by Jade Alters
I took my ID and my purse, but left my clothes behind. They’d smell too much like an omega.
I went out the back door. I slipped into my car. As I left the parking lot, I spotted Owen walking inside the building.
I drove.
Owen
The chief’s mouth pulled tight. “She’s gone.”
“What do you mean, she’s gone? She left Bull’s trial to what? Run away?” I knew from personal experience what it was like for an omega to run away and never be heard from again.
How could he have lost a fully grown omega? I took a step closer to the chief. “Didn’t you have anyone watching her?”
He held up his hand. “You need to settle down. She was always free to go.” he said. “I had my men watching the perimeter. No one could have gotten inside that wasn’t authorized.”
I took a step back. I couldn’t let my personal feelings interfere with the job. “I know you don’t like hearing this, but you could have someone on the inside, spilling secrets for cash. Or because they’re threatened.” The Chief had never liked any implication that his men were less than perfect, human or shifter. Today, he needed a healthy dose of realism.
He didn’t answer me. He turned his back to me and strode through the hallway, to the women’s locker room. “Look,” he said. He pointed at a pile of women’s clothes. I picked them up. It was part of a woman's black suit, with a white blouse, black pants, and black heels, appropriate for court.
The smell of honey mixed with spruce was familiar, stirring long-ago memories. I shoved the thought away. The less I lived in the past, the better. I yanked a shower curtain aside. I touched the still-dripping shower faucet. “The shower stall is still humid. She was just in here.” I’d have to hope that she’d gotten spooked and taken off. If Bull’s men had an omega…
“You’ll find her,” the chief said.
Damn right I would. We’d been after Bull and his gang for years. I wasn’t going to let him hurt anyone else. I picked up her clothes and inhaled, grateful the chief was a shifter and would understand why I was sniffing a crumpled suit. “Got any pictures?” I asked. The scent of the clothes was fucking with my head. I’d only ever smelled that particular blend of honey and spruce on one shifter, and I hadn’t laid eyes on her in ten years.
In the chief’s office, he pulled out a file. “Yeah, we have plenty of pictures. She’s got a headshot on the district attorney’s website.” He dropped a file in front of me. “This has her address, phone number, all of that. Her boss is in court with Bull right now, but he’ll be a good resource when they’re done.”
I opened picked up the papers and froze.
The woman staring up at me from the professional website photo was Eve Johnson.
Eve, who had been the love of my life, my friend, and my future mate.
I took a step back. I gripped the arm of the chair. She was not only alive, she was thriving. She was second in line to the district attorney, and she was working a high-profile case. All this time, she’d been in Denver, just hours from me.
“You okay?” The chief frowned at me.
“Fine.” I swallowed hard. If I let him know she’d been my promised mate, they’d pull me off the case. “She left in her own car, right? I’m going to have the state police run a search for her tags. I’ll be in touch.”
I went straight to the police station. I’d served with one of the guys overseas.He’d let me use his patrol car, no questions asked. I put in a call to the state police, and within ten minutes I had a location on Eve. I hit the road immediately. She was headed west on I-70.
Any first-year yahoo right out of training could track a license plate. This wasn’t the kind of work I’d usually be doing, but I wouldn’t stop, not even if they did take me off the case. I had to deliberately loosen my grip on the steering wheel. Thanks to the extra strength from being a shifter, if I held on any harder, I’d rip the wheel right out of the patrol car.
I wouldn’t trust anyone else with Eve, even though I knew I’d be dealing with the fallout for a long time. I had spent years getting her out of my head. And with one glossy photo, all the emotions I’d worked hard to put aside came rushing back. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and I found myself missing her presence in my life again, just as I had ten years ago.
I followed her for well over an hour before her destination became clear. She was heading toward Avon. Toward home.
It wasn’t her home anymore. It hadn’t been for well over a decade.
Finally. Right in front of me, I spotted her car. I checked the license number. Yep. That was Eve, directly in front of me on the freeway.
I hit the button to turn on the patrol car lights. It was time to catch up with Eve and have a little chat with her.
Eve
I was going well over the speed limit, so the flashing blue lights weren’t a surprise. I’d just accept the ticket and move on. I could hardly explain to a human police officer why I was so desperate to get out of Denver.
I spotted a side road and put my signal on, turning off the freeway onto a small two-lane road.
I parked on the side of the road near some trees, well off the pavement. I fiddled with the middle button of my shirt, where it pulled tight across my chest. This shirt was clearly made for a man, and the buttons were strained to the max. The last thing I needed was some young officer thinking I was trying to seduce him by showing my breasts.
Not that it hadn’t worked for my friend Melanie.
I stared straight ahead, both hands on the wheel until the officer reached my car. In the unlikely event that this officer was a shifter, he wouldn't be able to smell even an omega over all the pungent body spray I’d doused myself with.
I turned my head as the officer approached.
No. This wasn’t possible.
I sucked in air. My heart hammered. This was no police officer. Owen stood at my window. He’d been sent to find me, and he’d used a patrol car as part of his scheme.
