Page 153 of Pack Rivals: Part Two
My throat burns.
I close my eyes and open them again.
“Dr. Hannah?” I croak. Is it really her? She looks so different. No conservative turtle neck top, no knee-length skirt. And around her neck is a chain of bite marks. Ringing her neck like a collar. Old scars not new. I thought she wasn’t bonded.
“Bea Carsen,” she smiles, returning her glasses to her face and peering out at the ocean again.
I shake my head this time, so confused.
What happened?
I force myself to remember. Gunshots. Voices. Smoke.
“Where are my alphas?” I sit bolt upright on my sun-lounger, the movement making my stomach lurch, and swing my head around. To my left is more beach, in front of me the ocean, but behind is a huge mansion, several stories high, a pool shimmering on an upper terrace, the entire building formed of glass.
“Youralphas? They’re not yours, you’re unbonded, darling.”
“Where are they?” I demand, not caring about the semantics.
“Somewhere safe and sound.”
“What’s going on?” I growl.
“Hmmm, you must have worked out by now, darling, that you are a woman in demand. And not just with the alphas of this city but with us scientists too. You’re a fascinating specimen, Bea, one my pack is hoping will make us very rich.” She laughs, gesturing to the house behind us. “Not that we’re not rich already, but we’re hoping to diversify into more legal forms of pharmaceuticals.”
I frown, struggling to understand a word this woman is saying to me.
Specimen? Pharmaceuticals?
I glance down at my body. I’m still wearing the t-shirt and shorts I was earlier, dried slick all over my legs. I shift my arm, attempting to feel for Nate’s knife.
“If you’re looking for your weapon,” the doctor says, stretching out her legs and tipping her head back towards the sky, “we took it away. Wouldn’t want another accident with an eye, would we? Talking of which, my brother was rather insistent we chop you into lots of little pieces and feed you to the sharks. He’s still pretty unhappy about losing his right eye.” She giggles girlishly. “But luckily for you, my pack is more interested in money than revenge.”
“Your brother?”
“Yes, my brother. I’d lie and say this was all his idea. But it wasn’t, it was mine.” She sighs dramatically. “I’m rather sick of hiding who I am, who my pack are. I’ve been looking for a way to make everything respectable. To join in with all the fussy little omegas I’ve been treating all these years.”
I rub at my head. None of this makes sense. I don’t understand what she’s telling me.
“Who are your pack?” I ask, stumbling for something that I might be able to comprehend.
She doesn’t answer me, instead, leaning forward and twisting her body away from me. Immediately I see it, the tattoo winding down her spine, from the bite mark at the base of her neck all the way down her back, disappearing inside her shorts. A snake. Its angry eyes red like her lips, its tongue coiled.
I still don’t understand. She sits back against the lounger, reading the confusion on my face.
“You really are a little hillbilly, aren’t you, darling?” She reaches down to the ground, picking up a water bottle and unscrewing the lid. “Surely you’ve heard of them. The Snakebites?”
“Your pack is part of the Snakebites? But they’re a criminal gang.”
“My gangisthe Snakebites, darling. They run the operation.”
I swallow. Dr. Hannah. Beautiful, intelligent, bonded to a criminal gang?
“How?” I blurt out. Maybe I was right, maybe her involvement in whatever the hell this is has never been consensual. I remember what she told me, about being careful who I shared my first heat with, careful not to become attached.
“How?” She takes a long mouthful of water, screwing back the lid. “Micko, head of my pack, has a little omega sister. He brought her to my clinic. It was one of those things. Instantaneous. He wanted to make me his.”
“He forced you?”
