I remembered him, his white lab coat and purple latex gloves, and the stink of formaldehyde on his skin. He jabbed a needle into my fevered skin, and my limbs became very loose and weak.
Then he’d strapped me down to a table, my bare ass up and my legs spread. “This is for your own good. Trust me.”
I did not trust him.
He left the room. Shortly after, the door opened again, and River came in. “River! Please help me! Help me!” I’d pleaded, trying to struggle against the bonds, but finding my body too weak and unresponsive, and everything was so hazy.
My brother didn’t seem to hear me. Instead, he climbed on top of me, kissing me and rubbing against me—and that’s when I realized he was naked too.
“River? What are you… Stop! What are you doing?Helpme. Unstrap me and let’s get out of here! River? River!”
He didn’t hear me.
My whole body thrummed with fever, with the heat hormones making me ache at the very core of me, and they were affecting him, too. I felt his hardness against the cleft of my ass as he rubbed himself against me, kissing my shoulder and neck, panting hot against my skin.
“Sky,” he moaned, his voice rough with hunger.
“River,” I whispered, tears burning my eyes when I realized what was happening, and that I was powerless to stop it.
It hurt. I cried and pleaded and begged him to stop, but he didn’t. He took my innocence. He bred me. And the sick part was? When it stopped hurting, it felt good, so I stopped fightingit. I closed my eyes and imagined we were somewhere else, and that I was in River’s powerful arms, some place safe. Some place where this wasn’t some sick experiment.
Afterwards, they took River away. I didn’t see him again for months. When I finally did, and he realized I was pregnant, the disgust on his face was palpable.
The shame sank into my bones, deeper than marrow.
I told Madeline all of it. By the time I got to the end, my stomach was a knot, and I felt like I might vomit.
“How many times did this happen?” she asked. “The…breeding?”
“Three.” My voice was a whisper.
“And every time, River acted like this?”
“Like he couldn’t bear to be away from me any longer, yeah,” I said. Like being apart for months and months had triggered our twin bond, and he needed me.
Or maybe that’s what I told myself, lying alone and pregnant on that cot in that too-bright room, imagining stories where I finally got a happy ending…
Madeline’s expression softened, turning sympathetic. “Sky... Could your brother have been drugged?”
I looked at her. “What?”
“You’ve said it yourself, that the scientists there were experimenting on you, using you like test subjects. They took your babies away. Do you really think your brother would willingly breed you? Instead of trying to help you escape?”
I rubbed my forehead, trying to remember. Those memories were hazy, a blur of emotions and feelings and visceral need.
“Drugged?” I stared at her, horror tugging at my heart.
“Perhaps forced into a breeding frenzy, one where he couldn’t help himself and it didn’t matter, at the moment, that you were his twin. Isn’t that was Dr. Thompson wanted? For Alpha-Omega twins to procreate, so he could find the cure?”
My eyes filled with tears. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but this is good,” Madeline insisted, squeezing my knee. I blew my nose loudly into a tissue. “It’s painful, but sometimes you have to flush the bad stuff out before you can heal.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. It didn’t feel good. It felt shitty and awful, and the thoughts kept circling round and round.
Two days later, it still clung to me. The memory of my heat was a ghost, whispering nothings in the darkest corners of my mind. Calling to me, to draw me deeper into the blackness.
I couldn’t stop thinking about River. His body on mine, his hands all over, panting hard, kisses hot and sloppy, unrefined. Desperate. Was he drugged? Was that why they had strapped me down? So I couldn’t fight back? So I couldn’t fend him off?
