Chapter 15

Chapter

Fifteen

ZANE

S afe.

It was something I had been feeling for long enough that the small room, the chains, and the pain was starting to fade into the darkness. My vision was still red, still thick with clouds, but there was a light. There was scent from a Wolf I trusted.

The blood on my hands was not this Wolf's. It was from them—from the ones who hurt me. Not his , though—the one who forced me to call him master. The voice that would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. But there was still time to make him pay—to make him bleed and beg as I crushed the life out of him.

But even in the haze of that anger, the more distance we put between the little room and where we were going, the more I started to feel like myself.

It wasn't until I woke with the Omega pressed against me that I remembered my name. Zane—an Alpha. I had no idea where we were, only that the Wolf in my arms was important. That he was to be protected. His eyes looked wrong, his scent was different, but something told me he was mine.

A sort of intense possession rose in me, and I left him curled up as I went to provide. The water was cool against my skin as my claws itched, as my gums ached. I felt like I was somewhere between life and death and had been hovering there for too long. Everything in me wanted to stretch out and change, but the beast down below was too far to reach.

And then he came. My Omega. His wolf, beautiful and black with eyes that were too knowing. His fur was soft against my skin as he let me drag fingers through it, and I thought we could stay there forever. The rest of the world was unkind. All it wanted to do was hurt us.

Then my little Omega changed, and I could smell it. His want, his need. Slick ran down his thighs, and my mouth watered with wanting him. There was a deep desperation that had been growing for years, though those memories were too far for me to reach out and touch. But I knew them. This need for him was an old friend.

His fear wasn't enough to deter me, though I didn't entirely understand it. He was afraid of my touch, but he wanted me close. It wasn't until the pain gripped him that my head began to clear, and not everything was making sense, but he was.

Orion.

My Orion. Who was not an Omega, though everything about him right then said different. But it didn't matter. And I didn't think it ever would.

Holding him against my bare skin made me feel complete. I could help him with his pain. I could make it go away. I could sink my knot into his slick heat and keep him locked to me. Nothing would ever touch him.

"Orion," I managed. Words were such a foreign concept. My head was still so full of feeling and sensation. His rising heat against me was like lightning, the cock between my legs so hard, it was almost painful. I could already feel my knot building, and it took all of my self-control not to roll him over and push in. "Please."

I heard him sob, felt him press back against me. My nose was flooded with the scent of him—of us. I was leaking against his hole, and the head of my cock caught as I gave a short thrust. He gasped, his nails turning to claws, and he tore at the cushion beneath him.

"Need you, want you. Zane, please, please fuck me."

It was all I needed. My hand pushed between our bodies, two fingers sinking into his hole. He accepted me like I always belonged there, quivering around me. He gushed more slick into the palm of my hand, and I pushed deeper until I found that spot that made him scream.

His hips fucked forward against the sofa beneath him, and I pulled away, only to take him by the waist. Pushing my cock along the crack of his ass, I watched as it grew wet and heavy. Orion let out a chest-deep whine, close to begging, but I didn't want that.

I didn't want to make him wait.

"Orion," I said again. All I knew was his name and this need to fill him which was impossible to ignore.

"Need you," he said on the edge of a whisper.

I let instinct take over. He was too tight to take me in a single thrust, and the sofa was too damn small for both of us, but I set one foot on the floor and lifted him by the hips. He moved readily, presenting to me. His scent flooded my lungs, and in that moment, all I knew was him.

The head of my cock caught on his rim, and then with a firm thrust, I was inside. He howled with pleasure, his face buried in the pillow, thrashing back and forth. It was not enough, of course. It wouldn't be enough until he was stuffed with my knot.

Reaching down, I grabbed him by the wrists and forced him to brace himself on the arm of the sofa. When his claws dug in, I lifted him higher, planted my foot hard, and then pushed home. My knot started to grow as the room filled with slick-heavy noise, and I ruined him. He was coated in sweat, and I leaned forward, dragging my tongue up his spine to taste him.

