She dabbed the bloody wounds slashed across my palm. It hurt like a bitch, and it took everything in me not to flinch.
I studied the lines on the older woman’s face. She’d been brisk and to the point from the start, but I needed her to be skilled, not to have a good bedside manner.
She pressed the Band-Aid across the four red, bleeding dots on my palm. It still needed pressure.
“No bandage wrap?”
“Can’t have you hanging yourself,” she answered abruptly. I pursed my lips, and as soon as she let go of my hand, I pulled it to my lap to apply pressure. It smarted, but I could handle it.
A guard entered and nodded to Officer Sergei hanging by the door for the nurse’s protection. Obviously, because I was a stone-cold killer.
It truly was ridiculous.
A guard with a familiar face entered. All of them were starting to blur, but some had distinguishable features hard to ignore.
“You have a visitor,” he said to me, his eyebrows moving like they had their own mind. “Off.”
I slid off the bench. A visitor? Was it finally Sam? A thrill of excitement worked through my veins. If it were, and Bourne Pack could be exposed, all of this would be worth it.
He knelt and tugged at the chains around my ankles. They did it periodically to make sure no one had undone them. The good thing was that they only kept them on when they walked an inmate outside of the main cell area.
He waved me forward, and he fell into step behind me. Sergei took the lead, and I followed on his heels.
It was so funny to me—all of this. Like, I could overpower evenoneof them. The fluorescently lit hall was quiet as they led me through it and then across another door that needed a key card.
It opened to a hall with a glass pane.
My stomach began to turn over.
“Who is it?” I asked sharply, hesitating to look at the guard behind me. It was fifty-fifty whether he was going to answer me, but it didn’t hurt trying.
“Your Pack.”
“My Pack?” I jerked to sit up, and the cuffs dug into my wrist. “I don’t have a Pack.” Panic wrapped around my throat. “That’s impossible. I don’t have a Pack,” I repeated, my words bouncing off the walls of the quiet hall.
He didn’t say anything other than to twitch his thick eyebrows.
“You do today, inmate.” He clamped my elbow and urged me forward. Without another choice, I shuffled over the rubber tile toward the hall.
Chapter 32
“These chairs are arse,” I snarled, yanking at the seat so hard it scraped the cement floor.
The Beta male, feet away in the other booth, looked over. I sneered at him, and he quickly turned to face whoever he was visiting, his fear tangible.
Elias leaned against the metal divider, attention fixed on the glass pane separating the civilian side of the room from the other.
Elias sucked in a harsh breath, his shoulders jerking.
“Briar,” Kyan whispered, leaning forward on the other chair. I followed his gaze.
She appeared in the hall, swimming in a blue jumpsuit.
Dark hair grew out from the roots. She shuffled down the hall where another guard was waiting. I’d watched two other inmates come through, but seeing her escorted made me choke up.
A strangled sound left my mouth, and I cleared my throat. I didn’t want her to see the horror on my face. I quickly smoothed my expression.
Little by little, she made her way to the end of the hall. My entire focus narrowed on her, the chatter of other visitors melting into the background. She reached the end and awkwardly stepped onto the metal platform where the female guard waited. With her fully in view, I saw why her gait had been so uneven. She had cuffs snapped around her wrists and ankles that were connected. It only allowed a limited movement. My stomach dropped.
