Page 15 of Hide or Die

SIX

Leona

“YOU’RE...” JAX BEGAN, his eyes losing focus as he breathed in deeply. “You’re an...”

Kam moved in front of me, blocking my view of the alpha on the far side of the cell. “She’s a UFNA ambassador, and you’re part of her security team.”

He was trying to sound confident. Commanding. To my ears, he mostly just sounded terrified.

“How in thehelldid you manage to make it to a posting this high?” Jax asked, obviously bewildered.

“By being very good at her job,” Kam snapped.

I peered around Kam’s legs, succumbing to a deep-seated need to keep the alpha in my line of sight. Blue eyes locked with mine, and he took a step toward us, as though drawn by a string. Kam jerked a hand up—arm straight, palm out. He squared his shoulders, trying to make himself seem bigger.

“No. Stop right there. Take a step back.”

Kam put on a good show, but I knew him well enough to hear the faint tremor behind his words. A thread of rational thought pierced the haze of fever and emptiness smothering me. My sweet and gentle omega packmate was planning to stand between me and an alpha who could break him in half like a twig.

“Kam, don’t,” I begged.

The alpha across from us was breathing heavily, his scent thickening in response to mine. I had to think... I had to push past my body’s growing neediness. Every nerve thrummed, attuned to the figure on the other side of the cell. His dark, woodsy aroma flooded my senses, threatening to drown me.

But there was something...

Something important...

“Jax,” Kam said carefully. “You can’t help her, regardless. Even if she wanted it, you’re not in a position to—”

“Yes, I am.” The alpha’s voice had deepened to a basso rumble. “Step aside. Let her speak for herself.”

Subjugated. That was what Kam was trying to say... what my muddled brain had been reaching for. Subjugated alphas were chemically castrated.

Kam shot me a worried look over his shoulder. He must have seen some shred of coherence still in my gaze, because he reluctantly moved a step to the side. Jax stood before me, solid and strong and overwhelminglyalpha. My entire body clenched, the muscles of my aching passage cramping painfully. I curled around the agonizing emptiness, still holding eye contact.

The person behind those blue eyes and that irresistible scent was a stranger. And I was a thirty-one-year-old omega virgin who—thanks to years of using heat blockers—had experienced exactlyonenatural heat cycle before now. I was trapped in a cell and facing execution. The thought of his touch—when I would be too weak to resist and too mindless with need to communicate with him—terrified me.

I held his gaze despite my trembling muscles, fighting the urge that made me want to crawl to him on my hands and knees and lick my way up his body an inch at a time.

“Don’t touch me,” I choked out. “I do not give you permission.”

Blue eyes burned. My vision narrowed until they were all I could focus on. After a moment, the alpha firmed his jaw and nodded.

“I understand,” he said. “This is going to be a really bad twenty-four hours, Madam Ambassador—but I’ll do everything in my power to protect both of you when the guards return in the morning.”

A tiny thread of relief cut through my clamoring nerves. I knew I was also supposed to be worrying about tomorrow, but the threat of execution was already growing distant and unimportant compared to the storm raging inside my body.

“Thank you,” Kam murmured in abject relief, and I didn’t think he was only talking about the promise of protection.

“We’re still looking at a deeply unpleasant night for everyone involved,” Jax said.

“Followed by one hell of an unpleasant day,” Kam agreed. “Probably a fatal one. We know. I mean it, though. Thank you.”

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