by Nora Ash
There probably wasn’t any reason to tonight, either, I told myself as I walked along the empty corridors long after everyone else had gone home for the night. But despite the urge to turn around, go back to my work station, and—ideally—forget all about what I’d witnessed earlier today, I kept walking.
I needed to see that she was all right before I’d be able to sleep tonight for the guilt gnawing at my gut.
The female subjects were kept in a long cell block on the eastern side of the facility. They were locked in individual cells along a narrow hallway, but unlike the males, they weren’t separated from each other by thick concrete walls. They each had an area that was shielded from their fellow inmates, where a mattress and restroom facilities were located, but the rest of each small cell was only separated from their immediate neighbors by bars.
I found the female subject—A642, as the paperwork attached to the cell door revealed—curled up on her mattress, which had been dragged over to the bars between her cell and her neighbor to the left. The woman on the other side of the bars was stroking her still-messy hair and mumbling soothingly. She quieted when I stopped in front of the cell, shooting me a disgusted look.
“Is she all right?” I asked when A642 didn’t so much as move to acknowledge my presence.
“What do you care?” her neighbor spat.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. What did I care—beyond making myself feel better? If she was okay—which so far not much pointed toward—then what? Could I really just be on my merry way, content in the knowledge that what I’d witnessed would happen to all of these women?
“I brought this,” I said, holding out a pack of ice wrapped in a towel. “For the…” No delicate way of saying it. “The swelling.”
A642’s neighbor begrudgingly accepted the offering. Once in her hand, she nudged gently at the curled-up woman. “Hey. Gloria. Take this. It’s for your pussy. It’ll make it feel better.”
I fought back a blush at the inmate’s candid language. We were so far past embarrassment over frank word choices.
I sat down on the concrete floor by the separation between the two women’s cells as Gloria sluggishly pushed the ice pack between her legs before curling back up again. But this time, she was looking at me from underneath her tangled hair.
Her dark eyes were red from crying, and I couldn’t blame her for the accusation I saw burning behind the dull look of despair.
“I saw you there. You are one of them,” she said, her voice not much more than a hoarse croak. “What do you want?”
“I… came to see how you were doing,” I said.
“How do you think I’m doing?” she spat. “How would you feel after being locked up and forced into heat for five days with no release? Or after having some feral beast of a man mate you like a bitch? You people are monsters.”
“I thought you volunteered for this study,” I said. Even to my own ears, it sounded like the worst attempt at excusing what was inexcusable.
Gloria muttered something in Spanish and didn’t answer.
“We do,” her neighbor said. “We were told we can knock up to ten years off our sentence if we participate in this study. Let an alpha fuck us now and then—maybe even meet a nice one who’ll provide for us once we’re released. They never said what they’d be like. They never said what they did to them.” She visibly shuddered and pulled her legs up so she could curl in on herself. “They treat us like we’re nothing more than lab rats. You treat us like lab rats.”
I couldn’t blame her. I was pretty sure if I’d been tied up at that breeding post and at the mercy of one of the feral alphas, I’d want to curl up and hide, too.
“I didn’t know,” I said, hating myself for sounding like such a sad apologist. “Today was… it was the first time I saw what… what happens here.”
“You’re new,” Gloria said dully. “You’ll get used to it, or you’ll disappear.”
“I won’t.” I shook my head, determination welling up in my chest. “I’ll go to the press, if I have to.”
The neighbor woman snorted. “The press? You think anyone gives a shit about criminals being treated like breeding stock? This isn’t Mattenburg. No one cares.”
“I care,” I said, wrapping my fingers around the bars separating me from the two women inside. “I’ll help you. This isn’t right.”
Gloria shook her head. “Don’t. No one here will take your help. The alternative is being sent back to prison, and believe me—it’s not better than here.”
“Really?” I blinked. It wasn’t that the prison system had the best reputation, but I’d kind of assumed it would beat being hauled in to mate with feral alphas whenever the doctors saw fit.
Gloria’s neighbor shrugged. “At least there’s always enough food. And for ten years, I’ll take a lot of knots. Even if it’s in front of Dr. Pervert and his team. If anyone would take your help, it’d be the alphas.”
“They have even more to lose,” I said, dropping my gaze when 351’s haunting eyes flickered before my mind’s eye. “If I intervene, they’ll go back on death row.”
The woman shrugged before returning her attention to Gloria. “Seems to me they’re already dead. Nothing human left in them, anyway. If it were me, I’d rather the needle.”
6
Some of the alphas were sleeping when I entered the lab, but my footfalls as I passed their cages woke them. The sound of shifting bodies followed me as they raised their heads to follow, a wariness in their eyes that spoke of broken humanity.
From what the women had seen of them, I could understand why they’d think there was nothing remotely human left in these men. They were little more than savages during the day, when the drugs they were given were at their most potent. But later…
I remembered 351’s gravelly voice as he rasped out the word key.
They were still human, behind the serum. And though they belonged on death row, it didn’t mean they should be treated like animals. The women might see this facility as the lesser of two evils, as much as they hated it, but the alphas might not. Even if death was their only alternative, maybe some of them would still rather die with dignity than be forced to act like mindless beasts.
