A maniacal gleam shone in Legion’s gaze, his anticipation obvious. “How long?”
“Days, maybe less. I’d say three cycles at the most.”
“Then it’s important that we maintain surveillance. Have you had any difficulties following her?”
Adrian scoffed. “Everyone in the slums is too wrapped up in their own suffering to worry about one unfamiliar face. No one suspects a thing.”
Legion reopened the terminal screen and navigated to the camera feeds, which between all of them covered most of the city. It would only be a matter of time before he claimed the girl and when that happened she would never be out of his sight again.
His people had not installed the cameras, but it was a simple enough thing to hack even the feeds. The Central Command had contracted out too much of the infrastructure work needed in the city to maintain complete control over much of anything. Legion was not the first to take advantage of the relative chaos, but he was particularly good at it.
“Have you had word from the Crown?” Legion asked as he zoomed in on the girl’s apartment building. “Their deadline is rapidly approaching.”
The other man appeared slightly uncomfortable though his face remained expressionless. “I have had no word, Legion.”
His agreement with the King had been in force for more than a dozen years and the Crown had been trying to circumvent them for at least that long. The King and his underlings remained convinced that Legion could somehow be convinced to turn over control of the air processors. He had been offered titles, riches and women, even promises that he could claim one of only a dozen Omegas born in the city each year. But none of that had ever been enough to tempt him. Because in the end, what Legion wanted more than anything else was control.
And by controlling the air, he controlled every single life in the city.
“Do you think this is just some form of minor rebellion to soothe his supporters in the Senate, or is the King truly planning to test me?”
“There have been whispers…” Adrian hesitated as if carefully choosing his words. “I have heard you called a terrorist.”
Legion laughed, the sound of it dark and threatening. “The only terror that I hope to inspire is in crossing me. Will they pay, or not?”
“Eventually, most likely. Without additional leverage, what choice do they have?”
They had no choice. Legion had made sure of it when he keyed the master control of the city’s air processors to his own biometrics. If he were to die without disengaging the failsafe, the entire system would shut down. The King would have a difficult time ruling over a population dying of pollution sickness and oxygen deprivation.
That didn’t stop the toothless lion from roaring without the benefit of any bite to back it up.
Sullen, Legion tapped the screen to switch the view to one closer to the marketplace. “You’d think the Crown would be more focused on their missing prince than on a fight that they can’t possibly win.”
“Missing?” Adrian raised a sardonic brow. “Most would have said dead. They are executing someone for complicity in his murder later this week.”
Cracking his neck, Legion’s attention again switched to the feed. He was growing frustrated at not yet catching sight of who he was looking for. “Stranger things have come from the Forbidden Zone than a dead man. I’m willing to believe almost anything until they produce a body.”
His second-in-command almost seemed interested at that, pushing off the wall to take a step closer. “You think this execution is a set-up?”
“I don’t care enough to think about it all,” Legion answered with a sneer. “But I see a government scrambling to maintain power amid mass corruption. Castor had ideals, if you can even use that word in this city. I’m sure many people wanted him dead.”
Adrian flashed a sharp-toothed smile. “Are you including yourself in that?”
A sharp glint shone in the Alpha’s eye as he regarded his second. “If I had moved against the milquetoast prince, there would be no question of finding a body.”
The room had turned a shade colder and the slightly smaller man took a step back. Legion was well known for his preference for hand-to-hand combat. He wanted to feel the beat of his opponent’s heart in the gush of their blood spilling from open wounds before he snapped their necks. Something as craven as tampering with the engine of a skycar was beneath him. To even suggest otherwise was an insult.
Adrian lowered himself to one knee and bowed low, making a point to keep his gaze on the ground at his feet. “If there is nothing further you require, sir. I should return to the slums. It would not do for your woman to remain unmonitored at this point. The tainted alterants could take effect any time.”
“Go,” Legion snarled, teeth snapping. “And alert me the moment that anything changes.”
The other male backed out of the room, keeping his body low to the floor. He did not rise even as the door shut behind him.
With a growl, Legion swept the terminal off the desk so it crashed to the floor, destroyed. Waiting had him frustrated beyond belief, too distracted to deal with the upstart King and his bootlicking flunkies.
Handling the King would have to wait until he had his Omega. She would stay underneath him and filled with his knot until she repaid him for her part in this aggravation.
The girl would discover that there were consequences to her actions in the most dramatic way possible. He would prove that she had been hiding her dynamic and then he would destroy her.
Chapter Eleven
“Legion.”
Ianthe tasted the name on her lips for the thousandth time as she waited for the skycar to descend all the way back to the lower levels. She’d already looked him up on the CommNet and what she’d found shouldn’t have done anything but make her want to stay as far away from him as possible.
And yet, the memory of his hands was burned onto her skin.
The small window of their apartment was dark as the car hovered above the dirt. She wondered how long it took to clean off all the dust and grime that now coated the previously shiny surface. The slums left a stain on anyone who ventured there, except hers couldn’t be as easily washed away as mud would off the skycar.
