“What?” hissed the annoying Sandy bitch who wouldn’t leave me alone. The woman who moved into my blurry sight couldn’t be her, though. There was no cardigan, no bows in her hair, and she had dark hair, not blonde. She was bronze all over, and scowling, fierce. Huh.
“She’s—Pres, do we know any gynaecologists? Or surgeons?”
There was a moment of silence, which might have been peaceful if he wasn’t walking so fast he jostled my entire body.
“She’s that bad?” the first voice breathed. Pres. Whoever the fuck that was. I let my eyes fall shut again, drawing their scents through broken, ragged breaths, all of them fairly pleasant but none familiar until the scent of ocean and freedom reached me.
“What the fuckhappened?”Devil demanded, his voice almost a comfort after weeks of his persistence. It seemed to be a common theme of everyone who lived here: persistence. Like gnats who refused to leave.
“Stupid bitch refused to let anyone in her room even though sheclearlyneeded help,” Sandy replied with heavy judgement.
Don’t act like you know anything about me, bitch. You don’t know who I am. You don’t know the Hell that drowned me in darkness for weeks and weeks and weeks.
“What? I spoke to her yesterday, and she sounded fine,” Devil replied with a note of panic. Why were they all panicking over a stranger? Weirdos. “She told me to go fuck a cactus; she was completely normal.”
I would have listened to them more, but Giant quickened his pace and the pain was so severe that the world fell from beneath me.
When I came back, I squinted my eyes open to see a blur of a face, too smeared to tell if they were familiar. The smells around me were astringent and chemical, burning away all other scents, and panic charged through my heart, making my whole body flail.
“Shit,” someone swore. Familiar or not? I couldn’t tell. What the fuck was happening? Where was I? What were these people doing to me?
A mask came towards my face and I resisted. The last time I was drugged, I was thrown into Hell. I didn’t want to go back. The darkness was complete and neverending and full of monsters with claws and teeth that hungered for blood. I fought, but the mask pressed to my face and the blurry vision swirled into darkness, taking everything else with it.
4
Lynn
When I woke up, I knew who was to blame for drugging me. Miranda. That anaesthetist bitch.
Someone had given me more pain relief, though, because I couldn’t feel a single mangled part of my body, so that was a win.
“Easy,” a warm voice said. Male. Not Devil. I sucked down air, tasting crackling flames and burning wood. Not familiar. “Can you hear me? It’s Giant, the medic at the Alpha Knights compound.”
I groaned, letting myself slump back into the mattress. It wasn’t as comfortable as my bed in the sanctuary. I wet my lips, trying to speak. “F—”
“Here,” Giant said, and I cracked my eyes open—sore, gritty, dry—in time to see him angle a glass of water with a straw towards me, then realise I couldn’t drink it while I washorizontal. He winced, helped me sit up, and returned with the water.
“Thanks,” I croaked, and pretended that was what I planned to say all along. “Where am I?”
“There’s a room off from the main clinic where I see patients. It’s been your bedroom for a week while your body recovered.”
“A—what?”A week. I’d been unconscious for a week. They could have doneanythingto me.
A machine began to beep in my ear, rapid, alarmed. I drew my upper lip back in a snarl, wanting to drive my fist through the damned thing.
Giant batted my hand away when I reached for the machine. “Jane, you were severely injured. Not to mention dehydrated, in bad need of nutrients, and fighting an infection on the scale I’d like to never see again. You needed time to heal.”
“My name’s Lynn, you dick,” I muttered—and then froze. “Shit.”
A smile filled Giant’s whole face, making his eyes glitter. Ugh. Why was he so happy? What sunshine and rainbows existence had this man lived, to smile like that? “Lynn,” he echoed. “It’s nice to officially meet you. How do you feel?”
“Stabby.”
He nodded. “Don’t leave out any scalpels, got it.”
Ugh. Something annoying happened in my chest. Some raspy vibration of sound. I didn’t want to laugh when my head was full of darkness and my body was rife with pain and—oh, my pain was gone.
“Nice drugs,” I said, sitting up further, giving Giant a very odd look when he rushed to prop up my pillows. “Explain it to me.”