That was the mantra I kept repeating in my head over and over as I walked to the very last cage. As much as being around these men set every instinct in my body on edge, I still had a professional duty to ensure their humane treatment.
351 didn’t move when I stopped in front of his cell, but I could feel his eyes on me from the shadows by the far wall.
“Hey,” I whispered. “It’s… it’s me.” I don’t know why I thought adding that in would do any good, but I didn’t know what else to say. How did you break the ice with a feral alpha you’d so far only met under less than ideal circumstances?
Movement from within made me bite my lip, but the knot of tension in my stomach turned to icy horror when the alpha came to the front of the cage and I could finally see his face.
His lip was split and there was a gash of dried blood across one prominent cheekbone. Bruises marred his strong body, visible even in the low light, and when he wrapped his hands around the bars, I could see scrapes along his knuckles.
“What happened to you?” I gasped, too horrified to remember to keep a safe amount of space between myself and the bars. I closed the distance to the cell to gently trace the wounds on his hands. They looked defensive.
The alpha didn’t respond, but when I reached up to inspect the damage to his face, he closed his eyes and pressed his head against the bars, giving me easier access.
Someone had beaten him. I didn’t know if they’d let another test subject at him or if the guards had hurt him, but the truth was too obvious to ignore. They’d done this to punish him for his unwillingness to cooperate in the breeding room.
“They’re monsters.”
It was only when he opened those piercing blue-green eyes to look at me I realized I’d spoken out loud.
“I�
�m so sorry.”
351 unwrapped his hand from the bars and reached out toward me. I flinched on instinct, but he only stroked his abused fingers clumsily over my arm. Trying to comfort me.
I set my jaw as I looked at him, grim determination settling in deep in my gut. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
The good thing about working in a lab as well-stocked as this was that finding rubbing alcohol and ointments was a breeze. I was back at 351’s cell within five minutes, arms full of medical supplies, and saw him waiting for me by the bars.
“Sit with me,” I said as I sank down to the floor in front of his cell, scooting close enough to reach him with ease.
He obeyed slowly, eying the bottles I’d brought with caution.
“It’s to clean your wounds,” I explained, trying to ignore the twinge in my chest when I realized why he was so wary of a woman in a lab coat bringing medical supplies to his cage. “Rubbing alcohol and some ointment for your bruises, nothing else.” I held up the two containers for him to see.
He still didn’t look entirely trusting of the bottles, but when I poured some of the alcohol on a piece of cotton, he let me dab it on his skin. It had to have hurt, but he didn’t so much as flinch as I cleaned every laceration I could see. When I was done with his face and the scrapes on his knuckles, I placed the used piece of cotton in the discarded pile next to the ointment. “Do you have any more cuts or scrapes? Or can we continue with the bruises?”
He was still for a moment, staring at me with obvious hesitance. But after a few moments, he twisted around, turning his back to me. His heavy muscles flexed and bulged, tensed and ready for violence, but he still turned. For a short moment I didn’t know if I was more shocked or awed that he trusted me enough to have his back turned to me… but then I saw them.
Several long, red gashes of broken skin marred the middle of his back. Tell-tale wounds from a lash. He’d been whipped. Brutally.
“Who did this?” The anger in my voice manifested in my hands as well. I had to take several deep breaths before I could steady them enough to apply the rubbing alcohol to the deep lacerations.
He still didn’t move under my careful touches, but I could feel the tension in his hard muscles as I gently brushed my free hand against his unbroken skin. I didn’t think about it—it was an instinctual urge to soothe the pain laid bare in front of me, despite his silent endurance. His skin was warm and surprisingly soft underneath my fingers. I kept them there while I dabbed cleaning solution in his deep lash marks, mumbling soothingly when his muscles twinged with the pain. It took far too long to clean them all, shaking as my hands were, but he sat patiently through it until I finally put the bottle of rubbing alcohol down.
“If you turn back around, I’ll take care of the bruises,” I said, my voice hoarse with barely restrained emotion. The tears that had been threatening to escape ever since I saw his damaged back stung in my eyes. I wasn’t sure why seeing the alpha like this hurt so much. The shock of realizing exactly how ruthless Dr. Axell truly was was a shock, but this… it felt so… personal, somehow. Like I was the one he’d had beaten, not a criminal alpha on death row.
351 turned around to face me once more, and the look in his eyes made me lower mine as something warm and confusing pressed against the inside of my chest. There was so much tenderness in his blue-green gaze. It felt… so intimate, like he… knew me somehow.
Fumbling, I reached for the lotion meant for bruises. It was ridiculous, of course. I may have empathy for what had happened to him, perhaps even on a personal level and not just professional, but there was no reason to start reading anything more into it. And this man… He was deep in his instincts. Of course he would see a young woman caring for his wounds as an intimate gesture and react appropriately. It didn’t mean I had any excuse to lose my damn mind. I had a job to do.
Biting the inside of my cheek to steel myself, I looked back up at him, focusing on his bruises instead of the look in his eyes as I poured lotion on a fresh piece of cotton and reached in through the bars to dab it on his discolored skin.
