Chapter 46
FORTY-SIX
My knee bounces rapidly, as it has for the past half an hour on our drive to Pine Haven. Harvey slaps his hand over my knee and squeezes tightly.
“If you can’t calm down, I’m not going to let you go in, Atlas.”
I wrinkle my nose at him and make a disgruntled sound low in my throat. “I’m going in, Harvey. You can’t do this without me.” A purr rattles in his chest unbidden, and against my will, my body goes slack. I glare at the asshole Alpha. “I didn’t need you to do that.”
“Didn’t say you did, and I didn’t choose to do it, either. Instincts are a bitch sometimes.” He releases my knee and looks out the window as Wyatt drives us into the small town outside of Lunarcrest City.
Pine Haven is a satellite town of Lunarcrest City, with many residents making the forty-five-minute daily commute into the city. It’s charming, with a downtown area filled with boutique shops and restaurants, and it has its own mayor and city council.
I can see why people would rather live here than in the city proper.
The assisted living facility where Tyler’s uncle is located, Cypress Cove, is a few streets over from downtown, which could make getting him out without making a scene difficult, but I know we can manage it.
“Okay, let’s go over the plan one more time,” Wyatt says, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
“I’m going to go inside, tell whoever is working the desk that I’m Tyler’s boyfriend, waiting to pick him up.
Once I see him leaving, I’ll bait him to follow me.
” I’m not looking forward to seeing Tyler again after everything.
I used to care for the man and trust him, but now I know I had no idea who he really was.
“I’m going to be waiting outside the door to help make sure things go smoothly getting him out of the facility,” Harvey says, tapping the gun in the holster on his hip.
I don’t think he’ll shoot Tyler if he tries to make a run for it, but after everything Tyler put me and Athena through, I wouldn’t mind if he did.
“You’ll stay in the car, Wyatt, getting ready to drive us out of here as soon as we get him loaded up. ”
Does Wyatt ever get tired of doing all the driving? I’d think he’d say if he were, but he always slides into the front seat before anyone else can.
Wyatt navigates us into the parking lot and pulls into the closest spot to the door that isn’t marked for accessible parking. I unbuckle my seatbelt, but before I can open the door and slide out, Harvey stills me with a hand on my shoulder.
“Atlas.” The unexpected tenderness in his voice makes my body freeze. “Be careful.”
“He’s not going to try anything in public,” I say dismissively. “It’ll be fine.”
He squeezes and pulls backward. I slide across the bench seat as he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me against his chest. “I know you will. But still. Don’t do anything stupid. In and out. Simple extraction.”
Wyatt turns in his seat to look at me, a soft smile on his thin lips. “See you soon, Omega.”
And fuck if the title doesn’t make me preen.
The Beta nurse looks up at me with a smile. “You sure you don’t want to go back?” he asks for the third time.
I’ve been pretending to be engrossed with my phone for the last twenty minutes, but I’m staring at a picture of Athena stretched out asleep in the nest, her hair covering her face and her shirt barely covering her ass, leaving her thighs on display for me.
“No, it’s fine. I don’t want him to feel like he has to rush because I got here early to pick him up. ”
The nurse administrator, Miles, I think his name was, sits back and spins side to side in his chair.
He looks to be around my age, with boyish good looks and shaggy blond hair.
It looks like he’s a little uncomfortable that I’m in his lobby.
I imagine he feels like he has to be ‘on’ now that I’m here.
No one else has come in at all while I’ve been waiting, so he probably would’ve been reading or dicking around on his phone if I hadn’t come in.
“Do you live around here?” he asks politely.
“Nah, we live in Lunarcrest City.”
“My packmate is from there.” He picks up a pen and chews on the end. “We haven’t been back in a while, though.”
“Not a fan of the big city?” I ask, not hating the distraction the conversation is providing.
“Bad memories,” he says with a shrug. “Plus, we have everything we need here. He used to be a detective there, but he’s moved into the private sector. Still ends up there a lot for work. I don’t envy the commute.”
“Yours is short, then?”
“Yeah, only like ten minutes. My Alpha has one of those bookstore bars on the main strip.”
“Bookstore bar?”
He beams proudly. “Yeah. Buying and reading books while you drink. You can trade a used book for a free beer. It’s fun. In the morning, they have pastries and coffee.”
