Page 26 of Torment Me Knot
“Aubrey, wait—” Ezra reaches for him.
Too late. Aubrey is already stumbling toward Espie, catching himself on the bed frame. Kev steps back just in time as Aubrey grabs Espie and pulls her into his arms. They collapse togetherin the corner, wedging themselves into the space where two walls meet, fingers knotted in each other's clothes.
“Shit.” Lex's voice is barely audible. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Ezra breathes hard beside me, his fresh linen scent gone acrid. Kev plows his fingers through his hair and turns away.
Adrian ushers the nurses out of the room. “I'll get David Maverick.” I nod as he goes.
“If Turns wasn't already dead, I'd kill him with my bare hands,” I whisper. Wallace is next.
Espie's sobs have quieted to hiccupping gasps. Aubrey is still hyperventilating, but at least he's breathing. Their scents have gone rancid with fear, gardenia rotting, chamomile burning.
This is bad. Catastrophically bad, and there's not a single thing I can do about it. I can only stand here and watch my mates fall apart on a hospital floor.
I catch Kev's eye. Hold it. A second, no more. His scent has gone flat, the whiskey note stripped out, the oakwood gone dry and thin. We're all in hell together.
“I don't trust you,” I say.
“I know.” Kev nods. “I don't trust you either.” His jaw draws taut and releases. “But I trust that you want them safe.”
“They're not going to survive if we can't figure out how to be in the same room without tearing each other apart.” I glance at the omegas huddled in the corner. “They can't be separated.”
“We can't be separated from them—” He stops. Runs a hand through his hair, which he's already made a mess of. “Which means we need to be together. All of us. In the same space.”
I look at him. At the mess of him — eyes red at the rims, hair wrecked.
My cheekbone throbs where her elbow landed. The linoleum is cold through the soles of my boots. My mates’ scents sit wrong in my lungs, sharp with distress.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “I know.”
Chapter Eleven
Sera
Dr. Maverick arrives smelling of coffee and antiseptic.
I know him by reputation. Beta. Mid-fifties. Silver threaded through dark hair, kind eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.
He's treated more damaged omegas than anyone in the county, and his work here at the OHC is well-renowned.
He steps into the room and stops. Takes in the scene without reacting to it. Two omegas huddled together on the floor. Four alphas standing around them like we're all trying not to detonate.
His expression pinches slightly. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Nobody move any closer.”
He studies the omegas for a long moment, gaze moving over the way they're pressed together, the panic still sharp in their scents, the hypervigilant way Aubrey tracks every movement near Espie. Then he looks around the room itself. The white walls. The harsh hospital lighting. The empty floor space around them.
“This place is making it worse. They can scent the difference between here and somewhere safe, and right now every breath they take is telling them they're still in danger.”
His gaze flicks to me. Then Kev. “They need to be away from here. There are too many traumatic impressions for them to overcome.”
“Another private medical facility—” Adrian starts.
“Private doesn't help. It will still scent like somewhere they can't leave to them. You'd be moving the problem into another room. They wouldn’t heal there.” He glances at the alphas crowding the doorway, then to me. “They're scent-matched. Their bodies know you even if their minds haven’t caught up. That pull to you all is going to do more for them than anything I can prescribe.”
“What do you suggest?” Kev asks.
“I’d say he means taking them home with us,” Ezra says.
