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Neil Josten leaned against the dirty wall of the alley, uneven bricks digging into his bony shoulder blades and the oppressive, wet heat of a South Carolina summer clinging to every inch of his exposed skin. He was sweating through his t-shirt, sweating too much for the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up, to urge him to runrunrun from the colossal mistake he was making.
His mother would beat him black and blue if she knew he was going through with this, but his mother wasn’t here anymore. His mother would never lay her hands on him again, but she’d never talk to him again, either, and it hurt like a fresh burn even all these months later. He was used to pain, but this was something else, something deeper and worse, something that refused to scar.
Next to him, the nondescript door to Foxhole Clinic swung open and Neil tensed as a man stepped out. He was small, smaller than even Neil, and dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans. Neil watched a sheen of sweat start to gather on his forehead as he stepped closer to Neil–too close, his instincts screamed–and fished a lighter and pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. He held the pack out to Neil, who shook his head.
“I’m no doctor,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to smoke before surgery.”
The man didn’t react, instead focusing on lighting up his cigarette, taking a long drag, and then blowing the smoke directly in Neil’s face. He seemed to be expecting something, coughing or turning away, maybe, but Neil just accepted it, breathing in through his nose and letting his eyes flutter closed for a second as the scent took him back to a beach in California, smoke and fire and burning flesh.
“How interesting,” the man said, and Neil met his eyes again, now hooded and dark. “And here I thought you weren’t supposed to smoke before surgery.”
“I’m not smoking.”
The man stuck his cigarette between his teeth and stepped even closer to Neil. He leaned in and Neil tensed but didn’t back down. Didn’t submit. He fully expected the man to blow smoke in his mouth again, but he didn’t. Instead, there was a prick at his neck.
Neil stumbled back, scraping his elbow against the wall in his haste, but it wasn’t enough. Not far enough, not fast enough. The stranger had gotten a knife under Neil’s scent patch, smoothly cutting it free and releasing Neil’s scent into the air. He breathed in, deep and hungry, and Neil was sure he could smell the fear, too, smell the panic pounding in Neil’s chest.
“Sage,” the stranger said as he leaned back, eyes wide and dilated. “And blood.”
“Copper.” Neil felt heady and off-balance. No one had smelled him since his mother died. She only said he smelled of blood when she was angry, her eyes distant and haunted as the shadow of a monster hung heavy over them both. His father was the one who smelled of blood, but it wasn’t from his neck and wrists. Blood pooled in his mouth instead; slipped out between his teeth, dried scablike under his fingernails.
It was his legacy that Neil inherited, but he’d done it all wrong. He was supposed to be an Alpha. His hands were supposed to be steady when they held a knife. He was supposed to be able to stand still, to hold his tongue, to obey. He wasn’t born an Alpha, so the least he could do was be a good Omega.
He wasn’t sure such a thing existed.
More than that, he was sure he wasn’t an Omega at all.
The stranger threw his cigarette on the ground and stomped on it, only to pull out a new cigarette and keep smoking.
“Why are you here? I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that spaying is illegal.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You came to my pack, Neil Josten. That makes you my business.”
My pack. Neil looked at the man with new eyes, mind racing. Palmetto was a secretive pack due to its penchant for harboring strays and runaways from other packs, so only a few members were known. Pack Alpha David Wymack, of course, and Danielle Wilds, his second-in-command who continually refused the label of Pack Omega. Neil had no idea who he was up against here, and since he smelled of nothing but nicotine, he didn’t even know his designation.
“I’m just here for the surgery,” Neil said. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible, believe me.”
The man clicked his tongue. “Not good enough. Why here? Why now?”
Neil bit the side of his cheek to keep from snapping back. His temper was already frayed from nerves and he couldn’t afford to lose it, not now and especially not here.
“There’s nowhere else to go. Like you said, this procedure is illegal.”
“And you want it anyway.”
“Yes.” There was no point in denying it. This man knew his name, knew why he was here, why he had travelled thousands of miles to visit a controversial little pack in South Carolina and beg for something that could very well leave him dead or land them all in prison.
Neil’s death was inevitable, and approaching fast. It was either here on the operating table or in his father’s basement a few months down the road. His time was limited, and that was why he came here in the first place.
“Neil Josten” was nothing. “Neil Josten” was a name on a fake ID. There was a man beneath that, but he wasn’t real, either, and he never had been. He would die as much a lie as he lived.
