Chapter 248: Fine

Stopping in some dead-end corridor to catch my breath, I looked around feverishly. My mind was swimming. I had completely lost all sense of where I was.

Around me stretched only empty, endless hallways lined with identical doors, completely devoid of any nameplates. No doctors, no students—no one.

Backtracking, I turned around cautiously and tried to walk back, but the concrete walls seemed to stretch into an infinite loop.

Surveying my surroundings grimly, I caught only the sharp scent of fresh paint and a hollow, heavy silence. My heart finally stopped its treacherous attempt to batter through my ribs. The panic ebbed slightly, leaving behind a scorched wasteland inside my chest. God, how could I have run so blindly that I managed to get myself hopelessly lost in an unfamiliar building?

My head throbbed, and a fresh wave of drowsiness and sheer exhaustion from the stress washed over me. Listening intently to the dead silence, trying to catch even the faintest noise as a guide, I suddenly felt a weak vibration in my jeans pocket. Fumbling for the casing, I realized with surprise that my phone was ringing.

Pulling out the device, my eyes locked onto the display. Damian’s name glowed brightly on the screen.

"Hello?" Answering the call, I pressed the plastic against my ear, backing into a corner and freezing in place.

"Why aren’t you at the university?"

From the low, rumbling growl on the other end of the line, it wasn’t hard to tell that the guy was furious beyond measure. The bone-chilling tone sent a shiver of intense heat down my spine, bringing the panic back twofold.

"They took us for testing this morning..." Licking my dry, chapped lips, my eyes accidentally drifted downward, and I froze.

A vivid crimson stain was spreading across the side of my white sneaker. As I had sprinted down the hallways, the wound had torn open so wide that blood had completely soaked through the thick canvas of the shoe.

"What?" the guy asked, his voice dropping into a low, dangerously calm lull. "Did you go into the examination room? Were you examined?"

"I went in, but he told me to undress... I refused, and then he started shouting. I got scared and ran away. I think... I’m lost." Under the weight of immense stress, I began blurting out the absolute truth, without the slightest hope that this monster could ever understand me. "I don’t know where I am. And it looks like... I hurt my leg really badly again."

"He told you to do what?" Damian asked in a dead, completely emotionless voice. That tone alone gripped my insides with a terrifying dread.

"To undress... And when I refused..."

"Was he forcing you?" He growled into the phone so fiercely that the speaker membrane crackled.

"Yes... He said I had to," I whispered quietly, deep down desperately hoping that Damian wouldn’t force me to return to the office and undergo the procedure.

"Stay right where you are."

The short beeps of the disconnected call sharply grated on my ears. Inhaling the cool air through my nose, I thought bitterly that I definitely couldn’t stay on my feet any longer. I had completely run out of strength, and my foot burned like fire. Sinking to the floor, I leaned my back against the painted wall next to one of the locked doors. Fatigue blanketed my mind like a heavy shroud, and I instantly plunged into a deep, dreamless sleep.

***

Quiet voices, penetrating my consciousness through a viscous veil, pulled me out of an incredibly deep sleep. My body was so stiff that my muscles ached and pulled unbearably, reacting with a dull, throbbing pain to the slightest movement.

Half-opening my heavy, leaden eyelids, I tried to focus my blurring vision, only to realize a wild reality at that exact moment—I was lying on the back seat of a moving car.

Blinking rapidly and swallowing the dry lump in my throat, I tried to push myself up, pressing my trembling palms against the cool leather upholstery, but the very next instant a heavy male hand came down on my shoulder.

It was so sudden, commanding, and firm that sharp needles of terror instantly slithered through my body, and shuddering all over, I rolled sharply onto my back.

"Awake?" Damian’s raspy voice finally brought me completely to my senses, and the last remnants of sleep vanished.

The terror of realizing that I had fallen asleep right in an empty corridor of the research institute—completely defenseless, where anyone could have done anything to me in that state—washed over me like a tub of ice water. I started shaking. Everything inside me shrank from my own helplessness, because I couldn’t even remember how I had ended up in his car.

"How are you feeling?" His long fingers on my shoulder squeezed slightly, sending a searing heat rushing through my veins that seemed to melt my skin.

Closing my eyes for a split second, I nervously listened to my own body, trying to quiet the frantic pounding of my heart, which threatened to crack my ribs.

Only now did I realize that I felt a bit better than I had in the morning. Perhaps the whole point was that my body, exhausted by constant stress, had finally taken over, forcibly shutting me down for a few hours to grant me at least a brief respite.

Intent on moving away from that terrifying source of heat, I made one more attempt and finally managed to pull myself up, pressing my shoulder blades hard against the opposite car door, as far away from Damian’s crushing wolfish aura as possible.

Once I found myself at a relatively safe distance, I realized with a shudder yet another detail that made blood rush hot to my cheeks.

Until that very moment, my head had been resting on his thighs. On his lap. From this realization, my throat tightened with a caustic spasm of shame, making it even harder to breathe.

Swallowing nervously, I shifted my unfocused gaze to the front seats. Behind the wheel, driving with confident ease, sat a fair-haired guy who, according to Rita, was Damian’s brother, and as far as I could remember, his name was Matthias. He seemed more relaxed, yet even so, the same overpowering aura radiated from him, making it physically unbearable to remain inside the confined space of the car cabin.

"Hart?" Damian’s low, rumbling growl tore through the heavy silence, and I flinched, realizing I had probably spent too much time studying the profile of the guy behind the wheel while completely ignoring the question I’d been asked, which was clearly making Damian angry.

His tone slashed against raw nerves. Crudely. Dangerously.

"Yes? I feel fine," I forced out hoarsely, trying with all my might not to look into the dark abyss of his eyes.