Page 14 of Naga’s Mate (Prime Omegaverse #2)

CHAPTER 13

MIDNIGHT ESCAPE

The extraction night arrives with deceptive ordinariness—just another evening in my elegant prison. Freedom dangles before me like ripe fruit, simultaneously alluring and frightening. The capsule remains concealed in my laboratory, hidden in the false compartment I engineered when optimism still outweighed complexity.

I've spent hours categorizing my situation with the analytical precision that's become my emotional shield. Like any scientist worth her credentials, I've constructed a meticulous mental inventory, as if life's most pivotal decision could be distilled to data points:

Venom dependency: Severe physiological response without regular exposure. Potential neural damage. Pain beyond quantification.

Research access: Technologies and specimens unavailable to human science. Intellectual fulfillment unattainable elsewhere.

The hybrid child: Developing at accelerated rates. Exhibiting characteristics that could transform biological understanding. My own creation, regardless of conception circumstances.

And most confounding—Nezzar. Captor. Alpha. Something language fails to categorize. The relationship between us defies established terminology, neither human nor naga in definition. Not affection, surely. Yet something that's evolved beyond trauma bonding into unmapped emotional territory.

"Your cardiovascular rate is elevated," Nezzar observes as I adjust research parameters with unsteady fingers. "Are you experiencing gestational discomfort?"

The irony nearly suffocates me. Gestational discomfort. Such an inadequate description for the emotional maelstrom tearing through me. The being who captured me, claimed me, altered my biology—expressing genuine concern for my wellbeing. My situation's absurdity would be laughable if I weren't its central figure.

"Just restless," I lie, words bitter on my tongue. "The embryonic activity seems more pronounced today."

He approaches, his powerful form sliding across the laboratory floor with unsettling grace. Emerald and sapphire scales shimmer with each subtle movement, catching light in hypnotic patterns. When his hand reaches for my swollen abdomen, I allow the contact—another small capitulation in an endless progression.

"The development continues to accelerate," he notes, unusual wonder coloring his typically measured voice. "You've cultivated something remarkable within you."

We've cultivated, I nearly correct him, though the pronoun feels treasonous to everything I once defended. How rapidly principles dissolve when challenged by biological imperatives.

Evening deepens toward midnight. Nezzar conducts his territorial inspection—a security protocol grown more rigorous since Reed's appearance. The timing is calculated. The resistance understands his patterns, recognizes this brief window as optimal opportunity.

My best—perhaps only—chance at freedom.

Once alone, I approach my workstation with leaden movements, retrieving the hidden capsule with trembling fingers. It gleams innocently under laboratory lights, unremarkable in appearance yet devastating in potential. Liberation disguised as transparent fluid.

How often have I rehearsed this moment mentally? Detailed the necessary steps? Envisioned triumphant return to resistance operations, to autonomy over my own body?

Yet now, with escape literally in my palm, I falter.

My free hand drifts to my abdomen, to the life that freedom would sacrifice. The iridescent patterns beneath my skin pulse softly against my fingertips, somehow synchronized with my heartbeat. Not merely embryonic tissue—a being already demonstrating consciousness, connected to my physiology through pathways neither species typically manifests.

The neural disruptor would sever those connections. Irrevocably.

The laboratory illumination flickers—once, twice—before plunging into darkness. Emergency systems activate efficiently, washing everything in crimson glow. The extraction has commenced.

Decision time. Without further delay.

In that moment of darkness, clarity arrives with merciless simplicity. Not freedom versus captivity. Not resistance versus submission. But past versus future. The identity I clung to versus the person I've become.

The capsule weighs impossibly heavy as I lift it to my lips. One swift swallow before reconsideration becomes possible, the liquid tasteless yet searing as it descends. The effect manifests immediately—my enhanced perception diminishing like stars extinguished one by one. The constant awareness of Nezzar's location that had become my internal compass suddenly vanishes, leaving disorienting emptiness.

Alarms wail throughout the complex—initially distant, then increasingly urgent as security detects multiple breaches. The sounds reach me through a muffled barrier, perception already deteriorating as the disruptor begins its systematic work.

Then comes the pain.

Not gradual discomfort but instant, knife-like agony radiating from my core. I double forward, a cry escaping before I can contain it. What I anticipated as gentle neural recalibration reveals itself as aggressive purge of all naga biochemical influence—including the pregnancy my body had restructured itself to nurture.

