In the Van
Perrin
The logging trail spits us out into a clearing, and I ease the cargo van through a gap in the tree line, following the hand signals of a guy in a reflector vest who looks like he'd rather be literally anywhere else. Same, buddy.
The van lurches over the uneven ground and something shifts in the back, crates of medical supplies we picked up from a warehouse three hours south. I check the side mirror and spot Cliff pulling our SUV in beside me.
He's got one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the open window frame, his forearm tan and corded with muscle.
His dark hair is pushed back off his forehead, damp at the temples from the heat, and when he catches me looking through my mirror, he grins.
Just a flash of white teeth and those sharp, dark eyes crinkling at the corners.
God, he's sexy.
It's annoying.
I kill the engine and sit for a second, hands still on the wheel.
Through the windshield, the Morder unfolds in front of me. It’s a sprawling, improvised city of canvas and plywood wedged into a clearing that has no business holding this many people. Generators hum from every direction. The air shimmers above the tree line.
I really don't want to be here.
But Cliff asked for my help, and I can’t say no to the alpha.
I pull the keys out of the ignition and hop out. The heat hits me like opening an oven door. Even with my beta nose, I’m overwhelmed by the scent of sticky pine trees and hot diesel, mixed with something unmistakably omega. Dozens of them.
My jaw tightens.
This must be hell for the alphas.
Cliff is already out of the car and walking toward the front of the convoy where Raff is standing with a woman I don't recognize. I fall into step behind him, and almost immediately I feel Adam press in close on my left side, matching my stride.
"Hey," I say, glancing at him.
"Hey." Adam's voice is flat. His eyes are scanning the camp as if he's looking for an exit.
I know that look. This place is getting under his skin. It's getting under mine too, but Adam wears his emotions much closer to the surface.
We reach the others, and I get my first good look at the woman Raff is talking to.
She's tall, easily six feet, maybe more in the pointed high heels she's wearing.
She has sleek black hair pulled back tightly from her face.
Her lips are a high-gloss red that looks almost wet in the sunlight, and when she gestures while talking, I notice her nails.
Long and filed to sharp points, lacquered the same red as her mouth.
They look less like a manicure and more like a set of weapons.
"Angelica runs operations for the western camps," Cliff says, half turning to include me and Adam in the conversation. His tone is casual, but I catch the way his eyes move to Adam, checking on him.
"Gentlemen." Angelica's gaze sweeps over us with the cool efficiency of someone taking inventory. Her smile doesn't reach her eyes. “Thank you for picking up the delivery for us. Our pharmacy has been running a little thin for a few weeks now.”
"Happy to help," Raff says, and to his credit, he sounds as if he means it. Raff can sound like he means anything. It's one of his more terrifying qualities.
I hang back while they talk logistics. Payment for the vans, along with transporting the cargo. Adam drifts closer to me, and after a few seconds I feel his nose press gently against the curve of my shoulder. He inhales, slow and quiet.
He's scenting me.
Or more accurately, he's scenting Cliff and Raff on me. I slept in Cliff’s bed last night, and I'm saturated in pack scent. Adam needs that right now. He needs the reminder that his people are right here, that the alphas who keep him safe are close enough to touch.
Not wanting to embarrass him, I don't acknowledge it. I angle my shoulder a fraction closer so he can reach better.
Most people look at Adam and see his cocky attitude and cut muscles.
He’s the kind of guy who talks too much shit and grins while he does it.
But underneath the bravado is someone whose nervous system runs about twenty degrees hotter than it should.
He processes every sound and smell and shift in energy like a raw nerve, and he’d rather die than let anyone outside of our pack see it.
"How long is this going to take?" Adam murmurs against my sleeve.
“However long it needs to take,” I say.
"Great. Love that for us."
I almost smile. "You want to wait in the SUV?"
"No." He pulls back from my shoulder, straightening his back and squaring his shoulders. "I'm fine."
"Okay."
"I am." His brown eyes narrow.
"I said, okay."
There’s a beat of silence as he stares at me, then he whispers, "It smells weird here. It’s wrong."
"I know."
Adam’s sense of smell is better than mine. In fact, when we were kids, my parents were convinced he was going to be an omega. They were relieved when we both presented as betas.
“Can you smell it?” Adam turns toward the massive tents.
