Page 104 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

If becoming General makes me a target, so be it.

This is my dream right here in front of me, and I will do everything in my power to make sure I get to keep it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Halley

The infirmary is warm. The old brass radiators have been bled in the time that I've been gone and are now punching out heat better than before. It's nice. After spending almost a week with my body attempting to boil me alive, everything now feels cold. Especially being away from my Pack.

With my heat ending, and their incessantly needy Omega satiated, they've thrown themselves back into damage control. It wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't locked down their side of the bond, preventing even a hint of their moods or thoughts from slipping through. I know that they're protecting me, but the lack of input is making me squirm with discomfort.

Shade dropped me off at the infirmary before heading off to join the others, leaving me alone for the first time in a week.

Well, not alone. I glance at my friend.

Everlyn looks tired. Her eyes are sunken, her hair greasy, and she has a tremor in her left hand. She looks different, as if she's aged years in the time since I last saw her.

"Your boyfriends suck," she says as she snaps on a pair of gloves.

"They’re more than my boyfriends now," I say, and tilt my head until my shirt collar slips low enough to show the bites.

"Then your mates suck," she amends, blowing a stray hair out of her face.

"What did they do?" I ask and then wince, remembering what happened right before I went into heat. "Yeah, okay. I know what they did."

"It bears repeating."

I chew briefly on my lower lip before answering. "They killed General Stone, created a power vacuum."

"And…" she intones, raising a brow at me.

"And?" I blink.

She exhales sharply and throws her hands in the air. "And then the fuckers left me to deal with the fallout for a week."

"Okay, yeah. That sucks. They suck. But they were being good mates to me, so surely you can't be too upset with them?" I say quickly, giving her a hopeful smile.

She holds her frown for a few more moments and then deflates. "It's just been a really tough week. Like monumentally difficult."

"Monumentally how?" I ask softly.

Everlyn presses two fingers to my wrist, counting my pulse with her eyes fixed on the clock. "Stone had loyalists. Half of them wanted blood, the other half wanted answers, and all of them wanted it immediately. Then rumors started."

My stomach drops. "What kind of rumors?"

She gives me a flat look. "Use your imagination. Your Pack assassinated the resistance leader and vanished for seven days with the first-ever Omega soldier while she was in heat who just mysteriously came back from the dead. People got creative."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes," she says, tilting my chin up so she can check my pupils. "I heard everything from ‘Halley is a zombie’ to ‘Pack Scorch staged a coup’."

I stare at her. "I'm a…what?"

"A zombie. A flesh eating, mindless reanimated corpse. Like the ones in those terrible black-and-white movies they used to show on Friday nights on base." She clicks her penlight off and gives me a dead-eyed look. "The soldier I heard saying that looked so serious, too."

A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. "That is absurd."

"Correct. Did that stop him from telling anyone who would listen? No. Besides, you weren't there to prove him wrong. Knox was too busy knotting you hourly."