Page 28 of Protector (Alpha Ties)
TWENTY-EIGHT
ADDIE
The door handle creaks as the door swings open, but instead of attacking, AX2 straightens. A small noise leaves his throat, and then he strides forward, allowing me to see the newcomer.
AX21 stands in the doorway.
Blood drips steadily down his body, pooling on the floor with alarming speed. A snapped bone protrudes through one arm, and several of the deeper-laying circuits in his shoulders and neck are exposed. Bullet wounds pepper what’s left of his combat uniform.
“Dr. Thompson. I was sent for recalibration.”
“Christ,” I mutter. The AX units are built to withstand damage, but I’m surprised this one is still conscious. “All right, get into the stasis chamber.”
AX21 staggers a step forward to follow my command, but before he can take another, AX2 stops him.
“I’ve got you,” he rumbles as he lifts the other soldier into his arms. He carries him into the stasis chamber and lays him on the bench, and when I enter a moment later, he’s got his hand clasped in AX21’s.
I stare at their combined hands, and for a second, something in that image burns its way through my optic nerve and deep into my gut. I quickly shake it off and focus on the job at hand.
With the efficiency of experience, I snip off the rest of AX21’s uniform, hook up the machinery and attach electrodes and needles to his skin. Then I get my scalpel.
“Put him under.”
I glance at AX2, annoyed at the distraction. “What?”
“You trained us to endure pain, but we still feel it. Put him under before you start slicing.” He doesn’t look at me—his focus is on the other soldier, whose eyes widen as they flick from me to AX2.
An unbidden memory flashes, and I recall the times AX2 was on my table, injured but conscious. I’ve removed bullets and reattached circuits and veins while he’s been awake often enough, and he’s never so much as flinched while I did it.
I don’t like the tightening in my chest. Why would I have? I was fixing a machine.
I stare at AX2’s back for a short moment. Then I reach up to flick the switch that’ll inject the sedative through the needle in AX21’s arm.
When his eyelids flutter a moment later, AX2 sighs softly, as if releasing some pent-up tension.
It takes me hours to repair AX21. He must have been shot with at least one machine gun. Probably several, judging from the multiple angles of the entry wounds. Removing bullets is tedious work, and several have caused damage to his biological parts. I hate working with flesh. It’s so… gooey. I’m much more comfortable working on the mechanical parts, though the process of welding on synthetic skin with enough precision to make it look real takes forever.
When I’m finally, finally done, my vision’s swimming. I flick on the transfusion of blood and hydraulic fluid that will allow AX21’s biological and artificial systems to recover, brace my arms on the bench by his thigh, and rest my head against them to steady myself.
A warm hand ghosts over my shoulder blades. I jerk up, not expecting the touch, and stare at AX2.
He holds a lidded stainless steel cup toward me. “Drink.”
I take it on reflex, too exhausted to fight. The first couple of gulps make me grimace. The liquid is so thick it’s nearly chewable, and it tastes like goopy, salty nothing—one of the nutritional shakes I formulated for the AX soldiers.
“Ew.” I try to put it down, but he places two fingers under it and forces it back to my lips.
“You haven’t eaten all day. Drink.”
He has a point. I glare at him, but take another gulp of the thick paste. It becomes easier as it goes, and somehow I manage to finish the full cup.
Once I finally hand it back to AX2, I feel a lot better. “What time is it?”
“Just past eight p.m.”
No wonder my vision got blurry. I stretch my arms out and roll my neck. I always get absorbed by practical work. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes.”
I glance out the window leading to the rest of my lab, toward the now dark computer screen. “Any news from… outside?”
“No.”
I sigh and turn my attention back to AX21. Fretting won’t do any good, so instead I focus on cleaning blood smears off his skin, starting with his feet. I work in silence, right up until I reach his upper thighs. Then AX2 materializes by my side, his hand clasping my wrist.
“Let him do that when he wakes.”
I blink and stare up at him. “Why?”