I could press the pedal down, and go. I could try and outrun Owen. However, I wouldn’t get far. He’d call in other shifters as back up. At least if it were just the two of us, I might convince him to let me go.
Owen had been less of a neanderthal than the others. He could be reasoned with.
Unless he was here on orders. Owen didn’t break rules. He followed orders, because that was the way things went. He thought the clan was best, for anyone and everyone.
I rolled down my window. “I will not go back to the clan. I’d rather die fighting you,” I said. He was even more gorgeous than he’d been ten years ago. He’d lost the look of youth, and looked like a fully-grown shifter male.
“You haven’t lost your flair for the dramatic,” he said.
“Who’s the one that needed a police car to chase me down?” I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Guess you needed the humans to help after all, huh?”
“I have no issues with humans. I protect and serve them just as I do shifters.”
“Right.” This wasn’t going anywhere. Driving away it was. I pressed the gas. The car lurched forward, tires spinning in the loose gravel on the side of the road. The car bumped as I hit a few scrubby bushes.
Owen roared, and raced after me. The side of the car thunked, and there he was, grabbing onto the car with both hands.
I took my foot off the gas. “What are you, a dog? You’re going to get killed chasing a car.” Heart pounding, I shoved the car into park. I was terrified, and pissed off, but I didn’t want Owen to die.
I scrambled into the passenger seat and crawled out the door. I ran over scrubby brush and sandy dirt. There wasn’t a lot of cover out there. I twisted my head -- he was close now.
I should’ve run more. When Melanie begged me to run that half-marathon, I should have done it, instead of laughing at her. My human body was not happy.
My body longed to shift. In my bear form, running came easily. It had been ten years since I’d shifted. I missed it. So much.
Hi
s hand closed around my arm.
I whirled around. “Fuck you.” I was pissed off that he wasn’t even panting.
“I am trying to help you,” he said.
Sure. Not freaking likely. “No bear has ever done one thing that would help me. Let go of me.”
He didn’t let go. Instead, he took both of my wrists and held on. “I am not here on clan business. I’m here to save your life.”
I jerked my arms, but I couldn’t get away. “I’m doing just fine on my own.”
His jaw tightened. “Yeah. You were doing so fine that you were standing three feet away from Bull this morning while he scented you. Just fine.”
“That was an oversight. I underestimated him. What’s your excuse?”
“I don’t have one. All of us have underestimated him. I won’t make that mistake again. I’m not letting you go. You’ll die out here.”
“I can live with that.”
“Well I can’t.”
I didn’t want to die, far from it, but I refused to live a half life, confined and controlled. “I don’t trust you.” I also didn’t want his hands on me. Later, I was going to make him pay for this. The longer he held on, the more confused my body was getting. Warmth crawled up my arms, and into my chest. My stomach fluttered. My mind objected, but my body remember Owen’s touch as welcome, and not a threat.
“I give you my word. Whatever you’re worried about, I won’t do it.”
I nodded my head toward my wrists, still held in his grip. “That means nothing to me,” I spat at him.
His word had meant everything to me, at one time. Until I learned that he wanted what was best for the clan, and not for me.
Owen
Stung, I let go of her wrists. My word meant nothing to her? My word, and my vows to protect, was what I valued the most. “You don’t mean that.”
She crossed her arms and fixed me with a withering glare. I was glad I wasn’t being cross-examined by her. “Now who’s dramatic?” she asked with a lilt to her voice.
“This isn’t like you. Please be reasonable.” I couldn’t let her get away. Bull’s men would end up killing her when she didn’t act like a perfect omega.
“This is very much like me. The girl you knew wasn’t really me; it was a sad version of who I could have been. I learned to be human. I learned to survive. And I learned to have a life of my own. One that I’m in charge of.”
She should be terrified of Bull, but it’s me she’s scared of. I had loved her. I had thought we’d spend our lives together. Even now, I couldn’t get enough of staring at her creamy skin and her full pink lips. “Why do you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you. This has very little to do with you,” she said.
It was hard to keep looking directly at her face. She was even prettier than she’d been at eighteen, and I wanted her. My stomach churned. I wanted her to want me back, which meant I was setting myself up for another harsh rejection. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Our clan. Our kind. They want me to be locked away, good for one thing only,” she said. Her green eyes shone in the light. “They wanted me owned, like a possession,” she continued. Her voice shook as she spoke.
I hated seeing her in pain, but I didn’t appreciate that she thought I wanted her treated so badly. “You were going to marry me. I didn’t treat you like that.”
“Why are you so dense?” Her voice rose. “You were part of the system. I tried to talk to you about it. I tried to make you understand.”
Why had she rewritten our past to make me a villain? “You never said a word.”
“I asked you to leave with me. I told you I’d found us a place in Canada, where we could go and be free.” She looked away. “You laughed. You said no.”
She was holding one conversation against me. At eighteen, I hadn’t understood what she meant. Had I understood, would I have acted? Would I have left with her? I wasn’t sure. “I didn’t think you were serious.”
