Chapter 5 THE DISCOVERY

It was like a death march to the room of the trainer.

Each breath was a sharp, sharp glass, in my lungs. I felt the throb of my ribs in time with my heartbeat, thump, ouch, thump, ouch. I clutched myself together, and gritted my teeth not to make a noise. Alphas didn't whine. I needed to put up with the pain in case I wanted to remain in this team.

I opened the door of the medical bay. The scent of the latex and alcohol rubbing was sterile.

The team trainer, Vance, who was a burly Beta by the name Doc Lewis said without glancing up at his clipboard. You howled, said Captain, you struck me on the ribs. Hop on the table."

I sat at the tip of the crinkly paper, and drew up my jersey.

Doc Lewis whistled low. "Nasty."

I looked down. A black angry bruise was already forming on my right side, and changing through purple to a sickly yellow-green. It seemed as though it were a storm-cloud in my skin.

Doc poked about in the place with numb fingers. I hissed and my sight was filled with white spots.

Deep tissue damage, I told you, definitely, Doc said to himself. He turned to his computer. I have an order to request an X-ray. We need to rule out a fracture."

X-ray.

Cold as the ice rink the word tore my heart.

"No," I said, too quickly.

Eyebrow up, Doc turned about. "Excuse me?"

No X-rays, I you know I, clumsily scrambled off the table. "It's... it's not broken. I've had broken ribs before. This is just a bruise."

"You're not a doctor, Vance. In case, there is a hairline crack, the next blow might end up puncturing a lung.

"I can't afford the copay," I lied. It was the half-truth and therefore the easiest to lie. My plan does not cover non-emergency imaging.

The actual cause was much more perilous. It would not be possible to have ribs in an X-ray. It would indicate my bone density, which is lighter and much porous as compared to an Alpha. It may even reveal the inactive repressed form of a male uterus provided the angle was off.

One picture would end my life.

Doc Lewis crossed his arms and frowned. Noah, the University pays the injuries of the team. You know that."

"I... I am phobic, I said, taking my jersey and dragging it down. "Radiation. My mom died of cancer. I don't do X-rays."

It was a low blow, the death of my mom as an armour but I was in need.

Doc sighed, and rubbed his temples. "Fine. However, you are icing it twenty minutes and in case you cough up blood, I would drag you to the ER myself.

"Deal."

I took an ice pack and left before he could make his mind.

I have not attended the recovery lounge. I went back to the locker room.

It was empty. The remaining members were either going to the showers or cafeteria. The room was dark, the flickering motion-sensor lights at the back corner of it.

I got on the bench before my locker and dropped the ice pack. It wasn't doing anything. The suffering had become an animal, eating me on the side.

However, the most unpleasant thing was not the pain.

Pain caused stress. Cortisol spikes were brought about by stress. And cortisol counteracted the sten blocks in my scent spots.

I could feel it happening. The rising heat beneath my collar. The sickly sweet itch of my smell attempting to penetrate. Unless I got my body to relax, I would be smelling of Honey and Fear once again.

I needed the big guns.

I put my hand into the inner fabric of my gym bag. I felt the cold plastic of the unmarked bottle of amber with my fingers.

These weren't Tylenol. They were a deadly combination of quality pain-killers and unnatural hormone-suppressants. They were criminal, costly and the sole thing that put my biology on a leash.

I shook the bottle. Rattle. Rattle.

I gazed about at the room which remained vacant. Silence.

I popped the cap. I dropped two white, big pills into my hand.

I didn't have water. I didn't care. I tossed them in my mouth and gulped them down. They scratched my dry throat and they had a bitter chemical after taste.

I shut my eyes, and threw my head back upon the metal of the locker. I waited till the chemical haze struck. I sat and waited till the pain subsided and the panic had passed.

Just breathe, I told myself. Nobody knows. You're safe.

"Rough day?"

The voice was out of the darkness.

I sprung at such a rate that I almost fell out of the bench. The bottle I held in my hand flew off and made a terrible racket on the floor. Pills were lying around on the tiles like white confetti.

I clawed myself to my knees and desperately attempted to pick them up.

"Leave them."

Damon Sterling emerged out of the row of lockers behind me.

He had showered. His hair was wet, dampened on his collar of the grey t-shirt. He was neat, cool and frighteningly concentrated.

So he came to the spot where I was kneeling. He didn't look at me. He gazed upon the pills on the floor. Then he glanced on the untidied bottle beside his foot.

He bent down and picked it up.

"No!" I lunged for it.

Damon stood aside without difficulty and the bottle stayed beyond my reach. He was stronger, taller and faster. It was simply a desperate boy on his knees.

He inspected the bottle. No label. No prescription sticker. Only a plain old amber bottle of powerful white pills.

He looked at me. His eyes were cold, calculating.

You turned down the X-ray, said Damon in a low voice. "Doc Lewis told me. You were behaving slyly, he said.

I hate radiation, I said tremulously. "Give me my medicine, Damon."

Damon rattled the bottle.

"Medicine?" he repeated. That does not resemble medicine, Vance. Medicine has a label. There is a name of a doctor on medicine.

He took the top of the bottle and sniffed. The smell was a chemical that was acrid.

These are the street pills, said Damon. His voice went down a whole step, and became ominous. "Painkillers? Opiates? Or something harder?"

My blood ran cold.

He thought they were drugs. He thought I was a junkie.

Amaleet, it is because of the pain, as I begged, rising. "My ribs... you broke them. I just need to manage the pain."

Something is shaking you, I noticed, Damon thought. He approached me intruding upon my personal space. "You're sweating. Your pupils are blown."

He was misreading the signs. The shaking was fear. The ailment that was the fever of the suppressants working. but to him it was withdrawal by the book.

I knew you were feeble, I know you were weak, I thought inwardly, and I was disappointed. But I did not think you were stupid.

With his hand he seized the bottle.

"Please," I whispered. "I need those."

"No," Damon said. "You don't."

He pushed the bottle down his pocket.

"You're my roommate. You're my teammate. And I am not letting a drug addict spoil my season.

He grabbed my arm. His grip was like iron.

"Come on."

"Where?" I tugged at it, however, and it was the same as tugging at a statue. "Where are you taking me?"

Damon looked down on me with his grey eyes smouldering with a dark, twisted determination.

"Home," he said. Then we will flush them down the toilet. And then? You're going cold turkey."

My world shattered.

If he took the pills... If he forced me to detox...

My heat was due in three days.

I would not only be in pain without such pills. I would sicken into complete biological estrus. In the suite. With him.

You know not, damn you, Damon, I said, tears in my eye. "I will get sick. Really sick."

Good, said Damon, hauling me to the door. Perhaps, that will teach you a lesson.