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The gas hit first—bringing me to my knees. Then pressure at the side of my neck. I woke hours—maybe days—later strapped to a gurney in a lab that felt like death. Faceless humans stood over me, and I had no struggle left in my limbs to fight my bonds. I could see it in their eyes—I was powerless. I was a prisoner.
And then they began to carve away at me.
* * *
I was there for three months—give or take. It was hard to tell because sleep was rare, and peace was never. I spent most of my time unconscious, and the rest of it trapped in a silent scream as they worked on me. I had lost my ability to tell what they were doing, and I had never understood why. All I knew was that I would never get out. I would die there, like the animal the humans always believed we were, and if I could have laughed at the irony of it, I would have.
I felt three moons come and go, my wolf clawing at those dark corners to be set free—and yet I remained in that fucking bed.
Something began to shift in the air, though, just before the fourth moon. I could feel it. I could taste it, like hot metal close to a forge. It woke senses I thought long-dead, made my fingers ache to release claws, my gums itch to extend my fangs. I was awake more, even if I still couldn’t will my limbs to fight against the restraints that kept me pinned. Something was being set into motion. I knew the feeling—I had it plenty of times before we executed a maneuver to take down human strongholds that outnumbered us by more than I ever wanted to count.
It was the taste of freedom and victory, and I felt my heart beat harder—felt the craving for it simmer under my skin.
I wanted to fight. I wanted to break free and do something, but I was trapped. My ears were tuned in sharply, but I could see almost nothing. There was light in my periphery, but in the center of my vision, there was just… absence.
I knew it was night though. I could feel the pull of the moon—close to full. The lab was quiet apart from the gentle beeping to the pulse in my neck, reminding me that, in spite of all of this torture, I was still alive to try and fight the moment the opportunity presented itself. And it was that awareness which had me on alert when I heard the first lock on the door click.
And after a moment, there was a second. And then the third. I heard the familiar sound of air-pressure release when the door opened, and then shoes on the tile. They were not the steps of a Wolf, but they weren’t the steps of a human either. My body hummed with confusion, fear, and hope—which was dangerous.
No alarm blared, but I sensed the presence in the room that had never been there before. The scent was heady—the musk of an Omega and yet the touch on my arm was entirely human. I flinched, but the fingers didn’t stop until I had been tugged free of the straps.
“We need to go.” The voice was raspy, like a person who had spent too long screaming, and I would have laughed if I’d been able. “There’s going to be an explosion, and we’re going to have time to run—but not a lot. Do you think you can run?”
It felt like a trap. Another sick, sadistic human test to see if there was anything left of my mind to break when freedom was snatched from my grasp.
And yet, I wasn’t so sure. He sounded as terrified and nervous as I felt—his heart beating the same thrashing rhythm as my own. This Omega-human, whatever the hell he was, smelled like a prisoner. He smelled like fear and stale sheets and chemicals just like I did.
I tested my fingers—a weak grip into a fist, then I lifted my arm. I turned my head toward him and tried desperately to see him, but the blindness obscuring the front of my vision was almost total now. Taking a breath, I winced at how weak my lungs felt, winced at the pain in my chest where my heart was still racing. The damage done to my body wouldn’t even begin to heal until I could shift, until I could let my wolf take over and stitch me back together. And to do that, I had to be free of this place.
This stranger, this prisoner, was my only hope.
I struggled to sit up, and he allowed me the dignity of doing it myself as I perched on the edge of the bed with strength and balance I hadn’t known I still had. “How long?” I managed to ask, my tongue thick and dry.
“Two minutes,” he said.
I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out, and I felt him flinch when my trembling hand touched the side of his neck. He was warm—achingly warm, like an Omega in heat. He was slight, short, his hair long. There was very little strength in him—like most humans. But I could feel the tremble in his body was more from adrenaline and a need to get the hell out than it was from inability to accomplish this task.
He gently pried my hand from his neck, then I felt him tugging at something lodged under my skin which sent searing pain down my side.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, trying to shove him away.
“Quiet!” His tone was snappy, as desperate as I felt, and his fingers dug into my painfully sensitive skin. “I’m trying to help you.”
In spite of my condition, I did manage a soft, derisive snort. “By tearing more pieces off my body?”
At that, I felt him flinch. “I’m sorry, but our only hope to get you the fuck out of here is to disconnect you from the monitors at the exact moment the explosive goes off. They’ll be too busy dealing with that to pay attention to what’s going on in here. And it’s…” I heard the hesitation in his tone, and I felt him shift. “It’s going to hurt. Most of them are implanted under your skin, but I can’t risk…”
“Yes,” I interrupted with a desperation that was almost tangible. I wanted him to rip out all the shit the humans put in my body. I didn’t care about the pain. “Yes.”
His fingers spasmed on my arm, then he cleared his throat. “Your eyes,” he said, and the truth must have shown on my face from the way I flinched. “How long has your vision been impaired?”
I dragged my tongue over my lips and tried to think back to the first time I noticed everything going grey, but it was impossible to really know. It had been a slow process, and I had been so damn drugged, one moment bled into the next. “A while.” It had been a while. Maybe since the start. “It’ll heal, but I need time. Sleep. To shift.”
I heard the muscles in his body stiffen—and the fact that I heard them so clearly was a good sign. Small pieces of my strength were starting to return, which meant we had some hope of escape after all. I felt the clock ticking, felt time passing in ways I hadn’t in so long.
Before either of us spoke again, his hand tensed on me, and I knew it was almost time. There was a countdown going on in his head—and it led to the moment I felt the blast right before it rocked through the lab. The roar was deafening for a moment, the glass shaking, the tables rattling. Amid the chaos of that, the stranger began to work at pulling off my monitors—digging them out from under my skin until I was free of all the wires and tubes that had kept me under constant observation.
It took all of my effort—strength I still didn’t possess—to get my feet under me. His arm was strong, but not strong enough, and I had to call on every ounce of my own determination to keep steady. I wanted to savor the moment, but I could hear shouts in the distance and the sound of humans running. The acrid scent of burning metal and flesh and stone filled my nostrils, and I had only a moment to take it in before the man’s grip on me tightened and I followed him out.
