Page 11 of Despair

“It’s going to be worse if you don’t comply,” Kenneth sighed. “Just… trust me. It’s in your best interest to get that stupid alpha to cooperate.”

As much as I hated my former colleague for how un-horrified he seemed, I didn’t miss the warning. After what we’d gone through this weekend, I didn’t doubt Dr. Axell would punish both of us if we resisted whatever sick plans he had for his newly mated prize alpha.

“You need to let him inject you,” I said, keeping my voice soft to break through the alpha’s unrelenting growl. “It’s no use fighting. Not now.”

351 didn’t move, his bulk still pressing me firmly into the mattress and his growl rolling through the cell, warning the other male off.

“Please… they’re gonna hurt us more if we don’t,” I whispered, not wanting Kenneth to hear how scared I was of what was going to happen today.

351’s growl finally quieted, ending in an angry huff. He pressed his nose to the side of my face, constricting his arms around me… and I got the sense that he was trying to comfort me. Promise me it would be okay, even if we both knew it wouldn’t.

In that moment, for the first time since waking up in this damned cell, I was grateful he was there with me.

Gently, I touched his arm. “Come.”

He lifted off me then, slowly, reluctance clear in every line of his body as he unfolded and made his way to the bars.

“Arm,” Kenneth said while I tried to hide my nudity behind my hands. I might have spent the weekend naked with 351, but this was different. This was a former colleague—a reminder of the life I’d lost. Of when I was still someone who could expect to be treated like a human being.

351 turned to the bars and allowed Kenneth to jab a needle into his bicep. He glared at the lab assistant the entire time, and I didn’t miss how Kenneth avoided his gaze. It was apparent that the alpha’s anger had the same effect on beta males as it did me, even from the other side of sturdy metal bars.

The cell seemed colder as I huddled up on the mattress, looking at 351 and waiting for the drugs to take effect.

It wasn’t long.

Kenneth kept an eye on his watch until maybe five minutes had passed. Then he glanced up at me. “Stand back while we collar him, okay? It’s rarely a quiet affair, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

I bit my tongue to stop a derisive snort from escaping my throat. If they truly cared about whether or not I was hurt, they wouldn’t have locked me up with a feral alpha over the weekend, nor forced a mating. But I was too worried about what lay ahead to bicker, so I got to my feet and pressed myself up against the far wall, hands still clamped across my chest and nether region. “Can I have some clothes? Please? I don’t… want to walk through the lab naked.”

A twinge of what could have been shame shone in Kenneth’s eyes for the briefest moment. It was gone before I was even sure that was what I’d seen.

“Sorry, no clothes. Dr. Axell’s orders.”

He really was a creep. I recalled Gloria’s name for him—Dr. Pervert. It wasn’t hard to guess how he’d earned that one.

“Stand back now,” Kenneth warned, as he turned around and called to someone I couldn’t see. Not that I had to wait long to find out.

Three burly guards—alphas, by the looks of them—came into view, long metal poles with collars attached in their hands.

351 let out a low snarl, his shoulders hunching as he took up a defensive stance. When they opened the door, he charged, but they hit him with a taser, the voltage just high enough to make him jerk and lose his footing. The collars snapped shut around his neck and biceps before he regained full motor control, and by that point, it was too late. Not that that stopped the feral alpha from fighting against his bonds.

Heroaredand threw himself around, trying to break the men’s hold on the poles by forcing them against the bars, but it was no use. Through much swearing and banging of metal against metal, they got him dragged out of the cell.

“Come.” Kenneth held an arm out toward me. He had to raise his voice to be heard over 351’s fury. “I think it’s best you stay close. He’s not going to want to have you out of sight.”

I hesitated, eyes darting to the open door. Only the lab assistant blocked it, but there was no way I could make a break for it and make it out of the compound without being apprehended.

“Don’t make me get the restraints,” Kenneth said, voice a smidge softer. “Please. Just come.”

I did. There was nothing else I could do, so I walked out of the cell, bare feet pattering against the cold concrete floor, still trying to keep some illusion of modesty with my hands clasped across my naked body. It didn’t help much, and as Kenneth walked me by the rows of feral alphas at a safe distance from the still-snarling 351, more than one came to the front of their cage, eyes locked on what I couldn’t cover. Growls, rich and indulgent rather than aggressive, filled the lab as I tried to shrink in on myself and somehow cover my nose from the assault of alpha stench without taking my hands off my chest or lower half.

Ahead of me, 351’s aggression shifted from his jailers to the caged alphas. He snapped and snarled at the other ferals. Only the merciless metal bands encircling his arms and neck kept him moving forward.

We were led through a door I hadn’t noticed before and down a long, echoing corridor lit up by fluorescent lights reflecting off white paint. It smelled like disinfectant, but underneath was the faintest lingering odor of alpha aggression.

When we got to three doors more or less side by side, the guards shoved 351 through the farthest one and slammed it shut before Kenneth opened the middle one for me. 351’s furious growls echoed from within, and when I stepped through, I saw that we were in the same room, only he was separated from me by sturdy metal bars.

His side of the room was large and empty, made purely from concrete with video cameras mounted behind mesh casings set high in the ceilings. My side was much smaller, but equally bare. A grid in the center of it sharpened the anxiousness twisting in my gut.

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