Page 12 of Protector (Alpha Ties)

TWELVE

ADDIE

Cold air brushes against my skin. My mind snaps back from the fog of nothingness just in time to let me feel it when the alpha pulls his cock from my body, and my reality sets back in.

I choke on a sob at the burning pain between my legs, the sensation of warm semen leaking out of my too-open core and trickling down my thighs the last thing I register before numbness sweeps me away.

I am screaming. I don't know why.

Fabric pushes against my flailing arms, large hands grabbing me to still my thrashing.

"No! No! No! No!" The one word, repeated with high-pitched desperation, sounds like it comes from far away.

The hands on my body still for a long moment, then release. A growl rumbles through the room.

He is angry.

I whimper and curl in on myself, clasping a hand to the back of my neck and one between my legs, even though I know it's fruitless. Too powerful.

Fabric still warm from body heat falls on my head, shutting out the fluorescent lights.

Safe.

I blink in dazed confusion at the unexpected sensation of being… protected? When I inhale a shaky breath, my lungs fill with a heady, spicy scent that stills my trembling body. It's… so familiar. Calming. I bury my nose deeper into the fabric and sniff down several greedy lungfuls.

I'm limp in his grasp when he rolls me over and pulls the cloth over my head and arms. When he lifts me, I am pressed against his warm skin, and I finally remember that this man is not… not him.

I flutter away into oblivion without knowing why that makes something dark and hollow twist in my chest.

It's cold. Ice bites at my back, my legs, my feet, and my head. I whimper and curl tighter into the massive, naked chest I'm being held against, only vaguely registering the swaying motion and the flexing of hard muscles as movement.

There's a whooping sound in the air above us, and then a darkening of the light just as the freezing cold eases a little.

"We need clean blankets." The order rumbles through me, a physical vibration in my worn body from the alpha carrying me.

There's a sucking sensation behind my navel, and a lurch of movement. Strong arms clutch me tighter, securing me as we are brought up, up, up. I recognize the sound of a helicopter in flight and relief floods me, melting what little strength my muscles retained. This… This is my rescue.

I survived.

I have never had a fear of hospitals or needles. They are there to take away pain and make everything better.

The scent of disinfectant reminds me of my years of study, and of my lab.

It only takes five days for my mind to snap permanently back into my body. It shows my fortitude, the psychologist by my bedside tells me, while she offers me a smile carefully calibrated not to send me into another bout of disassociation. They didn't expect me to pull through for at least another week. “If at all” remains unspoken, but it's as heavy in the air as her tuberose perfume.

I think her name is Dr. Muller. I remember her cloying floral scent and her soothing voice during some of my lucid moments over the past few days. And her tortoise-shell glasses.

I touch a hand to my own glasses. I don't remember when they were placed on the bridge of my nose, or who did it. It feels like so long since the world was anything but a blur. They took my sight first.

“Addie?” Dr. Muller’s voice breaks through the sucking sound fraying at the edges of my hospital room. “Are you still with me, honey?”

"Dr. Thompson." My voice is creaky—barely more than a whisper. I clear my throat, forcing my mind to focus. “Dr. Thompson. Please.”

"Oh. Of course, Dr. Thompson." Her smile turns indulgent. “Do you need a moment? We can continue at another time, when you are stronger.”

When I am stronger.

For a moment, I am back in that horrible bunker. Cold and weak and small. There were times—a lot of times—when I forgot what it felt like to be strong.

I feel it again now—that sucking sensation, the heavy lethargy in my limbs, telling me I am just a mouse in a lion’s den, too weak to fight back.

I am so tired.

I nearly surrender this time. My mouth is trying to shape the words, to tell this kindly medical professional that I need to sleep—that I can’t face this now. Not yet. Please, not yet.

But I can’t. In a moment of clarity, I know what’s going to happen if I do. She will smile at me, tell me of course, honey. Perhaps pat my arm, before she writes more notes on my chart about how traumatized I am. Speak softly—patient broken beyond repair.

If I let that happen, I will never escape that bunker. I will always be this… this crippled thing, stuck in hospital beds and surrounded by soothing voices and pitying professionals.

Sleeping won’t take away what was done to me.

I shudder on reflex, my hand moving to my neck without conscious thought. Instead of ripped flesh, I find gauze.

Soon my body will be fully healed, and the only weakness that will remain is whatever I allow to fester.

I’m no mouse. I refuse to be.

“I’m fine.” This time I manage to speak without raspy weakness, only needing to clear my throat once. “How long until I can leave?”

Dr. Muller blinks once behind her tortoiseshells. “I… would not recommend you think about leaving anytime soon, Dr. Thompson. You will need to focus on your emotional recovery. The trauma you sustained?—”

I wave her off. “I am fine. Now, I assume you have orders to alert a commanding officer that I’m awake? I would like you to do that now, please. And if you would send in a doctor too? I need an overview of any medications needed after discharge.”

“Dr. Thompson,” she protests, voice still mild. Overbearing.

“Now. Please.” My smile reflects no warmth.

Dr. Muller hesitates for another second, but eventually dips her head in a nod and leaves.

Silence fills the room once she’s gone. It lets me feel how cold I am—something I hadn’t noticed while she was talking at me.

I scan my surroundings, making sure not to look directly at the chair by the door, and notice a stack of neatly folded blankets on another chair next to the window.