I bet Athena and Sebass would like that. Maybe once this is all said and done, we could take a trip out here and check it out.
Miles and I carry on a polite conversation for the next fifteen minutes. The guy is chatty as hell, but I don’t mind it. I can see why he’s up front. He has a way of making someone feel comfortable that is needed in places like this.
Eventually, though, I get antsy.
Tyler should be out by now.
“Is there any way he could’ve slipped out a side door?” I ask, which I know is suspicious as hell for someone waiting on their boyfriend, but, fuck, if he’s gone, I need to know.
Miles handwaves away my concern. “Nope. No side doors. Couldn’t have our dementia patients sneaking out, now could we?”
As soon as he finishes the statement, my ex-boyfriend rounds the corner.
Tyler is as handsome as ever, but he looks worn down. There are bags under his eyes, and his hair falls a little flat. When he spots me, he stops so abruptly I’m surprised his sneakers don’t leave skid marks on the linoleum flooring.
“Surprise, love,” I say, jumping to my feet. “I got here early. Let’s go get some lunch.”
The Alpha looks like he wants to say something rude, but his eyes dart over to where Miles watches us with a smile on his face. Tyler grits his teeth and takes a few steps toward me. “Sure thing. We have a lot to talk about.”
I grab him by the waist in a way that I’m sure looks romantic, but I dig my nails into the soft flesh above the waistband of his khakis. The moment we’re out of Miles’s earshot, he hisses, “I was wondering if you’d be stupid enough to seek me out.”
When we step through the sliding doors at the front of the facility, Harvey moves toward us from the smoking area he’d been hanging out in.
He’s been doing pretty well, giving up smoking, but he’s going through so much gum.
He steps up on Tyler’s other side, and I feel my ex stiffen in my arms as Harvey puts his gun to his spine.
“Let’s go, Tyler,” my Alpha growls. Tyler’s eyes dart around, looking for a way out, but Harvey jabs him harder with the barrel of the gun. “Don’t think about it. I have no problem pulling this trigger after what you did to my Omegas.”
Tyler swings his wide gaze at me. “It worked, then?”
They hadn’t told him yet. That’s good. That means Tyler couldn’t have spread the success around yet.
He looks absolutely giddy now. “I knew it would. Brilliant.”
I yank open the door of the SUV so Harvey can shove him in. A pair of handcuffs waits on my seat, and I secure one to the ‘oh shit’ handle in the roof beside the door, the other to the wrist Harvey is wrenching behind Tyler’s back.
Tyler is being surprisingly calm, which worries me. Why isn’t he losing his mind that we have him? If anything, he’s acting as if he’s completely comfortable with the situation that’s unfolding around him.
“I was waiting to hear from McIntosh on whether you two had successfully gone into heat. Did the girl as well?” Wyatt growls but quickly strangles it and puts his attention back on the road.
Tyler continues to pepper me with questions as if he didn’t hear the other Alpha.
“She was the Beta who had survived the longest, did you know that? The early experiments were brutal. We went through subjects so quickly.”
“What the fuck happened to you, Tyler?” I ask, unable to let him continue. “You weren’t always like this.”
He tilts his head to the side as he stares at me. Up close, I can see that his eyes are bloodshot, with dilated pupils.
He looks high.
“Betas have all the power in our society. Everyone thinks it’s Alphas, and it should be, because we’re the superior designation.
We’re the strongest, the natural leaders.
Omegas are at our feet. But society is structured on a Beta hierarchy and pushes Alphas to the side.
Even our Omegas are choosing to be with Betas now! ”
Wyatt chokes on a laugh. “That’s the stupidest fucking thing I ever heard. Alphas sit at the top of the food chain. Most of our legislators are Alphas. Alphas run our companies. In what world is society set up to favor Betas of all the designations?”
“Those Alphas had to work twice as hard to get where they are!” my ex-boyfriend shouts.
“The doctors that you hired don’t even believe that. They went on and on about the superior genetics of Alphas and Omegas.” I watch as Harvey slips his phone out of his pocket and subtly dials Sebass before turning the speaker volume all the way down.
“No, no, it’s all connected; how could you miss that? Betas are so threatened by our superior genetics that they have done everything they can to keep us under their thumb, and I’m not going to stand for it anymore!” He runs his free hand through his hair and throws his head back against the seat.
