Page 3 of Untamed

“He’s not staying in a cage. Put him with me.”

I move closer to the desk before I can reconsider the wording, and the tiny pull at Graves’s mouth makes me regret giving him anything that looks like confirmation. “With you? You’ve lived alone in a pack house with more bedrooms than furniture, and now you want custody of an Omega who killed an Alpha and has escaped twice. That’s a dramatic change of lifestyle.”

“I don’t care what his file says. I want him out of containment.”

His smile narrows instead of disappearing. “Three years without a bond, and now you’re standing in my office demanding one particular Omega. You don’t find that curious?” The satisfaction under the question lands worse than the question itself. Kael was right; Graves isn’t surprised I came here. If anything, he looks like he’s been waiting to see how long it would take.

“What do you want?”

Graves rises and rounds the desk, stopping close enough that his scent presses against mine, expensive soap over something clinical I’ve always associated with this building. “Orion Cavell has been assigned to you. Establish a bond strong enough to stabilize him and the trial continues. Refuse, and he stays in containment until the Council decides he’s no longer worth keeping alive.”

“No.” The word leaves me while he’s still finishing, dragged up by something too immediate for politeness. “I’m not biting a drugged Omega because you decided we belong together.”

“Then he stays in the cage. We keep him sedated and run the tests while he’s unconscious. His body can only take so much of it, and when it gives out, we move on.” Graves says it without changing his tone, which somehow makes it worse. A body fails, they move on. Another line in another ledger.

I keep my eyes on his face until the urge to put him through the wall passes far enough that I trust my hands again. “I want to see him.”

Graves gives a small nod, neat and satisfied, like we’ve finally reached the part of the conversation he wanted. “Follow me. Keep your pheromones in check unless you want the entire lower level on alert.”

The building changes one flight down. Polished wood gives way to reinforced steel, drainage grates cut across wet concrete, and the air holds the sour edge of too many suppressed scents trapped behind doors that only open from one side. The expensive stone upstairs suddenly feels obscene. I find Orion before I see him because pine and earth cut through everything else, followed by that same buried sweetness my Alpha recognizes before the rest of me catches up.

He’s in the farthest cage, a massive brown shape pressed so tightly into the corner that the bars look too close around him. The darts are still buried in his flank. A growl rolls through the concrete when Graves and I approach, low enough that I feel it in my boots, but Orion lifts his head, finds me through the bars with those amber eyes, and the sound dies in his chest.

A guard notices the change and apparently decides the sensible response is to move closer with one hand already drifting toward his weapon. Orion slams a paw into the reinforced gate. Metal cracks through the corridor, the guard flinches, and his hand closes around the grip.

My pheromones hit the hallway before I make a conscious choice to let them loose. “Put the gun down.” The Alpha bark carries harder than I intend, sharp enough that the guard’s arm drops before his expression catches up with the fact that he obeyed me.

Graves turns his head slowly, and the clinical interest on his face makes my skin crawl more than surprise would have. “Your file neglected to mention how much power your Alpha has, Maddox.”

“Tell him to keep the gun holstered.” I don’t look away from Orion. His ears are pinned flat, his breathing fast enough to fog the space between his muzzle and the bars, and every time the guard shifts his weight Orion’s attention snaps back to the weapon. “He’s already scared.”

“He’s a bear twice the size of most men. I’m more concerned with what he does when he’s afraid.” Graves gestures, and the guard backs off despite the contempt in his face. “You want him out? Go in there and show me you can get close to him.”

The electronic lock releases with a heavy thud that travels straight through my ribs. The gate opens just far enough for me to turn sideways and step through, and Orion rises as I enter, unfolding until the cage looks even smaller around him. Dried blood mats the fur around the dart wounds. His pupils have swallowed most of the amber from his eyes, and the closer I get, the harder my Alpha pushes against my control with an urge that has nothing useful to do with cages, guards, or common sense.

The gate slams shut behind me before I’ve made it two steps. The lock catches, Orion starts forward, and every heavy footfall vibrates up through the concrete while he crowds me backward. I keep my hands low where he can see them and drag my pheromones in so hard it makes my head ache, because the last thing he needs from me is another Alpha filling a cage with a command.

“All right, Orion. I’m not going to hurt you.”

His ears flatten until they nearly disappear into the fur, lips peeling back from teeth the size of my fingers as he watches me breathe. For one stretched second I think he might stop there, close enough that pine and blood fill my nose, and then his body bunches. He comes at me hard enough to erase the cage, Graves, every rifle outside the bars, everything except brown fur, white teeth, and several hundred pounds of terrified bear about to hit me.

Chapter Three

Orion

Iwake with something bitter coating my tongue and pain burning in three separate places beneath my fur. For a while that is all I can hold on to. Bitter. Burning. White light pressing through my eyelids hard enough to hurt. When I force my head up, the bars in front of me drag sideways before settling into one cage, one corridor, men beyond it with rifles hanging ready against their chests.

My legs barely answer when I tell them to move. One forepaw slides against wet concrete instead of getting under me, and panic hits before I can make sense of why my body feels so far away. The darts are still in my flank. I can smell the chemical stink of them under blood, antiseptic, old fear, too many bodies that have been kept down here long enough to work their scent into the walls.

Then leather cuts through it, woodsmoke underneath, warm enough that my head turns toward the scent before I decide whether I want to. The Alpha is inside the cage with me.

Everything in me tightens again. Alpha. Cage. Too close. His skin is dark bronze beneath the overhead lights, his shoulders broad enough that there is no easy way around him if he decides to come closer. My eyes find his hands first. Empty. Low at his sides. Then his throat, his stance, the space he has left between us.

I know his scent, and the woods come back in broken pieces: mud under my paws, blood in my mouth, men shouting somewhere behind me, and this same leather and smoke moving closer without the sharp bite of fear I expected from him. Hands helping drag my weight when the drugs took my legs. No boot in my ribs. No rifle fired when I could not get up.

Some of the pressure in my chest eases anyway. “Easy, Orion.” His voice stays low, deep enough that I feel more of it through the floor than I hear through the ringing in my ears. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

My name in an Alpha’s mouth makes my stomach turn.