Gray
The Boundarylands Omegaverse
Callie Rhodes
Contents
Gray
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
Also by Callie Rhodes
Gray
They told Olivia they were sending her to the Boundarylands on a mission of discovery, but what they really wanted her for was bait.
No woman willingly travels to the Boundarylands.
It's where they are—the Alphas.
They keep to themselves in the wilderness, and beta civilization knows to keep its distance. Especially beta women…for fear they may not be a beta after all.
Olivia’s orders were simple. Travel to the Boundarylands, covertly observe an alpha specimen, and send back her data. The government promised her every precaution. They promised she’d be safe. But they never told her she what they really needed her for was bait.
And when the alpha they’d sent her to observe discovers the spy on his property, he’s determined to take his revenge…any way he wants.
Welcome to the Boundarylands. A place where the only way to know your true nature is to feel the touch of an Alpha. Omegas may be rare, but every woman knows their fates are hellish—held captive, broken, mated, knotted, and bred.
Gray is the tenth book in The Boundaryland Omegaverse, a hot new ABO romance series featuring knotting, heats, and possession. Wear gloves, cause this sh*t is hot.
Chapter One
Like many people who'd risen to the top of their fields, Olivia Fowler had an extraordinary talent.
Being a world-renowned wildlife photographer, she had an eye for composition and a knack for timing, but those weren't the skills that had lined her shelves with awards or created such high demand for her services.
Her talent wasn't learned. It wasn't something that she'd picked up while studying for her master's degree at Yale or from her mentor at the National Audubon Society. And even though it sounded ridiculously simple, for most people it was the hardest thing in the world—to sit completely motionless.
Sure, anyone could chill on the couch through an entire season of Supernatural—but they weren't as still as they thought. There were a thousand different tics and gestures and habits people weren't even aware of, not to mention breathing irregularities and throat clearing and blinking and scratching. Animals and birds and insects, whose senses were often far more sensitive than humans, picked up on all of them—and once a subject was spooked, the odds of getting a good photograph decreased to nil.
Olivia had no idea where she'd gotten her talent, but the fact that she could sit perfectly still for hours at a time had earned her a reputation in her field. Unfortunately for her, it seemed that reputation had expanded past her colleagues and peers into a very gray area.
That was the only explanation Olivia could come up with for the call she'd received a week ago. At first, she thought it was a prank played by her friend Nate, a fellow photographer who was her go-to date for all the boring black-tie parties hosted by the museums, foundations, and universities who hired her. Nate's biting sense of humor was the only thing that made endless conversations with the wealthy, pompous donors bearable.
"We're recruiting you to photograph an alpha for one week," the caller had said, after identifying himself only as working for a highly classified government agency. "Your background check identified you as uniquely qualified for this assignment."
Olivia had laughed, but she stopped laughing when the caller told her a few things about herself that there was no legal way he could have known. In a monotone voice devoid of emotion, he'd listed her parents' and step-siblings' addresses, their employers, even the names of their pets.
But it wasn't until he started talking about how unfortunate it was that her mother had chosen to lease a car with brake problems that it started to sink in—whoever this guy was, he wasn't really asking her to take the job at all.
That became even more clear when a day later, an unmarked black sedan pulled up in front of her house. The man who'd knocked on her door was every bit as vague as his nondescript, dark suit. He'd refused to answer her questions or tell her his name before pushing his way inside, but the confident way he held himself made Olivia suspect he worked for one of the intelligence agencies.
"Lovely home you have here, Miss Fowler," he'd said, striding into her kitchen. "Gas stove? Very nice. Fickle, though. I hear these older models are prone to faulty piping. You should be careful. I'd hate to hear about an accident happening to someone as talented as you."
Olivia didn't need her Ivy League degree to translate a threat like that.
Ten minutes later, she was riding to the airport with him in the back of his car. On the seat next to her were reams of documents that she wasn't given time to read before signing.
"You'll be escorted by an elite team to a location just outside the subject's property line tomorrow evening," he said as Olivia frantically flipped through the pages.
"Tomorrow?" she'd asked, aghast. Having her life threatened was one thing, but she'd never been sent into the field with so little time to prepare. "That isn't possible. It takes me weeks or months to get ready for a shoot."
"This time you have twenty-four hours," the suit answered flatly. "But don't worry, we have already arranged for every detail to be ready for you."
Olivia's brows had pulled together. "And who exactly is we?"
The suit stared at her for a long second without blinking, making it crystal clear that she was never going to receive an answer to that question.
