Army sergeant or no, she had to be terrified. Or else stupid, or lacking basic powers of reason, neither of which struck Vonn as remotely likely. Only twenty minutes ago, she'd been dancing around him like a goddamn ninja, but now she was as still and silent as if she'd been drugged. A beta might be forgiven for thinking she was in shock—but the whirl of thoughts and emotions in her head were proof she was anything but.
Vonn might not be able to keep up with her mind's furious pace, but he could tell there was order to her thoughts. Just as when she'd first faced him in the campground, she was both measured and calculating. There would be no reckless moves from her, no throwing open the door and pitching herself out of the moving truck. Hell, if she had decided to run, she would have done it back at the campground while gathering up her things.
Instead, someone with her patience and discipline would wait for the right moment, slipping out when he was sleeping, for instance. But Vonn was counting on her being too bright for that. She had to know she wouldn't get far.
Vonn knew he ought to keep his mouth shut, but after they'd gone a dozen more miles, he couldn't stand her silence anymore. "You still think you're going to get out of here, don't you?"
As soon as he spoke, he knew it was a mistake. She gave him nothing, pretending she didn't hear him. Which made him double down like some wet-behind-the-ears pup propositioning his first prostitute. "You'd be nuts to try it. You're miles from the border, surrounded by private alpha property."
Still nothing…other than a very slight twitch at the corner of her lips. One that suggested she knew she had the upper hand. Which pissed Vonn off.
"You know that if you make one misstep, any brother of mine will be well within his rights to choke the life right out of you. And after your little admission at the camp, don't think they wouldn't jump at the chance."
This time, she turned and drilled him with a look that contained no emotion at all, probably some intimidation tactic she'd learned in soldier school. But on the inside, her mind was firing off like firecrackers. Bing. Bang. Boom.
What he would give to know precisely what she was thinking.
Vonn had never been anyone's idea of subtle, as open a book as any alpha could be. He didn't see the sense in bottling things up. He liked to drink and fuck and win, and he didn't care who knew it.
Holding nothing back had served him pretty well, too, no matter what that self-righteous son-of-a-bitch Gray thought of him. When he lost—as he had to his friend Trace recently—at least it was never for lack of trying.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced Vonn became that the way to deal with this woman wasn't to meet her where she was but to knock her out of her comfort zone. And if he had to talk to himself all the way home, so be it.
"So yeah, you'd probably make their day if you took off running. But that's assuming you could manage to get away from me. Which, of course, you can't."
Next to him, she bristled almost imperceptibly. Bingo: he'd hit the target. Like any fighter worth her salt, pride was her weakness.
"I mean, it's ridiculous even thinking about it. You wouldn't make it ten yards if you took off running."
"I seemed to be holding my own just fine earlier," she blurted.
Vonn suppressed a grin at this small victory. "I guess you were. A little too well, actually. That's how I figured out what you were."
Indignance wafted from her, and Vonn knew he'd unsettled her, breaking through her careful reserve. She opened her mouth to ask the obvious question but quickly thought better of it and snapped it shut.
But having managed to get her to talk once, Vonn wasn't about to lose his grip on the upper hand. "Your stance was too practiced, your nerves too calm," he continued casually, as if they were discussing the merits of synthetic motor oil.
She pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes, her posture going stiff with the effort of not responding. At this rate, she'd probably bite off her own tongue. Vonn was just about to give up on her when she snapped, "For all you know, I trained at a gym. It's not rocket science."
"Yeah, the moves, maybe," Vonn conceded. "Practice anything long enough, and I expect you'd get decent at it. But that's not what we're talking about."
He waited, enjoying her consternation more than he should have before finally relenting. "Standing your ground as an alpha rushed you? Getting up again when you were obviously hurt? That sort of shit only comes with intense military training. And then there was…the look."
Vonn put a little emphasis on the last word for drama, and sure enough, she took the bait.
"What look?"
"You know, that thing you do with your eyes, like they've got lasers in them. It's intense as shit." Vonn knew he sounded like he admired her for it, and maybe he did, but she didn't need to know. "I've only ever seen it in the eyes of beta soldiers as they mindlessly sacrifice anything and everything to carry out their meaningless orders."
Bam. The woman's jaw tensed as she took in a harsh breath, fury sharpening her honied scent.
"You've fought beta soldiers?"
"More than I ever wanted to. I didn't go looking for trouble, in case you're wondering. They brought it right to our doorstep."
"What happened to them?"
What did she think? "When they started shooting at me, it seemed pretty clear that it was a me-or-them situation." He shrugged. "I'm still here."
"You killed them," she said after a pause in a cold, flat tone. A new note entered her tone, one he hadn't detected in a while and one he didn't welcome. There was a reason alphas rarely reeked of revenge—if betas stuck to the code they were so damn proud of, they wouldn't have any need for it either.
Alphas knew the rules and enforced them consistently—and as a result, rarely broke them. When they did, they knew what to expect. But for all their high and mighty proselytizing, the betas’ leaders seemed to be the ones who broke their own laws with the most abandon. They sent their soldiers in to do the dirty work in secret, and then wondered why alphas delivered such swift and brutal justice.
