Page 26 of Break Me Knot

“We both know why.” My voice is rough with suppressed rage. The thought of David's report sent through minutes after he left makes my stomach twist. Years of black-market suppressants, malnutrition, signs of old trauma. An omega becomes this way through mistreatment. Through the worst kind of abuse.

“The suppressants she's been taking...” Zane's voice trails off, his scent sharp with distress. “They would have cost her a lot. No wonder she was starving.”

Black market suppressants are marked up a thousand percent, and they are only that way because they’re in demand.

I lean against the wall, trying to control my anger. “They shouldn't be illegal. If we could just get the legislation through, if Hardwick would stop blocking our attempts to make them accessible...” The sigh that comes out of me drains all the air from my lungs. “But our hands are tied, while omegas like Mira are forced to buy Gods know what on the black market.”

This confirms a more sickening point. There are desperate omegas out there to warrant the risk. Not all of them are being turned over to Haven. How many others suffer like Mira? There will likely be more all over the country.

“There's no telling how old those pills were, what she actually took,” Zane says. “Someone could be manufacturing knockoffs, or...”

“Or there's a leak in our company and someone is stealing our suppressants to sell.” The thought makes me sick. I make a mental note to check our manufacturing logs. Legislation goes both ways. Although our production is limited, it’s also stringent. Every pill is accounted for. If there’s a hole, I’ll findit. “Either way, she would have paid extortionate prices for pills that could have killed her. Pills that should be readily available, that should be her right to access.”

We both tense at the pitiful whimpers drifting from the bedroom.

“We have to fix this, Adrian.” Zane's voice carries a desperate edge. “The system, the laws, all of it. No omega should have to choose between starvation and suppressants.”

“We will.” My promise won't help Mira now. Won't erase years of having to make impossible choices just to survive. Even more worrying is the fact she let drop she’d been at Haven. I need to understand why that put terror through her, and why she wasn’t secured to a pack before she left. “But first, we must help her through this heat. If she'll let us.”

The bitter scent of her distress grows stronger. Her distress leaches through the walls and into the core of my body.

Zane spins on his heels, his cock tenting his shorts as strongly as mine. “Gods, this is hard!”

He wants to go in there as badly as I do and turn those whimpers of pain into pleasure. We just want to stop her hurting but the choicehasto be hers even though it kills me to wait.

I run a hand through my hair, probably making it stand on end. My control hangs by a thread. The memory of those scars on her back makes my vision blur with rage. Someone hurt our omega, marked her, tried to break her. The alpha in me howls for vengeance. “We can't force ourselves on her. If we want any hope with her, then her choosing us is the only way she’s going to accept us.”

Cole's tension bleeds into me despite his physical absence. He's at the office, running from this, from her, from everything she represents. Even he can't deny the pull. His distress bleeds through our connection at leaving her to this, making everything more complicated. He’s going to have to confront his demons so we all can confront hers.

Hours pass, and she's fighting it, fighting herself, making everything worse. I smell her self-hatred, her fear, her desperate attempt to deny what her bodydemands. Zane sits on the carpet opposite me. His head is tilted back, eyes closed but everything about him is on high alert, as am I.

Her distress fills the air, and I pull it into me willingly in the vain hope that by taking it into my body, it will relieve hers. I know that might be a fallacy, that I’m not doing anything at all, but now it’s all I can do when every cell in my body needs to do something.

Then we finally hear her broken cry of “Alpha” that shoots straight to my soul. The sound carries such desperate pining that it shatters what remains of our restraint.

We waste no time. I scramble to my feet, Zane beside me. He looks at me with bright wild eyes as I burst inside, nearly snapping the hinges from the door in my haste. Her scent hits us, but I can’t see her. She’s not in the bed.

“The nest.” Zane bolts across the room to the nest and rips open the doors to reveal a dark emptiness. The soft bedding, blankets and pillows we supplied are untouched. She’s not there.

Zane turns desperate eyes on me. “Where the hell is she?”

A whimper slides out of the closet. I pace into the dark room, gut churning, hoping against hope that she’s not in there, only to find her curled in the back, huddled on thin blankets that smell of desperation and loneliness.

She’s tried to make her own nest with the three ratty blankets and the sight of her breaks something in my chest. Her small frame drowns in Zane's borrowed shirt, making her look even more vulnerable.

She looks up as Zane and I enter. Her pupils swallow the green in her eyes that are glazed with pain and fever, her face streaked with tears and rough with tension. “Where's Cole?”

“We're here, Little One,” I say softly, trying to remain calm despite the way my body screams to take, to claim, to possess. I rejoice that she’s asked for him, but I can’t tell her he’s not here to help her. She’s distressed enough. “We've got you.”

Her frame is raked with another fever chill. She clutches her arms around her middle as she curls into a tight ball. The boxers she wears are wet with slick she tries and fails to hide.

I want to gather her up, to carry her to the proper nest, to shower her with everything she's been denied, but the fear in her eyes stops me. We have to be so careful now. She’s balancing on an edge and could go either way between accepting us into the scraps of blanket to ease her heat or rejecting us outright. Which would mean she’d have to endure this all on her own. Unacceptable.

I crouch at the edge of the blankets, careful not to crowd her. She’s pressed into a ball, protecting her softness as though…as though she expects violence. Gods, what does she think we will do to her?

What has been done in the past to make her assume the worst?

“We won't hurt you. I promise.” I let my scent project nothing but calm and protection. “You're in control here. You choose what happens. Nothing happens without your consent. I’d like to come into your nest, Omega. I’d like to make you feel better. We both would. Would you let us do that? Would you ask us in so we can help you?”

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