"Once you arrive at the camp, you will remain there for seven nights. During this time, you will surveil the subject, capturing as many photos of his daily life as possible using a camera we will provide you. These pictures will be instantly uploaded to a secure satellite, so once you are picked up on the morning of the eighth day and safely delivered home, there will be no need for further contact. I shouldn't have to tell you that every aspect of this mission is strictly confidential."
Olivia interpreted that last part as "you talk, you die"—especially once he showed her pictures of the military-grade camouflage gear designed specifically for the Boundarylands.
"No other nation has this technology," he told her. He explained that everything she touched had to be doused in a special military-grade scent-blocker because of the alphas' extraordinarily developed senses, from the fibers in her special suit to the packaging on the scent- and taste-free protein bars that would serve as her only food.
Olivia listened in a daze, overwhelmed by all the planning and research that had gone into this expedition. But there was one part of the plan that made no sense at all.
"Why send me?" she asked. "You must have someone in your organization who is qualified for this sort of work."
"If we did, I wouldn't be here talking to you. Our agents aren't used to cramped conditions like the blind you will be using."
"What about snipers?" Olivia had risked asking. She might not know exactly which agency the man worked for, but she was willing to bet it had paid assassins on the payroll. "The job's not that different. Just substitute a camera for a rifle—then wait patiently for your shot."
The guy's mouth flattened, the only sign he experienced any emotion at all. "Their talents are needed on more important missions. Besides, alphas are animals. You photograph animals. End of story."
"That's ridiculous!" Olivia blurted. "They might have a different nature, but they're born to beta parents. Surely that makes them human."
The government suit regarded her impassively. "I take it you've never met one of these creatures face to face."
Olivia could only shake her head. Of course she hadn't—hardly any betas traveled to the Boundarylands. Especially not women.
"Consider yourself lucky," the suit said coldly. "If you'd ever witnessed one killing a man with his bare hands, you'd never mistake them for human again."
Olivia had backed down after that. Not because she believed him—she knew better than most that just because someone was dangerous, it didn't make them a monster—but because arguing with someone who could kill your family and make it look like an accident was a really bad idea.
So instead, Olivia kept her mouth shut for the rest of the drive as well as the flight on a private jet that followed.
Once they'd landed, Olivia was taken to a sterile-looking room with florescent lights where a woman in white scrubs gave her an injection she said would temporarily reduce her sweat production.
The shot hurt like hell—and it also put her out. When she woke up, she was in a black SUV with tinted windows, headed for the Boundarylands.
That was three days ago.
Now, Olivia was sitting on the same stool she'd been perched on since waking up at six o'clock in the morning, hunkered down in a cramped hunting blind. Her only movements had been to focus her telephoto lens with her thumb when the alpha came into view. Olivia wasn't thrilled with the quality of the photos, but she supposed that the agency she was working for wasn't looking to hang her work in a gallery.
At least all of the agency's precautions had worked...so far. It was a good thing, too. Because while a kilometer might be too great a distance to take a decent photo, it was too close for a beta to comfortably sleep knowing an alpha was nearby.
Even though the suit and the team that had brought her out here had repeatedly assured her she was technically on neutral territory, her proximity to the alpha's wood-sided cabin felt uncomfortably intimate.
Based on what Olivia had learned from random news stories and documentaries, alphas really didn't like anyone poking a nose in their business.
Olivia didn't even want to think about it, so she forced herself to focus on her work.
Over the years, she'd trained herself to deal with the stresses of her profession by practicing breathing exercises and mindfulness. Her most frequent challenge was boredom, but working with lions, wolves, cobras, and grizzlies meant she'd had to learn to cope with fear as well.
Three days in, however, Olivia was beginning to think that her initial fears had been an overreaction. Not only had the alpha given no indication that he was aware of being watched—he hadn't done a single thing worth watching, either. Olivia took dozens of shots whenever he came into view, but they were so mundane that she was starting to wonder what the government was hoping for.
There simply wasn't anything interesting happening on the alpha's property. Certainly nothing worth threatening her family over.
So far, she'd logged over a thousand shots of the alpha doing all sorts of unremarkable tasks—getting into his truck, getting out of his truck, chopping wood, picking vegetables from a fenced garden, lounging on his porch, and bathing in a hot spring.
Okay, that last one wasn't so mundane.
If Olivia was honest with herself, watching the alpha bathe was the one thing that made this whole bizarre mission bearable. Because while the government agent who'd conscripted her might be convinced that alphas weren't human, no tiger or gorilla that Olivia had ever captured on film made her heat up the way she did when the alpha started stripping off his clothes.
The alpha went to the spring every day around midday. It was located up the slope to the west of his cabin, and though parts of the path were obscured by trees, Olivia had total visibility of the spring and natural basin carved from rock.
