Chapter EightEvan
Chapter Eight
Evan
“ I ’m going to take her upstairs,” Wes told me, our food finished. We hadn’t gotten Grace to eat, but she’d had some tea and now slept on top of him.
“Should I come up or do you want some alone time with her? I’m fine with either.” I cleared off the coffee table. She did better when sleeping on his bare chest.
As she should. I slept better with one of my alphas, too.
“If it’s all right with you, I’d like you to stay with me. But I’m sure Brennan would be more fun.” Wes scooped her up in his arms, careful of all her bruises. “I’m worried. Shouldn’t she be at the hospital?”
“We should take her in the morning if she keeps vomiting. But we’re going to have to be careful, get our story straight, and hope that anything she says that’s out of the ordinary is taken for disorientation,” I replied.
We didn’t need her institutionalized, or worse, becoming a government science project.
Wes nodded. “Her not having a record is going to be a problem. Not just if she has to go to the hospital, but if she stays for any length of time.”
She couldn’t get a job, have a bank account, go to the doctor, or do any number of things if she didn’t exist. That… now that I could fix. I kicked myself for not thinking of it hours ago as a preventative measure, even if she didn’t stay for long–assuming she could even get back.
Or wanted to.
Parallel world. Shit. If I hadn’t been friends with Spencer my entire life, I wouldn’t believe it. She somehow crossed the universe to be with my mate. So fucking romantic.
Wes was pretty special. Hopefully, she’d think I was too.
“I’ll be up soon.” I gave him a kiss, then stroked Grace’s soft, blonde hair, and took the dishes and garbage into the kitchen. After I cleaned up, I headed upstairs.
The two upper floors were a series of suites, with a few shared spaces. On the second floor, Brennan and Jett shared a suite. Spencer also had one. There was a library and an open space with a piano where I often found Brennan when he had a bad day.
Up on the third floor, I walked past a big open area with a sunken living room and the sunroom with a giant bay window where sometimes Wes liked to sketch.
Usually I slept in Wes’ room, which was on the other side of the sunroom–or with Brennan and Jett.
But I had my very own suite, with a lounge where Jett and I often retreated to watch the movies we liked and a desk where I could do some work, and my bedroom, and my nest, where out of respect, no one entered without my permission, and a giant bathroom and closet.
In my suite, I booted up my work laptop and got my headset, checking the time on my phone. She should still be up. I sent her a text.
Me
Calling you. I have a job.
“While I get your overwhelming omega need to help people, I don’t fucking do that anymore, you doofus,” a tart voice answered over my headset.
I rolled my eyes as I got into the clinic files and found Grace’s records. “Um, yes, you do, Ri. This isn’t for the Center, so you can charge your full rate.”
“Oh. What have we got? The usual?” Interest tinged her voice.
“We might have to take her to the hospital in the morning, so I’ll need at least the bare bones by then. Maybe we can blame it on a glitch or the downed grid or something when more info appears?” I started sending Riley the files she’d need.
Sometimes omegas needed new identities, and the Center would facilitate that. Riley had created more than one for me. She was supposed to be on the straight and narrow now. But I knew she wasn’t, which was why I felt no guilt in asking. She was good, and I could trust her implicitly.
“By morning? Fuck you. How much extra can I charge? Wait, if this isn’t for the Center why are you sending me Center records?”
I ran her through the barest basics of Grace’s case, leaving out the parallel world travel. “Since there’s no record to delete or work from, you’ll have to build one from scratch.”
She whistled. “That costs extra if you want it done right. Who the fuck has no record?”
“Someone from a country that doesn’t keep a database?
A person coming from a fundie community?
” Fundies generally didn’t believe in being part of the government, because they felt that it was the government’s fault every alpha didn’t get their own omega–even though it was mathematically impossible without unethical actions like omega breeding programs.
“All I need by morning is the ability to get her into the hospital and well, anything with the police since she’s got an open case. Eventually, I’d like her set up with a basic past so that she can be employable.” I continued looking over the tests and notes from the doctors.
She whistled. “How big are the pockets I’m fleecing? This is looking to be an expensive job.”
“They’re my pockets, not the pack’s. While I’ll pay you what’s fair, please don’t fuck me too badly, I don’t make very much.
Let’s put her down as a beta, maybe alter a tox screen to show Trevadol in order to explain why she came up undesignated?
” It was a common anxiety medication that fucked with the basic prick-test. Sometimes omegas in hiding took it for that specific reason.
For a moment I only heard typing.
“Can’t. Bloodwork shows some variant of Oxotipoline,” she retorted.
“Oh. Well, that could explain her memory loss.” My belly dropped. It was a sedative commonly used in human trafficking. The designer version, Eazy-E, was sometimes used by sexual predators.
There was more typing. “Okay, they only ran the common designation blood test on her. Since we can’t make her pass as a beta, should we use a rare for now? You’ve seen her, I haven’t. What would be plausible?”
I ran through the rare designations. Someone of her size wasn’t going to be a delta. Theta? Maybe. Her reaction to scents–and her scent–would make it too difficult for her to be an Iota. Hmmm. Maybe with her size we could try to pass her off as a gamma?
Gammas were more of a genetic anomaly that was given its own term than an actual designation, and sometimes didn’t come up on tests.
They were almost an omega, but for some reason their body halted the process.
Sometimes a genetic switch was thrown, other times it was environmental.
Usually, they had some of the general physical and psychological attributes associated with omegas, but lacked an omega’s scent, pheromones, and perfume.
They were often resistant to alpha barks. Each gamma was a little different.
“Let’s put her down as a gamma. I also need her to have a PhD in theoretical mathematics or something equivalent.
In case you need it, she likes romance novels, action movies, and can recite Pi to way more places than most people.
She smells of peaches. The only pictures I have of her are not very pleasing.
” I sent the photos they took to document her injuries.
“Creating a PhD? Are you serious?” she huffed.
“Fine, I’ll have Wes help me,” I replied, not up to her attitude tonight.
“I’m a better hacker than Wes. Fine.” She drew the last word out dramatically. “Her birth year is fucked up and doesn’t correspond with her age. Her city of birth doesn’t exist.”
“She has a concussion and is suffering from memory loss and disorientation. Oh, her birthday is right after Wes’.” At the Center she said she was twenty-seven. Wes was twenty-nine. Which meant that if he bit her when he was nineteen, she was only seventeen.
Ooh. That naughty, law-breaking, cradle-robber. I gave a birth year for Grace that would make her legal then, to head off any problems.
Had the bond test come back? Because of the legalities an alpha-omega bond implied, it was a government test. Wes and I never got married, but because we were bonded and had registered it, we had the same rights as spouses and were accepted as such.
Nope. Not yet.
We went over more things as I made note of what I needed to do on my end. I had other connections to reach out to that could help make Grace’s record complete and real.
“Okay, I think we’re good,” she finally said. “I’ll let you know if I need anything else. Night fucker.”
“Love you too, Ri. Night.” I logged out of the Center files, making it look like I’d never been there. Then, I checked a few tasks off my list and sent the first part of the payment.
Closing up, I went to find Wes and Grace, hoping that this was a precaution, and that we wouldn’t need it soon.