But Stacy—he was getting used to the name—didn't seem to have figured that out yet. Astonishingly, for such an obviously smart woman, she still seemed to be laboring under the illusion that the orders she followed without question were always motivated by honor.
Still, the idea of her plotting revenge was so absurd that Vonn couldn't help but be amused. "Come on, you're not really planning on killing me, are you?" he said as he made the sharp left turn onto his property. "You know you wouldn't stand a chance."
But the scent of her rage only grew stronger.
"Oh shit." He laughed. "You really are."
She twisted in her seat to glare at him. "You might be big, but that's nothing new to me. You're just a man, not some—some immortal god. I've made you bleed once, and I'll do it again."
"Maybe," he allowed. She might even be right, though he very much doubted he'd ever underestimate her again. "But you should know it's going to take a hell of a lot more some fancy footwork to keep me down for good."
That earned him a disdainful glance. "I've heard that more times than you can imagine."
Vonn believed her, and not just because of the spell her scent was casting over him. She'd lasted a hell of a longer in a Boundaryland fight than any other soldier to come before her.
But that didn't tell him why she'd been sent.
"So now that we have established that I should consider you a lethal threat, you have nothing to lose by telling me what you're doing here."
"I already told you," she gritted out. "I'm here to trade medical supplies."
Vonn's house came into view at the crest of the hill, a wood-sided L-shaped cabin with a stained oak door centered between two big square windows and a stone patio out front. He felt the soul-deep satisfaction that always filled him when arriving at the place he had built with his own two hands. "I thought we already established I can tell when you're lying."
"But I'm not lying. Technically
, that's what I've been doing here this whole time."
"I don't give a shit about the technicalities." The fact that betas always expected alphas to be fooled by lies of omission was, in Vonn's opinion, just one of many examples of their arrogance getting in the way of their reason. "I want to know why you're here."
"That's too bad," she said. He couldn't tell if she was impressed by his home, or thought it was a pile of shit, or had even noticed it. "I want to leave the Boundarylands as soon as possible, but wanting something doesn't mean you get to have it. It's one of the first things we betas learn in basic training. It's called discipline—you might want to look into it."
Damn it. Vonn was starting to prefer this woman stone silent.
"Tell me why you're here." This time it was a command, all sense of humor gone.
Given her omega nature, dormant or not, she should have reacted to the sound. But instead of the show of submission Vonn expected, she only glared at him.
"What will you do if I don't? Kill me, just like all the other soldiers? If you do, you won't get any answers."
Vonn slammed on the brakes, and she was thrown forward. The seat belt had likely left a hell of a bruise, but she said nothing as the truck's wheels skidded on the wet ground in front of his cabin before coming to a stop mere inches from one of the stone posts anchoring the patio.
He hadn't meant to do that, and the reaction that zapped through him was overwhelming. She could have been hurt. Killed, even, if he'd hit the stone hard enough to crumple the front end.
The near miss left him breathless with rage—at himself. If he killed his own omega, even by accident—
Vonn threw open the door of the truck hard enough to test the hinges. He reached across the bench seat and grabbed her arm too hard, trying to mask the fact that his hand was shaking. He pulled her across the seat and onto the ground, releasing her only after she'd found her footing in the mud.
She was tall for a beta, but he was tall for an alpha, so he figured they canceled each other out. She scowled at him with her chin held high as if he hadn't nearly crashed, as if he hadn't just manhandled her, as if she planned to make good on her threat and kill him where he stood.
"You're going to tell me why you've been sent to the Boundarylands," he roared, too frustrated and shaken to play games any longer. "You're going to give me everything, now."
"Stacy Clarke, Sergeant, Fort Blanchard." She punctuated each syllable like a curse.
"I already know your fucking name." Vonn grabbed her by the shoulders. "What I want is the damn truth."
She sighed, some of the rigidity going out of her stance. "Stacy Clarke, Sergeant, Fort Blanchard."
"Stop saying that." Vonn growled in frustration, and when she stayed silent, he let out a roar.
It wasn't something he'd planned to do, any more than he'd planned to come home with an omega today. Vonn had always been one to act first and think later. For the most part, it worked out.
And this time was no exception, at least as far as getting her attention. She jumped, then almost seemed to cower before forcing herself to stand once again at her full height—but some of the light had left her eyes as her gaze fell to the ground.
"Why do you keep repeating that?" Vonn asked quietly, some part of him wanting to mollify her.
But she sensed his fleeting weakness and seized on it, not only coming right back to attention but moving fractionally closer, almost daring him to react. "It's my name, rank, and assigned station. That's the only information a prisoner of war has to share with their captor."
Vonn couldn't take any more of this back and forth, his temper at a breaking point. He grabbed her arm again and pulled her toward his front door.
"You think you're a prisoner? Then I guess it's time to start treating you like one."
Chapter Seven
Stacy had to jog to keep up as Vonn dragged her by the arm across the patio to the front door. It wasn't locked, which momentarily confused Stacy. The dossier had emphasized over and over that she must never underestimate alphas' territoriality, which led her to assume they'd take every opportunity to protect what they owned.