He was everything. He was perfection. He was the only Wolf I had ever wanted, and the only Wolf I ever would.

And gods— gods —he tasted like mine.

My teeth closed around the back of his neck, and as my knot began to swell, everything in me told me to bite him. My fangs started to elongate again, but just as they pricked his skin, I felt him stiffen.

"Not yet."

The words hardly made any sense, but I could feel it. He didn't want this. Pain gripped me by the heart when I realized it. He needed to be filled—he needed an Alpha, but had no choice, no say in the matter.

My knot swelled hard, locking us together just as my mind started to clear. He was sobbing beneath me, his hand moving fast on his own dick to find his release, and I emptied inside him.

Grief threatened to crush me, even as exhaustion rippled through my bones. As I came, it felt like the life was being drawn out of me and pumped into the man below, and I knew why it was wrong.

He wasn't my Omega.

He wasn't an Omega at all. I didn't know why he was in heat, or how the hell his eyes had changed, but he was suffering just like me. He was changed against his will, and I had taken his choice of mate away.

I felt sick, but it was difficult to move as I fell to the side, boneless, still locked to him. He let out a shuddering breath, and I couldn't help but draw him close. He smelled like satisfaction and his heart was calming, and I wanted to believe he was grateful it was me instead of some other Wolf.

But I doubted he'd ever forgive me once he came out of the heat.

"Orion," I whispered again.

He breathed my name out with a sigh.

I woke with the dawn, covered in the scent of the Omega in my arms. It took several moments of listening to our hearts in sync and the rise and fall of his chest for me to come awake. I couldn't remember the last time I had slept without torment—from the hands of the humans and the nightmares that followed me out of the compound.

The peace I felt with Orion pressed against me wouldn't last, but for the moment, it allowed me some semblance of my old self again. I still ached, my body more ravaged than it had ever been in battle, and I couldn't imagine a world in which I wasn't surrounded by pain. The prolonged half-shift had shredded my tendons and muscles, and the thought of shifting terrified me because I wasn't sure I could reach my wolf.

At least, not yet.

But I was whole again or close to it. I could take in a deep breath and stretch my limbs and not feel the pull of chains. We were trapped in this house, in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn't forever. I hadn't been able to understand much of what Orion had said when he first rescued me, but somehow, I knew others were on the way.

This wasn't an ending though, I knew that. It was only the beginning.

Carefully extracting myself from the Wolf beneath me, I eased off the sofa, then glanced down at him. His face was drawn, his brows furrowed, and I had the urge to reach out and stroke his cheek until he looked at me. Now, being able to think, I wanted to see the orange for myself.

I could recall my confusion when he first arrived. His scent was home and safety, but it was also wrong. It was twisted and distorted from the Wolf I had once known, and it had set me on edge until he touched me.

He had taken Danyal's serum in order to find me. It had been meant for deeper espionage, and I wondered how much of my rescue destroyed our efforts to get what we needed from DC.

Shaking myself out of those thoughts, I padded across the room, attempting to keep quiet. Orion's exhaustion was tangible, even from several feet away. I had no idea how long he'd been awake, how long he'd been fighting the surge of hormones and heat, but I knew it was draining him.

I needed to figure out my own first steps back into cognizance before Kor arrived, because I was in no condition to fight now, but I would be. I wanted to sink my claws into the human who had attempted to turn me into a mindless beast, and I wanted to feel it with my own hands as his heart stopped.

Pushing back the rage inside me, I wandered into the back bedroom and found a small pile of clothing. There was a set of sweatpants and a t-shirt, so I slung that over my shoulder, then hunted for the little phone I knew Orion had to have. It was left haphazardly on the table, and I felt a burst of irritation for his carelessness until I realized that there was no threat here. At least, not yet. Kor had been clever enough to find the one place we could hide without threat of a government knocking down our door.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before those monsters found their way across the border. This couldn't last forever, but it would give us the time we needed to gather our forces.

