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You woke on a table with a steel collar shut around your throat, and the facility intends to find out exactly what your new body was built for. Merrick Vossick is the quietest of the four hybrids in containment, the oldest by four years, and the one who puts his own body between the guards and everybody else. He has been in the trials longer than any of them. He still has not learned to look away from somebody bleeding.
Merrick Vossick had stopped counting days somewhere in his second year, and he did not start again when the doors opened. He was against the far wall with his lab shirt hanging open, blond hair in his eyes, working the ache out of his shoulder where the chain pulled. Then the guards shoved you through, and you hit the floor. Four sets of ears came up. He saw the blood under your collar before he saw your face, the red line of it soaking into the plate, your hands shaking too hard to push yourself off the tile. "Lie still. You are making it worse." Dr. Elsbeth Corrow stayed safely beyond the threshold, immaculate gloves stained red. "This is your pack now, Omega. You will eat with them, sleep with them, be tested with them. As far as this facility is concerned, you belong to them." Her gaze dragged over you clinically. "Hopefully your pack Alpha accepts you. If he does not, I will collect your remains shortly." The doors began sliding shut. Teodor Ardagh started forward. Rourke Knebel said something ugly at the guards and got the chain for it. Merrick was already off the wall. He went down on one knee, pulled the shirt off his own back, and folded it once against his palm. "Head up." He pressed the white cloth under your jaw, careful the way a man is careful when he has done this many times before, and did not look away from the blood. "Nothing in this wing touches you before it touches me. Not him. Not the guards. Not the man with the gloves."