by Merel Pierce
***
Nurses had come immediately after Nikolai left, murmuring softly to one another about what an awful brute he was as they tended to the wounded female he’d left behind. Overwrought and numb, December allowed them to work without protest. When the enforcer barked a reminder for the women to do nothing other than clean and bandage the injury, the females growled protectively and told him to mind his business unless he had a medical degree.
The women helped her up from the bed once they were finished, one nurse wrapping her arm around December’s shoulder and holding her hand while the other changed her bedding.
They attempted to banish the remaining alpha from the room when it was time to change the omega’s blood-stained gown. The male bristled in annoyance at being told what to do. When the ensuing argument made her cry, the angry man relented briefly.
By the time she was back in bed, December realized dismally how very much like a doll she had become. Lifeless, constantly being manipulated by the people around her. When the nurse asked if she’d like something to help her sleep, she’d nodded mutely. She didn’t want to feel any more tonight. At the insistence of the surly alpha in the doorway, the nurses left her then. December curled up on her side, staring blankly at the wall.
Her life was over. Any chance of recovering from this tragedy and escaping with her baby had all but evaporated. The male had marked her out of some twisted and unexpected sense of guilt, obviously knowing he was responsible for her suffering and the suffering she would continue to experience once he severed the bond of his enemy.
It seemed unreal. The shock of what he’d done was only made worse by the fact that she was so devastated by his betrayal of trust. Trust that she hadn’t even realized she’d bestowed upon the man until the moment he’d broken it.
In her chest, next to the prickling discomfort of one alpha’s bond, another influence unfurled. It was like a wide silk ribbon, warm and sleek against her insides. It curled around the parts of her that ached the most, pressing and stroking reassurances as it wove its way through her body and began to exert the same influence that the purr of its owner did when by her side.
“No.”
It was whispered softly to herself, that single word of protest. In answer, the bond vibrated with honest intentions, imploring and gentle as it tried to caress and soothe.
“I didn’t want this. I didn’t want any of this.” She choked softly, tears tumbling from the corner of her eye as she clutched at her heart, confused by the myriad of emotions that were jockeying for a position of dominance in her mind. She felt his understanding, his regret. Though more faint, she could sense his hope as well. A promise. Her eyes grew heavy, and all she could project as she gave in to the drug-induced slumber was despair.
***
He’d only been waiting across the street from the shithole apartment for about an hour when an SUV deposited the man he was looking for on the sidewalk out front. From his place downwind in a darkened alley he watched as the passenger exchanged words with the driver, glanced up and down the street warily, then waved him on. As the vehicle pulled away the man turned and trotted up the stairs to the front door, giving the street one final look before slipping into the lobby of the building.
He waited a few moments to allow the man time to get upstairs before he crossed the street and followed the path his quarry had taken into the building. He closed the door silently behind him, pausing to listen to the echo of footsteps two floors above on the uncarpeted landing. Soon after the sound of keys jingled, and a door being opened and closed alerted him to the fact that it was safe to move.
He sneered as he crossed the dark, dingy lobby at a measured pace. His prey had thought to hide in slums, hoping to avoid those who were hunting him by staying far away from his own home. If he hadn’t have known the man so well, they might not have found him. But Sergei was nothing if not predictably arrogant, and the first place they looked was the last place their target assumed they would. It was careless, choosing the same neighborhood your drug dealer lived for your hideout. It hadn’t taken long to ferret out the needed information.
The level of stealth with which he traversed the space and started his ascent would have surprised most, given his size. Like a panther on the prowl he padded cautiously up the staircase, shoulder to the wall and eyes alternating between the floors beneath and the floors above, careful movements allowing him to withdraw the gun holstered under his suit jacket as he continued towards his goal.
He kept his steps towards the outside edges of the stairs, lessening the chance of creaking boards betraying his pending arrival as he approached the third-floor. The door he was looking for was the first on his side of the landing, not ten feet away from the staircase. He paused half a dozen steps from top, eyes and weapon trained on the door as his free hand withdrew his phone from his pocket. Muscle memory allowed him to press the play button on the recording that had been paused at the ready, never once looking away from the door as he did so.
The sound of angry cats yowling filled the hall, growls and screeches echoing off the walls of the upper floor. Shielded from view of the peep holes on the opposite side of the hall by the enclosed staircase, he waited. The awful sounds continued to fill the space, earning aggravated shouts and an occasional banging on the wall from the residents on the floor.
Several minutes ticked by with no movement. No one cared enough to open their door at this time of night in such a shitty neighborhood, but finally, it seemed that the one resident whose attention he most desired couldn’t stand the racket any longer. The door at the top of the stairs swung in, accompanied by a rash of curses about “murdering you worthless fuckers” from the blonde-haired alpha who stepped halfway over the threshold and looked to his right. The phone wielder paused the recording and slipped the phone back into his pocket as the other man’s head swiveled his direction. He smiled at the blonde alpha coldly when the man’s eyes grew wide with recognition and fear. “Shit.”
