7. Resa

Chapter 7

Resa

I keep my right hand wrapped around the hilt of the knife.

My palm is sweating, but I can deal with a little sweat. What I cannot deal with is going without a weapon for a second in a house of alphas.

You should have stayed on the streets, Resa. You'd have avoided this mess altogether.

"Why did you give me a knife?" I ask the beta currently crouched beside me.

Somehow, I made it to the top of a staircase that went on forever. I did not fall, and I did not cry when every step was agony. I followed Vaughn down a carpeted hallway and to this gray guestroom.

He dragged a dressing table chair to the bedside table where he flicked on a lamp and asked me to sit. I'm off my feet and it feels like heaven.

He continues riffling through the contents of a bulging first aid kit he tipped onto the bed. "Thought you'd appreciate it. So how'd you wind up hurting your feet?"

"I had to do something stupid to escape," I admit. Even now I struggle to believe I leapt from that window. If I didn't have O'Brien at the door and Rupert's blood on my hands, I couldn't have done it.

He makes a soft sound in the back of his throat as he pulls out a pair of blue rubber gloves. "Doesn't sound stupid to me if you got yourself out."

If only you knew.

"I guess," I concede.

"And the thing you were escaping from?" His tone is light, as if the answer means nothing to him.

I think it does. Sure, he saved my life in that alley, but do I intend to tell him my life story?

No.

A soft knock at the door interrupts me before I can think up a lie.

Vaughn swivels his head toward it. I just tense up.

"I brought some warm water and clean rags. We're downstairs if you need anything." It's the older sounding alpha. Garrison. And I swear he puts more emphasis on downstairs than he needed to.

Vaughn tosses the rubber gloves back into the first aid kit and rises. He crosses over to the door and takes a steaming gray bowl of water and white rags from the towering alpha, who must feel my stare but never looks at me.

Garrison hands the water and rags over, closes the door, and that's it. He's gone again.

"I can do it," I say, reaching for the rag and promptly tipping out of my chair.

"I've got it." Vaughn nudges me back before I can fall and, after dipping a cloth in the water, wrings it out.

With soft, gentle strokes he soon reduces the bowl of clean water to a dark, dirty one. The city's streets must be black for my feet to have been so bad.

I focus on his bent head. His hair is thick, a brighter gold under the room's lights than it was on the streets and hits his shoulders, smelling faintly of coconut. Beautiful hair. So beautiful it makes me embarrassed about the state of my filthy feet.

"Thanks." I pull my dirty, cut feet away from him before he realizes how disgusting they are.

"Wait a second." His grip is loose around my ankle, but it stops me. He spends even longer studying the soles of my feet, brow furrowed in concentration. "I think I can see colored glass. That's going to be a bitch to get out. Are you sure you don't want a doctor?"

I don't even have to think of my answer. "No."

He gives me a brief look, then returns to studying my foot. "I'll see what I can do."

"You're not worried I'll use this knife on you?" I ask.

He releases my foot and resumes rummaging through the first aid kit. "Nope." His eyes flick up. "This is going to involve picking glass out of your foot."

"I assume that's going to hurt?"

"You assume right. I'm efficient at quick and dirty fixes. Garrison is better at first aid. He had the patience to go through a proper intensive course, but a doctor would be even better."

Garrison. The alpha in his mid to late thirties with the deep voice, commanding presence and the sense he was in charge. The one who didn't seem to care that I have a fiancé I want to get back to. We're scent matches, so he should have had a problem with it. A big one.

Which means he's lying. I need to be careful he doesn't trap me here.

"He's not coming anywhere near me."

No alpha is.

I've been missing for two years, and returning pregnant with another man's child is going to be a big ask for Henry to accept. I didn't have a choice, but this baby is mine, and there's no question in my mind about keeping it.

"I can get you painkillers?" Vaughn offers.

Take drugs from a man I just met in an alley and risk waking up in a sealed room, tied to a bed, with an alpha determined to fuck me?

Not a chance in hell.

I might have made a mistake letting him bring me up here. Sure, he had a business card, and this house is the sort of mansion you'd see in Architectural Digest, but bad things happen in nice houses. If anyone knows how bad those can be, I do.

"No drugs." Watching Vaughn closely, I prepare myself for the possibility I might have to actually use this knife on him, deal with more blood I'd rather avoid and get myself down the stairs on feet that, for the first time in forever, aren't screaming at me now I'm off them.

"If you're sure."

He hesitates for so long it's clear he doesn't want to do this, though he seemed eager before. And that reluctance is what makes me wonder if I'm signing up to more than I can handle. Then I remember the alternatives and stiffen my spine.

"I'm sure."

"Well, I need to grab a couple of things, but I'll be right back." He pushes himself to his feet and walks out, leaving me alone for the first time.

I look around, absorbing my surroundings.

The room is not the nicest I've been in. The alphas who bought and traded me were richer than this. Animals beneath the surface, but rich.

This is okay. Not over the top elegant, but simple.

White linen or cotton bed sheets with a cream padded seat at the base of the bed. A matching pair of white bedside tables with silver lamps and a glass chandelier. Floor to ceiling silvery-gray drapes that make the window look massive.

There are two closed white doors. One leads to a closet that Vaughn retrieved the first aid kit from, and the other must lead to a bathroom.

If someone told me they'd hired an interior designer to decorate a guest room that wouldn't offend anyone, I'd believe them. It's clear no one has used this room. That's okay. I don't mind being in a room like this because there's a lock on the inside instead of the outside, and I have a weapon to defend myself if anyone tries to enter.

Vaughn returns a couple of minutes later and nudges the door closed behind him. He's holding a small silver torch and a pair of tweezers. He's also tied his hair back.

