Chapter 34 In which history is repeated

The man I knew as Doctor Schwab is still here. He gives me that smile that used to put me at ease, but that was before I knew all of this… Before I realized what a liar he is.

I feel like he’s taken more than the recommended pint of blood, draining me into tiny plastic bags. But he’s made it clear he won’t drain me all away. No, he wants to keep me alive.

“You shouldn’t have presented as an omega at anytime, Sadiecakes,” he says, sounding excited as hell by that. “The medications we gave you should have broken the omega hormones down in your system.”

I snort. My voice comes out sloppy and slurred. “Calling it medication makes it sound like I was sick. You gave me untested drugs. Harvested my hormones and imbedded them in someone else and then took away my designation.”

He frowns, scooting closer on his little stool. “That was never our intention, Sadie. We want to help people become their best selves. Some people want to become omegas. We’re working on the way to hep them accomplish that. Our intention is to increase the number of fertile omegas to increase the chance of reproduction.”

My gaze narrows. “There isn’t a reproduction crisis! You’re trying to help with something no one asked for!”

He glares at me. “Many, many people have asked for this. Can you honestly say you weren’t thrilled when you presented as an omega? When you realized you were no longer a beta.”

“I loved being a beta!” I shout at him. Even as my slur grows worse. “I loved it. Being an omega sucks. I loved not being controlled by my instincts and hormones. Having control over my emotions and body.”

He pats my hand condescendingly, like he thinks I’m lying. I’m not though. I would have happily stayed as a beta for the rest of my life. I’m fairly certain if I’d fucked Luca and Ethan that first night and stayed a beta, we would still have ended up together. The draw was too strong.

Besides, Swift has told me he wouldn’t have stopped looking for me. He would have found me and brought me into their pack. I have to believe that.

“Then you shouldn’t be upset that we tried to remove your designation from you.” I blink at him. Rage simmering deep in my belly. Did he really just say that? Truly? He thinks I should thank him for fucking with my body and my hormones? “As I said, going forward, we won’t be removing the designation from the omega whose hormones we harvest. The intent is to create more omegas, to increase the likelihood of finding fertile matches. Your situation was… requested by Claudia and her father. They didn’t want anyone competing for her scent match.”

I lick my lips and shake my head. “What was it you gave me? That was supposed to stop my designation presentation?”

His lips curl into a smile like he’s delighted that I’m taking an interest. I am, but more because I want to know. No, I need to know what he did to me. “It was a concentrated dose of a suppressant. Enough that it should have obliterated your omega hormones, rather than just suppress them. We gave them to you twice a month for a year. Then in lower doses in the years that followed. And eventually, we simply put you on normal suppressants, just in case. And yet your designation pushed through. Not only that, but your omega hormones are thriving. It’s fascinating.” He sounds genuinely intrigued.

“I wish I had the time to study you further, but alas, Claudia has made her wishes clear. And those wishes are that you are no longer an omega, to open the way for her to be with her pack. You understand, don’t you? The Pooles have made quite the investment in our research. ”

I blink at him, trying to make my fuzzy mind focus enough to fully understand what he’s doing. What he’s planning. But he’s taken so much blood, and I’m having a hard time concentrating as my brain goes a little swimmy. “What does that mean?”

“It means, Sadiecakes, that we’re going to have to do the entire process again. To break down the omegamones in your system and leave Claudia as the only scent match.”

I blink at him, and his meaning finally penetrates my mind. “You might as well just kill me. Or keep me locked up. You think if you break my omega and then let me out into the world as a Beta, I won’t fucking come for you? You think I’ll let you get away with this? With experimenting on me and, god, there must be others right? Other omegas, other alphas that you’ve done this to? You think I’ll just let you get away with it? You think my pack will just let you get away with it?”

He gives me that smile again, the one that puts my teeth on edge, condescending as hell. “My dear, I’ve already gotten away with it. Your mother signed away your rights when you were eight years old. She knew exactly what we were doing. By the time you became an adult, you blindly signed away your rights nearly every time you came to my office. You agreed to everything we did to you.” He pats my hand again. “You really should learn to read the fine print. And as for your mates? I imagine right now they’re balls deep in Claudia and bonded to her, too. The draw of a scent match is nearly impossible to ignore, especially without you there to muddy the waters.”