But he didn’t want to die as “Nathaniel Wesninski.” He didn’t want to die as the Butcher's Omega son. He wanted… he wanted to have something. The closest thing to truth he’d ever had.
“I don’t care about the risks,” he said after a long moment. “If I have to spend another day in my body while it’s like this, I might just rip out my uterus myself.”
The man didn’t react, just stared curiously at Neil. Then he spat his cigarette onto the ground, smothered it under his boot, turned, and disappeared back inside the clinic without a word.
Neil sagged back against the wall to catch his breath.
A few minutes later, the door opened again and the same man poked his head out. Neil fixed him with a glare, hands curling into fists at his sides, but he barely seemed to notice. Rather than immediately turning towards Neil, he looked around as though trying to locate him. Weird.
“Neil Josten? You can come inside now.”
Neil didn’t move. “Who are you?”
“Aaron. I’m on your medical team.”
“Really? You look a little young to be a doctor.”
Aaron shot him an annoyed look. “I’m a med student. Come on, we don’t have all day.”
Neil questioned how many patients a place like this could possibly have in a day, but kept quiet and just pushed off the wall to follow Aaron inside. Apparently, Aaron had changed his clothes since their conversation, since he was now actually dressed like a doctor. He no longer smelled of nicotine, either. He smelled of antiseptic and, beneath that, his own natural scent. Wet soil was easy to identify, but the second component was more difficult. Sweet, like vanilla and almonds. He didn’t know what it was, but what was more important was that Aaron smelled calm. Nothing about his scent stood out to Neil as particularly important. It was almost disappointing how uninteresting it was.
Aaron led Neil through the clinic and into a room divided up by curtains. The curtains were pulled shut over a few sections but enough were visible that Neil could see how they were used as small hospital rooms, each containing a bed and bedside table. Aaron ushered him into one of them and pointed to a bundle of fabric on the bed.
“Get changed,” he said. “The nurse will be in in a few minutes.” Then he was gone, closing the curtain as he left to give Neil some privacy.
The hospital was quiet and smelled strongly of scent neutralizer. It wasn’t enough to block out everything, though; if he concentrated, Neil could still smell Aaron along with a mix of other scents, the strongest being lavender. He’d suspect an air freshener if it wasn’t so clearly an Omega.
Neil gently set his duffle bag on the bed and lifted up the bundle of fabric. It was a hospital gown. He’d seen them on TV before. The thought of stripping and putting it on made his chest constrict. He couldn’t tell if anyone was in the room with him, and the only privacy he had were the curtains, which didn’t even reach the ceiling.
He could just run. This might be his last chance to run.
“Neil Josten?”
Neil jumped at the voice from outside. He was still standing there, fully-clothed, holding the gown. His arm twitched to grab his bag but he kept himself still.
“Yeah.”
“Are you decent?”
“Yes.”
The curtain slid open and an Omega woman entered. Neil immediately identified her as the source of the lavender scent, as well as… paprika, he thought.
“Hello, Neil. My name is Abby. Do you need any help getting into the gown?”
Neil shook his head.
“Okay. You can keep your underwear on until we take you into the operating room, if that would make you more comfortable. I’m going to leave the room now, you just hollar for me when you’re ready, all right?”
Once she was gone, Neil hesitated a moment more before stripping off his shirt before he could lose his nerve. That was the worst part. He felt cold and exposed, and quickly shrugged on the gown, securing the ties in the front. He pulled his shorts and boxers down with much more ease, packed his clothes back into his bag, and stuck his head out through the curtain to let Abby know he was ready.
“Today you will be receiving a complete ovariohysterectomy, a total vaginectomy, and a simple vulvectomy,” she said when she came back in. “Is that correct?”
Neil nodded.
“Great. How this is going to work is, I am going to put an IV in your arm to keep you hydrated, and when the time comes to take you into surgery, we will put you under general anesthesia. While you’re asleep, we’ll perform the operations, which will take a few hours, then take you to the recovery room and wake you up. We’ll keep you in the hospital for about a week, and then if everything’s looking good, you’ll be able to spend the rest of your recovery time at home.”
Neil wasn’t planning on staying in the hospital an entire week–as soon as he was well enough to run, he would–but he nodded again anyway.
Abby had him run her through his medical history. The Foxhole Clinic didn’t use records to minimize the risk of leaving a paper trail if the authorities got involved, which worked in Neil’s favor. Surprisingly, he didn’t have to lie on most of the questions Abby asked. It really was just his medical history, no questions on his background or why he wanted to be a Beta.
Finally, she asked, “Do you have someone with you who can hold onto that bag during surgery?”
