Page 18 of Hide or Die

“Here and now, it’s really not,” Jax shot back, a hint of an alpha bark creeping into his tone. “Have you been intimate with each other, yes or no?”

My spine snapped straight beneath that tone. I had to resist the instinct to roll my head to the side and look away, baring my throat.

“Yes,” I hissed. “Which doesn’t change the fact that I can’t help her with this. I can’t get hard, all right? If I could fix this for her,don’t you think I already would have?”

I could feel the defensive claws coming out, and I cursed myself when Leo whimpered in my arms and began to cry again. I tried to swallow everything down—to project calm support rather than the clammy terror that was choking me like a noose.

“You have hands,” Jax said flatly. “So you’re going to provide the knot, and I’m going to stay over here and provide the pheromones. It’s still not the kind of consent that an omega deserves, but at least it’s not getting fucked by a stranger.”

Or dying.

The words hung in the air, unspoken.

I fought to settle my churning stomach. After a moment, I managed to shove the fear down far enough to stroke Leo’s sweaty hair away from her brow. The bruise on her temple from the car wreck had almost completely faded, I noticed distantly.

“Odama,” I whispered. “We’re going to try to help you.”

“Alpha, please,” she whined, rutting mindlessly against my leg. “Need the alpha! Please,please...”

I was weeping silently, tears tracking down my cheeks. Fool that I was, I’d always pictured us going out in a blaze of glory when our secret finally came out—making some kind of noble, defiant speech to the television cameras as we were hauled away, swaying hearts and minds everywhere to our cause. Because, of course, that fantasy was so much more comforting than the reality where we were kidnapped by terrorists, and our captors showed up in the morning to find Leo writhing on the floor, begging for sex.

“Mr. Patel. She needs you to be strong right now, okay?”

I had no idea how Jax was keeping it together... how he was managing to speak in a way that made it clear he actually gave a shit about what the two of us were going through.

“Call me Kam,” I told him unsteadily. “I think we entered first-name territory a while ago.”

“Kam,” he said, and in that instant I wanted nothing more than for the alpha to come over here and wrap both of us up in his strong arms, blocking out the world. I set the ridiculous desire aside forcefully.

“Sorry,” I said. “You’re right, of course. If you think it will work, that’s what we need to do. She’ll understand. I’m sure she will.”

I tried to believe it.

“Sometimes,” Jax said, “there are situations where you can only control a very small number of things. Right now, we can try to ease her heat before it endangers her health. We can’t do anything about the rest of it at the moment. But we can do this.”

“I hear you.” I cleared my throat. “Leo, we’re going to help you, okay?”

She whined again and mumbled something, but the words didn’t make sense. At this point, approaching her first peak, it was apparent she’d lost the power of speech. Instead, she twisted and writhed, struggling to get free of my embrace.

“She’s trying to turn over so she can present,” Jax said calmly. “Let her go, Kam.”

I let her go, my arms feeling empty the moment I did. Sure enough, Leo rolled onto all fours, panting softly as her back arched in an omega’s instinctual lordosis. Presenting for sex to the alpha in the room... begging to be filled.

“When you say ‘knot,’” I began uncertainly, because this was nothing the two of us had ever done before. There’d been no point in trying. Outside of heat and in the absence of alpha pheromones, penetration wouldn’t be pleasurable in the least for her. For me, it wasn’t even an option any more.

“Work as many fingers into her as will comfortably fit,” Jax said bluntly. “That probably means either three or four. When I say so, and not before, curl them like you’re making a fist and keep them like that.” He paused. “I’m sincerely hoping that your nails are short.”

“They are,” I whispered.

The blanket had slipped from Leo’s body to land on the dirt floor. She’d shed her suit jacket when the fever started, and her conservative blouse was partially unbuttoned, hanging off one shoulder after her repeated attempts to wriggle out of her clothing. The dove gray pencil skirt—streaked with filth and blood from the car wreck—had hitched up around her hips when she’d climbed half into my lap earlier. Her light green panties were soaked from the river of slick she’d been putting out for the last hour.

She was as beautiful as she always was, but I knew she wouldn’t want to be seen like this. Not under these circumstances. My heart ached for her. Hell, my heart ached for both of us. I tossed the blanket over her back, draping it so it hid her lower body from view as I knelt behind her, silently cursing myself, the terrorists, and the world we’d been born into.

“Leo, I’m going to touch you now,” I said. “Just my fingers, but Jax says it will feel like a knot. He’s here, but he’s going to stay a little distance away and lend you his pheromones, all right? I’m going to move your underwear out of the way. If you want me to stop, shake your head, or say no, or even just move away, and I will, I promise.”

It was useless. Stupid. She couldn’t understand me in her current condition. She wasn’t going to resist my touch, because her body was flooded with industrial-strength heat hormones, and shecouldn’tresist. My words were only a salve to myself, not to her.

“You’re a good friend to her,” Jax said quietly, from his position across the cell.

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