"And then what?" Stacy tried to keep the nervousness out of her voice. "I run up to an alpha, tap him on the shoulder, then come back and tell you how it went?"
"Not exactly," Fulmer said with a thin smile. "Under laboratory conditions, one dose of the serum is effective for seven days, or a full week. We will be sending you in alone, with three doses to test under real-world conditions."
Stacy couldn't contain her shock. "I'm being deployed to the Boundarylands for three weeks with no backup?"
"From what I witnessed today, Sergeant Clarke, you should have nothing to worry about. If anything, those alpha bastards should be afraid of you.”
Chapter Two
"Gimme another." Vonn Carpenter slammed his empty beer mug onto the bar with enough force to get the attention of every other alpha in the place, earning him a few dirty looks. Vonn didn't give a shit—not just about what his brothers thought, but about anything other than getting another damn drink.
Ha, the little nagging voice in his head said.
"Hey," Vonn growled in an effort to drown it out. But he knew that the bartender had heard him the first time.
The gray-haired brother manning the bar tonight wasn't the usual one—but unluckily for Vonn, he was the most sanctimonious of the pinch hitters. Gray might be the closest thing they had to a leader in the uplands of the Pacific Northwest Boundarylands, but he was a little too casual about getting into other brothers' business, in Vonn's opinion. Though if he was being honest—(ha ha! the little voice chimed in) Vonn hadn't much cared until the older alpha had focused all that judgment on him.
At the moment, Gray was watching him with his arms crossed and unmistakable disapproval in his eyes, his pinched expression reminding Vonn of his second-grade teacher. Mrs. Peabody had written a note to Vonn's parents saying that she would recommend holding him back a year if she wasn't worried she'd have him in her classroom again.
As far as Vonn was concerned, betas like her deserved what they got. If she had just let him wear himself out during recess instead of constantly screeching at him, he might have worked off enough energy to be able to sit still in class. But no… betas' impulse when confronted by something they couldn't control was to double down.
At least Gray wouldn't do anything stupid like try to kick him out of the roadhouse. Vonn had every right to his seat at the bar unless he threatened another brother—and even that would probably just get him ordered outside until they settled the argument.
Unfortunately, there wasn't anything in alpha law to keep a brother from acting like his damn mommy. Vonn had hoped that he'd be drunk enough by now not to care what kind of shit Gray gave him, but apparently he wasn't quite there yet.
"I ordered another beer," he said, slurring slightly.
"I heard you." Gray didn't move a muscle.
Vonn looked around, but everyone had gone back to their drinking. "Somebody ought to tell Trace what a shitty substitute barkeep you are."
"Why don't you do it yourself?" Gray asked mockingly, knowing it was the last thing in the world that Vonn wanted to do.
"You know I can't."
Gray shrugged and scratched the back of his head. "Might be a good exercise in self-control."
"I got plenty of that, asshole," Vonn shot back. No one could dispute Vonn's discipline; the four wooded acres he'd single-handedly cleared last summer was proof. "Now get me another fucking beer."
As the seconds ticked by and Gray didn't move, Vonn wondered if he was going to have to throw a punch to satisfy his thirst, but finally, the older brother sighed and grabbed his mug and began to refill it. Neither spoke as he poured an amateurish pint with a sloppy head and slid it across the bar. "This is the last one, Vonn. After this, you're cut off."
"I never realized you had a sense of humor," Vonn said with a sneer. "Turns out you're fucking hysterical."
Gray only shook his head before walking away to the other end of the bar. Fine with Vonn—he wasn't looking for the judgmental bastard's company anyway. There were plenty of guys as drunk as him here tonight.
Okay, maybe not plenty, but some…and yet Vonn was the only one Gray was trying to put into a time-out. The fact that Vonn knew exactly why only pissed him off further.
If this was really going to be his last drink of the night, then he was going to need something a hell of a lot harder than beer. Vonn leaned over the bar—being one of the tallest alphas in the settlement came in handy sometimes—and groped around underneath, grabbing the first bottle he touched.
