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AMAYA

I can't breathe. I can't fucking breathe!

Darkness surrounds me and crushes me from the inside out. My chest feels like it's collapsing, or maybe I just don't exist at all.

Everything is pressure and pain. There's an ache, but maybe I am the ache. Nothing feels real beyond the suffocation twisting me into something unrecognizable. Something that doesn't even exist.

Am I dead?

What did I ever do to deserve this kind of afterlife?

I'm dying all over again, gasping for air that isn't there, from a mouth that is nothing but a shadow.

I am nothing.

'Alpha...'

Why can't I breathe?!

My chest bounces and comes into focus. 'Alpha!'

My heart jolts from my nightmare, but my body stays lax, making me realize that exhaustion was the thing crushing me into a shell of myself. What happened? Why can't I move?!

Beeping surrounds me as the scent of sterile sheets and salt water assault my nose. Please tell me I'm not back there! I try like hell to pry my eyes open, but it feels like they are sewn shut.

No, no, no! What have they done to me now?

All at once, I feel everything .

Every bruise and scrape tingles with awareness. My ankle burns with hot pulsing beats and my lungs ache with every inhale. Around my mouth and nose, a gentle pressure makes itself known muffing my broken whimpers.

Don't touch me , I want to scream. Writhing away from the weight on top of me isn't possible, nor is slapping away the hands grabbing my legs and arms.

No, please no!

"Ms. Rose, I need you to calm down. You'll hurt yourself."

I don't recognize the male voice, so why the hell would I listen to it? Where are my alphas? Where's Oliver? Why isn't anyone here?!

Flashes of Sam's angry face and Vincent's back moving away from me tumble through my mind. They were trying to leave me! They saved me just to walk away?!

"Sir, she's going to do more damage!"

A woman. Shan?

"Gimme that and dim the lights."

My mouth opens on a screech when something warm and damp touches my forehead. The pressure is soft, but it's a trick. At least I think it is until a soft humming sound begins and the cloths swipes across my eyelids.

"Come on, open your eyes now, girl."

I do as the motherly voice tells me, but not because I'm being submissive. I ought to know what I'm up against and why this person is being so nice to me.

White ceilings and even whiter lights glare back at me first. Then I see the lab coats and hear the crinkly bedding as I wince. This isn't real .

"Ms. Rose."

My eyes fly to a graying man in a coat. A white lab coat. Just like the clinic where our heats were studied at the academy.

"No," I whimper, trying to scramble away, but I’m incapable of moving.

Then my eyes flick over the rest of the room and each new person in scrubs steals what little sanity I had to begin with. The incessant beeping speeds up and my lungs feel like they're concaving. I can't get a word out and they won't allow me to scratch my pleas free with my fingernails.

"Sir!" That voice gasps again and when I look to my left, I see an older woman with a blonde bob tickling her jaw and wide blue eyes. "She needs?—"

"I know! Get me the sedative!"

"NO!" the woman snarls, finally prying her eyes from mine. "Get her pack! She needs her pack!"

"No time," the older man huffs, plucking a needle out of a younger woman's hand, solidifying the awful fear that I'm back at the academy clinic.

My flailing increases. Each movement feels like a hot poker stabbing in my chest and ankle. Fireworks explode beneath my breastbone, but I can't focus on anything beyond just getting the fuck away from that needle.

"Sir!" blonde bob lady scolds and rushes away, leaving me alone with the monster coming toward me.

"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY OMEGA!"