Page 39 of Into the Fire: After
Lin and I walked side by side, Limpdick behind us, his gun held in hand. He guided us toward an elevator, wordlessly pressed the button for the fifteenth floor—out of fifty-six—then urged us through when the doors opened. Five steps outside the elevator, he spoke, as though he’d crossed some sort of boundary.
“Cameras on the hallway don’t have audio. We can talk freely here.”
I rounded on him. “Where the fuck is she?”
“Keep moving,” the guard ordered. “There’s still video, dumbass.”
Growling, scowling, I did as he requested. Lin and I exchanged a glance, but the guard didn’t leave us in the dark for long. “I’m taking you to her. She needs you.”
“Why?” Lin asked, turning his head just a little toward the guard while keeping his voice low. “What’s happening?”
“She’s in heat.”
My stomach dropped out of my torso. I was surprised I didn’t trip over it. “That’s impossible. She just had a heat. We’ve only been here, what, two weeks?”
I swore to fucking god I heard him swallow as he guided us through another corridor to the left. “The doctors induced a heat state. All part of theirresearch.” He sneered the word. “What they want from the omegas, they can only get when in heat.”
I held myself back from punching a hole through the cinderblock wall to my right, but only just. Limpdick scanned his badge and moved around us to open a set of locked double doors.
How fucking dare they touch her, take things from her she didn’t want to give them? Force her body into a brutal, unrelenting process that, without any partners, would be—
We passed through the doors, and a distant, gravelly shriek pierced me down to my soul. Choked and uneven, like the person making that abominable sound had been doing so long enough that their voice was giving out. My alpha reared.
Taryn.
“How long has she been like this?” Lin asked, speeding his steps. I sped mine to match.
“Six days.”
Six days. Six goddamn motherfucking days that she’d been in heat with no one to help her. In untold agony.
I’d kill every last motherfucker in this place.
He didn’t need to direct us anymore. We simply followed the screams to another door, pausing to let Limpdick open it up and allow us to enter. As soon as it swung open, her scent bowled me over. The heat, the terror and anger and agony. My entire world shrank down to her, restrained to the hospital bed in the center of the room, soaked in sweat and trembling, limbs limp like she simply didn’t have the strength to do anything but succumb to gravity.
With a growl, I dove for her, stroking her greasy, sweat-matted hair.
“Shh, sunshine,” I whispered, my own hands shaking as I struggled to keep my alpha from going ballistic. “We’re here.”
She looked up at us, face tear-stained and flushed, eyes glazed. They didn’t focus on me, like I wasn’t quite solid in front of her. Or maybe just didn’t believe what she saw.
“Caine?”
Fuck, her voice was so small, so ragged voice that I choked back a sob.
I curled some hair behind her ear. “Here, baby. We’re here.”
Her hands reached for me, fingers scrabbling against my skin. The padded restraint wouldn’t let her get much further up my arm than my wrist. “Help me,” she sobbed. Her skin was feverish, overly warm even on just a grazing touch. “Please, make it stop, please, Caine—”
Lin stepped around me to stand above the head of the bed, lowering his lips to Taryn’s forehead. “We’re here to help you. We’re gonna make it feel better.”
“Yessss,” she breathed, the promise of imminent relief clearing some of the tension from her face.
Limpdick—okay, fine, Blondie—passed me a small key, which I immediately took to the restraints at Taryn’s wrists and ankles. The skin at her neck and chest were inflamed and covered in scratches, like she’d tried to claw it off her bones. Some had dried blood crusted on top.
My heart ached. My anger could wait. My omega could not.
Lin and I stood together, turned to look at the guard over our shoulder. We didn’t need to ask the question. “Five hours,” he said, crossing slowly toward us. A growl escaped my lips without my permission—our alphas were held at bay, but by a hair—and he stopped sharp. With an awkward throat-clear, he leaned out to hand us a box.
