by L. V. Lane
“It means Logan is going to be having words with his Omega,” I said. They both blanched. We all knew I didn't mean ‘words’ in the literal sense, although there might be a few between bouts of him heating up her backside. Or worse—I thought this situation might constitute worse. “But first we need to get the fuck off this boat.”
They were both good Betas, loyal, competent soldiers, and quick to follow commands. Sean was good enough that he tested as a Controller. Betas were often used for first-time Omega deployments, mostly because they weren’t complete animals. He’d been part of my team for six years, Jordan for three, and they both deserved better than this bullshit operation.
Emerging back onto the deck, we scoped the area. Questions were beating at me from all sides, along with self-recrimination. I had known something was off, but I’d put it down to her being a Singular. I should have trusted my gut instinct.
And Logan? I couldn’t go there because I had to shoulder some of that blame, too. I’d seen them together, witnessed all the fucking warning signs and I’d ignored them.
This wasn’t going to end well for any of us, and that put me in a temper.
I pushed it all down. There were enemy soldiers in the distance, searching through the boats. If we didn’t move, we were going to be cut off…And I needed to beat the ever-loving shit out of Logan before I died. Fucking sap!
“Closing in fifty, north-east,” Sean said. “Humans and a dog-bot.”
I swung my head that direction and nodded once. I gave the signal.
Sean dropped into the water to circle around the back of the patrol. We gave him time to get into position, then Jordan and I approached from the left and front. Slipping between the torn-up boats that littered the marina walk-ways, we got within twenty paces of them before they noticed. The bot went down first. Jordan was an impressive marksman, and I was grateful for it when dog-bot crumpled.
Collective enemy heads swung toward Jordon for that split second. That was all the opening we needed and we took the soldiers down in quick succession. They’d got sloppy, probably hadn’t encountered more than a terrified former citizen or the occasional thug for days.
“Let’s go.”
We didn’t waste any time getting away from the marina and who or whatever would be coming to check on the downed patrol. Calling through to the other team, I told them to meet us where Logan and Dano were waiting with the Omega.
I told them nothing else.
The little Omega’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw me stalking toward them. Logan was hanging onto her like she was about to run. My eyes narrowed. No, she’d already ran or tried to.
I was guessing she was sensing my mood since her whole countenance shifted. She quit trying to escape Logan’s hold and plastered herself to him like she was trying to crawl under his skin.
I didn’t hurt helpless women, Omegas or otherwise, but murderous thoughts were coursing through my veins. She’d put the whole team in danger. And Logan, I loved that fucking idiot like a brother, she’d just thrown him under a shuttle.
Logan’s dead stare locked onto me. I watched him piece together my expression with the lack of diplomat and whatever trouble his little Omega had just got up to. Logan had his body between her and me and was reaching for his gun a heartbeat later. What the fuck?
“Stand down!” That got me a split second to explain myself before he turned feral. “The diplomat wasn’t there. She set us up. She tried to run, didn’t she?” They were halfway to fucking bonded. I could see it written all over him. Fucking idiot! If I even looked at her the wrong way he was going to turn into a raging beast. So I didn’t look at her, or acknowledge her, and kept all my focus on him. This clusterfuck was why they didn’t let Controllers stay with the same Omega more than was necessary to get the job done.
He put his gun back in its holster, and the whole team took a collective breath.
Logan’s eyes flashed murder at his Omega. She’d betrayed us all, but whatever we were suffering would be nothing compared to what her fuckery was doing to him. I checked the time. “You’ve got one hour,” I said, snapping his focus back to me. “To find out where the diplomat really is. After that, I’m calling it, and we’re pulling out. You want to run with her, that’s your call. I won’t try and stop you.” I’d be stupid to try and stop him. Bonding of any kind between Alpha and Omegas was discouraged, but they were definitely heading that way. Getting between an Alpha and his bonded would be like trying to rip a mountain apart. He’d kill the whole fucking team or try to. Why the fuck hadn’t I seen this coming? “I’m not letting the team die for her. You get the information, or you run.”
Her face was deathly white, and she was shaking like a leaf—good! She should be scared shitless. I’d give him an hour. I hoped it wasn’t going to take that long.
And if the diplomat was dead? No, I wasn’t going there. That was a bad outcome all around.
Logan clamped a hand over her mouth when she started her bullshit protests and dragged her through a door that adjoined the lobby. The door slammed with a thud.
Feeling the weight of Dano’s stare, I turned back to the team. The Betas were standing rigid. They’d do what I told them to, as painful as that might be. We were a tight team, and that loyalty ran deep, to Logan, to each other and to me. If they’re tormented faces were any indication they were all halfway in lust-love with the traitorous little Omega.
I swiped a hand down my face. I didn’t need to tell the team that this stopped here. If anything needed to be reported, I would do it, but only if Logan didn’t do his job.
He’d better do his fucking job.
“Well, this is fucked up,” Dano muttered.
I rolled my eyes at him. Asshole!
“What if she won’t tell him?” Jordan asked.