“No one ever thinks an omega is serious.”
My bear grumbled. I stared at her. I’d tried to give her everything an omega could want. I’d have done anything for her, and she’d thrown it away. It didn’t matter. Those days were long gone. “We need to get moving. We’re going to get in the patrol car, drive to a motel, and check in.” I held out my hand. “Give me your cell phone.”
“It’s in my car.”
“Good. We’ll leave it there. If one of his men find your abandoned car, and phone, maybe we’ll hold them off for a little bit.”
Eve
The first motel we found was what you’d expect along a deserted highway in rural Colorado. Because things were going so well for me, the lady announced they only had one room, with one bed. Then she winked at us.
“Disgusting,” I muttered. “Now we know why there aren’t any rooms.”
Sure enough. There was one bed. Lumpy, with a dingy orange bedspread. “We’re lucky shifters don’t get hepatitis. Or worse,” I said.
Owen kicked the bed frame. “We aren’t immune to bed bugs”
I shuddered.
“I’ll take the floor,” he said.
“No. It’s fine. We both need to be rested.” I raised my eyebrows. “I’ll try not to paw at you.” As angry as I was, it wasn’t smart for me to keep picking at Owen. It was best if I acted as though we had no history.
Owen groaned. “Your jokes are still bad.” He said something under his breath. It sounded like, “there was a time you wanted to paw at me.”
I wasn’t going to touch that one. I had loved Owen. I had found him gorgeous, sexy, and smart. I’d dated a few humans here and there, but none did anything for me. After being engaged to a shifter bear, whether it was my choice or not, human males just didn’t measure up.
I snuck a look at Owen. As many males did, he had improved with age. Without the veil of anger, I could see him clearly now.
However, this was no time to get lost in ruminations. I sniffed my shirt. “Ugh. I smell like a frat boy who overdosed on body wash. I’m going to shower.”
“Thank you. I was contemplating finding a bag to put over my head.”
“I didn’t exactly have a lot of options. It was that or spray on some fire extinguisher foam.” I wandered into the cube-sized bathroom and shoved the shower curtain aside. “I’m going to have to use something else.”
“Now that Bull knows you’re a shifter, you could just let it go.”
“Right. And invite every shifter within a fifty mile radius here. Not to mention the clan coming after me.”
“I told you, I won’t let that happen.”
“How exactly would you prevent it?”
“I’m the Alpha now.”
“You can’t tell me the elders don’t still hold a lot of power,” I said. They’d never let go of that much control.
“They think they do. But they’ll listen to me.”
They might do as Owen commanded. But that didn’t mean the system was any different, not in ways that mattered to an omega. “You have no idea what it’s like.”
“So tell me.”
“I was born an omega,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. If I could present evidence to a jury, then I could keep from screaming at Owen. “I had no control over that. I wanted choices. I had none.”
He frowned at me. “I would have let you do whatever you wanted.”
I dropped into the ratty arm chair shoved in the corner. It was probably covered in lice, but I was too tired to care. “Do you even hear yourself? You’d let me? You’re part of the problem.”
“And humans are so much better?”
“Yes. They aren’t perfect. And they have their own screwed up history. But now, things are a whole hell of a lot fairer for women than they are for shifter omegas.”
He said nothing.
I got up and went to the shower. As I suspected, a fine layer of black mold covered every surface. It was preferable to looking at Owen’s bewildered face. It was hard to believe, but h
e really didn’t get it. I tried not to breathe in. I might have shifter immunity, but even a bear didn’t want to inhale germs like these.
All these years, and he hadn't truly understood why I left. I knew he was smart, but all those times I’d tried to talk to him about how I felt, he apparently hadn’t listened.
Oh well. It was better to know that upfront, than to get lost in a tangle of what-might-have-been.
Getting the stench of the body wash off was nice. This time I used the generic shampoo. It had a slightly industrial smell, like the soap at a sports arena or a concert hall. When I got out of the shower, I wrapped myself in a threadbare towel that barely covered my body.
“I don’t have any clothes.” I wrinkled my nose.“The smell of body spray is baked into the firefighter uniform.”
“I have your suit. From the courtroom. But it smells like omega.”
“You have my suit? That’s creepy.”
“I was using it to find you, dammit.”
“You were tracking me like a dog!” I laughed at the look on his face. “I could call a friend to bring me something.”
“Too dangerous. I’ll get you something. There’s a thrift store nearby.”
I couldn’t wait to see what he came back with. “Owen.” I put one hand on my hip, still clutching the towel with the other. “I don’t wear knock-off clothes brands. I’m going to need you to find a boutique.”
He turned to face me, mouth slack, eyes wide.
I burst into laughter. “Some of the lessons from our clan stuck, and practicality is one of them.”
“Jeez. I thought maybe being a lawyer had gone to your head.”
“I work for the state, not a private firm. I haven’t bought a boutique anything. Ever.” Not to mention that most Denver boutiques wouldn’t have anything to fit me. They might advertise plus size, but my hips didn’t agree with pencil skirts in any size.
