Page 23 of Despair

The familiar voice of the beta assistant cut through his horror, and he turned around and snarled at the bars.

“Yeah, that’s great, I’m terrified,” the man said, rolling his eyes. He held up a syringe and tapped a finger against the tray of food. “Now be a good boy and offer your arm willingly, or your mate isn’t eating today.”

351 snarled again, wanting nothing more than to snap the man in two, but just the thought of his female not eating brought him to the bars more easily than had he been pulled by a leash.

“I must say, you’ve gotten a lot easier to deal with since Lillian joined you in there,” the beta said conversationally as he readied the syringe. “I guess there’s not much you wouldn’t do to keep her safe, huh?”

The alpha glared down at him. This beta would never understand what it was like to be bonded. Under normal circumstances, 351 would have pitied him. But in here… having everything to lose was a fate worse than death.

“Too bad for you the drugs keep you from plotting anything that could get you out of here, I guess,” the assistant said as he pressed the syringe to the alpha’s skin. But where 351 had expected the usual prick of the needle, only the flat plastic pressed into his bulging bicep.

He stared down at the syringe as the beta pressed the plunger down, and the liquid inside trickled down the side of the alpha’s arm. When he looked back up at the beta, he stared back at him with wide, fearful eyes, but a determined set to his mouth.

“Because I’ve read your file, and no one in here would be more capable of staging an escape than you. Sure, they were watching Lillian when she tried to break you out; they were expecting it after seeing how she cared for you. But now it’s only the overnight guards keeping an occasional eye on the exit cameras on the weekends. Must suck for you to know your mind’s too muddled from the drugs to save her. If you are even aware enough to realize.”

He put the syringe in his pocket and pushed the tray of food through. “Eat up. You get some time off to recuperate after yesterday, but Monday, you’re scheduled in for a repeat performance. I’m sure you’ll need your strength for the ten alphas you’ll have to fight then.”

351’s heart hammered in his chest as he watched the beta administer the drug to the neighboring alpha, and then shove food through the gap in the door. The female was babbling pleas to be let out while the alpha growled possessively. From the deepening of his snarl, it was pretty obvious he had been jabbed with the needle.

351 wasn’t sure why the lab assistant had suddenly had a change of heart—or if it was some sort of trap. But he knew he wasn’t going to get another chance like this.

By Saturday evening,his head was clearer than it had been in over a year.

A year.

He wasn’t entirely sure of the days, but he knew he’d been here for more than twelve months. He hadn’t had the capability of realizing before, but he did now.

And with it came a new kind of rage—the sort that smoldered and festered deep in his gut. He pushed it aside, and focused on his goal at hand: freedom.

Revenge could come later.

It wasn’tuntil Sunday that he had a fully formed plan, and by that point, the deadline for executing it was looming.

The biggest hurdle was getting out of the cell. He’d gone over every inch of it, even considering unscrewing the toilet bowl, but the only way out was through the door. And without a keycard, it wasn’t opening.

So in the afternoon, a few hours before the evening feeding, he turned his attention to his mate. He’d not spent much time with her; he had been too focused on finding a way out for them to do much more than hold her for warmth when she slept. And she hadn’t tried to gain his attention, either.

The anchor in his chest twinged unpleasantly as he watched her curled up form on the mattress. She’d wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, her chin resting on her knees as she stared at the concrete wall separating them from the now pair-bonded alpha and his mate. Her blonde hair hung lank and unkempt around her naked shoulders, and even if they hadn’t been tied with a pair-bond, he’d known she’d given up hope. The depression weighing on her was a near-tangible entity in the cell.

“Lillian,” he said, voice gruff from not being used for days.

She started and turned to him. Though her eyes were wide with surprise, the life in them was dulled. “You know my name?”

Of course he knew his mate’s name. Though… he hadn’t spoken it before.

The damn bond twinged again and he rubbed at his chest. This wasn’t how a claim was supposed to happen. The female should have been worshipped, felt treasured… surrendered willingly. Not like the parody of a claiming they’d gone through.

The result was a damaged bond.

He’d been too drugged out of his mind to give her anything more than the very basest of care during the vital first days. And now, instead of something beautiful and serene, the hook in his chest gnawed and twanged with her distress.

Smoldering anger flared in his gut. He pushed it down again, promising himself that the scientists would suffer for the damaged bond as well as the months of his life they’d robbed him of.Afterhe’d gotten his mate to safety.

Nothing would matter if he failed.

He moved to the mattress and knelt by her side. Unable to keep his hands from her when she was so close, he stroked a lock of her hair from her cheek. She didn’t flinch away, but she lowered her eyes, unwilling to meet his gaze.

Worried he’d want to rut her.

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