If she didn’t tell him, then she wasn’t controlled.
I found myself relaxing—a little—because this was still a clusterfuck. Dano gave me a look that said my manic grin wasn’t delivering any comfort.
My grin got wider. My gut instinct was telling me that Logan had the Omega under control. “She’ll tell him,” I said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Logan
SOMEONE HAD LIT an incendiary under my skin. I was a crazy level of angry and I could barely see straight. I’d nearly shot Hudson for fuck sake. One minute Eloise had been fighting to get out of my hold—after I’d caught her trying to run—the next she’d been crawling all over me. I’m guessing her shielding wasn’t up, and she’d caught on to Hudson’s mood.
I still wanted to end the fucker for coming at her like that. Only one person got to scare her, and that person was me.
I had her slammed up against the wall and had my hand around her throat while the door was still rattling shut. It was some kind of office, a records console lay smashed in one corner, and data chips littered the floor, but I barely spared them a glance. Her whole body was trembling uncontrollably. She was right to be scared—I was impressed I was holding myself in check. “You don’t need me to spell out how much trouble you’re in. You need to talk to me, baby. And it better be damn good.”
Baby? And what the fuck was wrong with my voice sounding…gentle? Had I just lost my balls? I should be beating her fucking ass until she spilled all the information out. We didn’t have time for gentle. If we couldn’t recover from this, our superiors would be sending a team to hunt us down. This was about keeping her safe. Safe? Who was I fooling? If this went south, I’d be fighting to keep her alive. Not from Hudson. He’d have my back, but there was only so much he could do. We’d been here for two days, had updated command to say we were closing in on the target. They were expecting the diplomat or his body.
“What did Hudson mean by run?” she asked.
Her eyes were wide and so pale there was barely any color left. Fear of me, the situation, or both. “What the fuck are you doing here? Were you playing me the whole time?”
I felt like I’d just swallowed ac
id. I’d known her fifteen days, and I was ready to throw my life on the line to protect her. I thought I might strangle her if she told me this was all a fucking game.
She shook her head, and fat tears rolled down her cheeks. I’d rather have needles stuck under my fingernails than see this much terror on her face, but I needed her to give me the answers or we were both going to die. She tried to jerk away. I slammed her back against the wall and roared, “Start. Fucking. Talking.”
“I can’t let this keep happening!”
“What? Let what keep happening?” I tightened my fingers a fraction and made sure my whole body was pressed up against her. Made sure she could feel what I was and what I was capable of. “I’m so fucking mad. If I did half the things I want to do to you, you wouldn’t be able to sit for a month. But when I said I would protect you, I meant it. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll rip the fucking planet apart to do it if I have to. But you have to trust me, and you have to tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“The information the diplomat has. The viral program—the means to destroy the Copper virus or the means to lock it in.” Her eyes searched mine, tears streaming. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to be me. To be an Omega. To have no rights? To have all these urges?” She lowered her lashes. “We’d all be better off without it. Better off if that virus had never been created. It ruined us. It ruined everything!”
“You were going to let the diplomat and his family die?” My hand was shaking, but I made myself squeeze a little tighter in warning. Letting people die? That wasn’t something an Omega could do. I shook her. “Leave them to the mercy of our enemy, just so you could get the virus shut down because you felt hard done by?”
Her outraged glare answered that. “No! I thought I wanted—I don’t know what I wanted. Yes, I thought about lying, about saying they were dead. For five minutes! Then I was sick to the core when I realized what I was thinking. I didn’t come all this way just to let them die! I don’t want anyone to die, ever. I wanted to destroy the research. We’ll be safer if it’s gone. I can’t expect you to understand this urge…I can’t let anyone else die for this information, and as long as the knowledge exists, people will die to get to it.”
I let go of her throat and took a step back. She slid down the wall ass first, her knees buckling. “That’s what this is about? Saving people; saving worlds?” Anger was still riding me, but it had lost the edge. “How were you going to destroy it?” That must have been where she was trying to go. “You wouldn’t have lasted a minute out in the streets! Are you insane?” The thought of her out there, alone on streets crawling with Uncorrupted scum, brought such a violent thud to my temple that I thought I was going to pop a blood vessel. Now I wanted to beat her ass again for a completely different reason. “This right here.” I waved a finger at her. “This is why Omegas have Controllers.”
I can’t believe I had fucked up this badly. I had known something was wrong. Right at the very start when I’d asked her if she’d lied on her report. I knew it was a fucking trigger. It had been niggling at me the whole time. I should have pressed harder, should have been all over it. Instead, I’d been more focused on calming her enough so I could drive my cock in deep and dump my cum in her belly.
I should have just done what I wanted to do right back then at the start, put my mark on her and let nature run its course. It wouldn’t take much, she was a fucking pain junkie. Just a little more, just a little nudge would tip her over that end.
I took a deep breath, rubbed the back of my neck, and tried to calm the fuck down.
