Sinclair’s jaw tightened. “So what happened when I removed them?”
“There has been a hormonal imbalance in your body.” The doctor met Sinclair’s eyes. “Because there are other implants, those beads served to neutralize the hormones they produced.”
Sinclair stiffened. “What other implants?”
The doctor turned her screen around to show them some MRI scans—cross-sections of Sinclair’s torso. “When we did a scan based on the Facility’s reports, we found these in your midsection.” She highlighted two areas on the MRI image. They looked familiar, but wrong. There was an organ that opened up into Sinclair’s intestines, and something else. “This is an ovary,” the doctor said. “And this is a uterus.”
Sinclair had gone deathly silent. Dom stared at the screen, his mind making connections too quickly—things he was now afraid of the doctor saying.
“So—So what you’re saying,” Sinclair muttered. “I have omega parts?”
“Yes. When you removed the hormone inhibitors, the active hormones in your body went into effect, thus triggering what we know as a heat.”
“It can’t possibly...” Sinclair seemed stunned.
The doctor looked very apologetic. “I’m afraid that this might be bad news. You’re pregnant.”
18
Jesse Freaks Out
The words didn’t sink in, not at first. Jesse stared at the screen, trying to straighten out his thoughts. There was an ovary in his body. A uterus. Omega parts. Inside him.
It couldn’t be. He’d never felt anything different inside.
He pulled up his shirt and saw the scar. The big silver line just above his navel. The one that had hurt inside for weeks. Back then, he hadn’t known why—all he’d known were stretches where he’d dipped in and out of consciousness, someone changing his IV fluids whenever he could think. Then, he’d dropped back into darkness.
Jesse remembered the pride on Larson’s face whenever he paraded Jesse naked in front of his audience. He’d always been inside a clear fiberglass box, and he would never hear what Larson told the potential buyers. But Larson had always pointed a red laser dot at Jesse’s abdomen, where the scar was.
He understood now that Larson’s aim had been this. To put something inside him. So a buyer could impregnate him for whatever reason.
It was still inside him. This thing. And now Dom had fucked him, and... there was something growing inside Jesse. Something that shouldn’t be there.
He reeled, trying to breathe, his stomach turning.
“Shouldn’t his body have rejected it?” Dom’s words sounded faraway.
“We did some tests,” the doctor said, just as faintly. “These match Jesse’s DNA, but with the Y chromosomes turned off. We believe they were grown from stem cells.”
Jesse tried to absorb it all, he really did. But part of his mind just refused to take in the information. It violently rejected everything, and it made his head spin. He felt like puking.
He tried to breathe. But when he looked up, all he saw were white walls. Alarm hissed through his veins.
“Sinclair,” Dom said.
Jesse breathed harder. His heart pounded way too fast. He felt like he was back in the Facility again, and someone would come in and bring him away. Larson. He was here, wasn’t he? Where was his bitterwood scent?
“Sinclair,” Dom said. “Jesse!”
Jesse tore away from him, scrambling for the door. He struggled with the knob. Then he threw it open and barreled down the hallway, cataloging all the movements. All the potential threats. They could come after him. If there’d only been one of them, he could take them down. But there were so many that he was outnumbered.
Run.
Jesse blundered through the hallways, trying to follow the signs to the exit. But there were so many people, he knew he couldn’t leave that way. He turned back. Maybe there’d be a window in the bathroom. He thought he’d seen a window there. Maybe he could escape.
Fear crawled up his throat and closed it, and he couldn’t breathe.
He was almost into the bathroom when someone else barreled against him, an unyielding weight. He struggled against it, snarling when the person forced him into the bathroom. The window was there. But Jesse needed to get his captor down.
He threw a punch; the person blocked it. Then he was slammed against the wall, pressed down by that warm body. He tried to look at the window again. He needed to escape before the rest of his captors showed up.
Something came up, blocking his view of the window. The man turned his face, forcing their eyes to meet. “Jesse,” the man said. “Look at me.”
Jesse struggled against him. The man forced him down, and his eyes blurred into a mess of copper-brown.
“Breathe,” the man said. “I’m not here to hurt you. Just breathe.”
Jesse sucked in some air, only because his lungs needed it. Then he breathed more. He smelled blackwood.
At the back of his mind, he knew that was a safe scent. That he could trust it.
Maybe this person would help get him out of here.
He breathed again. And again. Until his heart stopped pounding so hard, and the white walls faded into the blue tiles of a restroom.
“Okay?” Dom asked, stroking the nape of Jesse’s neck.
Jesse blinked, panting from the adrenaline. “Yeah.”
Dom released him. Jesse staggered over to the toilet and threw up. It felt like his body was rejecting everything right now. But Dom approached him. “Okay if I touch you?” Dom asked.
Jesse nodded. Dom set a hand gently on his back, rubbing it.
It was a kind touch. Nothing dangerous. Jesse heaved up what little he’d eaten, before spitting the taste out. He flushed the toilet and went over to the sink to rinse his mouth.
He tried not to think about what the doctor had said. He didn’t want to panic again. Or puke again. But he didn’t know what to do with the thing inside his body, either.
Now that he was concentrating on finding it, he could feel a small, hard object in his middle. He knew exactly where it was. That made all his remaining hair stand on end.
“Do you want to come back another day?” Dom asked. “To see
