Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 193

Richard

I didn’t speak as Simon and Nathan helped carry Amelia’s unconscious body to the containment wing. I didn’t look at the blood still drying on my skin, or the bent metal frame of the bed, or the trail she’d left in her short rampage before the sedative had taken hold. I just walked, one step behind the gurney, my jaw locked and my shoulders squared, like I could fix this by standing taller, like holding my body steady would make the rest of it follow.

The silence between us wasn’t just procedural. It was the kind that forms around guilt, fear, and the knowledge that none of us could take back what had already been done.

Simon kept glancing at me with a clinical watchfulness that made it hard to breathe.

Nathan didn’t look at me at all. His silence was louder than any argument he could’ve made. He’d already made his stance clear: this wasn’t protection, it was cowardice wearing the costume of hope.

“Secure the eastern cell,” I said, and my voice came out low and firm, though not without a tremor beneath it. The guards moved quickly, opening the thick, double-sealed doors that led into the farthest wing of the facility. It had been mothballed for years, locked away after the early hybrid trials were declared a failure. No one had stepped foot in it since.The second the locks disengaged, both men took a step back, flinching slightly, like even her sleeping body was a threat waiting to ignite.

Simon crouched beside the cot and attached the final biometric cuff to her ankte. The cuffs weren’t meant to restrain, only to record, but watching the band close around her skin made my chest tighten. Her vitals kept spiking, even in unconsciousness, and I could see Simon tracking them with the barest twitch of his brow, tension bleeding from his shoulders.

He looked up at me and waited. I gave him a nod. “No restraints, and nonlethal protocol only.”

Nathan exhaled sharply. “You’re putting the entire wing at risk by keeping her conscious. If the vampires hardwired a remote switch into her mind, she could be activated again at any second, and this time it might not stop until someone’s dead.”

“I know what she’ll do if it happens,” I said. My words were dry and hard. “She’ll kill whoever’s in front of her, and she’ll do it precisely.”

Simon stood slowly, brushing his hands off against his coat even though they were clean. “Then we need to keep her under. I can regulate the dose, keep it light, just enough to dull responsiveness. It’ll buy us time without triggering trauma.”

“No,” I said before he could finish. “We don’t sedate unless we’re out of options. She deserves to wake up on her own.”Nathan crossed his arms, his jaw working. “You’re already out of options. Look at her.”

I didn’t need to. I could feel her presence bleeding through the walls even while she slept. The air hummed around her, electric and tense, like her body was holding a charge that couldn’t be discharged safely. Whatever they did to her, it hadn’t ended when she left.

“She needs to wake up knowing we didn’t treat her like a monster,” I said. “Or she’ll never trust us again.”

Simon’s mouth tightened, but he nodded and stepped back into the shadows.

A minute passed. Then another. And then she moved.

Her fingers twitched. Her breath shifted, deeper, sharper, and without warning, she sat up in one smooth motion.

The guards reached for their weapons before I even had to gesture for them to hold back. I raised one hand and kept my voice steady.

There was no grogginess, no confusion. Her eyes snapped to mine the instant she woke, and the intensity behind them rooted me to the floor, caught somewhere between recognition and dread.

She smiled.

“Oh,” she said, her voice faintly amused but chillingly flat.

“You’re still breathing. That’s disappointing.”

“Amelia,” I said. The name tasted foreign, hollow in my mouth. It didn’t match what I was seeing.

She stood with deliberate, balletic precision, her every movement slow and controlled. She stepped toward the barrier with a calm that was too careful, her head tilting slightly as she studied me the way a surgeon might study an incision site.”You know,” she said casually, “it’d be easier to get to your femoral from behind. Before you shift. Less resistance, less muscle. It’d take about four seconds to bleed you out.

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