I slipped out the front door, taking my first breath of fresh air as myself. I had no real idea how much time had passed, how long it had been since they dragged me from the side of the road and into the van, until I turned on the phone screen and saw the date. My heart thrashed wildly in my chest as I picked up speed toward the stream.

Weeks. I had been trapped there for weeks.

My knees gave out just before I reached the bank, panic rippling through me as images of that room began to consume me. The darkness, the pain, the terror. I had lost myself—lost everything about who I was. I had tasted blood of both Wolf and human, and I had wanted more.

There had been another Wolf there with me for a while, too. I remembered the scent of him—the beat of his heart, his limbs crooked and bent like mine in the half-shift. I remembered being ordered to attack him, and I remembered the ease of doing everything they asked. I fought him, claws and flesh tearing. I remembered tasting his blood and wanting to ruin him. Maim him. Kill him.

And I remembered he fought me with the same, mindless passion.

My stomach rolled with nausea, and I crawled toward the water, letting the freezing stream shock me out of it. What I needed more than anything else was details. Information. I needed the truth of what I had done, and who had taken me, and how we were prepared to take them all down.

And more than that, I needed to know if I had killed anyone.

I felt better once I had washed the scent of Orion's heat off me, though I felt a hollow ache when the last of him was gone from my skin. The night before, all I had wanted in the world was to bite him—to mate him and bond with him. I wanted to call him mine, and even now, every one of my instincts was screaming to run back to the cabin and claim him before he could be taken away from me.

He was mine.

He had always been mine.

But I had taken something from him now that couldn't be given back. The serum was meant to help him save me and others. This—this unexpected consequence that had given him no choice in agreeing to mate an Alpha—it was not the way a love story began. It was yet one more thing I would have to find forgiveness for thanks to my feral state.

Taking a shuddering breath, I laid down on the forest floor, my hand reaching for the phone. My eyes were still a little blurry, but I could feel the last vestiges of whatever the humans had pumped in me fading with each exhale. Opening the screen, I found the only number in there, and I hit the button.

It rang three times before the rough, gravelly voice of the Head Alpha came across the line. "Orion."

"Zane," I corrected. It felt strange to say my own name. It was alien on my tongue when I had been a beast for so long.

There was a long pause, then Kor let out a sharp breath. "You're okay."

I couldn't help a small laugh as I dragged a hand down my face, then pressed fingers into my closed eyes to watch the starbursts. "I don't know if I would say that, but I'm…" Back? Aware? A person again? "I'm coming off whatever the fuck they were feeding me."

Kor let out a quiet stream of curses, and I heard him grunt, then the soft, sleepy complaint of his mate in the background. "Give me a second," he said. I could hear him murmur something to Misha, then I heard him rise and curse again when he bashed into something. After a few moments, though, it was quiet in the background. "Where's Orion?"

"He's asleep," I said. The truth hovered in the back of my throat, but I couldn't bring myself to tell Kor that I had taken him during his heat. "Shit went sideways yesterday."

I could feel the tension rise in Kor, even this far away from him. "What happened?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it, then breathed out. "I need to speak to my brother. Your number is the only one in here, so…"

"Zane," Kor said, and there was something in his voice that turned my body to ice.

"What happened?" My voice was barely a whisper, and I was too afraid to ask.

Kor's silence spoke volumes, but I waited for him to find the courage to tell me. "We think he went after you. My contact at ComTech had to raze the building so Orion could get away, but we weren't sure whether or not he made it out. Danyal…all I can assume is that he panicked and decided to try and bring you back himself."

I pressed my fingers harder into my eyes and felt a well of fury at my idiot brother. "What happened ?" I asked again.

"Honestly, I'm not sure. He left in the middle of the night without telling anyone. All we know is that they grabbed him about a hundred miles outside of Corland. Mikael was able to tap into a traffic camera. He was at a stoplight. Grabbed right out of his car." Kor's voice was flat, resigned, and I wanted to scream at him and ask him why the fuck they hadn't been tearing the country apart to find him.