"I dunked the tweezers in rubbing alcohol to disinfect them so they're as clean as they're gonna get." He drops into a crouch in front of me and flicks on the torch. "Still sure about this?"

My options are this, a doctor, or the alpha downstairs.

"I'm sure."

He flashes me a grin. "Then one quick and dirty coming up."

I blink in surprise when he sticks the torch in his mouth and grips my right ankle with one hand and the tweezers with another.

His palm is warm, slightly calloused, and I get the sense he's not holding me as firmly as he could. He takes his time, but it doesn't take long for me to realize something when he starts pulling shards of glass from the soles of my feet.

Quick and dirty was a mistake.

A great big stinkin' case of what the hell were you thinking, Resa?

But if the other option is doctors and drugs that cloud my mind and steal my ability to fight back, then I'll take quick and dirty every single day of the week.

Swallowing hard, I press my back against my chair, silencing my mental scream.

It's like someone repeatedly stabbing into the soles of my foot with the occasional agonizing slice.

When I peel my eyes open, I expect fragments of glass the size of my finger. I can barely even see the thin slivers of colored glass Vaughn places on the bedside table. How can something so small hurt so much?

He pulls the torch from his mouth. "Think I see where it is now." After placing the torch aside, he goes back to digging more glass out.

I squeeze my eyes shut and concentrate on breathing in through my nose and out of my mouth.

"You're a lot stronger than I am."

My eyes fly open.

Vaughn glances up at me. "I'd be wailing like a baby."

I swallow hard, blinking back tears. "You shot two men in the head," I remind him. To do something like that, surely a bit of glass would be nothing.

"Yup," he concedes. "But this is different."

He gently runs his fingers along the soles of my right foot from my toes, down my arch to my heel, a ticklish sensation that makes me want to curl my toes, yank my foot away and giggle at the same time.

"This one is good," he says, grabbing a small roll of gauze he uses to wrap my right foot before he turns to my left. It hits me that I have to go through this agony all over again.

He picks up the torch again and nods at the knife I've clenched in one fist. "Feel free to use it on me if you want."

"You want me to cut you?"

"Well, no, actually." He bends his head and sweeps the torch across the sole of my foot before setting it aside. "But if you feel you must, I can take it."

"I thought you said you'd wail like a baby."

"Now I didn't say I'd take it quietly," he drawls.

He is not for me. My place is not in this house with two alphas, but a tiny part of me likes this beta with his cheeky smiles, winks, and flirtatious behavior far more than I should.

His eyes flick up.

I flatten my lips immediately. He does not need to know how close I came to smiling.

"There's less glass in this foot, so it shouldn't take me long." After a brief pause, he says casually, "You have a couple of bruises on your arms, and blood on the front of your dress."

The bruises I knew about. Rupert didn't know the meaning of gentle. But the blood?

I glance down. It's only a bit, courtesy of the tree I crashed into. "So?"

I count myself lucky to be alive after my leap out of the window. A little blood and a few scratches are nothing in the grand scheme of things.

"So I can do quick and dirty, but anything serious is above my pay grade."

It sounds like he's pushing me to see his alpha. Probably even the doctor I told him I didn't want.

My eyes narrow. "I said no drugs."

"That's not what I'm saying."

With his head still bent over my foot, his tone is casual. "I have a very particular skill-set. We all do. I can do enough to buy someone time to get to a hospital, but I'm not a medic. Deeper injuries and other internal stuff is something I don't know how to help or heal. If you catch my drift?"

He lifts his head, and his eyes flick to my belly and linger there for two seconds.

"Yeah, I think I do."

He can fix cuts and stop bleeding, but he can't do anything about my baby.

I itch to ask about the particular skill sets of the other men under this roof. I have a beta who apparently doesn't even need to aim to blow two men away and can patch up a person so they survive long enough to get to a hospital.

He's the beta here. In our world, on TV and in the movies, only alphas are the heroes and only they are brilliant enough to change the world.

I don't believe that any more than someone will replace a lost tooth with a dollar bill if I leave it under my pillow. But most people do believe it. It's been that way for so long that I doubt things will ever change, even though they need to.

As I stare at him, a memory flickers behind my eyes.

Bland faced men wearing all white drag me from the cells to the glass walled auction room where alphas shroud themselves in dark shadows, barely visible in the darkness. An announcer's voice rings out, calling out prices. Selling me off like a cow at the market.

Doctors wear white, and I can't do white coats, so hospitals are a no go.

But my baby…

My fingers flutter to my belly. Vaughn watches, his expression inscrutable as he waits for me to decide what comes next.

I jumped out of a window, smashed into a tree. Fell out of said tree.

And I lived.

I feel okay, but how would I know if my baby was?

"Your doctor can come here?"

"Sadie can." He nods at the knife in my head. "Though she might not be as understanding as I am about any stabby tendencies you might have."

I consider it.

The coat is a big deal. Less of one if she comes here.

White coats are a painful reminder of the Asylum rooms where they would drug a girl and prep her for auction.

If this doctor is doing house visits, then maybe she'll forget to bring her coat with her. I could ask Vaughn to tell her to leave it behind, but he will wonder why. Worse, it might get back to the alphas downstairs, and I refuse to show weakness to any alpha.

The biggest question is, could I live with myself if anything happened to my baby when I could have prevented it?

And the answer is no. I could not.

"Okay. I'll see your doctor." My hand tightens around the knife hilt as my eyes narrow. "But I'm keeping my knife."

His delighted grin is that of a spoiled kid on Christmas morning. "You know what, Resa? I think we're gonna be friends."

And seeing that grin, I think he might be right.