I hissed when she came a step closer. “Are you a real doctor?”
“Yes.”
“What field?”
“I’m an anaesthetist,” she admitted, her steady look just daring me to fight her on this.
“What are you gonna do, drug me?” Honestly, I could go for that right now. If I wasn’t surrounded by unknown quantities, I’d ask her to knock me right out.
Miranda came closer, and I gritted my teeth, kicking my foot into her knee.
“Well, that wasn’t very nice,” she sighed.
The world went black for a moment, but I held on. “I’m not very nice. Fuck off and anaesthetise someone else, Miranda.”
“You have very serious injuries, and really ought to go to a hospital—”
An omega did me a favour right then by breaking free of the line and running away screaming, “You’ll never touch me!”
“Yeah, tell ‘em girl,” I muttered, frowning when huge, leather-clad men went chasing after her shouting things likeyou’re safeandwe will never harm youandno one will touch you without your permissionandwatch out for that tractor.
“Try it,” I dared Miranda, and knew she would back off when she sighed.
“You need a full physical assessment immediately,” she argued.
“Gee, after weeks of sustained assault, I wonder why I’m not jumping at the prospect.”
“After weeks of sustained assault, you have injuries that need to be treated.”
“Yeah, well, suck it, lady,” I spat, swaying into Cobra.
When she moved on to the next woman in the row—a silent omega who’d just sat beside me, leaning against the edge of the trailer, staring into space, I exhaled a breath of relief. And found my new fanclub watching me.
“You going to force me into an assessment, too?” I demanded, my head spinning.
“Nah,” Cobra replied, his arm out, still propping me up. Dammit. “I don’t pick fights I won’t win.”
“Good,” I hissed. “Because I would—”
I curled my fingers into fists on instinct, and the pain was so severe that this time I blacked out.
2
Lynn
Consciousness hit me like a speeding train, and I woke with a snarl, wishing I had more of my mum’s alpha in me so I could growl for real. Someone was touching me, but that wasn’t unusual. What was strange were the gentle touches, the careful way someone lowered my arm to… a bed? What the fuck?
“Get off me,” I hissed, baring my teeth at the same time I dragged my eyes open, a stubborn layer of crust gluing them together. I lifted my hands to pick the sleep from my lashes but those gentle hands caught mine again.
“You need to be careful with these hands for the next two months,” said the woman leaning over mein a fucking bedof all things. Not Miranda. She was in her sixties with a warmth to her that couldn’t be faked, something soft about the wrinkles around her dark eyes, something lived in and joyous in the curves of her brown face. She was the brightest, most colourful personI’d seen since I was abducted and drugged weeks ago. Maybe months ago; it wasn’t exactly easy to track the days in that horror show of a barn.
“Did you hear what I said?” she asked, peering into my eyes, all her hair balanced on top of her head and wrapped in a green and yellow scarf patterned with sunbursts.
“Who are you?” I rasped, annoyed that the bed was so comfortable, that I didn’t want to leave, that—wait, I wasn’t in pain anymore. “What shit did you give me?”
She nodded at something above me, and I groaned when I saw an IV. Yep, there was a fucking needle in the back of my hand. “So you drugged me,” I muttered.
“I gave you all the best shit,” she agreed. “Antibiotics. Pain relief. Something with a little extra kick.”
