I screwed my eyes shut, trying to ignore the hallucination sitting in the corner. There had to be an explanation. I felt a bit like I’d been beaten up... and a bit like when I’d taken drugs early on, before I’d decided properly whether I wanted to live or die after getting free from the omega traffickers.
Could that be it? Had I tried to escape reality with drugs again, and someone had taken advantage of me while I was off my head?
The alien feelings of protectiveness inside my mind sharpened. An alpha purr vibrated next to me, but it had a worried edge. As though it wasbadthat I was freaking out like this.
“You might as well open your eyes,” said the ghost in the corner. “This conversation isn’t going to get any easier, no matter how long you avoid it.”
I reluctantly pried my eyelids open, but I still avoided looking in the direction of the voice. The glance I’d caught before had been bad enough. The innocent alpha I’d killed... now a talking corpse with dark-smudged eyes, gaunt cheeks, and pasty gray skin.
Instead, I looked toward the source of the purr.
Heath Dawson lay naked in bed with me. He was covered in dirt and blood, and... other bodily fluids. Scabby, half-healed wounds like claw marks decorated his face and neck. Some of them looked infected.
My gaze caught and held on his forest-green eyes. In the same instant, the alien feelings in my head spiked. One particular physical ache cut through my body’s general clamoring—centered at the top of my right shoulder, over the juncture of my neck.
A horrible, sick realization washed through me. With a gasp, I scrabbled backward across the soft surface I’d been lying on... and promptly fell off the edge of the bed.
I landed with a thud, tangled in the blanket I’d dragged down with me. The presence in my head radiated worry, and Heath crawled to the edge of the mattress as though he might follow me.
“Don’t.” It wasn’t an alpha bark, but Heath paused anyway, looking up. “Leave her be for now,” said the ghost of Matthew Knockley, sounding closer than before. “She and I are talking, Heath.”
Heath gave a low growl, but he made no further move toward me. The mental presence subsided into watchful silence.
Heart pounding frantically, I looked up at the corpse. Guilt pierced me, and I crab-crawled backward, dragging the blanketwith me like a fleecy shield, until my shoulders jammed up in a corner.
The ghost halted a few paces in front of me and sank smoothly into a crouch, his elbows resting loosely on his knees as he brought himself down to my pathetic level. I couldn’t keep from looking at him now. I couldn’t help scenting him, either, through the cloud of my own filthy stink.
I frowned. Since I killed him, shouldn’t he smell like death, instead of a welcoming campfire in a forest of green cedar?
“A few things to start off with,” he said, pinning me with soulful brown eyes that hadn’t clouded over and faded to gray dullness. “Number one—yes, I’m alive and out of the hospital. Number two—yes, you’re back at the pack house. This is Heath’s room. And number three—you and he were kidnapped by whoever hired you to murder me. They injected you with heat stim and Heath with rut-stim. Heath had already mated you by the time Gage and Tony showed up to get you out.”
My thoughts crashed to a standstill. Heath’s worried growl rumbled deeper.
“Wh-what?” I rasped.
“You’ll need a pregnancy test as soon as it’s feasible,” Knox went on.
“But—” I began.
“And I’d like you both to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases,” Knox continued.
“But I—”
“There are options for dealing with the mating itself.”
The words slid straight past me.
“But I tried—”
“A glandectomy being the most obvious one,” he said, as though I hadn’t spoken.
“But I tried to kill you!” I half-shouted.
He paused for a beat.
“Yes,” he agreed steadily. “You did.”
I opened my mouth, only for my throat to close up before any words could get out. Air caught and dragged against the constriction, the sound like an ugly, gasping sob. I tried again, with the same result, and before I could get control of my breathing, I collapsed into hysterical tears.
