Ren had spent three days counting Sergei’s footsteps. The creak of his left knee when he turned. The exact four seconds it took him to set the tray on the bedside table. The way the alpha always entered with his right shoulder first, leaving his left side exposed for a fraction of a second before he squared his body to face the room.
Four seconds. Left side. Knee that creaked.
It wasn’t much. Against an alpha Sergei’s size, it was almost nothing. But Ren had fought his whole life with almost nothing.
On the third night, when the light from the hallway filtered under the door and the bolt turned with its metallic click, Renwas sitting on the edge of the bed with his legs folded beneath him and his back hunched. The posture of a defeated omega. Of an animal that has stopped resisting.
Sergei entered with his right shoulder. Tray in his left hand. His eyes swept the room out of habit but lingered on Ren for only an instant, because the image was the same as it had been for the past three nights: a small blond body curled in on itself that posed no threat whatsoever.
Ren moved.
Not toward the door. Toward Sergei.
He used the bed as a springboard and drove his elbow at the guard’s throat. Sergei dropped the tray with a crash of porcelain against the floor and turned his face just in time to take the blow on his jaw. The impact vibrated through Ren from his elbow to his shoulder but he didn’t stop. Second strike: a knee to the left leg, the one with the creaking knee. Sergei grunted and his weight destabilized for half a second.
Half a second.
Ren slipped under his arm, made for the door. His fingers grazed the frame.
Sergei’s hand caught his ankle like a steel vice and Ren crashed face-first into the floor. The impact split his lip against his teeth and the metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth. He rolled instinctively, protecting his belly, and threw a blind kick that connected with something soft. Sergei forced air out between clenched teeth.
Ren crawled. His knees burned against the wooden floor. Two meters to the door. A meter and a half. His fingertips scraped the baseboard of the frame when Sergei’s weight landed on him like an avalanche.
He couldn’t breathe.
The alpha pinned his right arm by twisting it up behind his back and planted his knee between Ren’s shoulder blades. Ren kicked, shook his head, tried to bite his wrist. Sergei adjusted his grip and pressed Ren’s face against the floor with an open palm on the back of his neck. Ren felt the cold of the wood against his crushed cheek and the pressure of bone against his split lip.
He growled. Not the growl of a submissive omega but an animal sound that rose from the depths of his chest, guttural and furious. He tensed every muscle in his body and tried to lift his torso against Sergei’s weight. He didn’t move him a centimeter.
Sergei increased the pressure on his neck. A warning. Ren felt his vertebrae protest with a crack and he stopped. Not because he surrendered but because his body had reached the limit of what it could give against an alpha who out massed him threefold.
They stayed like that. Both breathing hard. Sergei’s breath was heavy against the back of Ren’s skull, warm and rough. Ren’s was a wheeze through bloody teeth blowing against the floor in small red bubbles.
Sergei eased the pressure off his knee. Not entirely, but enough for Ren to expand his lungs. He released his neck but kept the arm twisted.
Ren turned his head.
He looked up at him from below, cheek pressed to the floor and mouth open in a smile that showed teeth stained red. Blood between his incisors. Blood on his gums. His blue eyes blazing feverishly beneath the strand of blond hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
Sergei looked at him. Not with the blank gaze of the other nights but with something different, something Ren didn’t immediately identify because he wasn’t accustomed to seeing it directed at him from an alpha. The guard’s dark eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared once, as though he were recalibrating something in his head.
He released his arm.
He stood slowly, not taking his eyes off Ren the way you keep your eyes on a wounded animal that can still bite. He took a step back. Two.
“??????? ???????.”
The words came out low and hoarse from the exertion. Ren didn’t understand a syllable, but he understood the tone. It wasn’t contempt. It wasn’t the condescension alphas reserved for omegas who dared raise a fist. It was something else.
Ren kept smiling from the floor with his red teeth.
Sergei shook his head once, as if to himself, and left the room.
The bolt turned.
The sound sank into Ren’s stomach like a stone but he didn’t move until Sergei’s footsteps had faded down the hallway. Then he curled up. His body folded in on itself like a dry leaf and his mouth opened in a silent groan he didn’t let out.
His arm burned from shoulder to wrist. His left knee throbbed where he’d hit it against the floor in the fall. His split lip pulsed in time with his heartbeat and he could feel his face already swelling. But none of that mattered as much as the sharp, brief stab that crossed his lower abdomen when he rolled onto his side.