In his first stroke of luck in ages, Vonn came up with a nearly-full bottle of Wild Turkey. He picked up his beer and downed it in one long gulp, then twisted the top off the bourbon and poured half the bottle into the glass. He set the bottle down and took a healthy sip.
Ahhh….that was better.
If Gray didn't like it, he could go to hell. The alpha knew exactly why Vonn could only come to the roadhouse four nights out of every month these days. He should have been able to understand that on those nights, Vonn needed to pack as much into the night as possible. And since tonight wasn't one of the nights the working girls were…well, working, getting as drunk as possible was about the best he was going to do. And that was no small feat when you weighed nearly four hundred pounds of muscle.
"Don't think I didn't see that," Gray called down the bar like a mother hen, causing a few of Vonn's fellow patrons to give them both a curious glance.
"Don't think I give a shit," he shot back.
Screw it—half a bottle might not do the trick.
Vonn picked up his brimming glass in one hand and swiped the bottle of Wild Turkey in the other before heading straight for the door. He didn't need to waste a precious night out trading barbs with Gray when he could get just as drunk outside in peace.
Unfortunately, it was a balmy spring night, and the covered patio was full of revelers. It was unseasonably warm for May. The creeks were running high with snowmelt, the breeze was light, and everyone was in high spirits—especially once the sun had gone down. Laughter mixed with the clinking of glasses and the sound of dice being thrown. The mournful picking of a banjo drifted from the campground out back where the beta smugglers stayed while they were trading.
The betas were tolerated at the roadhouse only because they were respectful of alpha culture, keeping to themselves other than an occasional night in the bar, where they occupied a table in the back and exhibited better manners than a bunch of debutantes learning to curtsy. There was also the unfortunate fact that with the borders still locked down, black-market traders were the only source of supplies from the outside world and the only buyers for the alphas’ goods.
In no mood for company, Vonn still had to walk past the crowd to get to somewhere more private. At least everyone present, alpha and beta, was still sober enough to give Vonn room as he passed by along the weathered walkway. He took the path that led from the roadhouse to the shed where Trace stored empty kegs and bottles. There was a bench there that would do just fine while Vonn made his way to the bottom of the bottle.
He sipped like he was on the clock, steadily and with purpose, but no matter how much liquor he downed, it still wasn't enough to stamp out the memory that burned in his head day and night.
With a few inches left in the bottle, Vonn let out a hair-raising string of curses that scared off a few birds unlucky enough to have bedded down in the branches above him. He'd sworn he wasn't going to do this again, wasn't going to come all the way down here just to spend the night trying to escape things he couldn't change, mistakes that couldn't be undone.
Gray's advice echoed in his head, though his 'good exercise in self-control' wouldn't do a damn thing to drive out Vonn's demons. Still, the old son of a bitch had a point.
Plain common sense should have kept Vonn from doing what he'd done on a dozen other nights like these and expecting a different result. Alcohol rarely helped, and right now, it seemed to be making things worse. His liquor-soaked brain was no match for the memories
that began to flood his mind now that he was alone.
From the moment he'd laid eyes on that beta almost three months ago, Vonn had known there was something special about her. Scratch that—he'd sensed it from the moment he heard her footfalls in the loamy underbrush as she approached the edge of the woods where Vonn had been banging one of Miss Daisy's girls.
If he hadn't been balls-deep in the lovely Candy, Vonn might have stopped to wonder where the unusual, intoxicating note in her scent came from. As it was, he attributed it to sheer horniness. Whatever it was, having an audience while he was laying pipe with a cheerful working girl only heightened his pleasure. He drank in the scent of her arousal while he rode Candy harder, wild with lust, eliciting the kind of moans that couldn't be scripted even by a pro. As she got more and more turned on, the stranger’s desire was balanced by an equally strong vein of submission, and she began to take shape in his mind, this delectably shy beta girl who liked to watch.
