Chapter 9 Cade
My father’s office smelled of tobacco and leather. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, but I despised it because l associated the scent with his presence and every miserable memory of my childhood.
What should have been a quick meeting to retrieve a seizure warrant for the omega had dragged on, as I suspected it would. Despite knowing what time I was arriving, he made me wait in the lobby with his secretary for nearly an hour.
Every interaction with my father was a never-ending play for power, in which he asserted his dominance and control over my brother and me.
He liked to remind us that despite the peppered streaks running through his hair, and wrinkled creases around his eyes, he was very much still in command.
And how could we forget, when the scars that littered our bodies were a visual cue?
During our childhood, he ruled our home with an iron fist, apathetic to my mother’s scorn and drug abuse.
He turned a blind eye to her torment of Killian, and would even assist in her abuse by trying to “knock the sensitivity out of him.” We were both frequently scattered with bruises shaped to fit my father’s fist.
His physical abuse lessened after he accidentally went too far and broke Killian’s jaw.
At only eleven, Doctor’s wired my brother’s jaw shut for six weeks, preventing him from speaking or eating solid food.
When there was an inquiry by hospital staff into the injury, we all lied, claiming he'd fallen down the stairs, but everyone knew the truth, even if they feared my father too much to speak up.
Killian’s healing journey was painful, and there were also lasting effects, mainly nerve damage, which affected his speech.
A thick, ragged scar branded the abuse along his jaw.
Despite meeting with specialists weekly, his language remained clumsy and lacked skill because of lasting nerve pain, so he preferred to communicate via a visual-manual language that we had invented while his jaw had been wired shut.
Neither of us knew sign language, so we pieced together actual signs and made-up hand signals to create a language that only we understood. Even as adults, we often communicated that way, or Killian opted simply to grunt in a caveman fashion.
Despite my father’s physical abuse lessening into adulthood, the verbal abuse and complete control he exerted over us remained.
General Green drummed his fingers on the sturdy mahogany desk as he scanned Rowan’s paperwork. He had pulled her file from the Arca database. I had already briefed myself with what little information that was known about her during the ride to his office and long-wait in the lobby.
She was older than most omega deserters. Arca often caught them near or during their first heat. As soon as they went into heat, they would quite literally throw themselves at the closest alpha, begging to be knotted.
At 26, Rowan had avoided detection for a long time.
Talon suspected she had remained undetected through the use of illegal suppressants, which would have masked her scent and quelled her heat.
Her listed address was No-Man's-Land, so I assumed she must have lived off-grid to help conceal her designation and grow weeping violet.
Those woods were full of illegal plant farms.
“Pretty little thing, isn’t she?” My father remarked, his gaze lingering on her photo while scanning the file.
His eyes lit up and stared at the image for too long. I gritted my teeth, stifling my anger. I already felt protective of Rowan and didn’t even like him looking at her picture.
“Yes, she is,” I responded dryly.
“I tried to set your pack up with an omega from the Training Center. They're conditioned impeccably. Why exactly are you planning to keep this feral criminal when you wouldn’t even entertain my offer to find you a suitably trained omega? Most men would kill for one, but you always turned me down. You could exchange her with a trained one from the center,” my father questioned as he finally closed the file between a manila envelope.
Before I could answer, he continued, “Do you even actually plan to mate her, or is this just a tactic to buy more time for Killian’s recovery? You know Arca is getting impatient and wants your unit back at the Border Front Base.”
I briefly wondered if there was ever a time that our father actually cared about Killian or me. He was completely insensitive to Killian's near-death experience and viewed him as a commodity rather than his own flesh and blood.
Ignoring his insinuation, I responded, “This one is fine. Ryker seems keen to break her in; it won’t take long.”
My crude response seemed to satisfy him as he chuckled, signed the paperwork, and passed me the file, which contained the seizure warrant.
He then dismissed me, saying, “Close the door on your way out,” and not sparing me another glance, as he busied himself with more paperwork.
I left quickly, not wanting to be in his presence any longer than absolutely necessary.
My phone chimed on the way back to the dorms:
Talon: We got her here. She’s at the Medical Wing.
She's having an adverse reaction to the sedative. The doctor needs her history.
When are you going to be back with her file?
I rubbed my temples in frustration. I had specifically told them not to dose her with Talon’s shifter sedatives. The Arca scientists did not design them for use on omegas, and they were only to be used in the rare case Talon lost control of his wolf, which had never occurred.
Something told me Ryker was most likely to blame.
I texted him back, telling him I would be there shortly.