“Wait!” I grabbed his arm.

The alpha stopped abruptly, and I could feel every muscle in his body tense underneath my palm in response to my touch. He whipped around, and I staggered back and quickly removed my hand from him again, sure I was about to feel the impact of those bulging muscles straining against the cheap shirt I’d bought for him. But he only stared at me.

“Y-you can’t just storm up there. There are guards. Armed guards. Please, put on the shoes and lab coat and just follow me. Quietly.” I pointed back at the discarded shoes and white clothes in his cell, doing my best not to show him the burst of anxiety his nearness caused me. Having solid steel bars between us had been a pretty good safety net. “I’ll help you, but you have to trust me. Okay?”

351 made a low growling noise, but to my relief he returned to his cell, shoved his large feet into the shoes, and pulled the lab coat on.

The transformation from wild alpha to smoking-hot doctor look-alike was pretty damn convincing.

The errant thought made me blink, my cheeks heating slightly, but I forced it away as quickly as it’d reared its disturbing head. Now was definitely not the time for inappropriate fantasies about the man I was trying to save.

“Come. Stay by my side—and keep quiet,” I said, squaring my shoulders as I started toward the exit.

The alpha followed me—or rather, he walked beside me, but just a half-step ahead. Typical alpha—incapable of letting someone else take the lead. I shot his shoulder an annoyed glare, but at least he wasn’t storming ahead like I’d halfway feared.

The other alphas were much more alert this time—they all got to their feet and stared after us, hands wrapped around the bars to their cells, but didn’t make a sound. Instead they formed a silent guard, as if they knew their own fates depended on the outcome of our escape.

They might have been murderers, locked away on death row for their crimes before they were shipped to this facility, but my heart still twanged uncomfortably at leaving them behind. No one, not even the most dangerous of prisoners, deserved to have their voice taken away and their bodies beaten bloody if they stood up to their abusers. And these men… whatever they’d been before, they weren’t that anymore. Dr. Axell and his team had made sure there was nothing left of what had made them human.

But 351’s compliance only lasted until we reached the stairs. With a low grunt, he put a large hand on my shoulder, stopping me from ascending the steps. Then, without a care for my startled protests, he took them two at a time and smacked his hand against the door’s release button.

“No, wait!” I called, flashes of his hulking form leaping through the hallways and bursting out into the reception area like a wild beast playing through my mind in rapid-fire bursts. “You have to wait f—“

My voiced died when the door swung open—and the alpha immediately sunk into a defensive crouch, his lips pulling back in a furious snarl. But before he could leap forward, three thuck thuck thucks whistled through the air. I stared, wide-eyed at the three black-feathered darts sticking out from his chest. My heart pounded in my throat, realization setting in even as my conscious mind tried to deny it. No, no, no!

351 roared in absolute fury and staggered forward, intent on taking down whoever had shot him, but whatever they’d injected him with was obviously fast-working. He only managed two steps before he sunk to the ground in a heap.

"No!" I cried out. The Goliath of a man twitched once before he went still, his eyelids sliding shut. I sprinted up the stairs, not thinking about the danger, and threw myself down by his side. I frantically pulled the darts from his chest. Oh, God, what did they inject him with?

“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice sneered from the doorway. “I can’t say I’m surprised, but it is still a disappointment.”

I looked up from the unmoving alpha to the doorway. Dr. Axell stood in the middle of it, flanked by armed guards, and behind them I could just make out Dr. Urwin’s features.

“You had such potential,” he continued before he turned to the guards with a dramatic sigh. “Take him away.”

“What did you do to him?” I spat.

“Relax, sweetheart. He’s just knocked out. He’s much too valuable to kill, even though he’s sorely testing my patience these days.” His cool eyes narrowed as they returned to me. “You, however… I can’t say I’m not disappointed I’ll lose such a fine data analyst, but you are replaceable.”

I swallowed thickly and steeled myself as the guards came forward to hoist the passed-out alpha up. He was so big, it took all three of them to carry him off.

As much as my heart ached for the feral alpha and the fate that awaited him, I had to focus on my own situation now. I’d known there was a very real risk involved in trying to break one of Dr. Axell’s test subjects free—and now I had to face it.

“Are you going to kill me, then?” I asked with far more bravery than I felt. On the inside, my heart felt like it was trying to escape through my throat and my stomach was a hollow pit.

Dr. Urwin scoffed. “Hardly. We’ll hand you over to the authorities. You tried to sabotage a project funded by the Ministry of Defense.”

“Of course, death might be preferable to being tried for treason,” Dr. Axell mused. “But maybe they’ll go easier on a dumb female who thinks with her ovaries.”

I blanched. Somehow, while I’d prepared my plan, I’d never thought of what would happen to me if they handed me over to the authorities. I’d thought they might kill me, or—best-case scenario—I’d get turned over to the police and I’d end up with a petty charge and a ruined career. But in between those two extremes, I’d not considered the ties to the Ministry of Defense.

Yes, they would undoubtedly try me for treason.

“Please. Don’t. J-just kill me if you have to. But don’t… They’ll send me to Ezban.” It wasn’t that I wanted to die—not by a long shot. But… there were worse fates than death. Being labeled a traitor to your country was definitely one of them.

“If you didn’t want to go to Ezban, you shouldn’t have let your bleeding heart get in the way of a fucking government-stamped research project, should you?” Dr. Axell snarled. “Fucking women. We let you into the sciences, and this is the reward we get. It’s going to take us weeks to get 351 back in line now, all because of what? He makes your pussy tingle, is that it?”

“You torture them!” I snapped. “He disobeyed you, and you beat him bloody. You’ve taken their voices, their humanity! It’s not right, and you know it.”

“Their humanity,” he sneered. “They were hardly human to begin with. Do you know what 351 did? He murdered his commanding officer while out on assignment in the desert. He’s a war criminal, and you tried to release him into the public. That one?” He pointed at the nearest caged alpha, who bared his teeth at the doctor. “Raped and killed five children below the age of twelve before they caught him. Trust me, they deserve every damn thing coming their way. And so do you. Now get up.”

The world seemed to twist below me, centering on the black pit in my stomach as my indignant anger at what they’d done to these men faded to the background. Imminent fear for my own life set in instead. The few stories that ever made it out of Ezban made it very obvious that any other fate was better than being sent there. The nation had no concern for the wellbeing of traitors and war criminals. Anyone with even a shred of sanity would choose death over what awaited them there. “Please, don’t turn me in. There has to be another way.”

“I don’t think so. You tried to ruin my research after I let you onto my team—I have no pity for you.” Dr. Axell said, disdain clear in his voice. But when he stepped forward to grab me, Dr. Urwin raised his hand.