Page 41 of Fight or Fly

Additionally, Jax was losing it. With his boss and packmates captured and quite possibly undergoing torture at Enoch Sloane’s hands, the three of us in Committee custody, and a ghost from the past haunting him, our kindhearted alpha had finally reached capacity.

“It’s crazy,” he said, pacing back and forth across the cell with hitching, uneven strides. He scrubbed a hand through his close-cropped blond hair, ruffling it. “This iscrazy. Why would she work for them after what they did to her?”

“How certain are you that she’s telling the truth about the pups?” I asked, hating that there was even a question about it.

It was Kam who answered. He was sprawled on the bed, rumpled and obviously exhausted. “If Alex felt the bond break, the only possibility I can see is that they cut out Irina’s mating gland. And if that’s the case, it’s unlikely the pregnancy could have continued to term, even if they didn’t sterilize her at the same time. The hormonal disruption would have been too much.”

Jax growled, and didn’t pause in his restless pacing. “Right. So they mutilated her, killed her pups, and now she’s acting like Nikolayev’s pet lapdog? That’s even worse.”

I tapped a fingernail against the table. “Why is she alive at all? She was an unregistered omega openly infiltrating the beta military. She should be dead.”

“Another good point,” Kam agreed.

“And once again, she was captured in the UFNA, but here she is with the Euro-Soviets.” I sighed. “If we were free and we still had our positions at the Foreign Office, we could at least dig into the court records. Find out what her official fate was supposed to be.”

“If we were free, we could do a lot of things,” Jax said, frustration rolling off him in waves.

“As much as we might wonder what’s going through Irina’s head, there’s another angle I don’t get,” I mused. “What’s the value in keeping her? From Nikolayev’s perspective, I mean? She’s an omega. Yes, she was in the beta military, but only on the admin side, right?”

“Yeah,” Jax confirmed.

“So what makes a brainwashed omega valuable enough for him to not only keep her alive, but put her in a position of authority over beta soldiers?” I glanced between my two companions. “Why not use a brainwashed alpha instead? Or, for that matter, just use betas since the entire point of the organization is to get rid of alphas and omegas?”

“Omegas can be fighters, too,” Kam said quietly. “It’s a different skill set—speed and flexibility rather than brute strength. Just look at Beckett. But you’re right, in the context of the Committee, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Jax came to an abrupt halt in the center of the room. His eyes bored into me. “I don’t want you alone with Nikolayev.” His blue gaze played over Kam as well. “Either of you.”

I didn’t want to be alone with Nikolayev either, but my wants—and Jax’s—didn’t really come into it at this point.

“Jax,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “We’re prisoners. As much as I appreciate having you here, you can’t protect us now.”

That was probably a harsh thing to say to an alpha—confirmed when Jax snapped, “You think I don’t know that?” with a whipcrack of alpha bark in the words.

Kam and I flinched in unison. Jax froze, his shoulders a rigid line of tension.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “Shit—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark.”

I forced myself to relax, unclenching my muscles one by one. “We know. It’s okay. We’re all on edge.”

He seemed to deflate, pulling out the chair across from me and sinking into it. He put his elbows on the table and scrubbed the heels of his hands against his eye sockets before looking up with a sigh.

“You know what I can’t stop thinking about?” he asked.

“What?” I said.

He blew out a sharp breath. “If we were all mated, I’d at least be able to tell if Alex and Flynn are okay. If they’re in pain, or...” He trailed off and shook his head.

“They’re almost certainly notokay,” Kam said, quietly brutal. “Knowing what Alex went through with Irina, would you really want a front-row seat for whatever’s happening to them?”

Jax was silent for a long moment.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, and just like that, the fragile bravado that had sustained me up to this point fled. I wanted to cling to him and cry.

“We’re in a cell inside a remote compound in rural Cuba,” Kam went on. “We’ve been given assurances that no one will disturb us until morning. That might be true or it might be false, but in the end, I’m not sure it really matters. There is quite literally nothing productive we can do until Nikolayev or someone else in power shows up to talk with us. I, for one, have no desire to huddle on this bed alone while you two stay up all night exhausting yourselves with what-ifs. So would both of you please come over here and ensure I don’t have to do that?”

I wiped away a stray tear that escaped my shaky control. We’d been given the gift of one more night together, even if we were missing some of the people who should have been here with us. Tomorrow was shrouded in a fog of uncertainty. Tonight might be all we had left.

Rising from the table, I held my hand out to Jax. After the smallest of hesitations, he took it.

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