Page 12 of Hide or Die

“It’s personal,” I replied weakly. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

Mainly because talking about it could get me killed, I thought.

“It’ll be fine for a few days,” Kam said, the tension in his shoulders belying his calm tone. “I’m sure the cavalry will show up before it becomes an issue.”

I forced down my panic, grabbing the lifeline he’d just thrown. “Yes,” I agreed. “Sorry. It’ll be fine. Don’t mind me. How bad is that?” I added by way of deflection, gesturing to the ugly wound in Jax’s side.

The alpha craned to look at it.

“Better out than in, probably,” he said, and reached around with his uninjured arm as though he was going to yank the piece of metal out of his side with no further discussion.

Kam batted his hand away. “Let me. And give me that undershirt—we’ll use it to keep pressure on the wound until the bleeding stops.”

“You know, that old ‘better out than in’ thing refers to alcohol,” I said weakly. “Not shrapnel.”

Jax glanced over at me, his brow furrowing. “Same principal, isn’t it?”

“Ugh.Alphas,” Kam muttered, and tugged the metal free.

The alpha in question didn’t even flinch. Kam tossed the piece of shrapnel into the corner, where it bounced against the rocky wall with a light clink before falling to the dirt floor. He pressed the balled-up undershirt against the wound, which was oozing blood but not spurting.

My eyes slid away. Unlike Kam, I’d led a remarkably sheltered life for an omega. I’d always passed as beta... never had to endure the ugliness of subjugated life directly. Before today, the most blood I’d ever seen outside of a movie screen was a bleeding finger after a kitchen knife accident.

My fellow omega had directed his erstwhile patient to keep pressure on the first wound while he twisted Jax’s other arm into the weak light, peering at his bulging bicep.

“If the other piece is still in there, it’s buried too deep to do anything about,” he said.

“It’s still in there,” Jax said. “But don’t worry about it.”

“At least it’s small,” Kam offered.

“Yeah,” Jax agreed. “It’ll be fine. I can still fight if I have to.”

“Nobody’s fighting anyone,” I said, trying to channel authority into my tone. “We’ll talk to them. Negotiate. Find out what they want and try to come to some sort of understanding. I am supposed to be a diplomat, after all.”

“The others will find us soon.” Jax spoke the words as though they were an unbreakable maxim, and I didn’t try to argue.

“Sure,” I said. “Until then, we just need to keep it nice and low-key, all right? Let Kam and me do the talking. Everything will be fine.”

I wasn’t sure who I was trying to reassure—me, Kam, or the injured alpha who seemed to be psyching himself up for a one-sided kamikaze battle against armed terrorists.

* * *

As it happened, therewere no more opportunities for diplomatic discussion than there were for physical fights. Time was difficult to track beneath the unchanging light from the single bulb in the corridor outside, but based on my hunger and the hours I’d slept, I was pretty sure a full day passed before the lock on the door clanked.

It swung open just far enough to reveal a beta man holding an AR-15 pointed at Jax’s head. Kam and I froze. Jax just glared at him, unblinking and unimpressed. The man shifted to make enough space for another of our kidnappers to drop a fresh bucket of water inside the door, followed a moment later by a tray.

“Let me talk to you for a moment,” I said in French. “Can you understand me?”

The men withdrew and the door slammed shut.

I sighed. “You try next time, Kam.”

“Sure,” he said listlessly. “I’ll give it a shot.”

Jax went and wordlessly retrieved the tray of food—bread and dried brown strips of something. Jerky, maybe. My empty stomach churned with nervous worry, but I ate my portion anyway, washing it down with some of the stale water.

The situation was maddening, and it was all I could do to contain my growing panic. We were in a cell perhaps fifteen feet by twenty feet. It was bare, except for a latrine pit. A rough wooden box sat over it, with a hole cut from the top for use as a seat. We had a single threadbare blanket to share between us. Jax had waved it off when I tried to give it to him several hours earlier, so Kam and I had wrapped up in it to sleep when exhaustion overcame us.

---