Page 39 of Untamed

“The mug broke. The cabinet too.” I look down at the dried blood. “I don’t remember doing it.”

“Anything else?” Arlo’s voice stays quiet, but fear is pushing hard through the bond now. “Are you hurting anywhere else?”

I think about the question before answering. “I can feel pain. It just doesn’t matter.”

Arlo goes completely still. His hand comes toward my face slowly enough that I have time to refuse, and I know I usually lean into that touch before he reaches me. This time I only feel warmth and pressure when his palm settles against my cheek. Nothing in me moves toward it, so Arlo pulls back first.

The movement is small, but the fear that tears through the bond isn’t. He starts the purr that has brought me back from cages, nightmares, and the edge of a shift, and I recognize exactly what it is supposed to do. My body gives him nothing in return. He tries my wrist, my shoulder, then the back of my neck, searching the places that normally answer before I speak.

“I know you can hear me.” His breath is uneven now, and his thumb presses once against my pulse. “I just can’t feel you answering.”

“I hear you.” I want the sentence to comfort him because I remember that I usually want that. The memory is not the feeling itself. “I just don’t feel anything about it.”

His hand freezes at the base of my neck. The swelling under the skin gives the implant away before I can decide whether to explain it, and rage floods the bond so suddenly that my vision blurs. I register the fury, the fear beneath it, and the exact second Arlo understands that somebody altered me while he was gone. None of it reaches the part of me that should answer him.

“Who put this in you?” There is enough Alpha in his voice that the room seems smaller around us. His hand stays beside the swelling instead of pressing it again. “Orion, who touched your neck?”

“The Doctor put it in. He said it would stop the blackouts.”

Arlo’s face changes. “You agreed to this?”

I think about the guards holding my shoulders and Arlo’s name on the Council representative’s tongue. “I sat down.” The answer makes his scent turn vicious enough that I can tell I said something important. “They told me it had to stay.”

“This isn’t stability.” His voice breaks before he gets it back under control. “They shut you down.” He moves away long enough that the room loses his heat, and when he returns the shaking is gone from his hands. A serrated kitchen knife hangs at his side.

I watch the blade without the old surge of fear. Arlo kneels in front of me instead of reaching for my neck. “I’m taking a closer look at the implant. I’m not cutting until you tell me you want it out.”

The Doctor told me it had to stay, and the thought arrives as information instead of an order I want to obey. Across from me, Arlo waits with a knife in his hand and terror held tightly enough that I can feel it through the bond even when I can’t answer. For the first time since the implant went in, wanting something takes effort. I reach for the answer anyway.

Chapter Twenty-two

Arlo

The serrated kitchen knife feels too light in my hand for what I’m about to do. Orion sits on the edge of the mattress with both hands flat on his thighs and hasn’t shifted once since I came back into the room. Through the bond I can feel him breathing and the steady beat of his pulse, but almost none of the restless pressure that usually crowds the connection. Even his scent has thinned until pine and earth remain without the deeper Omega note I’ve learned to recognize beneath them.

I can still see the swelling at the base of his neck when I blink. Somebody stood close enough to put metal inside him, and now Orion is sitting in front of me without enough anger left to hate them for it. I want the Doctor. Instead I kneel in front of Orion and keep the knife pointed at the floor.

Usually Orion answers touch before he speaks: a change in his breathing, a shoulder loosening, irritation hitting the bond if I crowd him, sometimes one of those low sounds he still uses when words aren’t worth the effort. Now I’m between his knees with a knife in my hand and get nothing.

“Orion, look at me.” My voice scrapes on the first word, so I force myself to breathe before I continue. “Please.”

He turns his head slowly. His brown eyes usually sharpen when I sound worried, even if it only annoys him, but there’s nothing there now. “The Doctor said it stays.” His voice is flat enough that I barely recognize it.

I reach up with two fingers and stop just beside the swelling. “I found it. It’s suppressing more than the shifts. It’s suppressing you.” My anger spikes hard enough that the bond should answer, but Orion only waits. “I’m not touching it again until you tell me what you want.”

“Stability is the objective.” He says it like he’s reading from a manual. “The experiment requires compliance.”

I start the purr low in my chest and wait for the answering change in his breathing. Nothing comes. When I cup his cheek, he accepts the pressure without leaning into it or pulling away, and the same dead stillness follows my hand to his wrist and shoulder. I stop beside the implant again instead of touching it.

“I don’t care what the Doctor said.” I keep my hand where he can see it. “Do you want it out?”

The silence stretches until his brows pull together by a fraction. His lips part, close, then open again. “Yes. Get it out.”

I gather clean towels, antiseptic, pain medication, and everything else I’ll need before I let myself pick up the knife again. I know how to cut somebody open, but cutting Orion after everything men like that have done to him makes my stomach turn.

“Come to the table. The light’s better, and I can get behind you without making you lie down.” I wait until he stands on his own before following him into the kitchen. “If you tell me to stop, I stop.”

Orion sits in the wooden chair and lays both hands on the table. I move behind him and wait until his palms are flat before touching the back of his neck. “Cold first.” I press alcohol around the swelling and watch the skin pebble beneath the cloth. Orion blinks once but doesn’t move. “Knife now.”