“He’s off-limits. That’s all you need to know.” Jax glared at the two holding me up, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Get those filthy sweats off. We need to get him to the showers.”

One guy bent and tugged my pants further down my legs. “Lift your foot,” he said.

I did so, my head in a fog, and blinked several times, but the whole room and everyone in it wobbled. This wasn’t happening. This was another nightmare. After he pulled the sweats free from one leg, I raised my other foot and nearly lost my balance. He tossed the soiled clothing to the side and grabbed me by the arm.

Jax nodded toward the door. “Get moving. Cleft can clean this shit up.”

Cleft grumbled his dissent as they ushered me out the door and down a long tunnel. We passed a guy hauling a frail blonde by a leash, her skin damp and pasty. As she crawled past, she lifted her tear-filled eyes—eyes that grew huge as she took in my presence. She didn’t even look old enough to graduate high school. I could only imagine how terrified she must be, and seeing a guy my size, naked and barely able to walk under his own steam, must have sent a devastating blow to her hope for survival.

But I couldn’t think about that girl. Not now. Not with all the chaos raging through my head.

Jax’s familiar stride echoed behind us. The fact that it was familiar at all was shocking enough, but to wrap my fucking head around the rest of it—his presence here and the implication of his words back in that room—I couldn’t do it.

Thoughts bounced around my head, but I couldn’t catch a single one, couldn’t even form the words to convey the total mind-fuck this situation was. Words refused to leave my tongue. They were stuck there in surreal silence as Jax and the others pushed me into a room full of showers.

“Get lost,” he told the other two goons as he switched on the water.

I leaned against the tile, arms bent and forearms flat against the cold surface, and tried to gather my strength. As soon as the door shut behind the men, I lunged for Jax, hands going for his throat. But the floor tilted under me, and instead of attacking him, I used his shoulders to hoist myself upright.

“How the fuck are you behind this?”

He shoved me against the wall. Water washed over us in a chilly stream, dripping from my hair and soaking his T-shirt.

“You’re wasting your energy. They dosed you with the same shit you gave Alex when we took her.”