AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I spent most of my adult life—what little of it I got to live before the… the lab”—he swallowed thick enough I heard it catch in his throat—“reading and theorizing about how to make people more… humane? Empathetic?”
“And that’s humiliating?” I asked.
There was movement next to me, and then I realized he’d bowed his head when his voice came out slightly muffled. “It is when I could have been doing something about it. What good is theory when you’re sitting at a desk surrounded by books and decent people are being murdered?”
“Or sold,” I said very softly. He made a wounded noise, and I reached for him because instinct told me to. His Omega-like smell was seeping into my pores, twisting my head around, begging me to comfort him. When my arms came around him, and his heat settled into mine, the battered thing that might have been a heart once gave a small thud behind my ribs. “What could you have done?”
“Something,” he said, and he leaned into me with the same reluctance I felt about holding him, and yet neither of us pulled back. “Anything. I could have told my father to go fuck himself. I could have put up a fight.”
“They would have over-powered you,” I told him as gently as I could. “I don’t think humans are weak by nature, but Wolves are stronger and they took me down.”
“Other Wolves did,” Misha pointed out, and it was hard to argue with that. “Not the humans.”
“They still managed to keep me,” I reminded him. “For months in that fucking lab, and I only got out because of you.”
“For my own gain,” he whispered. “For my own freedom.”
I didn’t try to counter him because it was true—and yet I tasted a lie in the air between us. I didn’t know him—I didn’t really want to know him—but something told me Misha would have, in the end, risked his life to save me. Even if it meant sacrificing himself.
Chapter Four
MISHA
Kor’s body was still recovering, and not long after the food had settled, he retreated back into the room to rest. I didn’t need Wolf senses to be able to tell he was struggling, and it was never more obvious than when he stood up and swallowed his pride to ask for help finding his way. I did my best not to make a big deal out of it, but worry was starting to tug at me. He was stronger on his feet, but he wasn’t healing the way I’d hoped.
I was doing my best to cover up my own pain, but I had a feeling he could sense it, and that unnerved me. I had a pathetic, tiny glowing hope that once I was off the drugs and treatments, my body would start to return to normal, but if anything, it was worse. I didn’t succumb until Kor had left the room, but once he was gone, I allowed it to overwhelm me.
In the time that Kor slept, the toilet and I became best friends. It was rust-stained and smelled faintly of ammonia, but that stopped mattering the moment the contents of my stomach refused to stay put. I had no idea how long I’d been on my knees, only that they were aching as hard as my guts were, but I couldn’t stop heaving.
Panic had settled in sometime around when I saw a red tinge in the bile. It was obviously blood, and my brain immediately started to put the pieces together. I was either in some sort of withdrawal from the shit they’d been feeding me, or this was some sort of failsafe that my sadistic father had put into the chemical cocktail that meant I either had to stay on the treatments—or die.
A knock at the door startled me enough that I managed to look over, then the door swung inward, and I cringed before remembering that Kor probably couldn’t see me. Or, if his sight was returning, it probably wasn’t good enough yet to see how sorry I looked curled around the porcelain bowl.
“I just… need a moment,” I said, fighting off a gag.
His nostrils flared, his hands clenched at his sides. His foot traced the line of the open door, then he stepped inside. “You’re vomiting and you’re in pain, and your heart sounds like it’s trying to beat out of your chest. Are you dying, Misha?”
“I’m sick,” I said. The pangs in my stomach relaxed just a little, and I pressed my cheek to the toilet’s edge, which was no longer cool. “I want to say it’s food poisoning, but it’s probably something to do with the crap they were giving me.”
Kor crept in even closer, and I wanted to tell him to fuck off. I didn’t need a damn audience as I was taken out by my insides, but I didn’t have the strength. He found me with the edge of his foot, then his fingers brushed along the back of my neck before gripping. Hard.
I swore I felt the pinprick of claws, but it only lasted a second, and then I realized I could breathe. I could take in a full lungful of air and let it out, and nothing tried to claw up my throat. “How… how the fuck…?”
“It’s a pressure point that works on Wolves. I had a feeling,” Kor said, his voice a little rough. He lowered himself to the ground, then pressed his back against the stained clawfoot tub and hooked one arm around his bent leg. “If he really did fuck with your genetics, I figured it would work on you.”
“I’m scared whatever he did is killing me,” I admitted. Closing my eyes, I fumbled for the lever and flushed the toilet, taking the foul scent of bile with the water. “I really hope your friends get here soon.”
When I looked again, Kor’s eyes were open, staring toward the empty space where a sink had once been. They were still wide, still all pupil, and I was starting to wonder if they were going to be able to heal. I didn’t know a lot about Wolves, but I knew he should have made some progress by now.
“I think they’re close. I can feel them.” He trailed off and tilted his head to the side, and his nostrils flared.
I pushed myself to sit up a little farther. “How does that work?”
Kor gave a grimace that I thought was maybe supposed to be a smile, and he shrugged one shoulder. “Wolves bond to each other. Family has a distinct, stronger bond, and packs have another. It changed when the humans separated us, but they never went away.”
“I read about that,” I told him, sitting back. I laid my head against the wall and desperately wished I had a toothbrush. “I always kind of thought it was bullshit.”
Kor’s grimace twisted into something closer to a smirk. “Humans might have stood a better chance against us if they’d paid attention to reality instead of bullshit propaganda.”