He arches an eyebrow. “You don’t need to be touching any man there.”
He’s… jealous? The notion is so ludicrous, I can’t stop a bark of laughter from escaping my throat. “Really? You’re that alpha?”
“We’re all ‘that alpha,’ ” he rumbles, eyes narrowed. “You want him to think I’m happy with you rubbing another man’s genitals?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” I bite, embarrassment sharpening my voice. “I’ve cleaned all of you about a thousand times. Being elbow-deep in your guts is not sexy.”
“That was different. You weren’t… my mate then.” To my utter surprise, the faintest color heats his cheeks. “I can’t work with them unless they know I’ll defend my claim. One wrong look, and it’ll end in a fight. It’s instinct—I can’t control that.”
Stupid alphas and their stupid instincts. “They won’t know we’re… that I’m your…”
AX2 stares at the scar on my neck, and only now do I realize I didn’t put the gauze on in our rush to get out the door this morning. I clasp a hand to the pink flesh.
“They’ll know. And even if they didn’t, I will. Unless it’s falling off and you need to sew it back on, you’re not touching any dicks.”
I huff at his crudeness and wish I could order him to remember his place. But I’m all too aware that the power between us has shifted, so instead I move up to AX21’s navel and continue cleaning him off.
When I’m done, I check his vitals and ensure the IV is still trickling at a steady pace before I push off the bench. Normally I’d type in his data before finishing off, but since I’m not allowed near computers, there’s nothing more I can do for him before his stasis is complete.
“I’ve never seen this before.”
“Hm?” I look up at AX2. He’s leaning against the door with his arms across his chest, but his face is less… tight than before.
“How much care you put into patching us up.” He nods at AX21.
“You’ve been awake during recalibrations,” I say, arching my eyebrows. His demand to put AX21 under still grates.
“Mm. Hard to notice much when you’re digging a scalpel into my bone.”
I huff, annoyed, and make my way toward him and the door, intent on finding somewhere to rest outside the stasis chamber.
AX2 doesn’t move out of my way. When I glare up at him, there’s a weird expression in his eyes. It’s almost… gentle.
“Why are you like this, Adelaide? You’re so skilled… so clever. Why did you choose to cause so much hurt when you could have been someone who helps people?”
I’ve been called cold more times than I can remember. Cruel too. It never bothers me. Why would it? Males expect women to be sweet and kind and always willing to bend. That they won’t get their expectations met with me is their problem. And yet…
I stare up into AX2’s green eyes, and that tightness in my chest constricts around my lungs to the point of pain. It’s infuriating.
“I could have been someone who helps?” My voice is icy, and I level him with a stare that would have made lesser men wither on the spot. “Do you have any idea how many lives have been saved thanks to Project Fireshield? Wars have been stopped before they could even get started. And please do try to remember that without my cruelty, you wouldn’t be alive.”
“Am I alive?” he asks softly. “Are machines alive, Adelaide?”
The tightness drops into my gut, and from it, coldness seeps through my flesh in icy tendrils, and suddenly I can’t stand to look at him for another second.
“Move,” I hiss.
Startlingly, he obeys. I flee out of the stasis chamber, intent on the lab exit, but before I can touch the door handle, the hook in my chest yanks me to a stop.
Shaking and angry, I glare over my shoulder at the alpha tethering me, but his focus has shifted to the man on the examination bench. I watch him through the window to the stasis chamber as he moves to the side of the bench and clasps AX21’s hand in his, careful not to disturb his IV.
His profile is visible through the window, and I can see concern and regret playing across his features as clearly as I feel them ghosting through our bond and deep into my heart muscle.
No, machines aren’t alive. And they don’t feel, either.
I stare mutely at the alpha whose emotions I can no longer blame on primitive urges coming alive with our mating. He cares for this other alpha’s fate, for his suffering, and it’s got nothing to do with instincts or DNA.
He cares simply because he is a man.
A man I have done unspeakable things to.