Page 79 of Ruin Me Knot
“Stay back.” Somehow, I scream out the words.
Fire eats through muscle, and heat crawls up my spine in a sudden electric rush that floods my body. A black hole forms in my abdomen, the empty space calling to be filled by an Alpha knot.
No.Please, no.
My heat can’t be starting again. Not now, not with everyone staring at me. But the waves of cramping are brutal, my body tearing itself apart. Every cell liquefies into pure need, and it doesn’t care that this is the worst possible place for it to happen.
I’ll kill the only friends I have. My sisters in everything but blood.
My twisting insides might kill me, but I can’t let this happen to them. I won’t.
My knees buckle and I go down. I expect to meet the cold, marble floor but Jax catches me, arms snaking around my waist and hauling me against his chest before I hit the ground. His touch is both mercy and torture, stoking the fever already licking my veins.
My Alphas close around me, a living wall of scent and muscle. Panic claws up my throat, tangled with the heat-drenched ache that makes me shake. I try to breathe, but I’m drowning in their scents, in everything that is them and me, and the danger affecting us all.
"Leah, what do you mean, you’ll kill them? How? Kitten. Look at me. Leah." Ronan’s voice cracks over me.
I force my head up, vision blurring. My slick charges the air with pungent Omega pheromones.
Emma and Mira’s Alphas bracket them, their faces etched in horror. But even as their mates hold them back, I see the girls I knew in Haven fighting to break free. Mira's hands are clamped over her mouth, tears streaking down her cheeks, but her eyes blaze with that familiar fury. Not at me, never at me, but at whatever's hurting me. Emma grips Mira's arm, both of them shaking, and I catch themoment recognition hits them. Emma's medical training shows in her face as she pieces together my symptoms. Mira's lips move in what looks like a curse, probably the same colorful language that used to make the guards blush.
I want nothing more than to touch them again. My sisters, my chosen family, but there’s no way in the world I’d do that to them.
"Please, I can’t. I can’t be near them." Another cramp seizes me, and I collapse into Jax’s hold. My hips roll into empty air, everything inside me saturated in arousal. "Take me away. Anywhere else. Please, I can’t be here…"
Jax’s arms steel around me, and Gabriel kneels, blocking my view of the others, voice gentle and urgent as the world shudders under the intensity of my scent. "Sweetheart, this is the safest place we can be. Everywhere else is compromised."
They don’t understand. They don’t know. I want to scream, want to tear at my own skin, want to run until I’m dust on the wind because if I don’t, I might kill every Omega inside this building.
The heat is burning me alive. It’s different. Wrong. This is jagged and consuming. A wildfire, not a fever. Slick gushes out of me, soaking my thighs, pooling under me on the flawless marble, marking me as a target for any unbonded Alpha close by.
Gabriel cups my face with his palms and groans. A thick bulge forms against my hip where Jax has me crushed to his body. Ronan’s eyes are glassy with desire and hunger.
"Stop. Listen!" I suck in a shaking breath, fighting for control over my body. I must get this out before my tongue is too thick to talk. "Infected…Mortalis Strain." I groan, circling around a cramp that makes me want to hurl. "Don’t let…them close…"
Ronan’s dilated eyes widen with the same horror reeling through me. For a heartbeat, everything is silent but for the stutter-beat of my own chest. Then Ronan’s command ruptures the stillness. "Everyone out! Get away from her! Now!Move!"
Chaos erupts. I barely register the clatter of shoes on marble, urgent shouts writhing through the foyer. Alpha voices snarl and roar, ordering their Omegas and Betas back, away.
Emma's voice cuts through it all. "We're not leaving her!"
Mira's response is immediate. "Like hell we're abandoning Leah!"
But their Alphas are already moving them, forced to choose between proximity and poison.
I try to scream how sorry I am, but my heat shoves everything else out, squeezing my throat and melting the world.
Emma and Mira are hustled backward by their mates, their faces twisted in shocked misery as they're forced to leave me behind.
"We'll find another way," Emma calls out, her voice breaking. "We won't leave you alone, Leah!"
Mira fights against her Alphas’ hold one more time. "You hear me? We're not going anywhere.” Their voices fade as distance forces safety, but I catch Mira's final shout. "You survived worse than this, you stubborn bitch! Don't you dare give up now!"
Tears streak down my cheeks, smearing everyone’s faces into bands of color, ache, and desperate need. My stomach knots, sharp and sickening. I retch, doubling over as a cramp seizes my belly, hands digging in for an anchor.
Gods, this so much worse than any heat I’ve had before. Arousal is a tidal wave, splitting me open. My perfume rises like a living thing. I can’t think, can’t even summon fear anymore. I’m nothing but urgent, frantic craving spilling out of me.
Something is wrong. Something is horribly, fatally wrong.