With a sigh of relief, I push my covers off and swing my feet over the edge of the bed, but a painful tug on my hand makes me grit out a curse. I forgot about the IV.

“What are you doing?”

That disapproving rumble seems to come from that festering, mutilated place in my chest as much as from the seat by the door.

I set my jaw against the dark tangle of emotion threatening to flood my system at the mere sound of his voice. I don’t answer until there is nothing left but smooth, calm control. “Getting blankets.” I yank at the IV with more force than is smart, then hiss out another curse at the sickening sensation of the needle moving inside my vein.

His chair scrapes behind me, and through that twisted link lodged near my heart, I feel his intention. Feel him.

“Stay!” I snarl with enough force to make his body lock up, the sear of my command ghosting from his chip and back through our bond. I raise my IV-free hand to rub at the unpleasant sensation in my chest, only stilling when I realize why it feels like that.

“I don’t need help.” I say the words and immediately regret them. Offering an explanation—it’s a concession. An acknowledgment that things are different, after the bunker. That I’m different.

But I’m not. I refuse to be.

He doesn’t answer me.

I manage to pull the IV out and not lose my balance when I stand. Coldness seeps from the floor through my socks, and echoes of discomfort grip my pelvis with every step. I grit my teeth and push down the sensation, along with the memories it tries to force to the forefront of my mind, focusing solely on the pile of blankets bathed in light from the large window.

When the doctor enters my room a few minutes later, I’ve returned to my bed and am buried under all five of them, but my body still hasn’t warmed.

“Mrs.— Dr. Thompson,” the man in the white lab coat corrects himself, offering me a brief smile before his gaze goes to his side where AX2 is still standing. “Mr. Thompson.”

Mr. Thompson. No. No, no, no. I can already tell what’s about to happen, what the doctor’s going to say when he next opens his mouth—and who he’s going to say it to.

There’s a screeching tone somewhere at the back of my skull, and I only barely manage to keep myself from screaming. Instead, I force my body upright in the bed and inject as much authority as I can into my voice when I say, “I need you to run me through any procedures I’ve undergone since arriving here, and then you will have to make out a list of prescriptions. I will be leaving today.”

The doctor clears his throat, eyebrows rising high on his forehead. “I can’t approve a discharge yet, Dr. Thompson. Your body is healing fine, but?—”

“Nevertheless, that is what will happen,” I interrupt him. “What treatments have I undergone? I assume you’ve administered antibiotics? Antiretrovirals?”

He hesitates for another second, but then nods. “Along with temazepam, for the first couple of days, to allow your body and mind rest. There was some vaginal trauma.” He flicks his gaze down to the clipboard in his hands, scanning the page. “But not enough to require surgery. A nurse administered a saline cleanse, and the cocktail of antibiotics have prevented infection. Your mate claim is healing nicely as well.”

My mate claim.

I draw in a deep breath, forcing numbness to fill my brain as the words wash over me—to feel nothing when I ask, “Have you done a pregnancy test?”

His gaze flicks briefly to AX2. “Yes. As we have already informed your husband, you did not conceive during either claiming.”

“My husband?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, that screeching at the back of my brain too loud to drown out. “I don’t have a husband.”

The doctor’s only response to my outburst is to place an empathetic hand on AX2’s bicep. “Many newly claimed women take a little time to settle in, especially after a… problematic mating. I would strongly advise you to leave your wife in our care for at least another week, Mr. Thompson, to ensure her long-term wellbeing.”

This isn’t happening. It can’t be.

I look at the two men in my hospital room, their faces distorting to a blur—one in a lab coat just like my own, the other… The other isn’t even truly a man. He is a piece of machinery I welded myself, more robot than human, and yet… And yet even here, after I was finally saved, after I survived when I really shouldn’t have, he is the one who gets to decide what happens to me.

The horror of my situation freezes my brain, and I don’t—I can’t think . Can’t breathe.

Only when AX2 grunts, “She decides,” does the knowledge that I can still command him return.

I decide. Me. Even now. No matter what society will try to dictate, no matter whether he thinks the balance has shifted between us, now that… now that we are…

I don’t finish the thought, but my trembling hand returns to the bandage on my neck.

“Very well. I will fetch the relevant paperwork.” The doctor gives us both a nod before he exits, leaving the room in the same deafening silence as before.

It lasts until a sob cuts through the air. “Addie!”

I look up just in time to see my mom rush through the door.

“Oh, my poor baby girl!” She flings herself across the room, a flurry of expensive wool and disheveled, blonde hair, and tightens her arms around my neck before I can fully process the flutter of relief expanding in my gut.

I groan softly into her shoulder and cling to her as tightly as she does to me. The scent of her perfume envelops me in its vanilla warmth as comfortingly as her arms.

“Mom,” I croak, swallowing thickly when my throat closes up. I have to fight to keep a sob from escaping, but right now, I’ve never been happier to see her. Never needed her more.

“We were so scared,” she whisper-cries into my hair. “So, so scared. If your dad hadn’t found you, I don’t?—”

I look up from her messy strands as she chokes on another sob, and only then do I see my father.

He’s standing in the doorway, a hand against the frame as he stares at me. His face, usually so stoic and unemotional, is drawn with grief.