When the alpha emerged from the woods, Olivia focused her lens on him peeling off his shirt. She had no idea what he'd been doing out there all morning, since the dense redwood forest obscured her view, but it must have been hard work because his shirt was always damp with sweat. Underneath was the impossibly broad, gorgeously defined chest that had become the single bright spot in Olivia's day.
Then the alpha reached for the fly of his faded jeans.
Olivia knew what happened next. This was the moment when her moral compass spun wildly, and she forced herself to look away. After all, she would be horrified if their roles were reversed, and she found out some random creeper was hiding in the bushes taking pictures of her bathing.
There was, however, the matter of the agreement she'd made with the agent. Olivia's survival instinct kicked in and, rather than fail to give him what he was expecting, she reached a compromise. When the alpha started taking off his pants, she closed her eyes and just kept hitting the shutter button for sixty seconds until she could be relatively sure that his body was immersed in the bubbling waters.
But when she opened her eyes this time, the alpha was nowhere to be seen. For the past two days, she'd photographed him soaking lazily on an underwater ledge, his huge, muscular arms resting on the smooth stone, the silver streaks in his dark hair glinting in the sun as the steam rose around him. But the basin was empty.
A jolt of fear shot up Olivia's spine, but she fought back her panic. There was no reason to freak out—she'd just lost sight of him for a moment. Maybe he'd remembered an urgent task that needed his attention or was distracted by an animal. Or maybe he needed to relieve himself. It could be anything.
Olivia widened the angle of her lens until her view encompassed the cabin and the land immediately surrounding it. The alpha wasn't there.
He wasn't anywhere to be seen.
This time it was harder to suppress her shiver of fear. Olivia moved the camera soundlessly on its tripod, desperately trying to find the dangerous subject she'd been sent to document.
A twig snapped somewhere nearby. Olivia had no time to react before a dark gray blur filled the camera's display screen. She could only watch as the camera was ripped from the opening in the blind.
Olivia froze, not even daring to breathe, even though there was no doubt the worst had already happened.
She'd been found.
Chapter Two
Olivia had long ago accepted the risks of her profession. Taking a job that required her to set up camp a stone's throw from a pride of lions or a polar bear's den meant that she gambled with her life on a regular basis.
If she was honest with herself, the risk was also part of the reward of her line of work. There was nothing like the exhilaration of getting the perfect shot, especially when no one else was willing to go through what she did in order to score it. The adrenaline rush was part of it, the way every nerve ending in her body went on high alert, her senses sharpened to the slightest sound or change of wind direction or blur of motion.
But that didn't mean that Olivia was reckless. On the contrary, she valued her own life enough to be very, very careful. That was why she researched every job extensively and took every precaution. Most of all, she always made damn sure every job was worth the risk.
Each photograph in Olivia's portfolio represented a reward that others wouldn't necessarily understand. She wasn't motivated by money or prestige—things that could be easily wiped out with one wrong move. All the cash and awards in the world wouldn't mean a damn thing if she ended up six feet underground because of a venomous snake bite.
The things that did matter to Olivia—the things that got her up in the morning and made her look forward to the day ahead—were less tangible. She longed to bring the beauty and fragility of nature to others through research, education,
and raising public awareness. That was why she usually chose to work with universities or wildlife non-profits, assignments that helped her build a legacy that would mean something to the world long after she was gone.
Never in a thousand years would she have imagined that her end would come at the hands of a raging alpha while being coerced by some shady government agency—an end as undignified as it was likely to be unnoticed. Because an employer who threatened your family wasn't likely to let that same family know they'd gotten you killed.
A split second after Olivia's camera had been ripped from her grip, a massive hand poked through the opening in the blind and ripped the synthetic shell clean in half. The shelter crumbled around Olivia, poles, camouflage, and camera equipment toppling to the ground. It was all she could do to remain motionless on her lightweight tripod stool as her heart thundered wildly.
Remaining calm was her only hope of survival, and she ran through the disaster protocol in her mind: release tension through breath, focus on sensory input, repeat. She'd trained for this moment for years.
Okay…not this moment precisely. But nothing in her training could have prepared her for this.
Olivia had been given a quick primer by the leader of the heavily camouflaged team that had brought her here: if confronted, don't run; avoid eye contact; telegraph submission by making herself small and making no abrupt movements. Olivia didn't bother telling him that advice was old hat for her—Dealing with Apex Predators 101. She didn't need to be reminded that running from a wild hunter only sent their killer instincts into overdrive.
Gray: The Boundarylands Omegaverse: M/F Alpha Omega Romance Page 1