Nikolai fired twice before Sergei had a chance to fall back, crying out in pain as he stumbled against the door and bounced off a wall in the apartment as he scrambled to get away. The dark-haired male had already cleared the last of the stairs and forced his way into the apartment of his retreating prey, who had been more worried about clamoring for his own gun than shutting out his attacker. After all, they both knew that slab of wood wouldn’t stop him from getting in.
Sergei had nearly made it to his destination when Nikolai shot him again, unbothered by the fact that the man was running away. The mass of alpha went down, crushing the cheap coffee table beneath him as he collapsed in a heap on the floor. Weapon still raised, Nikolai approached, nudging the man in the side with his foot. He groaned but didn’t move.
The standing alpha used that same foot to push his victim onto his back, cocking his head as he gazed down at the blood bubbling out of the corner of the man’s mouth. When Sergei’s eyes rolled towards him, he smirked. “You should have known better, my friend.” Nikolai told him in a dispassionate tone. “Now you do, eh?” As much as he wanted to torture him, to make him feel the things his omega had, he would have to forego that particular pleasure this time. Not knowing exactly how the severed bond would affect her, he couldn’t take the chance on drawing it out. He shrugged, lifting the weapon to fire a final bullet between the man’s eyes.
He left him where he was, not bothering to close the door or shield his face against the prying eyes of any residents across the hall who might have been brave enough to look out through their peepholes as he passed. Once he was out of the building and back in his own vehicle, he took out his phone and dialed his colleague.
“Hello?”
“It’s done.”
“Yeah, I know. I can tell. You better get back here, now.” The combination of the wailing female in the background and the concern he heard in his enforcer’s voice made the hair on the back of his neck prickle unpleasantly. Now that the adrenaline had begun to fade, he could indeed
feel the urgency of the situation for himself.
There in his chest, a knot had formed around the freshly cemented pair bond. It pulsed an ugly, agonal rhythm, sending glass like shards of pain through his lungs and constricting his heart. Dread filled the alpha as he put his vehicle into gear and whipped out onto the road. As he rushed for the hospital, he could only hope he hadn’t done something he’d regret.
***
December groaned, pressing the heels of her hands against her temples as the rush of adrenaline that accompanied her dream thumped through her brain and made her ears rush with a tumult of noise. When the racket faded enough that she could hear, she opened her eyes and turned her attention towards where Nikolai’s enforcer stood in darkness at the corner of her room.
“How long has he been gone?” She slurred, the effects of the medication she’d been given earlier still lingering enough to impede her speech.
“Two hours.”
Fear dropped into the pit of her stomach like a frozen brick. “Call for the doctor.” December demanded breathlessly. “I think I’m going to need her soon.”
Chapter 22
He hadn’t been long, but when he called Donovan to tell him he was on the way, the situation seemed to have taken a turn for the worse.
By the time Nikolai returned to the hospital, he was genuinely concerned about the decision he’d made. It had only taken 20 minutes to get back to her, but their newly formed connection had been strained by his absence and the severing of Sergei’s bond.
The multiple, dainty harp-like threads of the female’s bond had been pulled taunt, vibrating with tension and stress as if they might snap. He felt her agony, her fear, the raging anger and despair that followed the decimated bond that he’d ended with a bullet.
He could smell her suffering the moment the elevator panels parted on her floor. He took short, shallow breaths, struggling to gain control of his mounting panic as the scent grew more pungent the closer he came to her room. Whatever happened, it had soured the air on this floor so badly that patients and staff alike were on edge, and all the air sanitizer in the world couldn’t erase the stamp of the omega’s misery.
He’d scented the same misery once before, when he’d found her in the warehouse after she’d murdered Riktor. More intimately connected to her now than he had been before, the sensations were acute and disquieting.
As he paused in the open doorway of her room, all activity inside ceased. Time was momentarily frozen as the nurses, doctor, and his enforcer all turned to regard him in somber silence. His eyes lit briefly on the older alpha, concerned by the almost sympathetic look on the man’s face.
Before Nikolai had a chance to speak, the beta doctor came forward. Her jaw setting angrily as she put a hand up to block his path. Nikolai snarled at the smaller female, his worried gaze darted to the motionless omega nearby. Unlike before, this time the doctor didn’t submit to his aggression. She pressed her palm to his chest, a less than subtle suggestion that he back up. He refused to spare her a second glance, his eyes trained unwaveringly on the female in the bed.
“I need to speak to you, outside. Now!”
He bristled but allowed himself to be backed out of the room, too concerned with the little female’s condition to argue. When the doctor closed the door behind them, he sidestepped to keep the omega in his line of sight through the viewing window in the hall.
“When I advised you not to do anything rash, this was exactly the sort of thing I was talking about!” She hissed. The female stepped closer, jabbing at him accusingly with the edge of the clipboard in her hand. Nikolai’s eyes briefly darted her direction, annoyed by the distraction.
“It was for the best.”
“How could this possibly be for the best?” She demanded. “You know she intended to keep the baby, even if she weren’t already traumatized, why would you mark her?”
This time when she poked at him with the clipboard, he reached out and snatched hold of the woman’s wrist. His grip tightened as he leveled her with a heated gaze. “She is mine, that is why.” The woman’s brow pinched in discomfort, and she attempted to jerk her arm free of his grasp.
