“So. How’d you do that?” Adam pointed at the door leading to the basement.
“You mean burn it off its hinges?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Karey buried herself deeper into the blanket he’d wrapped around her shoulders. It wasn’t going to be very long before he figured it out anyway, was it? She let out a heavy sigh. “The serum works. Dr. Carter figured it out. And it was used on me. I was dragon-spliced. So without the blockers, I can breathe fire.”
Adam blinked slowly. Then he shrugged, stood and headed for the fridge. “Well. Guess that means things are progressed even further than we knew. And it also means you are staying on these blockers for the rest of your life.”
Karey’s heart sank. She hid her face in the blanket, hating the new cold that swept through her. The rest of her life? Tears burned her eyes. What was the point if she could never be who she really was? She fought the sobs, but they escaped anyway.
And Adam just stood there and watched.
***
Adam managed to fix the basement door but also moved the bed from the bedroom into the main room, pressing it against the door leading to the outside to prevent her from trying to escape again. He needn’t have bothered. That night, Karey woke up coughing so hard that her diaphragm hurt. She shivered and shook. If it wasn’t for the relentless coughing, she would have stayed in the basement and suffered, but her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, snot ran down her face, and she felt like she was about to fly apart.
Walking up the stairs was difficult, but when she knocked on the door, Adam answered it soon enough. He took one look at her, shivering like crazy, and scooped her into his arms.
Karey yelped in protest, but it quickly turned into another bout of coughing. She felt too lousy to be very surprised when Adam put her in the bed and tucked the blankets tight around her. He even retrieved all the pillows in the house and propped her up so she wasn’t drowning in her own mucus. He then added wood to the fire; Karey soon found she was too hot and too cold at the same time.
“I can just make myself some soup and go back downstairs,” she offered meekly as Adam pulled a pot from the cupboard. “I don’t need—”
“You’re staying right there. It’s my fault that you got so sick. I should never have left you here by yourself. Maura was right. I should have brought you with me when I called in my report.” He shook his head, a look of frustration crossing his face. “If I had, you wouldn’t have gotten so cold and now you wouldn’t be sick.”
Wait… was he serious? Karey stared at him, her jaw hanging open from shock as well as a desire to breathe. Was he really blaming himself? Was he really taking care of her instead of laughing at her that this was all her fault anyway and she would just have to deal with it?
She couldn’t remember the last time someone had been so kind to her.
But it wasn’t real. She tightened her fists on the blankets. He was working her, manipulating her to gain her trust. He said so himself! All he wanted was information. If she wasn’t useful to him, he would have left her in that basement.
Adam retrieved some pills that he gave to her.
Karey looked at them distrustfully. “What are these for?”
“Well, we had some cold medicine in case you got sick. This will help clear up your head a bit and hopefully help with that cough.” He frowned as he pressed his palm to her forehead. “It’ll help bring that fever down, too.”
Karey hesitantly swallowed the pills. In the Pack, they didn’t use this sort of medicine. The Alpha believed that those who were truly strong would heal themselves from illnesses. Not that the majority of them got sick. Only Omegas like her. The ones on blockers. Her lips trembled at Adam’s gentleness as he brought her a water bottle and then a bowl of soup.
“You should try to get some rest,” he said doubtfully. “I’ll bring the mattress up from the basement to sleep on myself. I don’t want to stick you back down there while you’re sick. It’s awfully cold. But don’t try anything, okay? Because I will put you back under if you don’t behave yourself.”
If she was a stronger person, she might have used this illness as a way to break free from Adam. He was certainly turning his back on her long enough that she could club him over the head. With how her last escape attempt went, though, and with how weak and foggy her brain was, it wasn’t going to happen. It’d just be a stupid move and she couldn’t afford any stupid moves.
***
Three days passed with Karey feeling like death and Adam taking care of her. He even moved the TV so she could see it when she was awake. Twice when she was half-asleep, she heard Adam muttering to himself about taking her to the Academy to be looked after. Her blood ran cold at the thought of that. As bad as it was being held prisoner here, it would be even worse at the Academy. The Alpha still had moles inside their institution. If she was brought there, he’d know about it by the end of the day.
And she didn’t want that. As long as she was out here, hidden away and isolated, she had a chance at him believing the truth when she got back. But at the Academy? He’d assume that she’d turned traitor and told them everything in order to get herself better treatment.
Adam did, however, back off with the injections of the blockers. Rather than giving her a top-up every two hours like he ought to have, he pushed them back to every four hours. It wasn’t long enough for her wolf to remerge or feel anything other than a slight heat from her new fires, but it was enough for her shifter biology to reassert itself enough to help fight this nasty cold.
Once she started feeling like she could actually move about and not be totally miserable, Karey dared to ask the question that had been weighing on her mind. “Why are you taking care of me?”
Adam’s cheeks turned a pinkish color as he ducked over the new soup he was making. “Why wouldn’t I? We want information from you, what help would it be to let you suffer?”
“You could have tried to say you’d give me the medication only if I told you things.”
