by Nora Ash
Zach’s snarl rose in volume, as if me talking to what he saw as rival alphas fueled his rage. When I caught a glimpse of his eyes, I saw the darkness creeping back like encroaching shadows threatening to take away the small respite our coupling had brought him.
“And hurry!”
* * *
It didn’t take the SEALs long to return with a tranquilizer gun, but by that point Zach was nearly unrecognizable. He kept snarling and spitting like a trapped beast at the doorway where he could hear them pacing, jerking on our tie every few seconds in his efforts to get to the men and tear them apart. Apparently he’d forgotten about the chains tying him to the wall, and I had to clench my jaw not to cry out from the constant tugging between my legs. I knew he wouldn’t calm down if he heard my pained cries.
Thankfully, the other alphas didn’t hesitate. The moment Jerome returned with the gun, he took up position at the doorway, aimed, and fired three arrows straight into Zach’s back and neck.
My mate roared, lunging at his attacker and pulling painfully on my dilated opening, and I screamed. But before any real damage could be done, Zach slumped down on top of me, eyelids fluttering shut.
Boots scuffed against the concrete floor just before the others lifted Zach off me. His cock slid out of me easily, his knot deflated, leaving a wet trail of fluids dripping out of my still-open sex.
Jerome looked down at me, assessing my body for damages. He had a hold of Zach’s left armpit while Jarl had the other. “You all right?”
“I’ll be fine.” I winced as I gathered my legs and tested my body. My abdomen was predictably sore, and I was pretty sure I’d be sporting bruises and scrapes on my back. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I had expected when I’d first reached for his cock to remind him of who I was. He’d prepared me, rather than just tear into my dry sex, and though he’d been rough… there had been moments of tenderness.
I bit my lip, the ghost of his forceful kiss haunting me. I hadn’t thought he remembered how to, nor that he had any inclination for it. But he had—so deep in the depravity of what they’d done to him, when his humanity was so far gone I wasn’t sure he’d ever regain it, he’d still kissed me.
I got to my feet, taking Eric’s offered hand to steady myself. It wasn’t until I noticed how he studiously avoided looking at my naked lower half that it dawned on me they hadn’t been watching us have sex. Heard it, sure, but not for their own twisted pleasure, like the doctors here.
“We need to get Barnes out of here before the morning shift comes in and finds the soldiers and guards dead,” Jerome said, nodding at Eric. “You make sure she stays on her feet. And find her some pants.”
“Wait. We can’t leave yet. They’ve done something to him—he’s… he’s different than he was before,” I said.
Jerome frowned. “How do you mean?”
“I think they’ve been given him another drug, perhaps even multiple. I need to find his file and see what they’ve given him—and if there’s an antidote. I don’t think… I don’t think he’ll be able to regain his humanity on his own.” I looked at my passed-out mate hanging limply between the two alphas, and my heart ached at the many scars covering his strong body. They’d done everything to break him, and in my absence they’d finally succeeded.
* * *
They hadn’t put him on another drug.
Eric managed to hack into Dr. Axell’s computer for me, and that’s where I learned exactly what they’d done to him. I scrolled past the pages detailing his systematic torture, unable to stomach the clinical detachment in Dr. Axell’s notes as he described his step-by-step process to dehumanize “Subject 351” until he was nothing but an empty shell, ready to be reprogrammed.
But when I came to his comments on the drugs they’d administered, my gut clenched in horror.
* * *
Subject 351 has been injected with 6 milliliters of the X-variant of hexatrepodamine two times a day. His reasoning skills appear to continually decline, limiting his problem-solving and ability to use tools. It is unlikely that he will ever be able to regain these abilities, and we consider the affected brain areas permanently shut down. It is doubtful if even di-hydroperalimitus will be able to reverse this effect. He is, at this point, the very basest of animals.
* * *
Twelve milliliters a day. When I’d worked with the alphas, it had been .75 milliliters per man per day, and it had left the alphas unable to access the majority of what made them human. If Zach had been injected with twelve every day since I left…
But they were wrong. He’d kissed me. Animals didn’t kiss.
They had to be wrong.
“Find anything?” Eric said, interrupting my spiraling thoughts.
“Di-hydroperalimitus,” I said, wiping the tears I hadn’t been aware of from my cheeks with a shaking hand. “It will be in the refrigerated area where the ferals are kept. We need as much as we can carry.”
He didn’t comment on my tears as I led the way into the lab. The cooling section held most of the drugs used on the facility, and it was a small mercy to see three full rows of glass bottles labeled di-hydroperalimitus. We grabbed all of them and then made our way to the corridor that led to the ground floor and exit. The others were waiting for us there. Zach’s passed-out form was heavy to lug around, and the SEALs were not going to leave Beau’s body behind. With Larry injured, they’d needed the head start while Eric and I found what we needed for Zach.
“Lillian!”
I glanced to my right at the sound of my name and locked eyes with my former neighbor’s frantic gaze.
“Where are you going? You promised to take me with you!”
I turned my head back around and stared straight ahead as I kept walking toward the exit.
“Lillian! Please, Oh god, no, you can’t leave me here! Lillian!”
