I couldn’t be mated.
I couldn’t be pregnant.
And I absolutelycould notbe someone who’d tried to murder an innocent man!
Bits and flashes of images—memories?—glitched across my hazy vision. My teeth buried in an alpha’s wrist, blood blooming across my tongue. A knife in my hand, stabbing into a neck. Red fountaining out, splattering across my cheek. My fingernails scratching at a terrified face... gouging eyeballs...ripping open skin.
I stared down at my hands, blinking past the blur of tears. My nails were crusted with flaky reddish brown. A scream lodged in my throat, stuck behind the thick obstruction that was already strangling my air.
Heath made a noise of distress and jerked toward me, even as I cringed further back into the corner.
“Heath.Stop.” It was Knox again. Still not a bark. And again, Heath froze in place, trembling like a hunting dog straining to be let off the leash.
I wheezed, feeling lightheaded.
“Look at me, Jez.” The alpha’s tone was devoid of anger... of pity.
Unable to help myself, I looked into those brown eyes—trying to focus past the gray swirl of fog gathering at the edges of my vision.
Knox was alive. I hadn’t killed him, even if he was pale and hollowed out by days spent in the hospital, fighting to survive.He was keeping Heath away from me, as though he knew that I’d shatter at the first touch from the red-haired alpha who had bitten me while we’d both been out of our minds with lust.
“Where’s Gage?” It wasn’t even a proper whisper. I didn’t have enough air for that.
“Sleeping,” Knox said, still without judgment. “He was in here watching over things—making sure you were both safe—for almost three days straight.”
The band around my chest snapped, but I could still only breathe in harsh sobs. I curled forward, hugging myself with both arms. I cried... I wasn’t sure for how long. My own distress mixed and swirled with Heath’s distress at not being able to jump off the bed and magically fix me with the power of his goddamned alpha purr.
But I was also exhausted. And eventually, my body couldn’t sustain any more tears. I slumped in the corner, feeling scraped out and empty despite having a second person jammed inside my head with me. Cautiously, I peeked up at Knox through my thick pall of humiliation.
He’d moved to a more comfortable position, sitting propped against the side of the bed. This also allowed him to place a quelling hand on Heath’s wrist, wordlessly keeping the other alpha from leaping up and coming to me.
“If you can talk now, then let’s talk,” Knox said. “Tony said you ran off so you could find out who’d been lying to you, and who was telling the truth. Did you find your answer?”
Why was he acting like this? Like he wasn’t furious at me? Like what I had to say mattered?
I nodded wordlessly.
“And what answer was that?” he pressed.
I swallowed. Now my throat and sinuses hurt, along with everything else.
“Adrian lied to me,” I rasped. “You don’t hurt omegas. You try to help them. And I almost killed you.”
Knox rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand. “Yes. Well. Thankfully, you didn’t. At this point, I’m more concerned with this Adrian character, in that regard.”
“But—” I stammered, because he couldn’t really beletting it go, just like that?
“But nothing.” He let out a slow breath. “Gage thinks the Vozzina gang is behind the attempted hit. He doesn’t have any real proof, though.”
The presence in my head jolted.
“I don’t know that name,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Knox said. “We’ll see if Heath learned anything useful before he got himself kidnapped. But until then—”
The mental presence twisted awkwardly, like a newly awakened sleeper trying to get their bearings. I held my breath.
“V’zzina?” Heath slurred, raising a hand to his forehead as though it ached.