“I could have, yeah. I guess. But that’d be like starving you for information.” Adam shook his head. “That’s just wrong.”
Karey almost laughed, but he was serious. Her brow furrowed. Was he saying that prisoners deserved to have their basic needs met? He’d have been laughed out of the Pack if he came with that attitude. But hadn’t it always made her feel terribly guilty and awful when she saw the treatment of their own prisoners?
I couldn’t help them, she quickly told herself, but that didn’t ease the guilt twisting in her stomach. Could she have done more?
“A few years ago, my father was trying to get information from a prisoner and ordered that he not get any food for a week,” she blurted, knowing that Adam couldn’t absolve her of her sins but for some reason needing to tell him this. Needing him to know why she couldn’t have done more. “I always brought him water. One time I snuck him a few crackers because I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
Adam stirred the soup slowly. His brow was furrowed as he glanced at her. No judgment in his eyes. And that gave her the courage to continue.
“My father found out. And for punishment, he put me in the cellar. That’s where he always put me when he was mad at me. I wasn’t allowed out for two weeks and I was only given a handful of crackers to eat every day and a bottle of water not much bigger than this.” She held the bottle Adam had given her. “And then he said it’d done me good because I had lost weight. He said he should lock me up until I wasn’t so fat…”
The look of horror that crossed Adam’s face was too much. Karey broke down into sobs. Hating those memories. Hating herself for telling him. Hating everything in her life.
At least Adam’s never starved me, she thought bitterly as she hid her face. At least he’s never beaten me.
Funny how she got better treatment from the man holding her prisoner than from the man who was her father.
Chapter Six
Adam blinked in startled surprise as Kar
ey sobbed into her hands. He stood there, torn between the desire to comfort her and the desire to rage at her father for being so needlessly cruel to her. What sort of parent did that to their child? Was it any wonder that she was so afraid of him?
He dished out a bowl of soup, his brow furrowed. But if it was true, if Karey’s father was so cruel, why would she go back to him when she had the opportunity to escape?
Abuse isn’t that simple, he thought, moving the pot off the burner. He set the bowl of soup on the TV tray next to her and looked away, uncomfortable and uncertain. And isn’t it blaming the victim to say that she had the chance to escape but didn’t take it? The first thing an abuser does is wear down an abuse victim’s self-esteem. And didn’t I read that the majority of women killed by their abusive partners are only killed after they attempt to leave?
Maybe he wasn’t the right person for this job. Despite the administrative stuff that Fiona and Patrick were involved in, they ought to be the ones here. Didn’t Fiona come from a family situation that wasn’t all that different from Karey’s? If anybody could empathize with her situation, it was Fiona.
Adam didn’t know what he was supposed to do or say. The sort of homelife he’d had was nowhere near good, but it was very different from Karey’s situation.
He dished himself up some soup and sat at the table. He ate in silence while Karey still cried. He wanted so badly to go to her and comfort her. But every time he went close to her she still shuddered as though she was afraid of him. In her current state, he didn’t want to make her more afraid as well as dealing with the complex emotions she must be going through…
After a few minutes, she dried her face with a tissue and tossed it into the garbage beside her bed. “I’m sorry.”
Adam shook his head. “You don’t have to be sorry for crying. From the sounds of it, you have plenty to cry about. Do you feel better at least?”
Karey shook her head miserably. She adjusted the pillows so she was lying down a little more and pulled the blankets to her chin. “I’ll eat later, okay?”
“Yeah. Do you want me to put it back on the stove, so it stays warm?”
Karey chewed her lip and nodded.
Adam gave her a smile, still feeling awkward, and retrieved the bowl. He dumped it back into the pot, set it back on the burner at a low temperature and returned to his own meal. He didn’t look at Karey, trying to give her some privacy. But when he was finished and started to clean out his bowl, he found that she was still staring hard at him.
With a sigh, he shrugged. “I don’t do well with crying.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be.” Adam pulled a chair close to the bed and sat. “I just don’t see how you can support the Pack when you have been hurt by it like that.”
Karey half hid her face in the blankets. “What else am I supposed to do? If I leave, I’ll just end up in jail or murdered and I don’t want that. And besides, Father wants to make everyone stronger and smarter and better. If we were all the same, then we wouldn’t have wars and people wouldn’t be so angry with each other all the time. Don’t you think it’d be better if we could all just get along?”
“Well… yes.” Adam frowned. “But if you can only get along with people exactly like you, then you’re an asshole. I don’t think going around and terrorizing people and killing them and forcing them to become shifters is the way to do it.”
“Oh, but if humans were shifters, then they wouldn’t have so many diseases. They wouldn’t be so easily killed. They would be stronger and—”
“Unless they were declared Omegas by some arbitrary ruling and were on blockers to try to make a wolf that only exists with them go to someone else,” Adam said pointedly. Did she not see what a hypocritical argument that was? She was a born shifter not permitted to embrace her identity. What made her think that the Pack would look after the interests of people forced to become shifters against their will?
Karey closed her mouth and hunched deeper into her blankets.
