Chapter 4 Four #2
I’d found her.
She’d found me.
“Everyone thinks you’re dead,” I said, voice dull.
“Better they think that,” she said. “Then I can stay here and they can stay there and things can go on being all right.”
“All right?” I charged from the chair so quickly it nearly toppled as I stormed to the window and leaned my palms against the sill.
Furious tears stung my eyes, and I didn’t want her to see.
“Nothing is all right! Some one-percenter eugenicist asshat is disappearing omegas left, right, and center with no one the wiser. The latest one being my fucking omega. Half of our pack are missing, probably dead, we’re stuck here in the middle of a goddamn B-movie horror set, and you think this is all right? ”
“Deal with this long enough and your benchmark for ‘all right’ will shift.”
Shaking fingers threaded through my hair.
“You might be content to sit back and let the rest of the world deal with the problem, but I sure as hell am not.” I turned to glare at her.
“Now, you’re going to tell me everything you know, and then you’re going to help me get back to my omega and help us get the fuck out of these mountains. ”
She didn’t answer. I turned back to the window.
Inhale. Exhale.
Had to keep calm. Keep a clear head. That was hard enough with the still-persistent ache and throb. So, back to Point A: Keep calm and scheme on.
I focused on the landscape outside the window.
Nova’s hideaway sat on a rocky outcropping, trees sheltering us from view, but an expansive mountainside stretched out below us.
The gray sky melted into a fog that shrouded the treetops.
Slick brown leaves covered the muddy ground, uneven divots making the land look rough and untouched.
I blinked, looking closer.
Those weren’t divots. They were tire wells.
Far from untouched, then.
My heart sped.
I listened then, the eery silence pressing against my ears like a vise around my head.
Silence.
That river had been so loud I could still hear it at the cave. It had never really been out of earshot from the moment we first found it.
But I couldn’t hear it now.
Nova couldn’t have dragged me this far from the river, let alone however far we actually were from Falcon’s Edge.
She had wheels.
Harsh static made us both jump as the radio she’d pointed to earlier came to life.
“Base camp to hunters, report in. Any sign of our rabbit yet? Over.”
My stomach churned as the hunters checked in one by one.
About the rabbit.
My fucking omega. Nothing but prey in their eyes.
Finally, “Hunter four, no signs in the eastern grid. Over.”
“Base camp to hunters, expand to Perimeter D and continue search. Over and out.”
I rubbed my palms over my arms, mind spinning. Or head spinning. Hard to tell the vertigo from the actual world falling to shreds around me.
Nova made no move, as though we’d listened to a lame talk radio segment. Just discussing a bit of light human trafficking over coffee for the morning commute.
What happened to this girl?
It didn’t matter. Time to go.
My eyes scanned the room as surreptitiously as I could manage. “Taryn would never leave you to the wolves,” I said by way of distraction. “Not if she thought she could stop it.”
“Then she’s a better omega than me,” Nova replied without hesitation.
“Yes,” I said as my eyes snagged on a book on the mantel, slightly ajar, like something has been shoved quickly in the middle of it. “Without a doubt.”
I lunged, snatched the book off the ledged and danced out of Nova’s reach as she tried to stop me. I pulled the keyring from the pages and threw the book at her. It bounced off her shoulder as she stretched for my closed fist, held high above my head.
“Just let me leave!” I grunted as I tried to push her off me. Too many days without food had me weak, muscles shaking as she tugged on my arm.
She shook her head. Stray hairs fell over her face, but they couldn’t hide the raw terror in her eyes. “You’ll lead them back here,” she breathed. “And I won’t go back.”
I drove my knee into her gut and ran out the door. I circled the small shack, looking for a car, a motorcycle, whatever the fuck this key went to. Nothing. She must’ve stashed it somewhere to prevent exactly this scenario.
Before I’d jogged ten yards away, a heart-wrenching shriek tore through the air, stopping me dead. A few nearby birds took angry flight. The echo faded. My uneven breaths shouted into the still air. I looked back the way I’d come.
You don’t care, I lied.
Taryn needs you. You can’t care.
Yet my feet turned back, my steps closing the distance back to the shack and the still wide-open door. Nova was hunched on the ground, hands clasped behind her head the way they used to teach kids in school to do in case of disaster.
“Please,” she sobbed, a thick sniff cutting through her words, “don’t send them back here.”
I swallowed as I sat down beside her and crossed my legs. “What do they do?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.” I raised my hand, smoothing it down her back. She flinched like I’d carved her with razor blades. “Please?”
She huffed, sitting up to her knees. This girl was so different from the hardened woman I’d woken to. That woman had been an island. This girl…she was the derelict rowboat on the shore.
“Finding the designation gene is their main gambit,” she said quietly. “But they can’t invest this much time and resources into that alone, not without some other payout.
“Omega hormones shift during heats. Our DNA literally changes temporarily. And those changes, those specific hormones, they can only get those while we’re in active heat.”
My belly clenched as Nova’s scent soured with remembered pain, with fresh fear.
“So they keep us in heat. Endlessly. They draw blood and extract eggs or whatever the fuck. Then they do it again. And again.”
Nausea threatened to overtake me as the reality of Nova’s torture—the torture they wanted for my Taryn—unfolded itself in my mind’s eye. Brooks had told us about the developing research of omega pheromones for alpha healthcare. Everyone insisted all was above board, obtained via consenting omegas.
But, as we’d established, omegas were a limited resource. Ones willing to donate blood, eggs, whatever, even rarer.
“The ones who die, they’re lucky,” Nova continued. “But the ones whose minds break first, or whose heats burn out entirely, they’re offloaded to the underground omega trades. Hidden from the world, kept quiet, used up at a steep discount.”
A hot tear fell down my cheek. The depravity of Nova’s words sucked me in like a black hole. Stole my breath. Paralyzed my limbs.
“I promise you,” I whispered through my thick throat, “I will not let that happen to you again. But I can’t let that happen to Taryn either.” I placed my hand on her back. “Please.”
We sat there for several minutes, neither of us saying a word. I wished I could comfort her. I wished someone could comfort me.
Finally, though, Nova crawled toward the small bed behind her, reaching underneath and pulling a canvas backpack out.
She slid it toward me. Frowning, I untied the flap covering the opening.
Inside was a dark sweater, cargo pants, socks and boots.
A small bag with a flashlight, a collapsible water bottle, a few packets of jerky. A satellite phone. A map.
Nova’s go-bag.
I looked up and met her eye. “You’re a fighter after all,” I said.
A frown marred her face, turning her back into the woman I’d woken to. The island buffeted by tsunamis and monsoons, yet still standing tall above the waterline.
“No, I’m not.” She stood. “I’ll drive you to the cave. You can figure out your own way from there.”