Page 28 of Knot Unwanted: Part Two

My vision tunnels. Not here. We risked everything, and she was never here.

Behind me, Jax makes a wounded noise. “Then where?—?”

The beta’s lips twist into a grotesque parody of a smile despite his pain. “You really think… we’d keep that bitch… somewhere you could find her?”

White-hot rage floods my system. My fist connects with his face in a crunch of cartilage. Blood sprays across the white wall as he slumps unconscious to the floor.

The pheromones in the air make it hard to think. My skin feels too tight, my blood too hot. Jax is leaning heavily against the wall now, his breathing labored.

“Ren—” His voice is strained. “The gas…we need to?—”

Boots pound down the hallway outside. Multiple sets. Heavy tread. Reinforcements.

My mind races through the chemical haze. If Hailey isn’t here, then there’s only one way to find her…

There’s a shout, and three armed betas pour in, masks secured, weapons raised.

I stumble toward the corner of the room, grabbing Jax by the arm and pulling him with me. With my knife, I pry off the coverof the air duct and shove him toward it with every ounce of my strength. “Get in!”

He doesn’t let go of me, not even as he climbs into the duct. Once he’s in and turns, expecting me to follow, I wrench my arm from his grip and slide the cover back on.

The look in Jax’s eyes when the vent cover clicks shut between us will haunt me forever.

Betrayal.

His fingers claw at the metal grate, his lips forming my name—Ren!—but the sound is lost beneath the pounding of boots and the rush of blood in my ears.

I turn away before I can see the moment his expression shifts from shock to fury. Before he realizes I’ve just locked him in there, alone, while I stay behind.

Because I have to.

The betas fan out, weapons trained on me. I don’t fight as the first dart embeds itself in my thigh. I don’t resist as the second hits my shoulder, the third my neck.

Let them think they’ve won.

My knees hit the floor. The world tilts, my vision swimming with black spots. The last thing I see before darkness takes me is a beta crouching in front of me, his masked face inches from mine.

“Widow wants a word.”

His gloved hand grips my jaw, forcing my head up. Prick.

“And you’re going to give her exactly what she asks for.”

Chapter 7

Hailey

Iwake to the taste of copper and the smell of antiseptic burning my nose.

My head pounds—a slow, nauseating throb that pulses behind my eyes in time with my heartbeat. The surface beneath me is cold. Metal. A table, not a bed. Straps bite into my wrists, my ankles, my waist. Even my forehead is secured, a thick band keeping me from turning my head.

Panic claws up my throat, but I force it down. It won’t help. It never has.

Where am I?

The last thing I remember is the beta with peppermint breath—the Prepper—his hands clinical and cruel as he stripped me. “Widow wants you prepped,” he’d said, voice flat as he catalogued every inch of my body. The humiliating examination. The ice-cold shower they blasted me with, the rough scrubbing that left my skin raw. The injection that made my limbs go slack while my mind stayed horribly, completely aware.

Now I’m…somewhere else. The light filtering through a high window is pale morning sun, not the harsh fluorescents of thefacility where they’d first taken me. This room is different too—sleeker, more modern. Less like a prison and more like a high-end medical suite, all chrome and glass.

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