Page 38 of Hide or Die

“Flynn says your heat has broken,” he told me, in that carefully neutral voice he used when he was particularly worried about something. “I won’t bother asking how you’re feeling.”

Memories of the last several days began to filter into my mind, backwards.

“Oh my god,” I said. “I... don’t currently have enough brain cells functioning to even begin to deal with the burning radioactive fallout from this. Kam, I amso sorry.”

His arm was around my shoulders, holding me against him. At that, his fingers clasped my bicep convulsively. “Please don’t apologize,” he said, a bit desperately. “I don’t think I can handle it right now.”

I nodded, and tried to focus on something practical. “Okay. I’m starving right now. Is there food?”

In fact, I was having a hard time not grabbing Kam’s shirt and shaking him until he gave me a blow-by-blow report on what thehellhad happened in the days since an I.E.D. had blown up our motorcade. Were we still in Romania? What had happened with the summit? If we’d been rescued by our own security forces, why hadn’t we been arrested immediately afterward? I gave my head a sharp shake to clear it, and instantly regretted it when my brain sloshed around like a pickled egg in a jar.

“Alex is getting you something to eat,” Kam said. “You haven’t had any food in four days. I expect Flynn already found somewhere to crash, now that the pheromones have subsided.”

“Right,” I said, wincing a bit when my stomach audibly gurgled its displeasure. Rather than focus on it, I moved on to the next important thing that I could potentially do something about. “How are you? And please don’t say ‘fine.’”

“Fine,” he said, way too quickly.

“Kameron Patel, I swear to god—” I began, only to be cut off when a knock sounded at the door.

It opened a moment later, and the female alpha, Alex, entered. She gave a hesitant sniff, visibly steeling herself before entering with a bowl of something held in one hand, and a bottle of water tucked under her arm. I glanced down at my body reflexively, but an oversized black T-shirt covered me from neck to mid-thigh. It smelled of stale sweat and spicy alpha.

Flynn.

I was wearing Flynn’s T-shirt.

Jesus Christ.

I shoved the realization aside. “Hello. Is that for me?”

“It is... assuming you can choke down something that’s supposedly pork and lentils, based on the picture on the can,” Alex said. “Spoiler alert—it bears no actual resemblance to the picture. Welcome to rural Eastern Europe.”

“If she tries to give you anything containing either fish meatballs or preserved cod liver, run for the hills,” Kam counseled.

At this point, I would have considered cat food if she’d offered it. Which, it turned out, was fortunate. I accepted the bowl of steaming, gelatinous, pinkish-brown mush and started spooning it into my mouth without paying much attention to the taste—pausing at intervals to wash it down with bottled water.

“You’ll be wanting a briefing on recent events, Madam Ambassador,” Alex said formally. She was standing at parade rest a short distance away—eyes front, not looking at me directly.

“Already?” Kam appeared distinctly uncomfortable. “Maybe you should rest for a day or two first, Leo.”

“Will that make me like what I’m about to hear any better?” I asked.

“Doubtful,” Alex said.

“Then go ahead and hit me with it now,” I told her. “Meanwhile, we’ll all pretend that I’m not sitting in an omega nest wearing nothing but a sex-stained T-shirt belonging to an alpha—one who’s supposed to be chemically castrated, but isn’t. First, though, are there any updates on Jax’s condition? I know he was hurt, even though I can’t remember the details.”

“No, ma’am,” Alex said. “We’ve had no outside contact since I returned here with the vehicle two days ago.”

Two days? God, I’d been even more out of it than I’d realized.

“All right,” I replied, my heart sinking. “In that case, tell me the rest of it.”

In clipped and professional tones, Alex related the details of the roadside attack and kidnapping, painting their subsequent rescue efforts in broad strokes—collecting satellite and spy plane intel, then spending days in a systematic search of the known cave systems in an ever expanding grid. I nearly dropped my spoon when her recitation jarred loose my hazy memories of the videotaped speech the kidnappers had wanted us to make, with its spine-chilling reference to a targeted alphomic weapon.

She went on to describe the early findings related to the modified chemical nerve agent that had been given to Jax, and had almost been given to me. Kam, still curled up beside me, wrapped his arms around his knees, hugging himself.

After freeing us, they’d brought us here, to this isolated cabin in the Carpathians that Beckett had somehow magically conjured for use as a safehouse—another thing that didn’t add up. Then she and Beckett had driven Jax to a hospital in Bucharest, before dropping the sample of the chemical at a government lab. Once Jax’s condition was stabilized, he’d been transferred to a private clinic with a specialist in alphomic medicine on staff, and Alex had returned here with the vehicle.

“As far as the press is concerned, you’re both being held at an undisclosed location due to credible ongoing threats to your safety,” Alex concluded.

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