“I can’t keep it with me?”
Abby looked torn. “We don’t like to bring personal belongings into surgery… I can lock it up in the recovery room, if you want? No one will be able to get to it and it’ll be there when you wake up.”
Neil thought about it. He didn’t want to part with his bag and he didn’t trust Abby enough to leave it with her, but he’d certainly prefer it be locked up while he was unconscious if he couldn’t keep it with him.
“Okay.”
Abby smiled. “Thank you, Neil. Can I feel around your arms to find a vein for the IV?”
He nodded and held his arms out. Abby poked and prodded at the insides of his elbows and the backs of his hands for what seemed like an excessive amount of time before putting the IV in his left elbow. It was a strange feeling, not painful but distinctly present, especially when the drip started, a cool feeling beneath his skin.
“I need to attach a heart rate monitor, too.”
When she was done, Abby picked up his bag. “I’m going to run this to the recovery room and check to see if we’re ready for you in surgery yet.”
“Can’t I come with you?” He would feel better if he could see her lock it up.
“I’m sorry, Neil. Just hang tight for a bit, okay?”
He could insist, but that would just look more suspicious, so he reluctantly agreed and let her leave with his bag. He didn’t know how long it was before she came back, but it was at least half an hour. When she poked back through the curtain, she gave him a bright smile and a thumbs-up.
“All right, we’re ready for you! Now the only question is, are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” he said dryly.
Abby laughed and came up next to him, fiddling with the IV and then starting to wheel the bed through the hospital…
Sleep was soft and warm and dark around Neil. He woke slowly and calmly, feeling more well-rested than he had in years. But that couldn’t be right. He just had…
Surgery. Neil forced his sticky eyes open, blinking in the bright light of the hospital as he shed the last vestiges of a peaceful oblivion. Across the room was Abby, who smiled when she met his eyes.
“Hello again, Neil. Do you know where you are?”
He nodded slowly.
“Good. I’m happy to tell you that your surgeries went well with no complications. I’ll go over your recovery timeline and what to expect going forward when you’re more awake, but I didn’t want you to be alone when you came to.”
Neil blinked and slurred out his comprehension.
“Take your time waking up. Your bag is next to you, I thought being able to see it might be comforting. Would you like me to stay, or do you want some privacy?”
He managed to raise his hand to point at the door. She nodded and left.
With the anesthesia wearing off, Neil was groggy, disoriented, and sluggish. He gave himself what he figured was a few minutes but could just as well have been an hour to just lie there, pulling himself together both mentally and physically.
Neil never intended to stick around long after surgery. Accessible information on these procedures was limited due to their illegality so he didn’t know what recovery usually entailed, but Neil was used to pain. He was used to dragging his body around, battered and bleeding and on the brink of death, and this would be no different.
Abby was right in her guess that having his bag near him would be comforting. Ignoring the twinge of pain, he forced himself to sit upright and pulled it into his lap. It looked untouched, but Neil was too suspicious to trust that to actually be the case, so he unzipped it and froze.
Nothing seemed wrong at first glance, but Neil had a system. He always bent the tags twice on a shirt in the top layer, but now it lay flat, identical to every other tag in his bag. Heart in his throat and panic threatening to clog his lungs, he sifted through his bag, shakingly frantic, checking for anything missing.
But there was nothing. Whoever had gone through his bag had meticulously placed every single thing back in exactly the same condition they had found it. But still, they had seen. They had seen Neil’s binder. The money, the codes, the contacts, everything.
He hadn’t wanted to leave quite this early, but this meant he had to push his departure up. He couldn’t stay, not around an unknown threat with too much information.
Neil was still hooked up to the IV, so he took a bandage out of the first-aid kit he kept in his bag, stripped the pillow from the hospital bed, and slid the IV out of his skin, using the pillowcase to contain the bleeding while he got the bandage on. It was messy one-handed. Blood and fluid from the catheter spilled over his skin and the wound bled through the bandage faster than he expected, but he didn’t have time to worry about that.
He swung his legs over the hospital bed and tried to stand, but his legs refused to work. A jolt of pain so intense it nearly brought tears to his eyes split up from his stomach and the space between his legs. His lips parted in a soundless gasp as he crumbled to the floor, panting.
The door to the recovery slammed open and Abby ran in, eyes wide.
“Neil, oh my god, what happened?”
She crouched down next to him and reached out to help, but he flinched away, anger and pain hot in his stomach as he hissed, “Fuck you. You said it would be safe.”
