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Loveless sighs and pushes her glasses up onto the top of her head so that they get tangled in her thick, dark curls. “Look, I can remove the IV line. Just make sure she gets these morphine tablets every six hours and these antibiotic tablets every twelve.”
Carefully, making no sudden movements, she approaches the bed and unties the ropes from around Echo’s wrists and unlocks the cuffs from around mine. As she works, Echo cringes away from her and hides her face in the center of my chest. I hold her close, terrified of and loving her closeness. With my Omega and I both now free from the prisons of our beds, Loveless shoves three pill bottles into my hand.
She complains about me tearin’ my stitching as I snatch the pills from her and scoop Echo up off of the sheets. “Don’t care about stitching,” I tell her. Right now, I got my Omega in my arms and she’s holdin’ onto me as tight as her shaky arms can, which scares the shit outta me since she’s claimed to hate me more than a couple hundred times so far.
I just want her safe, alone, close, with me.
Down the stairs, I exit into the gardens and take a deep breath — that cuts short when I hear Loveless chasin’ after me. “Dragnovic! Just…Berserker, wait!”
I gotta loyal core staff. They know they can talk back to me, talk shit, cuss and call me by my last name. They also know I’m onlyslightlyless likely to ignore them and do whatever the fuck I want when compared to anybody else in my city. That’s why they know to call me Berserker when they absolutelyneedmy attention.
I pause, even though it hurts. Echo inhales sharply like she’s been hit. Her toes curl and she cringes away from Loveless, like the tiny Alpha with very light brown skin stained by a sun we don’t see when we live in the dark might hurt her. I feel like I’m standin’ beneath that sun now and my skin flushes with heat that surprises me. My cock starts to stiffen in the most infuckinopportune goddamn moment…Fuck.I inhale a little deeper, wonderin’…
Echo mewls like she’s in pain and I jerk up and try to hold her a little further away from me. “What the fuck?” I hiss.
Loveless manages to look a little sheepish. “I gave you antibiotics, morphine and heat suppressants. You’re holding them now. Some of the Alphas who brought her in could scent it and started to get…well, let’s just say there’s a reason Vi, Barbero, and Peate are keeping themselves and the other Alphas out.” Wanna break something.Bones.
“You mean to tell me you kept me sedated while my Omega went into heat?”
She takes a step back, her eyes widening. She lowers her gaze to the ground and starts to wobble. “Ward…we…your injuries…”
“Fuck my injuries. If other Alphas were sniffing after my Omega, it’s my duty to challenge them for the right to her.”
“But you’d…you’d have died. You weren’t even conscious…”
“Then I would have died!” I roar. My hands tighten around Echo, but I stiffen, straighten, and try to relax my hold. My temples are pounding. I need rest. I need to calm the fuck down. But now that our bond is fucking…there, I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I’m excited, but more than that…I’m scared. “Tell them to meet me in Battleground in an hour, after I get my Omega settled.”
“No.” Echo’s voice is hard — almost as hard as I remember it in Trash City. I look at her face, into her eyes, and read fear there that steels my resolve to murder somethin’. Until she grabs the tattered tips of my still matted beard and yanks on it. “You promised.”
“Promised?”
She nods. “You wouldn’t leave me. You said that. Don’t you remember?” Tears again. Too many fuckin’ tears. Each one is a chisel to the heart. Nah, fuck a chisel. A pickaxe.
She’s talkin’ about when I fucked her. The first time. She’s never brought it up before, choosin’ to forcibly forget. I know she didn’t want to want it. That she’s acknowledgin’ it at all freaks the shit outta me. Makes me glad for the heat suppressants quite suddenly because if she went into heat now, there’s no chance I wouldn’t topple over into rut right after and, given the state a’ my body and hers, it’d kill us both.
“Didn’t forget, Omega.”
Her eyebrows crinkle and she sniffles and I don’t know if she’s assured, but she nods anyway. “Then stay. Please?”
Fuckin’ cut my legs off at the knees. “I’ll stay.”For as long as you let me.
I turn from Loveless and, as I walk, throw the bottle of heat suppressants towards the stream off to my left. It hits the bridge and shatters. “Don’t need these anymore. She goes into heat, she’s got her Berserker.”
16 | Echo
Dragnovic Manor
The bath water is so hot it’s impossible to shiver,and I would be shivering if I could.Fear is standing in the corner, partially hidden by swirling mist. But she’s still batting her eyelashes at me and waving with all of her claws. I’m so out of my element here. It makes me miss Paradise Hole.
Wait — is that coconut oil shampoo?
Alright. It makes me miss Paradise Hole alittle. I reach for the bottle and flick the cap open with my thumb. Even though Adam let me take off the brace, I was given specific instruction not to use my injured arm — an instruction I immediately forgot. The swollen fingers of my left hand try to close around the shampoo bottle instinctively, but I hiss, fumble, drop it into the bath. It’s anenormousbath, built for someone — several someones — much taller than me, so the water comes up to my chest. I lose the bottle immediately. I’m going to have to dive for it. I take a deep breath and start to sink.
“The fuck are you doing?”
The door slams shut and Adam wades towards me through the fog, looking like a spectre himself. An angry one. I glance in the corner for my BFF, but as soon as he appeared, she winked out of existence.
I exhale shakily and lift my injured arm. My jaw works. His eyes flash to my swollen fingers and his face crumples. A low growl rattles out of his chest, throaty and deep. It’s not a purr. It’s far from it and when I inhale, I smell pureaggression.How it’s become so discernible to me in the span of a few days is confounding and annoying because it doesn’t inspire fear. Oh no. My Omega instinct is pleased by his violence and I’m so, so grateful for the hot water surrounding me. Means I’m wet anyway. And he can’t smell it. I hope he can’t smell it.
