Page 55

"Heat accelerant," Kain announces with clinical detachment. "Designed specifically for captured omegas. Triggers artificial heat symptoms severe enough to incapacitate through pain while leaving breeding capacity intact."

Understanding hits an instant before the chemical reaches me.

I try to hold my breath. Press my face against stone. But contact with skin is sufficient for absorption, and the compound permeates the air itself.

When it touches me, fire erupts beneath my skin.

Not the gradual warmth of natural heat, but consuming inferno that races through my nervous system with brutal efficiency. My knees buckle as agony overwhelms every sense. Ascream tears from my throat as fabricated need crashes through me.

But this isn't like the heat that brought Vex and me together. That was biological imperative—uncomfortable but purposeful, my body preparing for potential breeding.

This is weaponized suffering. Artificial stimulation of hormone receptors without corresponding pleasure responses that make natural heat bearable.

Pure torture disguised as biology.

"Amelia!" Vex's roar barely penetrates the haze of agony consuming me.

Through tear-blurred vision, I see his response transcend tactical consideration. With me incapacitated and vulnerable, his protective instincts override survival concerns completely. He abandons all defensive positioning, putting himself between enforcement agents and my suffering form with berserker determination that ensures my safety at cost of his own.

"You dare use chemical warfare on my mate?"

The words emerge as primal sound more than language. He launches at Kain with such speed the Feline captain barely has time to raise his blade. They collide in a blur of scales and spotted fur, crashing into the cliff face with enough force to crack stone.

Vex's claws rake parallel lines across Kain's chest, drawing blood through tactical armor. His tail whips around to entangle the captain's legs while his good wing buffers them against the rock face.

The fury is magnificent and terrible to witness.

But it leaves him vulnerable to the remaining Gargoyle, who fires binding chains designed for permanent wing restriction. The metallic links spread mid-air before wrapping around Vex's massive form, paralytic compounds embedded in the metal beginning to work immediately upon contact.

"Vex!" I try to warn him, fighting through chemical agony to form words, but my voice emerges as little more than pained whisper.

His movements slow visibly as the paralytic spreads. Each attempt to break free becomes less effective than the last as specialized compounds affect his muscular control. The bindings constrict further, designed to permanently restrict wing function.

"Wing mobility compromised at eighty percent," the Gargoyle reports with satisfaction. "Binding protocols fully engaged."

I watch my alpha's capture while unable to intervene directly, my own body betraying me through artificial heat symptoms that make coherent thought increasingly difficult. The pain is almost unbearable—waves of burning agony radiating from my core outward, muscles contracting in spasms that leave me gasping.

Sweat soaks through my clothing. Skin becomes hypersensitive to even air movement. Yet through the chemical haze, one truth burns clearer than the pain itself:

Vex sacrificed his freedom, perhaps his flight permanently, to protect me.

The realization ignites something beyond the artificial heat raging through my system—determination that transcends physical limitation, fury that cuts through chemically-induced fog.

Medical training surfaces through the agony. Heat accelerants work by targeting omega reproductive systems specifically. Most are calibrated to avoid affecting Prime captors during transport, using specialized delivery mechanisms with limited cross-species impact.

But all chemicals have interactions. Side effects. Unintended consequences when combined with other substances.

Kain approaches with the control collar again, satisfaction evident in his feline features as he surveys his captured prizes. "Comfortable transport is still possible with cooperation," he says, reaching for my throat.

My trembling hand finds the hidden vial in my tunic—the nerve toxin Vex insisted I carry for emergency defense. Mountain plant extract designed for use against smaller Prime threats. Insufficient dosage for larger species like Gargoyles.

But combined with heat accelerant already saturating the air, making all nerve receptors hypersensitive...

I drive the needle-tipped vial into Kain's exposed wrist as he reaches for me, injecting the full dose directly into his bloodstream. His surprised snarl turns to confusion as the toxin enters his system, nerve pathways already affected by the chemical accelerant making them hypersensitive to neural disruption.

"What did you?—"

His words cut off as the combined chemicals take effect. Neural pathways misfire in cascading failure. His body stiffens as competing toxins overwhelm his system, combat effectiveness eliminated as hypersensitive receptors amplify the toxin's effect far beyond normal parameters.