“Thanks for the ride,” she murmured, voice heavy with sarcasm, before slamming the door shut behind her.
Circe had promised not to wait up, saying she wanted to be rested when the guardians showed up to tell her that Ianthe had been taken to detention. As much as the nagging annoyed her, she had to acknowledge that none of this would have worked without her sister’s help. Circe would have made an excellent chemist if she’d ever been given the chance at an education.
The thought of slipping into her bed made her give a deep sigh of relief.
And then promptly choke on it when she opened the door to find her brother, whipcord arms crossed over his chest, standing in the middle of the living room.
“Where have you been?”
“Eaon, why are you out of bed?” She pulled the door closed behind her, checking surreptitiously that none of their neighbors had wandered past. “It’s nearly morning.”
“Tell me where you were.”
She surveyed his too skinny body and noted with some dismay how shallowly his chest rose and fell with each harsh breath. “Did you go to the clinic for your breathing treatment today?”
“Stop it. I’m asking the questions.” He blocked her path when she tried to sweep past him. Though he was still a little small for his age from the sickness, her brother had always been fast. “I want to know where you’ve been.”
“Out,” she said shortly, so weary that there was no energy left to try to wheedle him.
“With who?”
“None of your business. Get out of the way, Eaon.”
“My friend Niko saw you get into the back of a skycar last night, windows all blacked up and everything. Who sent you a skycar? Where did you go?”
Heat suffused her cheeks as she stared into his belligerent face. Of all the people w
ho might see her get into a skycar in the middle of the night, it had to be a friend of her little brother. “It’s not important and it won’t happen ever again. Please just let it go.”
She slipped past him but his voice stopped her before she could disappear into her bedroom.
“How did you pay for my breathing treatments, Ianthe? Where did the money come from?”
Without saying another word, Ianthe closed the door on the accusation in his face.
Circe was sitting at the kitchen table when Ianthe finally woke sometime in the mid-afternoon. She’d slept much later than she intended, her body too weary to rise any sooner.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this tired. And her body was sore and achy as if all the muscles had been pushed to their limits. It must have resulted from what Legion had put her through. Perhaps she’d fought his hold harder than she thought and now that adrenaline had worn off, her body was paying the price.
“Where’s Eaon?” she asked, grinding the palms of her hands against her eyes to kill a splitting headache.
Circe set down her cup of coffee with a light click. “He left early this morning. I assume he’s reported at the schoolhouse.”
Assumptions were dangerous things, but Ianthe shrugged away a sudden feeling of unease as she joined her sister at the table. “I feel terrible.”
“Well, you did take enough alterants to supply an apothecary for a year. What did you expect?” Circe pushed the terminal screen in front of her across the table. “I was checking rates for apartments on the middle levels. Take a look.”
Ianthe took the screen and stared down at the surface, figures dancing in front of her eyes as the room spun before slowly coming back into focus. When she was finally able to read the displayed figures, she experienced a nasty shock. “This can’t be right!”
She routinely checked the listings for modest homes on the middle levels. It partly served as wish fulfillment, but also as a reminder that a better life was still in reach for them.
Circe’s gaze was inscrutable, although the rapid drumming of her fingers against the table signaled her unease. “The prices have more than tripled.”
“There must be something wrong with this.” It wasn’t possible. That couldn’t be right. All of the things that she had done to ensure their future couldn’t have been for nothing. She flipped frantically through all the listings, organizing from lowest price to highest and back again, but the result remained the same.
She would have to endure a hundred more nights in Eros House for any chance at getting her family out of the slums.
Her hands shook as the screen clattered back to the table.
Circe picked up the terminal and placed it back in its dock. “It’s not all bad, you know.”
Ianthe gaped at her sister. “How is this not all bad?”
“So we’re stuck in the slums, we’ve managed this many years here already.” Her voice was heavy with resignation. “At least we can afford the rest of Eaon’s treatments, maybe even with enough left over for a year at the Academy.”
A keen sense of failure coursed through Ianthe at her sister’s words. She had failed them. It was her one responsibility to make sure that her family was taken care of and she couldn’t even accomplish that.
Her mind had already started the calculations of how much it would take for them to stand a chance…
“You’re not going back there,” Circe said, sternly. “Or if you do, you won’t be getting any more help from me. It’s too dangerous for you to be with an Alpha again.”
Ianthe squeezed her eyes shut at her sister’s very deliberate choice of words. “Be with? Do you mean fuck?”
I don’t fuck Betas. The words whispered through her mind, tempting her. This was the first time in her life that she had ever been tempted to reveal her dynamic, even for a moment.
“I’d prefer not to use that word, actually.” Circe sat up a little straighter as if visibly buttoning herself up. “Don’t you have to be at work soon?”
Painful resentment grew slowly inside of her like a rosebush made only of thorns. It wasn’t just the political types who looked down on Omegas, the rest of the population had similar ideas about what it meant to be part of the weakest dynamic: simple, naïve and easily led. She fought her nature not just because of what it required, but because to be Omega meant having the respect of absolutely no one.
