It had taken two grown men to hold her down, dour Kieran and the stunned doctor finding the malnourished Omega stronger than she looked.
When she dared to set her teeth to his arm, Kieran slapped her hard enough to split her lip. He boxed her ear the moment she tried to pull out her IV and scramble away. And then in a voice so unlike the rage on his face, he calmly asked her why.
Shaking her head, feeling foreign food roil in her stomach, she begged with wide, wet eyes.
“Is it that you are afraid of needles?”
Confession was the only answer, one that was all the easier when a surprise prick of a needle left her floating on undulating apathy. Two blinks, a stuttering breath, and she let him press a pen into her fingers. Glancing at the sharp object, at the crumple of paper he pressed to her thigh, Wren coughed… and found it didn’t hurt that much.
They had already been treating her for days. She already owed too much to ever pay when the bill came due.
Ink flowed over white paper. Paper with not even a dusting of dirt or a stain of mud. Paper that had not begun to mildew. I’d rather be sick.
Steely eyes took on a glint that didn’t fit such beautiful features. “You’ll die.”
I can’t pay! I can’t go to the debtor’s quarry. Not yet. My boys need me. I can die when they’re old enough to take care of themselves.
The curl of Kieran’s lip was not from amusement, or even scorn. It was from absolute incomprehension, as if what she said was unfathomable. “You’re not going to die, Jax.”
Wren said nothing, only stared at him, her lip trembling despite the drugs. Of course she was going to die. Everyone died. Especially in the Warrens. She’d be lucky to live to thirty even with perfect health.
No one lasted. Everyone ended up buried in mud, weighted down with stone so their bodies did not float up once they started to bloat and decompose. Just like the children buried behind her home. Just like all her dreams. Tie a rock to it and let it sink deep, deep down.
The Second Alpha glowered, a look far too similar to Caspian’s. “What good would you be to us sick? We take care of the girls in the pen. Caspian already spent a fortune on that special science muck he’s been feeding you, and Toby’s paying for your care. Me, I’ve been relegated to nursemaid… and believe me, I’ve got much better things to do than sit by the bedside of an ungrateful Omega.”
Sit at the bedside? Had he been here all this time?
Sinking into the pillows, and there were many, Wren took notice. She was in her own room. There were no curtains dividing her from other sick patients. There was even a window showing a view she had not seen since her father tossed her out of his moving vehicle right into the stinking mud.
This wasn’t a Warrens’ shanty town clinic. The posh facility was midlevel, there was even a little bit of horizon between the tall buildings.
“Haven’t seen it in a while, have you?”
It wasn’t exactly as she remembered. Drab… it was drab, no less spectacular than the light reflecting off the morning mud down below. But it was light, and it did hold a certain appeal.
The shuck of a belt, the metallic click of the buckle, all ignored while Wren took in the view. Tooth by tooth, the sounds of a zipper descending, then the atmosphere grew full of a scent that softened the astringent air.
From the corner of her eye, Wren could see Kieran pumping his fist in a measured stroke down an impressive erection. Slow, the way she’d learned he liked it. Staring at her watching the view.
How he found any of this stimulating, she’d never know, but she met his heated gaze and held it.
“Right there, that fucking look in your eye is so goddamn hot.”
What look? Resignation? But Wren was fooling herself. She’d been staring doe-eyed and full of nostalgia—maybe even wonder at that drab bit of sky. There had even been a soft smile playing at her lips as if this was her normal and she’d get to smile at the view every day.
She used to…
It hadn’t been all bad with her family. There had been times it had even been… nice.
And she had never gone hungry.
Starvation and how to cope with it was something she’d learned in the Warrens.
In this moment, in this room, even if her body ached under the drugs, she wasn’t hungry. Caspian had fed her. Kieran had bathed her. And Toby…
“Fuck… keep looking at me just like that.” Fist dragging upward, he pulled foreskin over a swollen crown. His slit oozed, a thumb running a circle over the mess before Kieran reversed direction and stroked from tip to base.