I want to scoff at him, to tell him they will never, ever bond with Claudia, that they love me. But then, none of them have said those words, and there were far too many times in recent memory when they’d lingered between the two of us, torn about what omega they should go to, comfort. What if, without me there, they give in? What if…

Almost like he can feel my doubts, Swift sends a blast of love and affection to me, determination and reassurance. They aren’t leaving me here. They aren’t fucking Claudia. They aren’t bonding with her. Swift won’t let them. Ethan won’t let them. He’s a beta and not as driven by his instincts as the alphas of the pack.

I swear I hear Swift’s voice in my head. “We’re coming, Cherrybomb.” His voice drips violence and blood. I shiver at the dark promise.

Dr. Funkle grins at me, mistaking my shiver for acceptance. “Now, I’m going to just take a little more blood, and then we’ll move on to the suppressants. I do believe they’ll be more effective with the blood loss, but we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”

I scowl at him. “You can think what you want, but my mates are on their way here, to us. They are going to rip you apart for doing this to me. Do you understand? You might have taken advantage of a weak teenager who thought she was sick, but they don’t give a fuck about contracts I signed when I was eighteen. They are going to destroy you.”

His lips curl into a small, delighted smile. “My dear, they have no idea where we are. And it’s not a matter of just getting rid of me. Do you honestly think I’m the only one working on this?”

No, of course not. Making a medication that will turn betas into omegas is a freaking cash cow. Of course, he’s working for someone. A company. A pharmaceutical company, like the one I was recently let go from.

My bleary mind thinks back to when I got the job, to how my mother informed me she got me an interview there, how they hired me nearly on the spot. None of that was because of me and my abilities. It was because they were monitoring their investment.

“Apex,” I breathe.

He beams like he’s proud of me for putting it together. “Exactly. So you see, even the Falcone pack can’t stand up to Apex. They might try, but they will fail.”

My heart clenches. He might be right, but it won’t stop them from trying. It won’t stop them from fighting for me, for my revenge.

Dr. Funkle turns away from me, checking the current blood bag. “I believe that one of my colleagues has recently become acquainted with a friend of yours, a Sylvie Kinsella?” My heat thunders hard in my chest, trying to pump my too thin blood through my veins at the mention of my best friend.

“What?”

He nods. “Oh, yes, a very interesting case. Rejected by her mates at a young age before she’d even presented, suffering from RMD, and now on her way to a full recovery after reuniting with her scent matched pack. Apparently, her hormones are off the charts as she comes down from the suppressants she’s been on.”

Fuck. Sylvie. I need to warn her. I need to find her and save her and keep her from ending up like me, strapped to a chair with her blood draining out of her.

“Leave her alone,” I demand, but it’s more of a whisper, because now I’ve lost all the fight in my body.

“You aren’t listening, Sadiecakes, I’m not working with her. My colleague is.” He frowns. “Or was. I’m not sure what is going on there. I haven’t talked to her in days. You’re really putting a wrench in my plans, Sadie. If you’d just kept your head down and continued working at Apex, never went off your suppressants…”

I grit my teeth. “I should never have been on them to begin with. You stole my designation from me.”

He tsks. “We didn’t steal it. We gave it to someone else.”

My eyes flutter. “It’s the same fucking thing.”

“Language, my dear. Honestly. Hanging out with those criminals has turned you into such a heathen.”

Almost there, Swift’s voice filters through my mind.

Relief rushes through me, but I’m honestly not sure they’ll make it in time. My head is bobbing, nausea is thick in my stomach, my vision is spotty and I’m having a hard time concentrating.

Gonna tear them apart, Cherrybomb. Stay with me.

Dr. Funkle fiddles with something out of my sight. Panic strikes and I try to keep it shut down. He said he was going to give me enough suppressants to kill my designation. What if that’s what he’s doing right now?

No. No. Not when I know my pack is on the way. I refuse to let him do this to me.

“Why?” My voice is a rasp, my lips feel cracked and dry. I guess that makes sense. He’s draining all the liquid out of me. “Why would you let me leave?”

He comes back into my line of sight. “Now? Or when you were a child?”

“Either,” I say, fighting the nausea roiling in my stomach.

“Well, back then, you were already stressed enough from the constant treatments. Locking you in a facility would have increased the stress hormones in your system and we worried it might affect the tests. Letting you go home with your mother, being in your own house, in your own space, all of that was designed to keep you as comfortable as possible.”

