No. No, no, no. They weren't my pack. They were my captors. My tormentors. The men who had stolen me, claimed me, locked me in a concrete box to teach me a lesson.
My body didn't care about distinctions. Didn't understand the difference between chosen and forced. All it knew was that I was alone, that I was cold, that I was going into heat with no one to help me through it. I curled tighter into myself, pressing my thighs together against the growing ache, biting my lip to keep from crying out. The darkness was total. The cold was relentless. And somewhere deep inside me, something was building that I couldn't stop.
I didn't know how many hours had passed. Five? Eight? Ten? The darkness had swallowed time along with everything else. All I knew was that I was shaking, and it wasn't just from the cold anymore.
I was shaking because I wanted them. Because my body was screaming for them. Because every cell in my being was crying out for the men who had put me here, demanding their touch, their presence, their claim. I was shaking because I was starting to break.
The worst part, the absolute worst part, was that some small, treacherous piece of me was relieved. Because breaking meant they would come for me. And God help me, I wanted them to come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MASON
Twelve hours.
I'd watched the clock the entire time, unable to focus on anything else. Every minute felt like an hour. Every hour felt like a lifetime. Through the bond, I could feel her, distant and muffled by the concrete and steel, but still there. Still suffering.
Still ours.
"It's time," Ethan said from his monitoring station, his green eyes fixed on the screens that showed her vital signs. His voice was calm, but I'd known him long enough to see the tension in his shoulders, the tightness around his mouth. "Her temperature has been elevated for the past six hours. Heart rate increased. Hormonal markers consistent with early pre-heat."
"Pre-heat?" I moved to stand behind him, staring at the data on the screen. Numbers and graphs that translated into our Omega, alone in the dark, her body betraying her. "Her cycle isn't due for weeks."
"Stress accelerates it," Ethan replied, pulling off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I theorized this mighthappen, but the speed of onset is remarkable. She's progressing faster than any case study I've reviewed."
"Is she in danger?" Caleb asked from the corner where he'd been sitting for the past twelve hours, refusing to leave, his ice-blue eyes fixed on the thermal image of Ava's curled form.
"Not yet," Ethan assured him, replacing his glasses and turning to face us. "But if we leave her much longer, the combination of isolation and accelerating heat could cause genuine psychological damage. The correction has served its purpose. It's time to move to the next phase."
I didn't wait for further discussion. I was already moving toward the door, my footsteps quick on the hardwood floor. Behind me, I heard the others following, Caleb's heavy tread, Leo's lighter steps, Ethan bringing up the rear.
The basement stairs stretched downward into darkness, and I took them two at a time, my heart pounding with something that felt too much like fear. She was ours. She was suffering. And even though we'd chosen this, even though it was necessary, some part of me hated every second she spent in that room. The steel door loomed at the end of the hallway, solid and unforgiving. I pressed my thumb to the scanner, heard the beep of recognition, felt the lock disengage.
I opened the door.
The smell hit me first. Omega in distress, sharp and sweet and desperate, layered with the unmistakable musk of approaching heat. It cut through the cold air like a blade, making my Alpha instincts surge forward, demanding I protect, claim, possess. I forced them down and stepped inside.
The room was dark, the single bulb still off, but light from the hallway spilled across the threshold, illuminating the small space. The thin mattress. The untouched water bottle. The bucket in the corner.
And Ava.
She was curled on the mattress, her body a tight ball of misery, shaking so hard I could see it from the doorway. Her red hair was tangled and wild, spread across the thin fabric like blood on snow. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, but her cheeks were flushed with fever heat. She didn't look up when the door opened. Didn't react to the light or the sound or my presence. Just lay there, trembling, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes squeezed shut.
"Ava," I said softly, crouching at the edge of the mattress, keeping my voice gentle despite the turmoil raging inside me. "It's over. You can come out now."
She flinched at the sound of my voice, a full-body shudder that made my chest ache. Slowly, painfully, she uncurled enough to look at me, her green eyes huge in her pale face, pupils dilated, rimmed with red from crying.
"Mason?" Ava whispered, her voice hoarse and cracked, barely recognizable. She blinked at me like she wasn't sure I was real, like I might be a hallucination conjured by twelve hours of darkness and cold.
"I'm here," I confirmed, reaching out to brush a strand of hair from her face. Her skin was hot beneath my fingers, fever-warm despite the chill of the room. "It's over. Come on."
She didn't move. Just stared at me with those huge, lost eyes, her body still shaking, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
"I can't," Ava said, her voice small and broken, nothing like the fierce woman who had stood in the wreckage of the kitchen and dared us to punish her. "I can't move. I'm so cold, and I'm so... I feel..." She trailed off, her face crumpling, tears spilling down her cheeks. Through the bond, I felt her confusion, her shame, her desperate, unwilling need.
She was going into heat. Here. Now. Triggered by the stress and isolation, her body crying out for her pack even as her mind rejected us.
"I know," I said softly, gathering her into my arms. She was lighter than she should have been, fragile despite her fire, and when I lifted her from the mattress she made a sound—a whimper, a moan, something primal and involuntary, and pressed herself against my chest.
