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She hands me Madden’s old t-shirt, folding it to a clean portion. “You should bite on this. This is gonna suck, but you have to try and stay quiet, the only reason they let me in here is 'cause I know one of the guys guarding you, but if someone comes looking, we might get in trouble.”

I nod my head, swallowing hard.

“Ready?”

“Y—yeah. As ready as I can be,” I say, putting the fabric between my teeth.

I squeeze my eyes shut when I feel her touch. The softness of her hands does nothing to distract me from the pain of whatever she’s doing.

I don’t even know if I can fully describe what it’s like, to have someone shove something into an unnatural hole in your body. All I know is it hurts. And burns.

I let out a startled gasp, every single muscle in my neck tensing with my effort to not scream. My jaw creaks and I see white. I think I forget to breathe.

It’s not until she lets out her own sigh of relief and squeezes my good shoulder that I take a gasping breath, spitting out the t-shirt and turning to my side, heaving from the pain.

Reyna rubs my back, making soft soothing noises from the back of her throat.

“Shhhhh, shhhh, you did so good, Luna. I’m all done. The hard part is over now.”

Tears stream down my cheeks and I let out a sputtering laugh that quickly devolves into coughs. “That—that sucked.”

“Yeah, I bet,” She lets out her own laugh. She pulls out a granola bar and a bottle of water. “You in the mood to eat something?”

“I—I probably should,” I say.

She nods, cracking open the bottle of water and handing it to me.

I take it with my good arm and drink like I’ve been stuck in a desert. I gulp down two-thirds of the bottle before I stop to take a break.

“Eat this while I wrap your arm real quick.”

I pause before taking a bite of the granola bar. “Will—will this part hurt too?”

“No, it shouldn’t hurt too bad, especially compared to what you just put up with,” She offers me a reassuring smile.

I give her a shaky nod, taking a bite of the dry protein bar as she takes some more gauze and wraps it around my arm.

“All done,” she says, sitting back on her heels. “Wait, one last thing.” She grabs the t-shirt that’s resting in my lap and ties itaround my arm again. “Just so no one notices that someone checked you out.”

She shifts like she’s going to stand, but my good hand reaches out to grab her. I don’t want her to leave me alone here. Not when I know my fate at the hands of Alpha Niall will probably make her packing my wound look like a playground.

“How—how did you find me?” I ask her.

She bites her bottom lip before shrugging. “I was covering a shift upstairs for a friend when I heard some of the bouncers talk about a hurt omega being kept in the basement.”

“A shift? But—but Alpha Niall said this is a brothel.”

Her gaze sharpens when I mention Alpha Niall’s name. “Yup, and I work at places like these. Or at least that’s one of the jobs I work.” She plops herself down on the concrete in front of me. “Now tell me how a cute little omega like you got in with a douchebag like Niall? Family debt or something? I can’t imagine it was a drug problem.”

I shake my head. “He—he kidnapped me. I was in the Northside in my pack house when he sent a bunch of mercenaries to kidnap me.” Tears fill my eyes again when I remember how Madden looked, slumped over the driver’s seat.

“What?” Reyna spits, her voice harsher than anything I’ve heard before. “You had a pack? And he kidnapped you?”

I nod, sniffling, wiping at my cheeks and trying to get rid of the evidence of my tears. Sitting in front of a woman like Reyna and crying like a baby makes me feel, well, like a baby.

“We—we’d just made it official that day.”

“Fuck,” She curses under her breath. “You’re from the Northside, too?”