And in my eagerness to please him, I’d pushed my own ethical objections to his methods aside, trusting that he knew best. I’d been so damn stupid. How had I, of all people, let an alpha’s charm and dominance pull the wool over my eyes?

Christ, I’d… I’d watched a woman get violated right in front of me, and I’d done nothing to stop it.

I’d not been down in the section of the underground lab where the female subjects were kept. Most of my analysis was of the males’ data, and so there hadn’t been any reason to venture into that area.

There probably wasn’t any reason to tonight, either, I told myself as I walked along the empty corridors long after everyone else had gone home for the night. But despite the urge to turn around, go back to my work station, and—ideally—forget all about what I’d witnessed earlier today, I kept walking.

I needed to see that she was all right before I’d be able to sleep tonight for the guilt gnawing at my gut.

The female subjects were kept in a long cell block on the eastern side of the facility. They were locked in individual cells along a narrow hallway, but unlike the males, they weren’t separated from each other by thick concrete walls. They each had an area that was shielded from their fellow inmates, where a mattress and restroom facilities were located, but the rest of each small cell was only separated from their immediate neighbors by bars.

I found the female subject—A642, as the paperwork attached to the cell door revealed—curled up on her mattress, which had been dragged over to the bars between her cell and her neighbor to the left. The woman on the other side of the bars was stroking her still-messy hair and mumbling soothingly. She quieted when I stopped in front of the cell, shooting me a disgusted look.

“Is she all right?” I asked when A642 didn’t so much as move to acknowledge my presence.

“What do you care?” her neighbor spat.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. What did I care—beyond making myself feel better? If she was okay—which so far not much pointed toward—then what? Could I really just be on my merry way, content in the knowledge that what I’d witnessed would happen to all of these women?

“I brought this,” I said, holding out a pack of ice wrapped in a towel. “For the…” No delicate way of saying it. “The swelling.”

A642’s neighbor begrudgingly accepted the offering. Once in her hand, she nudged gently at the curled-up woman. “Hey. Gloria. Take this. It’s for your pussy. It’ll make it feel better.”

I fought back a blush at the inmate’s candid language. We were so far past embarrassment over frank word choices.

I sat down on the concrete floor by the separation between the two women’s cells as Gloria sluggishly pushed the ice pack between her legs before curling back up again. But this time, she was looking at me from underneath her tangled hair.

Her dark eyes were red from crying, and I couldn’t blame her for the accusation I saw burning behind the dull look of despair.

“I saw you there. You are one of them,” she said, her voice not much more than a hoarse croak. “What do you want?”

“I… came to see how you were doing,” I said.

“How do you think I’m doing?” she spat. “How would you feel after being locked up and forced into heat for five days with no release? Or after having some feral beast of a man mate you like a bitch? You people are monsters.”

“I thought you volunteered for this study,” I said. Even to my own ears, it sounded like the worst attempt at excusing what was inexcusable.

Gloria muttered something in Spanish and didn’t answer.

“We do,” her neighbor said. “We were told we can knock up to ten years off our sentence if we participate in this study. Let an alpha fuck us now and then—maybe even meet a nice one who’ll provide for us once we’re released. They never said what they’d be like. They never said what they did to them.” She visibly shuddered and pulled her legs up so she could curl in on herself. “They treat us like we’re nothing more than lab rats. You treat us like lab rats.”

I couldn’t blame her. I was pretty sure if I’d been tied up at that breeding post and at the mercy of one of the feral alphas, I’d want to curl up and hide, too.

“I didn’t know,” I said, hating myself for sounding like such a sad apologist. “Today was… it was the first time I saw what… what happens here.”

“You’re new,” Gloria said dully. “You’ll get used to it, or you’ll disappear.”

“I won’t.” I shook my head, determination welling up in my chest. “I’ll go to the press, if I have to.”

The neighbor woman snorted. “The press? You think anyone gives a shit about criminals being treated like breeding stock? This isn’t Mattenburg. No one cares.”

“I care,” I said, wrapping my fingers around the bars separating me from the two women inside. “I’ll help you. This isn’t right.”

Gloria shook her head. “Don’t. No one here will take your help. The alternative is being sent back to prison, and believe me—it’s not better than here.”

“Really?” I blinked. It wasn’t that the prison system had the best reputation, but I’d kind of assumed it would beat being hauled in to mate with feral alphas whenever the doctors saw fit.

Gloria’s neighbor shrugged. “At least there’s always enough food. And for ten years, I’ll take a lot of knots. Even if it’s in front of Dr. Pervert and his team. If anyone would take your help, it’d be the alphas.”

“They have even more to lose,” I said, dropping my gaze when 351’s haunting eyes flickered before my mind’s eye. “If I intervene, they’ll go back on death row.”

The woman shrugged before returning her attention to Gloria. “Seems to me they’re already dead. Nothing human left in them, anyway. If it were me, I’d rather the needle.”

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6

Some of the alphas were sleeping when I entered the lab, but my footfalls as I passed their cages woke them. The sound of shifting bodies followed me as they raised their heads to follow, a wariness in their eyes that spoke of broken humanity.

From what the women had seen of them, I could understand why they’d think there was nothing remotely human left in these men. They were little more than savages during the day, when the drugs they were given were at their most potent. But later…

I remembered 351’s gravelly voice as he rasped out the word key.

They were still human, behind the serum. And though they belonged on death row, it didn’t mean they should be treated like animals. The women might see this facility as the lesser of two evils, as much as they hated it, but the alphas might not. Even if death was their only alternative, maybe some of them would still rather die with dignity than be forced to act like mindless beasts.

That was the mantra I kept repeating in my head over and over as I walked to the very last cage. As much as being around these men set every instinct in my body on edge, I still had a professional duty to ensure their humane treatment.

351 didn’t move when I stopped in front of his cell, but I could feel his eyes on me from the shadows by the far wall.

“Hey,” I whispered. “It’s… it’s me.” I don’t know why I thought adding that in would do any good, but I didn’t know what else to say. How did you break the ice with a feral alpha you’d so far only met under less than ideal circumstances?

Movement from within made me bite my lip, but the knot of tension in my stomach turned to icy horror when the alpha came to the front of the cage and I could finally see his face.

His lip was split and there was a gash of dried blood across one prominent cheekbone. Bruises marred his strong body, visible even in the low light, and when he wrapped his hands around the bars, I could see scrapes along his knuckles.