“Yeah,” I say simply.
I don’t have to ask. I know he means the omegas. Even with my dull beta senses, I can smell them all over this camp. Weirdly sweet and overly floral, cut with something medicinal.
It makes my skin crawl.
The idea of selling omegas has never sat right with me.
I know they're different. They have different biology, different drives, and even different needs.
I've never actually known one personally.
Growing up, omegas were talked about the way people talk about exotic animals.
Rare, valuable, and kind of unpredictable.
But I'm pretty sure they're just people.
People who are scared, and drugged, and lined up in holding tents while alphas bid on them like livestock.
My fists tighten at my sides, but I make myself loosen them before anyone notices.
Angelica's sharp blue eyes land on me suddenly, and her glossy lips curve. "You." She points one of those talon-nails in my direction. "Beta?"
"Guilty," I say, easing my hands into my pockets. I’m so fucking uncomfortable, but I’ll be damned if I show it.
"Good." She turns to Raff and extends her hand, palm up. "The manifest?"
Raff pulls a clipboard from under his arm and hands it over. Angelica flips through the pages, scanning them with the speed of someone who's done this a thousand times, then holds the clipboard out toward me.
"Take this to the pharmacy tent and let them know more supplies have arrived. They'll need to update their stock counts." She gives the clipboard a small shake when I don't grab it fast enough. “The auction starts in a few hours so this needs to be done quickly.”
I hand the keys to my van to Cliff, then I take the clipboard. "Where am I going?"
"Follow the main path east until you hit the medical cluster. The pharmacy tent is the white one. You can't miss it." She's already turning back to Raff. "It shouldn't take you more than twenty minutes."
Cliff's eyes find mine, silently asking me if I’m good.
I give him the smallest nod, and he returns a slight dip of his chin.
Adam shifts beside me, and I lean close enough to murmur, "Stay with Cliff. I'll be back in twenty."
My brother’s jaw flexes, but he nods.
I tuck the clipboard under my arm and start walking.
The camp is packed. Extension cords snake across the dirt in every direction, while techs and nurses weave between tents with their heads down, moving fast. Nobody looks at me twice.
I skirt the main path, figuring I'll loop around the perimeter and find the white tent from the outside. The white canvas should be easy to spot, but all I can see are dark peaks of fabric.
Not wanting to take too long, I flag down a tech hauling a crate of bottled water. "Pharmacy tent?"
She barely slows down. Her arm shoots out, pointing past the medical cluster toward the far edge of the clearing. "White tent. AC units on the side. Other end of the quad."
"Thanks."
And she's gone before the word leaves my mouth.
I look where she pointed. The top of the pharmacy tent is visible from here, but the direct route cuts straight through a knot of activity — nurses moving between the holding tents, a group clustered around a supply cart, techs wheeling equipment across the path.
It's a bottleneck, loud and crowded, and I don't feel like shouldering through it.
So I go around.
I cut left, away from the main path, and follow the tree line along the edge of the meadow. It's quieter out here.
The tents thin out, replaced by storage units and equipment staging areas.
Tarps draped over pallets of bottled water, stacked crates of MREs, coils of extension cords piled on folding tables.
The generators are louder this close to the perimeter, their diesel groan vibrating through the ground under my boots.
The shade is thicker too. The pine trees press in close, their branches knitting together overhead. It makes the temperature drop a few degrees. Not enough to offer much relief, but I’ll take what I can get.
And that’s when I see her.
A young woman is leaning against the side of a storage tent, half-hidden in the shadow between the canvas wall and a stack of plastic crates.
She's wearing black scrubs, her dark hair stuck to her neck and temples in damp strands, the rest of it falling loose around a face that stops me for a second despite everything.
Sharp cheekbones, a pointed chin, and full lips pressed together in concentration or pain, I can't tell which.
She has one hand pressed flat against her stomach and the other braced on the crates, holding herself up.
She looks sick. Or hurt.
My first thought is heatstroke.
It's ninety-something degrees, and she's flushed and swaying and breathing in these short, shallow pulls that make her shoulders hitch.
“Hey.” I slow down. "You okay?"
The beta’s head lifts, looking right at me, and my gaze sweeps over her face. The line of her jaw, the dark sweep of her lashes against flushed cheeks, the fullness of her lower lip.