Then she remembered a couple other relevant facts: no alpha could be stopped by a lock, no matter how strong, and they simply killed anyone stupid enough to come onto their property without an invitation. Which made the idea of a deadbolt kind of irrelevant.
Try harder, Clarke. The voice of her long-ago training officer, a hardass West Virginian named Hugo Aston—known among the scrubs as Sgt. Huge Asshole—came back as it always did when Stacy had underperformed. She had to think faster, be sharper if she was going to survive this.
Little light reached inside the cabin despite the large square windows, owing to the moonless sky and the dense forest that came almost to the edge of the place on three sides. That didn't stop Stacy from taking a thorough inventory. Nearly every set of surroundings offered ample clues if you knew how to suss them out.
Stacy counted her steps from the door until Vonn abruptly stopped. Nine—twice as many as he had taken—which she calculated to be about twenty feet, or nearly the width of the place from what she'd seen outside.
She'd taken note of what light there was glinting dully off surfaces around the room, indicating metal. Metal could be many things—cabinet hardware, pots and pans, furniture legs—but it could also sometimes be a potential weapon. A knife, a pair of scissors, a fireplace poker—Stacy wasn't in a position to be picky.
By now, Stacy's eyes had adjusted sufficiently that she could make out the dim outlines of walls and furniture. She made mental notes of the location of the flashes—one on the wall at 3 o'clock from the entrance, another at nine o'clock and four paces. The floorboards made no sound as she and Vonn trod on them, which suggested that they were solidly joined on a reinforced subfloor, and prying them loose was out of the question. Assuming the construction of the walls was of the same high standard, if she was going to escape, it would have to be through a door or window.
Not a bad amount of intel, considering she'd only been in the place for a matter of seconds. Stacy felt a much-needed boost of her confidence—until, in the next moment, Vonn seized her hand and yanked her into another room, this one even darker than the last. If this room had a window, it was completely blocked, and when Vonn shut the door behind him, she couldn't even make out his shadow.
Stacy couldn't help but be impressed. When she'd read in the dossier that alphas built nearly everything they owned, including their own houses, she'd expected shanties and huts. But this place was as sturdily constructed as the army's old telecom bunkers in the Mojave desert.
But that thought fled as Stacy realized she'd lost awareness of the alpha's position, something that had never happened during any exercise. The first frisson of real fear raised the hair on the back of her neck. She forced herself to slow her breathing to better listen for any sound that might give him away—an exhalation, a footstep, an accidental brush against an object.
But there was nothing.
Either Vonn had the capacity to remain inhumanly still, or he had been training in stealth with even more dedication than her. The latter seemed out of the question, so…it had to be his alpha nature. Given that alphas relied on hunting for nearly all their food, it made sense that they would have evolved such skills.
But that didn't mean that Stacy had to wait like a frightened rabbit. Lowering her body into a defensive crouch, she slowly backed up until her ass made contact with a wall. Nothing about this situation favored her odds, but at least from this position she wouldn't have to defend her rear.
She waited, barely breathing, until her tensed thighs and calves began to ache—long enough for her to question whether Vonn was even present in the room. Had she somehow missed him slipping out when he closed the door? She was just about to relax her guard when his deep voice shattered the silence.
"Go to the end of the bed."
Stacy's body surged back to high alert, ready to defend her head and
neck from an attack. But his words suggested a different kind of assault, one Stacy had deliberately avoided thinking about.
Alphas had sex with their omegas. This alpha was convinced she was his omega. He very well might be about to have sex with her.
Several times in her military career, Stacy had come close to being assaulted by male officers. It happened so often that most of her friends had been victims.
But Stacy had always managed to defend herself. She had never been sexually brutalized, and there was at least one captain whose balls probably had required medical attention when after she defended herself.
But there was no way she could defend herself against an alpha. Not indefinitely.
"Don't make me tell you again."
The switch inside Stacy, hardwired through years of practice, flipped again. Her terror took a backseat to her training. Vonn had spoken directly to where she was standing, which suggested that his superior senses included some pretty damn impressive night vision. That was a distinct advantage in low light conditions, one he apparently had forgotten she didn't have.
"I don't know where the bed is," she said flatly. "I can't see in the dark."
She heard him move to the other end of the room and knew that she was only able to because he wasn't bothering to mask it. A wheel struck on flint, and a tiny flame was followed by an orange flare as he lit the wick of an oil lamp. In an instant, the room was bathed in a soft glow.
The space was bigger than she'd imagined, with a huge bed in the center and little else. A door, presumably to a closet, was cracked a few inches, but Stacy couldn't see inside. The bed was neatly made. Dark curtains were pulled tight across the window. A dresser held a stoneware pitcher and, at complete odds with her expectations, a thick hardback book with a feather protruding from its pages.
The bed had been right beside her all along. She'd backed up parallel to it and reached the corner across from Vonn, but any sense of security at the massive bed between them was a false one. He could scramble across it in two seconds. Hell, for all Stacy knew, he could jump across it.
Vonn: The Boundarylands Omegaverse: M/F Alpha Omega Romance Page 5
