didn’t need me barking at him and making it worse.
He fidgeted, but he had everyone’s attention.
“I don’t know how to say this, but it does, in fact, look like there are trace elements of synthetic chemicals that can trigger rut. Both Alexi and Valyx show varying degrees of a drug that was kept on the Hive for that purpose.”
“What about Saphyra and Axion?” I asked, my blood boiling, and wanting to peel off my skin to get the foreign intrusion out.
“Their test came back negative for any foreign substances.”
Ax’s smile of triumph was short-lived. “That’s good at least. What about you? Did you test yourself?”
The doctor tapped on the datapad. “I did, but I have no reason to think there would be anything…” He trailed off, his brows pulling together. “No, this can’t be right.”
He tapped on the screen a few more times, flipping through files faster than I could make sense of.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The sample must have been contaminated. I’ll need to run the test again.” Grey grabbed the testing instrument and repeated the process on himself.
Saphyra joined us at the table, only a sheet wrapped around her. Her pretty amber eyes fixed on the datapad as it ran its calculations. She tucked herself up beside the doctor and rested her head on his chest. He wrapped an arm around her and held her close to him like she was as precious and delicate as glass.
The way he looked at her while we waited for the results, as if she was the most important thing in the room. Even when he was clearly ill, and the medical tests seemed dire, his priority was always her.
I wanted to hate him. I didn’t want to share her with him, but it was times like this where I could see how well he fit. How he was already a part of us. Making her happy. Putting our needs before his own.
Was I a selfish hypocrite? Probably, but I was starting to see how wrong I’d been.
As soon as the analysis was done for the second time, he sat down hard, leaving Saphyra wobbling on her feet beside him. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was in shock.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened, Grey?” She reached for him, and he slid his hand into hers.
“The results are the same as the last test and quite conclusive. I’m being poisoned.”