I hate to say it, but all of that makes sense. “And now?”

He runs a knuckle down my cheek. “Now you aren’t going anywhere. At least not until you can prove that you can be a good girl for us.” Ew, gross . “If you go along with it, don’t fight, then we can see about letting you go back to your life. You’ll have to keep working at Apex, of course, but not in the capacity you were before. No, they’ll want to keep a closer eye on you. You’ve been such a troublesome girl.”

I swallow thickly. “You should just kill me.”

He looks over at me in surprise. “Why would I do that?”

My eyes narrow into slits even as black swims in my vision. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to kill you. I swear to God I will.”

He’s unfazed by my threat. In fact, if anything, he looks charmed. Like he thinks I’m adorable. He crouches down so our eyes are level. “I would never kill my greatest accomplishment, Sadie. Never. You’ve helped me discover the secrets to making omegas. You will always have a soft spot in my heart.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? To make me just be okay with all the shit you put me through? You fucking tortured me for years. I was a child, and you subjected me to unnecessary procedure after unnecessary procedure. I was in pain every single time I left your office.”

He straightens up, his palm resting on the top of my head as though he thinks his touch will soothe me. “I regret that. But it was all part of the process, my dear.”

All part of the… Of course, that’s how he would see it. I’ve never been an actual person to him, not a living being. I’ve always been an experiment, a means to an end.

Fuck him.

Fuck all of this.

Swift must feel the swell of my righteous indignation because he responds with a giddy, vicious, violent feeling. A promise of what’s coming.

Dr. Funkle frowns down at me. “You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He sighs and runs a hand over his face before tipping my head up with a finger under my chin. “Your friend, Sorrel Forbes. She’s a packless beta, isn’t she?” My stomach swoops in fear at his casual mention of my friend. Just like it had when he’d talked about Sylvie. But Sylvie at least is safe for now, being courted by the Werth pack who owns the half of the city that the Falcone pack doesn’t.

I know they won’t let anything happen to her. They have the power and the wealth to protect her.

Sorrel, though? Sorrel is alone in the world. Her parents died suddenly and tragically before she and I ever met. There’s a douchebag pack up at Lake Kilrose that seems to think she owes them something, but would they really raise a fuss if she disappeared?

I shake my head at the threat. “Please.”

“Please what, Sadie?”

I swallow thickly. “Please leave her out of this. She has nothing to do with any of this.”

“Well, now that’s where you’re wrong. She means something to you, which means I can use that to my advantage. Claudia Poole paid a lot of money to become an omega. She is within her rights to demand that we kill you. But my research is just as important. So if I have to hold your friend’s safety over your head to get you to cooperate, I will. Is that understood?”

Tears fill my eyes and flow down my cheeks. “Yes.”

His fingers caress my cheek. “Good. Now, I hate to do this, my dear, but you are putting off enough omega pheromones to alert anyone to your distress, and we’re running out of time. So it’s time to move on to the suppressants before we can move you.”

“Please, don’t.” I don’t want to go back to how I felt before. The idea of reliving the pain of the concentrated does sweeping through my body and obliterating my very make up, makes nausea swell. I don’t want to go back to being just a beta.

I want to stay an omega. Surprising to come to that realization after all my complaining about it. I want to stay with my pack. I want to have the chance to love them properly, fully. To be loved in return. I can’t handle the thought of not having them any longer.

His motions are confident. Years of practice, of doing this to me and others, taking the lead.

I want to fight. I want to buck and kick and scream and curse at him. I want to have alpha strength to break through the bonds on my wrists and throat punch this motherfucker. But I can’t. I’m too weak and I’m too drained. I’m fighting nausea and my brain is all kinds of fuzzy and my vision is wavering in and out.

Hurry, I urge Swift with as much strength as I can muster.

And as if in answer to my plea, the room shudders. Something dry and powdery rains down on me from above. Dr. Funkle curses, his movements grow more frantic, but my whole body relaxes.

A smile curves my lips. “You’re so fucked,” I mutter. “So fucked. My pack is going to tear you apart.”

For the first time since he walked into this room, he looks concerned. Genuinely worried that he might not get away with this. A gunshot, close to us, has him jumping.

He curses. “They might tear me apart, Sadie,” he murmurs. “But they’ll still be too late to save you.”

“What?” I murmur, just before I feel the pinch in my arm and the familiar painful spread of the suppressants in my veins.