Page 11 of Hide or Die

Jax grunted and levered himself upright. Kam helped him out of his torn and filthy suit jacket, easing it off his injured arm. The white button-down shirt followed. It was stained red, and so was the white undershirt beneath it. He’d lost quite a bit of blood—but, as he’d said himself, alphas were hard to kill.

I clung to that knowledge and tore my eyes away when he reached back with his good hand, grasping the torn undershirt and pulling it over his head in a single, smooth movement. Injured or no, a shirtless, muscular alpha was not something I needed to see right now. Not so close to—

My mind blanked out in a moment of perfect, crystal-clear denial.

Not so close to my heat.

Oh, god. My heat was only days away, and I was trapped in a cell with an unfamiliar alpha, at the mercy of kidnappers who might want us as hostages, or for ransom money, or...

Trapped. I wastrapped.

In a cell.

With my heat coming on.

Cold sweat broke out across my entire body, my heartbeat thundering into triple time. My head pounded in counterpoint to my galloping pulse as sudden panic gripped me. Jax turned to look at me, a frown creasing his sharply chiseled features as though he’d heard my breathing pick up and my heart thumping against my ribcage like a trapped animal.

And... ofcoursehe’d heard it. He was an alpha, and the cell wasn’t that large. Kam looked up from his examination of the bloody tear in Jax’s side, following the alpha’s gaze to me. Something must have shown in my expression. I’d probably gone pale as a sheet, all the blood draining from my face.

“Leona?” he asked, worry sharpening his tone. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

FIVE

Leona

“MY LUGGAGE,” I saidstupidly. “Is our luggage here?”

Understanding flooded Kam’s features, followed by horror. He hid both reactions under a poker face within seconds.

“No,” Jax said blankly. “I... don’t think our luggage was really top of mind for the terrorists who planted an I.E.D. and snatched us from a diplomatic motorcade on a public highway. Why? I take it there was something important in your suitcase?”

I opened my mouth and paused, stuck for a reply.

Kam looked between us and promptly rescued me. “She... takes medication. For a chronic condition.”

“What kind of condition?” Jax asked, because apparently we were going to have this conversation with me staring at his bare chest and the jagged hunk of metal protruding from his sluggishly bleeding side.

---