“Oh, calm down, four-eyes.” Ernie scoffs. “They’re all behind bars, and the omega is strapped to a bed. You’ll be fine.”
With that, the guards follow the Senator, while the scientist walks into my cell, arranging things on a tray with shaky fingers. My eyes never leave him as he fumbles, obviously nervous. Sam, West, and Hayden also stare at him, and the attention is clearly more than a little unnerving.
When he turns to me, needle at the ready, I give him a smile. Based on the horror in his eyes, it’s still bloody from when I bit Dick’s finger. “If you come near me with that needle, Doc, it’s goin’ straight in your eye.” My voice is saccharine sweet, and if I could snap a picture of the look of fear in his eyes when I say it, I would make it my phone wallpaper.
“I’d listen to her if I were you,” Hayden calls through the bars. “I’ve never seen Jo make a threat she couldn’t deliver on.”
“She’s killed fourteen alphas, you know,” Sam adds, adding Banesworth to the tally.
“Of course he knows, why do you think he’s so nervous?” West asks, talking like the scientist isn’t even here.
“F…Fourteen?” the scrawny man stutters. “I thought it was thirteen.”
“Oops.” I grin again. “Sammy forgot not everyone knows about that last one. They’ll never find his body, you know. Just like they’ll never find yours if you stick that needle anywhere near me.”
A door slams up above, making the scientist jump, and loud footsteps echo down the hall. “Holy shit, Sinclair, you haven’t done it yet?” The two guards come back into view. “Boss won’t let us order dinner until you have what you need to test her blood, so get on it.”
“She says she’ll put the needle in my eye if I come near her.” It’s official. Sinclair is a sniveling little bitch.
Bert lets out a heavy sigh. “We’ll hold her.” He nods at Ernie. “Come on, I’m starving.”
When they approach, my eyes catch on the syringe in Sinclair’s hand and my panic response kicks in. “Don’t touch me!” I snarl, thrashing so they can’t hold me. I’m sick of being a lab rat. An experiment. Less than human.
And if my blood really does have what they need to reverse-engineer the serum? I can’t let them get what they need.
Ernie approaches, moving to the bed to try to hold my shoulders still. He bends down to speak in my ear. “Oh calm down, Red—Fuck!” He stumbles, my head throbbing from where I threw it back and smashed his nose.
Bert’s eyes widen, and he rushes to grab the sides of my head to hold me still. I snap my teeth at him, and Ernie comes around the side of the bed while Sinclair cowers in the corner.
“You damn bitch.” Ernie’s voice is nasally from the blood spurting from his nose, and when his fist meets my gut, all the wind is knocked out of me.
My lungs seize, and when my eyes land on the cell opposite me, I lock eyes with Kole’s furious expression.
thirty-five
West
The hideous feeling of helplessness overtakes me as I watch the taller guard sucker punch my omega in the gut. Sam growls, stalking back and forth uselessly, and Hayden shakes the bars, cursing at the assholes.
The thing that makes my blood freeze, though? The sound of the snarl that comes from Kole.
Hayden turns from the bars with a roar, taking his lighter out of his pocket and flipping it nervously. Either the Senator isn’t completely heartless, or he doesn’t view his son as a threat, consideringhe left him uncuffed.
“My Daddy hit me harder than that when I was ten, Ernie,” Jo chokes out.
“What are we going to do?” Hayden is muttering to himself, the snicking of the lighter growing more furious with each passing moment.
The guard that Jo referred to as Ernie for some reason laughs and points a thumb over his shoulder at us. “Instincts really are a bitch, aren’t they? These poor saps are all up in arms because a bitch like you smells good to them. Pathetic.”
Hayden clicks the lighter again, and my eyes pause on it, wondering why they didn’t take it from him.Oh. His dad thinks it's the lighter thathegave to him. He wouldn’t know that Hayden destroyed it, and I provided him with an actual working replacement.
Kole snarls again, struggling against his cuffs. I want to tell him that he’s going to destroy his wrists if he keeps it up, but based on the black voids of his eyes, he’s pretty much feral at this point and won’t register a word I say.
Jo shrugs, not a glimpse of pain showing on her face. “Better to smell good to them, than to smell like a rotten sewer-rat’s ass like you and Bert do.”
I don’t have time to appreciate the fact that she named the guards Bert and Ernie, because then Ernie is taking another swing, hitting her in the gut again.
Hayden lets out a pained sound, clutching his chest, and Sam snarls, a roar of rage leaving him.