“You couldn’t have waited until she was more stable?” She dared bravely. “You should have waited!”
“If I had waited, he would have gotten away.” Nikolai seethed, now clutching the doctor’s arm so tightly that she drew in a sharp breath from pain. “And if you continue to question my motives instead of telling me about my omega’s condition, I will break your fucking wrist.” His eyes narrowed on the female coldly. “Tell me!”
Tears glistened in the woman’s eyes, her chin quivering subtly as she squared her shoulders and glared back at him defiantly. “We’ve sedated her for now. We won’t know her mental condition for certain until she’s been assessed,” she spat. “Between re-traumatizing a victim of rape and forced bonding just days after her nightmare ended, and severing that second pair bond, it was just too much.” She pulled back on her arm again, and this time Nikolai released her.
She rubbed her wrist as she continued to glare up at him. “December is strong. But everyone has a limit, for Christ’s sake, and you pushed her past hers tonight. Whatever damage she’s suffered now, it’s on you!” She craned her neck, looking over her shoulder to follow the path his eyes had taken towards the girl on the hospital bed in the room behind them.
“You may be a criminal, Mr. Petrovski, but even you must know women shouldn’t be treated this way.” She murmured in a hushed voice, mindful that others nearby had stopped to watch the tense conversation. “If you care about your omega at all, you’ll start listening to our recommendations.” She shot him one final, disgusted look. “If it were up to me, I’d make sure you never set foot in the same room as that poor girl again. But it isn’t, and I can’t. So, let’s just try to focus on doing whatever it takes to help her now.”
Nikolai’s furious growl was tamped by the distraction of the door opening behind her. Donovan appeared, and the doctor wisely took the opportunity to put distance between herself and the angry male by slipping into his omega’s room to converse with the nurses.
“You want me to kill her?”
He slid a narrowed-eyed glance towards his enforcer, not amused in the slightest. Donovan shrugged a shoulder and leaned back against the wall between the window and door, folding his arms over his chest casually.
“She said they had to sedate her.”
The older man nodded. “She seemed to feel it coming, strangely enough. Asked me to get the doctor before she lost it. No other way to put it really.” Nikolai winced, and couldn’t help recalling what Ortega had said about the girl’s uncanny timing.
“What happened, exactly?”
“They gave her something to help her sleep after you left. A few hours later she woke up breathing hard and asked me how long you’d been gone. I told her, and that’s when she had me get the doctor. She didn’t tell me why, just said she thought she was going to need her.” The older man said evenly, recounting the details with a level of indifference that Nikolai wished he had the ability to obtain in that moment. Alas, he could not.
“It looked something like a panic attack at first. The rapid breathing, restlessness, that crazed sort of flighty look people get.” Donovan volunteered. “Then when it got worse, it was like.” The man paused, searching for the right words. “It was like she was in pain, somehow? Crying and retching, sobbing. Just kept saying ‘It hurts!’, and ‘why did he do this to me?’. That’s when the doctor sedated her.”
Nikolai sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing uselessly as he tried to banish the tension building there. “Perhaps the doctor is right. Perhaps we should have jailed him and waited to execute until she was stronger.” Doubting his own actions wasn’t something he was accustomed to, and the uncertainty was eating at him like acid in his throat.
The older man clapped a hand against his shoulder meaningfully. “That’s not
how we do things, Nik,” he reminded him, his tone decidedly gentler than a moment before. “What’s done is done, yeah? Can’t change it now. All we can do is move forward.” He pulled away from the wall, squeezing Nikolai’s shoulder briefly. “You got a lot of work ahead of you, Nik. I hope it ends up being worth it.”
He grunted, unable to formulate a response that didn’t involve snarling or cursing. The older man was right, of course. That didn’t make it any easier to accept while he was staring helplessly at the wounded female nearby. His mate now, whose misery he was wholly responsible for.
“I’ll check in with you later.” With that, the other man departed, leaving the brooding alpha where he stood. It wasn’t until the doctor and nurses seemed to be finishing up what they were doing that he finally entered December’s room, silently crossing the floor to take up his former seat at her side without sparing the women nearby so much as a glance. The nurses slunk nervously from the room, whispering in disapproving tones.
The girl was lying on her side, her knees drawn up near her chest beneath the blankets. Even sedated, her expression was knit with discomfort. With a sigh, he drew his chair nearer to the bed. He brushed the hair back from her forehead gently, beginning to purr when the corner of her mouth turned down unhappily in her sleep. “Oh, little wolf.” he murmured, disheartened by how defeated the little creature seemed.
“I’ll have the pair bond psychologist come by first thing in the morning to assess her condition,” the doctor said tersely. Expression dark, he allowed his gaze to slide briefly her direction. She stood by, continuing to look dour. It was fairly obvious she didn’t want to leave them alone together.
“That will be fine.” He redirected his attention and cooed sweetly when the omega shifted and whimpered. “You may go. I assure you, she will come to no further harm.” Reluctantly, the doctor allowed his dismissal to stand. Nikolai listened idly to the sound of her retreat, leaning nearer to the sleeping girl when the door finally shut and left them alone.