“Neil?”
“You said no one could get it in here.”
Abby looked taken aback. “Something happened to your bag?”
“Yes,” he bit out.
“Was something stolen?”
Neil didn’t answer, content to just glare at her.
“Okay,” she said, seemingly more to herself than him. “We can figure this out. But I need you to lie back down. If you don’t, I may have to give you a heavier sedative so you don’t hurt yourself, and I don’t want to do that.”
“Fuck you,” he said, but let Abby help him back onto the bed. When that was done, she took out her phone, turned it on speaker, and, while it rang, peeled off Neil’s blood-soaked bandage and pressed a gauze pad against the area instead.
“Abby?”
“Hi, David, do you know where Andrew is?”
Neil leaned forward to try to catch the response, but the effort wasn’t necessary. The person on the other end of the phone–presumably David Wymack–seemingly pulled the phone away from his ear to yell.
“Hemmick! Where’s your good-for-nothing cousin?”
“Which one?” a different voice asked jovially.
“Tweedle-dum, Tweedle-dee, I don’t care!”
“Aaron’s got a shift today, and you know Andrew doesn’t tell me anything. Sorry, Coach!”
Several things clicked in Neil’s head at once. Aaron and Andrew. Aaron’s got a shift today.
“They’re twins,” Neil said. “Identical?”
Abby nodded.
It wasn’t Aaron, then, who had talked to him in the alley outside. The man who smelled of nothing but nicotine, who had cut Neil’s scent patch off with a knife–that was Andrew. And while Aaron was busy helping with the surgery, Andrew would have had free reign to impersonate him and walk around the hospital. Plenty of time to break into the recovery room and look through Neil’s bag.
Neil cursed, and Abby gave him a sideways glance.
“I met him,” Neil explained. “Andrew. Before Aaron took me in here, I was talking to Andrew.”
At that, Abby looked alarmed. “David, I think you should get over here.”
“I’m getting that. And you got the new patient with you?”
“Yes. You’re on speaker phone, David.”
“Perfect, I need to tell him something. You listening, kid?”
After a moment too long, Neil said, “Yeah.”
“Andrew is part of my pack, but if he’s fucking with you, I’ll do my best to keep him away, got that? It won’t be perfect–Lord knows that little devil does whatever he wants–but you can come to me any time he’s bothering you.”
“Okay.”
“Great. Good talk, see you in five.”
He hung up, and Abby cleaned and rebandaged his IV site before attaching a new IV to Neil’s other arm for hydration and painkillers. Shortly after she was done, the door burst open and in walked the Head Alpha of the Palmetto Pack, David Wymack. Neil startled and moved instinctually to get up, to not be lying prone in front of a man like him, but Wymack stopped him with a wave of his hand.
“Sit your sorry ass down and keep it there,” he barked, but it wasn’t a command, not in the way Neil would have expected. His scent was controlled, no dominating pheromones flooding the room, no bared teeth, no threats. He carried a definitive air of authority, but it wasn’t because he was an Alpha.
Still, Neil felt himself flinch and comply automatically.
“Here’s the deal,” Wymack continued. “Until Abby clears your recovery, you’re a member of the Palmetto Pack, got it? You’re under my protection, no questions asked. And if that means I have to protect you from your idiotic self and my own damn pack members, so be it.”
He let out a weary, put-upon sigh and scrubbed a hand down his stubble. “I’m sorry about Minyard’s behavior, he was out of line. He’s a tough one to dissuade once he gets fixated on something, but I’ll see what I can do in the way of discipline.”
“Discipline,” Neil repeated warily.
Wymack must have heard the apprehension in his tone, because he met his eyes, expression serious and grim. “Yeah, kid. Discipline. Signing his lazy ass up for a marathon. Keeping him in-territory this Friday night. I won’t hurt him, if that’s what your previous pack thought of as ‘discipline.’ We don’t do that here.”
Neil swallowed, his mind racing to process the new information. He didn’t trust Wymack. He was an unknown variable, a Pack Alpha around his father’s age, and that alone set Neil on edge. He couldn’t trust Wymack, but he didn’t have much choice in accepting the invitation to stay with the pack temporarily. He’d put him in a vulnerable position, willing and fully aware of what the consequences may be, even if he underestimated them. He couldn’t even take a shit by himself at this point, let alone leave. He’d just have to bide his time, play nice until he recovered enough to run again.
So he nodded. “Okay.”
Wymack raised an eyebrow. “Okay?”
“I’ll join your pack.”