Page 23 of Hide or Die

Kameron

THE DOOR OPENED again, but only a few inches. It wasn’t enough space for Jax to wield his improvised club, or for him to force his way out of the cell. I held Leo close against my side, painfully aware that we had no chance of resisting if the guards got past Jax.

A slender gun barrel poked through the gap—different than the chunky semi-automatic rifle that had greeted us on previous visits. Before I could brace for the inevitable heartbreak to come, the barrel jerked. The retort was strangely quiet, like the sound of a small-caliber pistol with a silencer fitted. Rather than falling down with blood spurting from a gunshot wound, Jax only flinched.

He remained standing, but his hand flew convulsively to his chest, where a fletched dart hung from one bulging pectoral muscle. With a roar, he ripped it free and threw it to the side. Faster than I could follow, he reached out and grabbed the tranquilizer gun, using it to yank the bearer into the door with an ugly clang of flesh against metal.

Dragging the gunman with him, he snarled and staggered through the gap, disappearing into the corridor beyond. I resisted the urge to squeeze my eyes shut as shouts and thumps echoed against the cave walls.

Weak fingers tangled in the material of my shirt.

“Kam,” Leo slurred. “Don’ resist when they come for me. Let th’m take me. They don’ know you’re omega. Jus’ me.”

My stomach churned. She wanted me to hand her over to them...to throw her under the bus in some doomed attempt to save myself.

“Stay here, odama.” I removed her hand from my shirt and darted across the cell in search of another usable length of board. The pickings weren’t great, but I grabbed a piece that would extend my reach a bit, with the added bonus of a couple of nails sticking out of one end.

Outside, the shouting had subsided in favor of the thumping. I knew better than to hope that meant Jax was winning. They’d tranqed him. As soon as the drugs took him down, we were toast. I hid behind the open door, holding the sad piece of wood like a cricket bat. They might slam the thing open on their way in and squash me against the wall like a bug—but at least they wouldn’t see me right away. It was the only chance we had.

The fight in the hallway went ominously quiet. Boots tramped toward the door.

“Kam,” Leo said desperately. “Let them take me.”

Answering her would have given away my position. Not that there were, y’know, too many places to hide inside this bare cell. For the second time in my life, I stood motionless, barely breathing... convinced I was about to die. The footsteps reached the half-open doorway.

I held my breath, waiting. An instant later—with perfect irony—the heavy door rammed into me beneath the force of a heavy shove, sending me staggering even as I tried to dodge out of the way. I tripped over Leo’s legs and hit the ground hard. A boot in the ribs drove the remaining air from my lungs, and gray splotches erupted in my vision.

As though underwater, I heard the men exchange another round of rapid-fire Turkish. I tried to roll over and crawl toward them as two of them hefted Leo up by the arms and dragged her away. Uselessly, I patted the packed dirt in search of my pathetic piece of broken wood. Aside from the gasp she’d let out when I stumbled over her body on my ignominious way to the ground, Leo was utterly silent as they hauled her from the cell. I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than if she’d been screaming.

The door slammed unceremoniously shut while I was still scrabbling toward it on my hands and knees. I staggered to my feet and half-fell against it, my palms slapping the unyielding metal.

The lock clicked with a terrible sense of finality.

My knees gave up on the job of holding me upright, and I crumpled to the floor, my fingernails scraping against the door on the way down. I stared at the rusty metal with unseeing eyes, a horrible sense of numbness washing over me like frigid, brackish water.

My companions were gone, dragged off to face who-knew-what unimaginable horrors. I had failed them... and now I was alone.

* * *

Somehow, I managedto crawl a few feet away, where I at least wouldn’t get slammed by the door again, the next time it opened. I had no illusions that our captors had forgotten about me. As a perceived beta weakling who posed no threat, I had simply become a lower priority than an omega in heat.

I remembered this heavy numbness all too well, although I wished I didn’t. The feeling of being caged alone, knowing in the depths of my gut that everyone I cared about was either dead or facing the kind of unimaginable torture that only angry betas could devise.

Committee sympathizers had come for my family in Kolkata when I was twelve. We were purebreds—an ancient family line that had been influential in the Bengal region’s silk trade since the fifteen hundreds. For centuries, we’d managed to avoid the cyclical tensions between betas and the old, alphomic bloodlines. Strategic bribery... political influence... even disappearing underground for a generation or two, on occasion—these were the things that had allowed my family to endure. To flourish, even.

Perhaps that long history of overcoming the odds had made us complacent. When the end came, I’d still been a pup to all intents and purposes. Naive, trusting, and far too pretty for my own good. In the months leading up to the pogrom, I’d overheard the adults talking in solemn whispers from time to time, but when the vigilantes arrived with guns and shackles, I hadn’t truly understood what was about to happen.

The adults had been rounded up and taken to the courtyard. Two men in black, military-style fatigues had held my littermates and me at gunpoint in the grand hall of the old house. I still remembered the sound of gunfire outside; remembered thinking that it must be fireworks, even though it was daylight and there was no festival.

After the courtyard fell silent, a third man came in and checked us over, one by one, verifying our sex. My three alpha brothers and sisters were taken away. I never saw them again. I learned later that alphas were in low demand for the slave trade at the time, since a single alpha could impregnate many omegas. Of my family, I was the only one with enough potential economic value to make my life worth keeping.

They collared me and dragged me to a truck with a cage in the back. I watched my family home disappear into the distance with almost exactly the same dead feeling that was currently crushing my lungs beneath its weight.

How much time had passed since Leo and Jax had been taken? I wasn’t sure. I thought it had only been fifteen minutes or so, but it was entirely possible that my fugue state had distorted my perception of time.

What sort of things could be done to an unconscious alpha and a heat-dazed omega in the space of fifteen minutes? My gorge rose uncontrollably. I staggered onto shaky legs and barely made it to the uncovered latrine hole before losing my stomach contents. Heaving made my bruised ribs feel like they were about to crack in two, but I welcomed the pain. I deserved far worse for not having protected my vulnerable packmate when she needed me.

Muffled gunfire reached me through the walls. My heart stuttered and skipped. I fell back, landing on my ass. Denial raged through me, burning away the comforting numbness.

---