"Lyra!" Reed's voice penetrates the alarm cacophony as the laboratory's external entrance slides open. He enters with three resistance operatives, moving with tactical precision, specialized tools still emitting faint smoke from security bypass. Their features blur in my compromised vision, details melting together in surreal distortion as the compound rewires my neural pathways.

"Quickly," Reed urges, supporting my collapsing weight as another spasm tears through me. "The compound's acting faster than projected. Four minutes before secondary systems restore containment fields."

I attempt response, but coherent speech eludes me. Warmth trickles down my inner thighs—not the familiar omega arousal but something thicker. Darker. Blood, unmistakably.

"Fetal detachment initiated," one operative notes clinically, face masked against potential exposure. "Complete purge protocol activated."

The clinical terminology penetrates even my disoriented consciousness. Complete purge. Not merely neutralizing the venom bond or disrupting pregnancy—but violently severing every cellular connection to Nezzar, to the hybrid child, to these months of shared existence.

"No," I try protesting, words slurring unrecognizably. "Not like this. I didn't realize?—"

"Venom withdrawal speaking," Reed interrupts, misinterpreting my horror. "Stay with us, Lyra. Extraction proceeding."

They half-carry, half-drag me through darkened corridors, following meticulously planned routes. My awareness fractures into disconnected fragments—emergency lighting casting sinister shadows across familiar spaces. Distant sounds of naga security mobilizing. The spreading wetness between my thighs as my body violently rejects what it had reconfigured itself to protect.

Reed murmurs coordinates into communication equipment, security barriers temporarily neutralized by technologies I helped develop before capture. The resistance has orchestrated this extraction with military precision.

They simply omitted the complete cost.

"Almost clear," Reed encourages as we approach the exterior vegetation zone. "Transport waiting. Medical intervention within the hour."

Medical intervention. As if my condition represents standard procedure. As if months of biological adaptation, venom-enhanced neural pathways, and pregnancy-induced genetic expression can be simply reversed.

As if they can restore who I was before.

Fresh cramping drives me to my knees, pain so intense consciousness momentarily vanishes. When awareness returns seconds later, I'm being physically carried toward a camouflaged vehicle barely visible among dense foliage. Night air assaults my sensitized skin like caustic acid, each breath a struggle against lungs suddenly forgetting their function.

"Systemic collapse imminent," someone reports, voice distant through the roaring in my ears. "Neural reconfiguration destabilizing autonomic functions."

"Secure her in transport," Reed commands, his concern genuine yet underlined with something darker—determination bordering fanaticism. "Post-boundary crossing, we'll administer stabilizing agents."

Agents designed to complete the disruptor's work—purging everything naga from my system. Including the child whose loss I hadn't anticipated mourning until this moment of violent separation.

The wetness between my thighs becomes torrential, consciousness flickering like the facility's compromised systems. Through fragmented perception, I glimpse the extraction team's operational efficiency—previously unnoticed weapons, communications equipment exceeding standard resistance capabilities, medical supplies specifically engineered for omega extraction.

Not improvisation but calculated operation, planned with meticulous detail.

As they transfer me into the transport, my senses continue deteriorating. Colors fade to monochrome, sounds diminish to underwater murmurs, even pain recedes to distant throbbing as my nervous system struggles without the biochemistry it had restructured itself around.

"Cardiac rhythm deteriorating," someone announces with clinical detachment. "Initiating emergency protocol."

A needle's prick barely registers amid the sensory catastrophe. Whatever compound they administer spreads numbing cold through my circulation, temporarily counteracting physical symptoms while doing nothing for psychological devastation.

My child is dying inside me. The thought forms with perfect clarity despite my fracturing consciousness.

Correction: my child is being killed. By my decision. By swallowing that capsule when I suspected—when I knew —the consequences.

"Approaching boundary," Reed reports from the driver's position. "Two minutes to territorial crossing."

Two minutes to theoretical liberation. Two minutes until official extraction from captivity, from venom dependency, from the intricate emotional web connecting me to my captor.

"Freedom" tastes like ash in my thoughts.

Through encroaching darkness, as consciousness slips further away, another sensation penetrates—a sound beyond the vehicle's engine, beyond tactical communications. Something primal and thunderous. A roar that reverberates through bone and blood.

Nezzar.

Too late for reconsideration, for changed minds, for different choices. The physical and psychological trauma of sudden pregnancy termination overwhelms my system completely, darkness rushing inward from all directions.

The final perception before consciousness vanishes entirely is Reed's voice, tense with controlled alarm: "He's found us. Drive!"

Then nothing but emptiness, as hollow as the space now forming inside me.