Why did she have to sacrifice so much, only to gain so very little?
Ianthe pushed open the door of the cafeteria and even that small movement seemed to sap her of all energy. Her arms felt like weights at her sides and she wondered how she could possibly make it through her shift.
Miranda was standing by the counter with a terminal in her hands, a very stressed look on her face. “What are you doing here?”
Slipping an apron over her head, Ianthe frowned at the older woman. “Working, what else would I be doing?”
“Didn’t you receive word? There’s a hoity-toity party on the middle levels for some government types and we’re closing early to provide extra hands. You were supposed to be there an hour ago.”
She was already pulling the apron back over her head and tossing it aside. “I did not receive word. And my brother is likely to thank for that.”
“Well, you’ll be docked for every extra minute that you’re late, so I suggest you stop making excuses and get going.”
Ianthe wanted to tell the snotty woman precisely where she could stuff her opinions but wisely bit her tongue. Miranda made the work schedule and getting on her bad side would only guarantee fewer credits in her pocket.
There wasn’t time to wait on one of the slow, open-air platforms that could carry her to the middle levels. It took one of them several hours to rise slowly from the lower levels up to the next sector, groaning and creaking all the way. That was why no one who lived in the slums worked in higher levels, the time and cost to travel was too much to make it worth it. Today, she would have to eat the credits and hail a public skycar.
Luckily, it was mid-afternoon and a slow time for traffic between the levels. She managed to quickly catch a public skycar that was dropping off another passenger just down the street from the cafeteria.
She slid onto the cracked leather seat. It was difficult not to be reminded of the luxury vehicle that had carried her to Eros House. This model was significantly older and had seen many more miles of service. A smell of something damp and musty drifted into her nostrils as she settled back against the seat.
“Scan your identification,” the driver snapped, indicating a reader panel that extended from behind his seat. “C’mon, I haven’t got all day.”
Ianthe scanned her card and glared at the back of the driver’s head. He was likely a slum-dweller, just as she was. And like all of those who lived in the lower levels, patience was a virtue they could ill-afford.
Though, that didn’t give him cause to be so rude.
The scanner beeped as more credits than she could afford were deducted from her family’s shared account. “Just get me there quickly, please.”
“You’ll get there when you do. I’m not risking a citation on you.”
She fought off a wave of nausea as the skycar lifted off of the ground and into the air. The back of her hand pressed against her mouth as bile burned in the back of her throat.
“I will not throw up,” she murmured, squeezing her eyes shut.
“What was that?” The cabbie craned back to glare at her. “Better not be getting sick in my car, rat. I’ll have you fined for the cleaning.”
Taking a deep breath, she snapped right back. “The sooner you get me to the civic pavilion, the less you’ll have to worry about.”
The cabbie grumbled something rude under his breath, but returned his gaze to the lines of traffic climbing up between the sky-high buildings. “This is why I don’t service the slums.”
Ianthe chose to ignore that and focus on keeping down the small breakfast she’d had. She couldn’
t remember the last time that she’d felt this ill, perhaps the stress of it all was finally getting to her. Her skin felt itchy on the inside, in places where she couldn’t reach. Beads of sweat broke out along her brow and she looked over the driver’s shoulder to ensure he had not turned the heat on full blast.
The civic pavilion came into view just as the skycar began a rapid descent to the landing pad. Her stomach responded with a sensation like the organ had been launched up into her throat so it felt like she was choking on it.
“Swallow down that sick and get out,” the driver grouched as she pushed open the door. “And don’t think I’m waiting around to take you back down. Call somebody else or you can use the platform like the rest of ‘em.”
As if her credits wouldn’t go just as far as anybody else’s. Interactions like these were what made Ianthe so desperate to get her family out of the slums. This cabbie would rather go without a fair than take her back to the lower levels and she hadn’t even thrown up in his car. He wouldn’t dare speak to her that way if she was from the higher sectors.
Despite Miranda’s insistence that she was already late, only workers milled about the pavilion, setting up tables and chairs. The event, whatever it was, clearly hadn’t yet begun.
A harried woman wearing a dark suit and impractical heels was at the entrance of the pavilion, barking orders into a heads-up display.
“The cloth on table four doesn’t match the rest. I need you to bring me cream, not off-white.”
The woman stalked back and forth across the walkway, gesticulating wildly.
“And why did I see lilies in the reception hall when I specifically requested orchids? Sky above, could you screw this up anymore if you tried?”
Ianthe approached slowly, not wanting to draw too much attention to herself. But the woman continued to rant at whatever poor soul was on the other end of the receiver.
“Who are you?”
With a start, she realized the woman was staring at her. “My name is Ianthe.”
“I don’t care,” the woman snapped. She turned away, clearly speaking again through the earpiece. “Get that stage moved over at least four feet and send someone to the ballroom with extra tables. What do you want?”
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