No.Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut. His body had abandoned him, leaving him trapped in his mind.This is my bed with Garrison. We’re supposed to be together. I don’t wantyouhere.
Nothing he thought did any good. Gabriel was caught on the bed like a mouse in a glue trap—stuck, helpless, andafraid.
Why was Garrison doing this to him? He’d been good and done everything Garrison had told him to do. He’d bedded every man Garrison had asked without complaint, because Garrison had told him that if he did, eventually they’d have enough money to get married. Why couldn’t they just betogether?
Itwasn’tfair.
The man beyond the doorway moved past Garrison, entering the darkness. Gabriel’s heart raced as he approached the bed, and it nearly burst when the man’s knees sank into the mattress. Gabriel smelled him on the air—like wood and leather, and beneath that, the putrid scent of an alpha whose soul wasrotting.
As the man moved across the bed, straddling Gabriel inch by inch, Garrison left through the open door. Gabriel lifted his head and tried to cry out for him, but words refused to come. He knew that if Garrison closed that door, he’d never see him again. Heknewit.
So why was Garrison going? Why was he leaving Gabriel with someone he didn’t want? Why was he letting thishappen?
If Gabriel could just get up from the bed, if he could move his legs, if he could dosomething,then maybe they could still be together. Maybe he could follow Garrison wherever he wantedtogo.
But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t talk. He could barelybreathe.
Garrison closed the door behind him. The room was plunged in darkness once more, and Gabriel felt the weight of the man without a name pushing him down into themattress.
The dreams always started the same, and they always ended the same, too—asnightmares.
* * *
Gabriel woke up screaming.Mouth dry, throat sore, and heart pounding, he struggled against the thin blankets on his bed only to find that he was trapped in them. The scream of terror turned into one of anguish, and he struggled to roll to the side, but his body refused tolethim.
“Gabriel?” a familiar but distant voice asked. “Gabriel, you’ve got to come back to us. Come back down from wherever you are and come back to us. It was a dream. It was all a dream.You’resafe.”
Only Gabriel didn’t feel safe at all. He hadn’t felt safe since the bust on The White Lotus brothel had robbed him of his home—and ofGarrison.
“Gabriel!” the voice said again, firmer this time. “Gabriel, come back down. Come backtous.”
But Gabriel couldn’t. He didn’t want to. All he wanted to do was go back to when he had been safe, and loved, and cared for. Before he’d come to Stonecrest Omega Rehabilitation Center, before he’d been taken from the brothel during the bust and kept unjustly by the man with no name, he’d been with Garrison, and that time had been the happiest ofhislife.
He wanted togoback.
“Gabriel?”
Gabriel focused and found himself in his closet-sized private room at Stonecrest, light streaming through the singular window as Counselor Kendrick held him by the shoulders. The concern on the counselor’s face should have made Gabriel feel cared for, but instead, it made him feelworse.
Broken.
He wasn’t broken. Not really. Not in any way thatcounted.
Love broke men. It made them weak. Gabriel didn’t get why none of the counselors here understood that. He hadn’t been shaped into something he wasn’t—he’d been formed into the man he was, and Garrison had been the one who’d molded him from useless putty into a creature of exquisite beauty. He’d taken Gabriel when he was still bumbling and confused, unsure of his sexuality, unsure of his body, unsure ofeverything,and he’d shown Gabriel the world. But now that world was small and gray, and Gabriel longed to see coloragain.
Gabriel blinked away tears. He wasalone.
Blinking didn’t do anything to keep the tears at bay. They rolled down his cheeks in silence until Gabriel’s nose blocked and he had to breathe through his mouth. It was a mistake. The air hitched in his throat and turned into an ugly,shudderingsob.
All he wanted was to get to Garrison, and he’dfailed. He’d let his brother, Adrian, put him in this place, thinking that he might be able to figure out a way to get back to the man he loved, but instead, he’d languished. The things the counselors tried to teach him weren’t meant for people like him—he wasn’t broken by circumstance, he was broken by love, and that was different. Sodifferent.
“Gabriel?” Counselor Kendrick tried again. His hands tightened on Gabriel’s shoulders, the pressure reassuring instead of overbearing. “Where are you,Gabriel?”
“Lost,” Gabriel said through a rattling sob. “I’m lost, and I don’t want to be hereanymore.”
“Gabriel?” Counselor Kendrick’s tone became worried. “What are yousaying?”
Gabriel let loose with one last ugly wail that shook his chest and hurt his lungs, but he couldn’t hold back the truth any longer. “I want to call my brother. I want togohome.”