It was a quicker job than caring for his scrapes and cuts, and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief when I could finally put the used bit of cotton in the discarded pile with the others and screw the lid back on the bottle of lotion. But before I could stand up, the feral alpha reached a hand through the bars—slowly, as to not startle me—and brushed his warm, scraped fingers against my cheek.
“Thank you.” His voice was rough, and the hesitant way his soft lips formed around the words spoke of how infrequently he used it.
I couldn’t help the rush of warmth and pity and anger that coursed through my veins as I felt his gentle caress and looked back up at him. I could see him—the man behind the feral beast, struggling to break through the haze from the chemicals they’d given him. His lips parted, to say more I realized, but he couldn’t find the words. Frustrated, he growled and pulled his hand from my face, clenching it around one of the bars.
That’s when I knew, with unequivocal certainty, that I had to save him, no matter the cost.
7
It was four days before the handheld RFID copier I’d ordered off eBay was delivered to my home address, but it gave me enough time to prepare my plan.
It was simple, in the end. I’d bought clothes and a lab coat in a size I thought would fit a man of 351’s stature and kept them in my locker at work. The security team was used to me leaving late and didn’t give me any second glances. As long as the feral alpha could pass for just another researcher who happened to leave at the same time as me, he could be swiped out on my card and hopefully shouldn’t draw any attention.
The only pinch point was in getting him out of his cell. That’s where the RFID copier came in play.
I spent the day after my eBay delivery trailing after Dr. Urwin and Dr. Axell—the only two people on our team I was sure had access to the cells. Just before lunch I saw Dr. Urwin put down his card by the coffeemaker while he had his lunch at the break room table along with Dr. Axell, Dr. Miller, and Kenneth, the main lab assistant.
My heart rate spiked at the sight of the unguarded card, and I covertly glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one was looking this way. Thankfully, they were all deeply engrossed in conversation about what sounded like the potential to control the alpha who’d mounted the woman in front of me earlier in the week if she conceived his child.
I suppressed a shudder at the thought of using an innocent baby like that and turned my attention back to the card.
Careful to keep my body between the men at the table and the coffee counter, I slipped my card copier out of my handbag and snatched the card up under the guise of grabbing a mug.
The process took less than two seconds. Very anti-climactic. Which didn’t stop me from elbowing the coffeepot and sending it flying to the floor with a loud bang when Dr. Urwin said, “Miss Dorne?”
“Oh, goddammit!” I groaned. Thankfully the pot didn’t shatter. “Sorry! Having a clumsy day here.” I shot the table my best “frazzled female” smile and bent for the pot.
“Happens to us all,” Dr. Urwin chuckled. “You all right?”
“Uh-huh.” I picked up the coffee pot and gave it a little shake. “And so’s our friend here. Can’t have a research team with no caffeine supply.”
“True,” Dr. Urwin said, a wide grin on his lips. “Once you’ve gotten your food and coffee, come over. We’re discussing a potential new plan for our alpha problem and would love your input. I reckon a naturally produced child will bind an alpha almost as tightly as a mate, but Dr. Axell says otherwise.”
* * *
The only thing the discussion about whether or not using a child against one of the imprisoned alphas did was strengthen my resolve to get 351 out as soon as possible. It was my hope that, once he was out, I would be able to somehow use his testimony to uncover what horrors SilverCorp committed in the government’s name. If he ever regained his full humanity again.
I knew he w
as able to speak a few words at night, when the drug they used on the alphas wore off a little, but I had no way of knowing the long-term effects. It seemed Dr. Axell and his team hadn’t been too bothered, seeing as all their male test subjects were on death row anyway.
Hopefully 351 would be able to find enough words to help me convince one of the big news networks to spread the word of the abuse going on in this lab.
It seemed like forever before the clock on my computer finally showed five o'clock, marking the time where most of the team went home. I waited two hours longer before I grabbed my clipboard and a pen and started down the hallway. Under the guise of needing to check up on numbers, I walked through the entire ground floor of the facility, ensuring no one was there except me, the locked up women, and the alphas.
Thankfully, it seemed no one else had decided to work overtime today. If I wanted to break 351 out, now was the time.
With my heart pounding in my throat, I hurried to my locker and got the bag of men's clothing out. I double checked my newly made copy of David’s swipe card was safe in my handbag, took a deep breath—and made my way back to the lab.
The alphas looked up at my arrival, a couple of them getting to their feet to pace, but most of them ignored me after they saw who I was. Clearly, after I’d been down here enough times that they’d gotten used to my scent, they’d all written me off as a non-threat.
351, however, got to his feet and walked to the front of his cell when he saw me, a pleased look on his handsome face.
“Hey,” I said as I stopped in front of his cage.
He didn’t answer, but he did reach one hand out between the bars, palm up. A clear encouragement for me to put my hand in his.
I bit my lip, fighting back the flush of heat in my cheeks at the gesture. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was just being friendly, or if me tending to him earlier in the week had given him some unfortunate ideas about my intentions.