Why had she been told the details of the research? She had never mentioned it once. It smelt a lot like a setup. No one would trust an Omega with that. Might as well have put a fire extinguisher in her hand and told her to watch someone burn.
“The Copper virus is already locked in for those who show. They only give the virus out where both parents haven’t shown. Everyone else receives placebos. As for destroying the virus—once it’s hosted; it’s not a virus anymore, so there’s nothing to destroy. The research is useful to our enemies, but not for the reasons you might think. We’re here because the governing council doesn’t want the public to know the virus has been locked in.” Public data had been manipulated. The governing council was entirely Alpha, and they controlled their power tightly. “You sent Hudson chasing after nothing. Every second here is a second in which one of the team, or you, could be killed.”
“I—I didn’t know!” Her tear stained face looked up at me. “He’s in here. The diplomat is in this building. I didn’t even know how I was going to get the research from him. Some of the details were—hazy. I just imagined destroying it and then handing myself over. To—to go to prison.”
Talk of prison brought a second rush of adrenaline. Prison was pretty compared to what they would have done to someone fucking with an operation of this magnitude. I took a deep breath, then tapped the communicator in my ear while she sobbed her heart out. “They’re in this building,” I said.
Hudson confirmed. I heard his orders being issued on the open channel before he switched to private and said to me, “Do we need a chat about this?”
“No…it’s all good.” I thought about her having access to those sensitive operational details. Something was off, but I’d talk to Hudson about that later, once I’d had time to work through it in my head. “Just a misunderstanding…Can you give me ten here?”
I heard Hudson’s laughter before he said, “Sure.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “And thanks sir, I—owe you.”
“You sure fucking do!”
Switching the communicator off, I crouched in front of her. She’d come so close to doing something stupid, and I’d been ready to jump in that hole after her. Once she figured out the lengths I’d go to keep her safe, I’d be in a world of trouble. Better not let her get any wrong ideas about how things were going to be going forward.
I rested a hand over the top of her head and stroked my fingers through her knotty hair. “Give me your eyes, Eloise.” Loud sniffing followed, and I gave her a few seconds to get herself straight.
She lifted her damp lashes. “What’s going to happen now? Has Hudson—reported me?”
“You didn’t do anything. I stopped you,” She started to talk, but I tightened my fingers on her hair in warning. “I’m your Controller, baby. All the responsibility is with me, not you. Whatever might have happened is between my superior officer and me, and that would be Hudson. So you’re going to forget it for now. Although you can be sure when we get somewhere less—” I looked over the shattered former office. “dangerous, we’ll be having a long talk about it, in between me turning your ass red.” I bit back a smile when her little body stiffened. She glanced about like she was getting ready to do something foolish like try and run again, so I tugged on her hair to get her attention.
“Your behavior has been exceptionally poor.” I couldn’t imagine how she had endured the weight of her scheme for so long. I might even have admired her bravery, misplaced though it was. “You need a punishment now, or you’ll never settle,” I said, enjoying the way her eyes still lit up with both arousal and fear. “And I’m still mad as fucking hell at you, so I expect it’s going to hurt.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Copper virus was developed in a lab. Hailed as the next stage of human evolution, as unnatural as that evolution was. They thought it would bring us enlightenment. They released it to the mass population far too soon, in a politically motivated, glory-seeking move.
It took us years to restore order, and it changed, not just individuals, but the entire political structure and power base.
Doctor Lillian Brach
Eloise
THE DIPLOMAT DIDN’T have the research information.
In fact, he had nothing other than a firm, unwavering belief that his life was worth more than the entire life on the planet.
Where the actual research information was, was anyone’s guess.
We were huddled next to a low wall, waiting for the movement at the far end of the street to taper off. The whole area was crawling with enemy patrols. We needed to move away from the marina and find somewhere quieter to bring in the remote-controlled shuttle.
I took a deep breath. I had been carrying the weight of my half-formed plans around for a long time, and as disastrous as today had been, I was glad it was over and that I wasn’t imminently about to be hauled off to prison.
I shifted my crouch and winced when the movement caught a tender spot on my ass. I didn’t know how he managed to generate so much pain so quickly using nothing but his hand.
I caught him smirking when he noticed my discomfort—it was not a skill to be proud of.
Although he had been right, and I did feel better afterward, and my terrible guilt was assuaged by each punishing blow. I had broken the fragile bond that had been growing between us. I hadn’t meant to put lives in danger, but I’d sent Hudson on a merry chase after nothing. On top of this, the diplomat didn’t have the data stack containing the research, and even if he did, it wouldn’t have achieved the results I’d imagined. I had broken things, and in the same stroke, I had driven the broken pieces tightly back together.
“I can feel—someone close by,” I said. I had become attuned to our group and their individual signatures, and the sudden intrusion was sharp.
“Another patrol?” Logan asked.
I shook my head. “No, it’s not a threat.” I peered over the low wall before he could stop me.
“Which part of stay down do you not understand?” Logan growled and yanked me back before I could catch more than a glimpse. The movement brought my backside into contact with his leg, and it was all I could do to stifle my yelp.