“So, trafficking the Omegas was just an excuse to find people to experiment on?” I feel sick. How long has he been doing this?
Was it happening right under my nose?
He shakes his head, shaggy hair flopping around.
“Oh no, that’s how I funded this. I skimmed a little off the top with every transaction.
Kieran paid me well already, but I needed a little extra to get the talent required to make this a reality.
And now I’ve done it. Soon there will be no more Betas. ”
“They’re still socialized as Betas, though,” Wyatt interjects. “How does turning them into Alphas and Omegas change anything?”
“Because only those who share my ideology will be allowed to become Alphas. Alphas already have control over the Omegas, and that won’t change now that we’ll have more Omegas to go around.
It’ll be a relief not to have to worry about Betas trying to figure out how to use our biology against us.
Only Betas who believe in the cause will move to the top of the food chain. ”
He’s off his rocker. In his mind, he has created a narrative where Alphas, who arguably have the most power in society, are discriminated against in favor of a designation that can’t legally join a pack.
Does he not understand how much harder it is to live a comfortable life on a two-person, Beta household income?
Corporations have jacked the prices up on everything, since there is more disposable income in a pack than in a monogamous pairing.
And yet, Tyler has somehow made himself the victim. Not the Omegas, who have to have handlers, who are at risk of forced bondings and induced heats and being sold to monsters like him, but the Alphas.
For the rest of the drive to the Hawks compound, Tyler continues to babble on and on with his nonsense about how Alphas are second-class citizens in our world, and the only way to right the wrongs of society and get it back to its natural order is to get rid of the Betas by turning them into Omegas and forcing them to kneel at the feet of an Alpha.
I can’t believe I ever cared for this man. How could he lie in bed with me, kiss me, fuck me, when he thinks so little of Betas? When he hated me solely because of my designation?
No wonder he and McIntosh got along so well. Both of them wanted to eradicate an entire designation, even if their motives weren’t quite the same.
Wyatt pulls into the Hawks compound, where Boots and Valkyrie wait for us. They open the door to the SUV and uncuff Tyler from the roof handle before hauling him out and securing his hands behind his back.
The gravity of the situation finally seems to weigh on Tyler. Whatever drugs he took must be wearing off, because it looks like he’s finally realizing that he’s not getting out of this. His grand plans for Alpha domination have been thwarted, and he’s about to answer for all the pain he’s caused.
“He’s a piece of work,” Valkyrie sneers. “Was it hard to get him?”
“No, once we knew where to find him, it was easy. The guy is a joke,” Harvey spits. “Never done a bit of his own dirty work in his fucking life.”
Tyler turns around slowly, a sinister smile creeping up his face. “I mean, maybe before. But not now.”
My stomach twists. The hair on my arms stands up, and I feel bile creeping up my throat.
Tyler throws his elbow backward, hitting an unsuspecting Boots in the stomach. The cuffs hang from one hand, and he reaches down and pulls a gun out of a holster that was hidden on his ankle.
How the fuck did he get his hand out of the cuff?
He’s laughing as he holds the gun up, aiming right at me, and I fucking freeze.
Fight, flight, fawn, or freeze.
And my body freezes.
We didn’t think to search him for weapons, and now it’s going to cost me my life.
In quick succession, I hear two gunshots. I brace myself for impact, my mind racing with all the things I will never get to do, never get to say. The life I was looking forward to living with my pack is being taken from me, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.
I screw my face up, anticipating the hot pain of a bullet ripping through me, but the pain never comes.
When I open my eyes, Tyler is lying on the ground, with a shot straight through his chest. Beside me, Boots is on the ground, clutching his bleeding thigh.
Tyler must have pulled the trigger right as he was getting hit, and the impact caused his shot to go wide.
Harvey holds his gun loosely at his side, a growl vibrating in his chest as he stares at Tyler’s lifeless body. Valkyrie moves to him slowly, making soothing noises as she takes the gun from his hand. As soon as she does, he grabs me, pulling me to his chest and burying his face in my neck.
“You’re okay,” he says roughly, hands running up and down my back like he’s searching for injury. “You’re okay.”
Wyatt presses himself against me from behind, and their combined scents have my heart rate dropping. Once it does, I can feel the absolute terror that is blowing up my bonds with the others.