"Where is he now?"

"We don't know. The moment Orion released all the files he grabbed from ComTech, they began to dismantle all the labs. The only one they couldn't move was yours," he said on a quiet breath. "Mikael went after him."

I deflated a little with some relief, though it wasn't much. Considering what I'd been through, considering what they did to me—making sure that I didn't spend a second of those long weeks without torture and pain—I couldn't fathom it happening to my brother.

Not Danyal.

It wasn't that he was an Omega, it was that he was the baby. He was the unexpected miracle that arrived just months before our father was killed by a bomb. It had become my job after that to protect him, to save him.

Closing my eyes, I reached across the bond, searching for him. He was there—the connection was weak from the distance, just like my link to Talia, but he was alive. And more than that, as far as I could tell, he wasn't in pain. He wasn't suffering. I wasn't sure what the hell was happening, but it meant we had time.

I had failed in the worst way imaginable, but it wasn't over.

"We'll get him back," Kor said gruffly.

I pushed up to sit, reaching for the clothes, and I pinned the phone between my ear and shoulder as I struggled into the sweats. "What happened when Orion got to the city? How much do we know?"

"Everything," Kor said, and that single word had me freezing with my shirt halfway on.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," Kor said, "he was able to download almost the entire ComTech database, which contained the location of the labs, their bases, the log of humans and Wolves they've taken. And before he left, Mikael was certain that a lot of the coded information we got were the experiments they were running."

I blinked, surprised at how much was done in such a short mission. "How far are you in decoding?"

"That got complicated," Kor said, regret in his tone. "Most of us here were trained for war. Physical war. My contact at ComTech was an Omega Wolf who had to go into hiding. I have a scheduled meeting with her, but she's got a target on her back, and not just by the humans."

I knew that. There had been enough Wolf scent around that compound to know that we were in bed with more than just the enemy. We were married, bonded, creating a family of corruption that stretched from top to bottom.

"She has everything we need, but it's going to take time for her to finish it all."

I took in a breath, then nodded. "I get it. Look, why don't Orion and I hit the road and meet you…"

"No," Kor barked, and my jaw snapped shut against my will. "I know for a fact you have more healing to do, and your faces will be everywhere. You can't move."

I backed up until I hit a tree, then braced myself on it as my legs started to feel weak. He was asking me to stay here? With the Wolf I had just…taken? And the gods help me if Orion went into heat again.

"I can't," I told him flatly.

Kor scoffed. "You can and you goddamn will. I didn't just risk and lose lives for you to get caught again."

I was hit with a small surge of guilt, though it didn't change the fact that my point stood. I couldn't stay here. "You don't understand."

"I do. What you just went through…"

"It's not that," I told him quickly, though I regretted it instantly. It would have been easier to let him think the reason I couldn't stay was trauma, but I had never been able to lie effectively. Not when it counted. "Orion went into heat."

Kor sucked in a breath. "Shit. Tell him to get off the fucking serum."

My brow furrowed. It seemed like a logical solution, but it seemed illogical that Orion wouldn't have done that the moment he left DC. "I don't know if he's still on it."

Kor was quiet for a long moment. "Are his eyes still changed?"

"Yeah," I said. At least, they had been the last time I had seen him, when I was thrusting into his ass, knotting him full and filling him with my seed.

"Fuck," Kor whispered, then said it again louder. "How bad is the heat? Are you with him right now? Jesus, he's gonna send you into a rut…"

"I'm outside the cabin," I told him, not willing to voice the rest. "I'd be more help if I could join in the search for Danyal."

"You know why you can't do that," Kor answered softly. "Look just…ride it out as best you can. Orion trusts you more than any other Wolf besides me."

That felt like a dagger to my heart, and I bowed my head on a burst of pain. "I know."

"He'll trust you to get him through this. And the moment I hear from Nadya, I will be in touch. Just…stay safe."

I ended the call with nothing else to say, because what else could I do besides confess the greatest sin I had ever committed?