She didn't know that he'd spotted her, of course. Otherwise, a girl like her, ashamed of what she couldn't deny, would have run away like a scared little rabbit. Vonn wasn't about to spook her, not when he could sense what the sight of him and Candy screwing was doing to her.
As Vonn gave her one hell of a show, taking Candy in one position after another and making her come like a Mack truck while also making sure his little voyeur got a good view of his huge cock plunging in and out, he realized that he wouldn't be content just to tease her like this. While his cock was happy enough in the talented, professional pussy of a Boundarylands prostitute, what it really wanted—needed—was hiding in the trees not ten feet away.
He should have known she was a dormant omega. How else to explain that extraordinary scent, the strange pull he'd felt? But by the time Vonn realized what his little voyeur really was, his closest alpha brother had already touched her, igniting her dormant omega nature and claiming her for his own.
Vonn was left destroyed, both unbearably empty and filled with a howling rage. As it happened, he was buried deep inside Miss Daisy herself when the change had happened, pounding her on a barstool while his brother Trace entertained the lady in the storeroom he used for an office. If he'd known she was a dormant omega…if he'd realized what Trace was about to do—well, that was a crap pile of useless bullshit shoulda, woulda, couldas. All that mattered was that a primal switch had been flipped inside Vonn that night.
Once he realized what was happening—and Vonn would never forget the electric jolt he felt as the new omega's nature took root—he'd jumped off Miss Daisy and tried to break into the storeroom, driven by pure instinct and need. It was a good thing that the door held because if Vonn could have pounded it down, he would have.
And blood would have been spilled. It was likely that only one of them, he or Trace, would have survived to claim the little omega with the shiny gold hair and the delicate features.
Vonn had been struggling to turn back that switch ever since that night, to no avail.
Since it happened, Vonn couldn't bear to be around Trace or his omega. The urge to take her was still in his blood—not her exactly, but the omega in her. He didn't actually know anything about the woman that couldn’t be learned from her scent.
'Submissive voyeur' was only part of her personality; contrary to the lies the beta government spread, the omegas that Vonn had met were as diverse and independent as any beta women. Trace's omega might be funny or serious; creative or analytical, cautious or impulsive. Hell, she and Vonn might not even like each other if they ever got to know each other.
But none of that mattered. Now that he'd breathed in that scent, tasted it on his tongue, felt that fire igniting in his veins, he hadn't found a second of satisfaction in anything. Work, sex, drink, Vonn had thrown himself into all of them, but none had helped.
And the feeling was so much worse around Trace. The rational part of Vonn wanted to be happy for his alpha brother, but his primitive alpha nature only craved what Trace had.
The only answer was to stay away. Which was a major pain in the ass since Trace was the roadhouse bartender. The only time he missed work was for the four days per month that his omega went into heat.
So that's when Vonn came to the bar.
Even an alpha craved the company of his brothers from time to time, and Vonn had to trade like everyone else. Most of his winter wheat crop stayed in the Boundarylands, traded with other alphas for moonshine and meat and soap and a dozen other things his brothers made. But Vonn also sold the syrup he made from the sap of Sierra Bigleaf maples, prized for its uniquely complex taste by beta foodies. The high price it fetched allowed Vonn to buy everything else that he needed from the smugglers.
He told himself that if it wasn't for all that, he would be tempted not to bother coming to the bar at all. His interaction with Gray tonight wasn't new; he'd had similar encounters with the other substitutes that took their turn behind the bar. Gray, Ryder, Knox—all of them suddenly seemed to think they knew what was good for him. Luckily, everyone else took their cues from the dark cloud above Vonn's head and gave him plenty of room.
But Vonn didn't want to admit to the real reason why he couldn't stay away, not even to himself. And so he tried to pretend to be indifferent to the beta smugglers milling—or staggering drunkenly, as the night wore on—around the roadhouse, which served as the only patch of neutral territory for a hundred miles. The smugglers had no other choice but to camp here, drink here, fuck here…and with any luck, one of these nights, Vonn might find someone like her again.