“Come on, Karey. You just told me that you were punished for being empathetic to a man who was being starved and your father said it was a good thing that he abuses you like that.”
“It’s not abuse.” Her voice was so small he almost didn’t hear it. “My father does what’s best for the Pack. He just does what he thinks is best for me.”
Adam resisted the urge to yank down her blankets and demand if she really believed that. He held his breath, counting to ten. He would not show anger. With Karey’s history, if he got mad at her, she’d just clam up and do everything she could to avoid getting hurt. He didn’t even care if she was playing it up in order to get more sympathy. Even if she was, which he didn’t believe, he had to take this seriously.
Otherwise, he was just an asshole, plain and simple.
“I know it can be hard to look at these things from an outside perspective,” he said, keeping his voice low so as not to scare her. “But it’s not normal. Locking up your daughter for two weeks on a few crackers and some water? That’s not normal. That’s not teaching anything except fear. And then to taunt you about your weight? You are beautiful, Karey. Every inch of you. You deserve so much better than to have that sort of life.”
Karey pulled the blankets over her head. “You’re trying to confuse me.”
“No, I’m not. I’m trying to help you see that you are worth more than—”
“No. You’re trying to confuse me. You’re trying to get me to turn away from my father. Just because I don’t always understand why he does what he does doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. I’m just too stupid to understand. I’m just too stupid.”
Adam wished he could tell her that she wasn’t stupid at all. Just scared and lonely. He leaned back in his chair. Yeah, Fiona would have been a lot better at this. Or maybe a trained psychologist.
He didn’t know if what he was doing was making it worse or better or what. He would have liked to point out that it sounded like her father was isolating her from anybody who would encourage her to trust herself enough to come up with her own opinions, but what right did he have to call out that behavior when he had her here, isolated from everybody but him?
What could he say? Nothing. So he might as well try to get some work done. He was almost finished making a new door for the basement. Then he’d figure out how to get the heat down there better and he wouldn’t have to worry about Karey trying to run off and freezing to death again.
***
From the lean-to, Adam didn’t hear Karey crying. When he came back in to find her dishing herself up some soup, though, her eyes were red and puffy. She avoided looking at him as she slipped back into bed. She was still wearing the same clothes he’d given her three days ago. The only other set they had for her were the ones that got all torn up when she shifted in them. Adam had done his best to patch them up, though, and they’d be good enough for her to wear while he washed the ones she was wearing now.
Now didn’t quite seem like the right time to tell her to get changed, though. So, he went about taking the charred basement door off its hinges. As he worked, the uncomfortable silence grew. He had to say something. Figure out a way so that she’d know it wasn’t just because he wanted information from her.
That he had empathy, even if he wasn’t going to be stupid like Liam or Eugene and let himself totally fall for someone who he couldn’t trust.
“I know it’s hard,” he said abruptly. “Walking away. Even from people who hurt you. Even from people who take and take and take and never give anything back.”
“You don’t know my life.”
Adam set the door against the wall and checked the doorjamb. It had some structural damage but nothing he couldn’t easily take care of. “You’re right. I don’t know your life. I only know what I have seen and what you’ve told me. But quite frankly,” he turned toward her, his shoulders slumping, “I’m not sure how much detail I need to know.”
She frowned at him.
�
�I know what it’s like to live in an abusive home. Mine was never so bad that my parents starved me or beat me, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t abuse me in other ways. I know what it’s like to be told you’re nothing. You’re useless, you’re stupid, you’ll never amount to anything.”
“But you’re a dragon!” Karey’s eyes widened.
“So?” Adam shrugged. “I was clumsy. Klutzy. I couldn’t get past a B+ on any report card. I was terrible at homework, even worse at trying to act like an adult. I was loud. I was needy. I liked stupid things and wasn’t serious enough. I joined up with the military as soon as I could because I thought… that was one place I didn’t have to be good at anything other than following orders.”
Karey still stared at him like she didn’t quite believe it.
“I was shot through the throat not that long ago. I nearly died. For quite a while, everybody thought I was dead because we were keeping it a secret that I survived.”
“I know. My father was very happy that we’d managed to kill one of the Blaze Ops, and he was very disappointed when it turned out that you were alive.”
Adam smiled wryly as he touched the scar on his throat. “For months, my parents thought I was dead. And I realized that I was happier with them thinking that. Being completely cut off from them. You know, they didn’t even want to pay to ship my body back to them for a funeral? They phoned up Maura and immediately started telling her that since it was the military’s fault I was dead, the military should pay for everything. Didn’t even ask how I died or when they could have a funeral for me.”
Karey wrapped her arms around her waist, her soup forgotten. “Don’t… don’t they love you?”
“I don’t know. They’ve told me that they love me, but I don’t think I believe them. If they do, their idea of love is very different from mine.” Adam laughed bitterly, shaking his head. “You don’t tell someone you love that they’re stupid. You don’t make them feel like a useless waste of space.”
Dragon's Prisoner: A Curvy Girl Military Romance (Dragon Blaze Ops Book 4) Page 4