Somewhere deep inside, in a place the agony from my bond had muted before, I felt a stab of guilt when the door to the lab slid shut behind us, silencing the panicked woman’s screams as if they never existed.
Chapter 7
Lillian
“We can’t go back to my place,” Jerome said as he drove us down an abandoned country road. I had no idea where it would lead us, but so long as it was away from SilverCorp’s compound, it was good enough for me. “They’ll have some nice images of all our faces from the security cameras—we’re all gonna have to get out of the country and disappear somewhere. But we ain’t gonna make it across the border with him in that state, so hopefully the drugs you stole are gonna kick in sometime soon.”
“Any plans?” I asked as I slid a needle into Zach’s bicep. My mate was still passed out, but a hushed growl escaped his lips as I injected him with the first dose of di-hydroperalimitus. I had no idea how fast it would work, if at all, but I reasoned it’d be much easier to give it to him while he was still unconscious. Hopefully it would be easier to treat him if the drug began to take effect.
When it took effect.
“Nothing, I’m afraid. Dishonorably discharged vets don’t exactly get the kind of payout that allows for a nice backup hideout in Colombia. We’ll work something out. Getting across the border’s the first goal. You just take care of Barnes. Leave the rest to us.” Jerome sighed, running a hand over his scalp before changing gears.
“Jerome, I… I haven’t thanked you…”
“You had other things on your mind,” he grunted. “And it wasn’t like we were gonna let our brother rot in some fucking test facility.”
“But you lost Beau. And Larry—will he be all right?” I glanced over my shoulder at the headlights following us. Eric drove the other car, allowing Jarl to care for Larry’s injury in the backseat. “I didn’t consider… the cost of this.” Not that I would have stopped them from saving Zach if I had, but the guilt sparked by the claimed woman’s pleas for help as we left the facility gnawed at my gut.
They’d all lost so much, and now they’d be fugitives as well.
“You need to und
I looked at Zach’s naked form as he lay slumped against the backseat door, unable to take my hand off his arm where I’d injected him. The contact of his skin against mine soothed the place in my chest where the bond now hummed contentedly. Despite the absence of pain, I still felt raw inside and out, and I wasn’t sure that part would ever heal. Maybe the damage our separation had done would be permanent.
He’d been introduced to me as a war criminal, a convict, the lowest of scum, no better than an animal. And yet these men had all put their lives on the line to save him.
“I need you to tell me what happened,” I said quietly, never taking my eyes off Zach’s sleeping face. “I need to know why they charged him with treason.”
“You know I can’t. I swore an oath,” Jerome rumbled. “If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you himself.”
“There is…” I swallowed thickly, forcing down the wave of despair just thinking the thought brought on. “There is no guarantee he will ever speak again, Jerome. There is no guarantee he will ever be anything more than a mindless animal. What they did to him… I don’t know if I can bring him back. I’ll try. I’ll never stop trying. He ensured that when he put his claiming mark on my neck.
“I don’t hate him. I don’t hate him for being so desperate for a companion that he stole my choice and my future from me. I don’t hate him for the things he has done to me because they took away his ability to control himself. But I… I want to know… I need to know, if the world had been different, if we had met… somewhere else. Could I have loved him? Would I have chosen him, if he had asked instead of taking?”
Silence filled the car as my voice died down. For the longest time, I thought he was going to keep quiet, and I wiped the tears threatening to spill from my eyes. I had my mate back—hours ago that was all I’d wanted, and more than I’d hoped for. How we had come to be, and how we would continue… it didn’t matter. I had no right to cry anymore.
“Just because you didn’t choose him doesn’t mean you don’t love him.” Jerome’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet. “Why did you try to rescue him that first time?”
“They were hurting him. No one deserves that kind of treatment, no matter what they’ve done. Despite… Despite everything, I would do it again.”
“But why him, specifically?” Jerome asked, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “There were dozens of other alphas in there, locked up and brutalized just like Barnes. Why’d you choose him?”
“I…” I bit my lip, frowning at the question. I thought back to Zach’s bloody back and the pained mistrust in his beautiful eyes. And then, like a whisper, I remembered how I’d thought about him day and night, how his eyes and his body had stayed with me in my dreams. “I thought he was different.”
“You thought he was different, yet you thought him a traitor and a murderer?” Jerome snorted. “It doesn’t get a lot of press, not outside alpha circles… but the rumor is we’re not the only ones who know when we meet the woman who’s meant to be our mate. She will too, even if she doesn’t always understand. Zach isn’t the type of man to claim whatever piece of ass he can get a hold of just because he’s lonely. I don’t care what they’ve done to him, that shit is fused into your bones.
“You say he stole your future from you—girl, he was always your future. You picked him when you chose to free him from that fucking cell the first time ‘round. So don’t give me any bullshit about how you might have loved him if he’d been the perfect gentleman and bought you flowers before he gave you the knot and bit your neck. Love ain’t like that, not for us. It’s primal and it’s inescapable, and what you feel for him… that’s the kind of love that never, ever dies.”
I gaped at his steely gaze in the rearview mirror, too stunned to respond. But his words sank in deep, penetrating the place in my chest my bond was hooked and making it hum as if it was trying to convince me he spoke nothing but the truth.