A dormant omega.
Vonn wouldn't miss the cues this time. The moment that the fine hairs along the back of his neck stood up in awareness, that his cock got hard from just a whiff of her scent, that he felt inexplicably alive, he wouldn't let anything get in his way.
But omegas were rare, and while there were more betas than ever passing through the Boundarylands, women only made up a small percentage of the smugglers and traders that made the dangerous journey. Even worse, the beta government had started testing their women for the dormant omega gene, and the odds of such a woman being willing to risk coming here was roughly zero.
But Vonn still held out hope that one day he'd find her, because if he didn't…
Vonn lifted the bottle to his lips and discovered it was empty. "Fuck," he mumbled, dropping it to the ground at his feet.
Didn't matter. If Vonn didn't find an omega of his own, he might as well go throw himself off the granite cliffs two miles up the creek that ran through his property. Smashing his body on the rocky creek bed almost sounded like a relief.
His nostrils twitched.
For a moment, Vonn wondered if he was so drunk he was having delusions. But then he snapped his head up as the faint trace of that elusive, rare scent entered his lungs. His cock stirred to life, instantly as hard as those granite cliffs, and gooseflesh sprung up along his arms.
Oh, God…that was it. What he'd been missing. What he'd been waiting for.
Vonn was on his feet so fast he wasn't aware he was moving. With predatory focus, he scanned the shed, the nearby forest, the porch, unable to find the source.
But he would. He strode toward the campground, chin lifted, testing the air. God help anyone oblivious enough to get in his way because this time, nothing was going to stop him.
The scent grew stronger as the campfire came into view, and soon Vonn detected the heartbeat of his soon-to-be omega, a woman who probably had no idea how much her life was about to change.
Which one was she?
Vonn scanned the small group of betas gathered around the fire pit. When he spotted her, he knew instantly that she was the one.
She was standing near the fire's edge, the glow of the flames creating a corona around her tall, slim, proud silhouette. She turned slightly, and he could make out her features: dark brown hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, high, sculpted cheekbones, intelligent eyes the color of gingerbread.
There she was…his destiny.
> Chapter Three
By night six of her mission, Stacy was starting to believe she had the Boundarylands all figured out. After all, it had been nearly a week since she had successfully crossed the border in the company of the black market trading group she’d joined, her cover story and price of admission paid for by Fulmer. After an easy two-day hike, the group arrived in neutral territory and set up camp behind the roadhouse and begun to trade.
No one in her group had questioned her assumed identity—a smuggler of medical supplies making her first trading trip to an alpha settlement. In fact, most had been generous with their advice and offers of help.
Still, Stacy was surprised to discover how much she actually liked many of the beta dealers. The trek to the alpha territory had passed with shared meals and pleasant conversations. But in the evening, when the others drank and traded stories, Stacy turned in early and pored over the thick dossier Fulmer had given her by the light of her headlamp.
It hadn't taken her long to absorb the information she'd been given to study, every page of it stamped CONFIDENTIAL in large red letters. The Division of Alpha Control had learned considerably more about alphas and the Boundarylands than Stacy would ever have suspected, but little of it was surprising.
Amid the information about alphas' psychological makeup (brutish and incapable of empathy and love) and sexual habits (the fact that there were beta prostitutes who willingly served them shocked Stacy almost as much as their reported ability to have intercourse literally for hours straight) were some details about the raid that had taken the lives of her three friends. Details that had never been released to the public.
Stacy was shocked to read that the woman they were trying to rescue that day—Mia Baird, the Senator's daughter—had developed Stockholm syndrome in captivity and turned against her father. Without her actions that day, the Senator and the agents protecting him would still be alive.
Vonn: The Boundarylands Omegaverse: M/F Alpha Omega Romance Page 2