“I’ve been in love before,” I whispered. “Many times. It didn’t feel like this—this is… it’s awful. I have this thing inside of me, like a worm burrowing in my flesh, a parasite manipulating me, hurting me when I’m too far away from him.”
Jerome scoffed. “Beta love. That’s not real, girl. That’s a beta making you feel good to get in your pants. You think your bond is manipulating you?” He scoffed again. “Fucking betas.”
He fell silent again and I returned my attention to Zach’s sleeping form. Was Jerome right? I thought back to Dr. Urwin and what he’d said to me as he strapped me onto the breeding bench. How every beta boyfriend I’d ever had had wanted to do the same to me. But that was just a projection of his own twisted desires. Right?
“On our last mission, our squad was tasked with taking a strategic vantage point. Said it was an abandoned school. Only when we got there, it’d been turned into a fucking orphanage. Mostly it as filled with kids whose parents died in the war. We killed their parents, and now we were going to take their last safehouse too? Wasn’t gonna happen.
“Captain didn’t see it that way, though. Told us to get with the program or get tried for treason. When we still refused, he shot a kid. Fucking shot him right in front of the others, and said we better get our priorities straight or he’d be forced to clear them all out. ‘Cause if all the kids are dead, it’s no longer an orphanage, or some bullshit like that.
“That’s when Barnes pulled his gun and shot the captain point-blank. And the fuckers at home tried him for treason and judged him a war criminal, because otherwise it’d have gotten out what they’d tried to do. Barnes told us not to make a fuss. That we should take our dishonorable discharge and disappear or they’d try us too. Tell no one, he said. He didn’t want us to die along with him. And we didn’t, to honor his sacrifice.
“But every single one of us are willing to lay down our lives for him. Fuck what the brass calls us—he saved our honor that day. And our fucking souls, if you believe in that shit.
“I tell you this not to help you justify what you feel for him, whether you want to admit it it not. I tell you so if he truly never speaks again, if this is all that’s left of the man who saved all those kids and his squad along with it… then at least you can tell any child you bear him what he used to be.”
We parked far down an abandoned dirt trail in a thick patch of wood. They buried Beau under an oak tree some thirty yards in, then returned to the cars to catch a few hours’ sleep. Daylight meant a much higher chance of getting caught while on the open road.
Jarl took the first shift as lookout and I climbed into the backseat of Jerome’s Jeep, where I curled up against Zach. My bond hummed with contentment as my skin touched his, my eyelids fluttering shut when the last vestige of the adrenaline that’d kept me going since we broke into SilverCorp’s compound left my body. He might have been unconscious, but my instincts still made me feel so much safer in his presence.
I’d slept fitfully, plagued by nightmares and anxiety since my first escape from the dreaded hellhole. Now, though, with the warmth of the alpha underneath me, I drifted off with nothing but relief filling my mind.
* * *
I woke up to a rumbling sound that seemed to originate from everywhere at once. It jarred me out of the my peaceful sleep, warning signals firing in my fuzzy brain.
Groggily, I opened my eyes and tried to sit up, but an iron band kept me glued to the hot surface I’d been sleeping against.
“Lillian, can you try to calm him, please?”
I looked up at the sound of Jerome’s very quiet, calm voice, and saw him kneeling in the driver’s seat facing us, eyes locked above me. When I followed his gaze, I realized where the noise was coming from.
“Shit,” I mumbled, my brain kicking through the haze of sleep with a panicked start. None of us had thought about what might happen if Zach woke up to find another alpha so close by. “Zach. Zach?”
He didn’t respond.
“Hey, it’s okay. He’s a friend.” I gently brushed my hand up his naked side to rest it against his chest. “Zach, look at me. Everything’s okay. We’re safe.”
I wasn’t sure he understood me, but when I pressed against where his end of our bond hooked, his eyes flickered to mine.
I smiled to show him there was no threat, planting a kiss against his tensed bicep. “Calm down, big guy.”
Slowly, his growl quieted, his intense stare remaining on my face. His pupils were larger than normal, but not completely blackening his irises.
“Hey,” I whispered, petting his thickly muscled chest. “How are you feeling?”
He didn’t respond, too busy studying my every feature as if he’d forgotten what I looked like. Maybe he had—the amount of drugs they’d given him would have been enough to shut down nearly everything but his lizard brain.
“I’m gonna take watch so he can have a moment to come to terms with everything,” Jerome said. Even though his tone was still deliberately non-aggressive, Zach snapped his head around and bared his teeth. “Give us a shout if you need us.”
Zach tensed even further when Jerome moved to slip out of the car, but he didn’t lunge. When the door closed and we were alone again, his growl died, though he stared out the window at Jerome’s retreating back.
“You sent me to him,” I said, still stroking his chest to keep him calm. At this point, I was pretty sure he didn’t understand what I was saying, but my voice seemed to have a soothing effect on him. “You said he’d take care of me, and he has. He got me to you—he and the others are the reason I could get you out. And… he told me what you did, before. You’re a hero, Zach. Not a criminal. And I didn’t know. You almost died without me knowing who you truly are.”
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