Chapter 26
TOSCA
As the day went on, I caught myself humming and smiling away to myself as I went about my chores.
Agelius would turn up soon, surely it would be soon…
Owen kept giving me funny glances. Surprisingly, no-one had wanted him last night, and when the betas left us all alone, I’d told him how things had gone down with George.
“That was clever,” he’d said, and the relief he’d felt was written all over his face. He worried a lot about me, I knew that, but I was proud I’d handled the situation on my own.
“I love to see you happy,” he told me, after he’d caught me humming several times, “but still be careful. You get a little more flamboyant when you’re happy. You mustn’t draw attention to yourself.”
He was right, of course, but my mood was just too good to hear it.
My mouth was half-open to reply when the low grinding of gears in the background caught our attention.
Owen’s eyes met mine. Trucks never came up here.
Not trucks of this size. I could tell from the low growl of the engine that this was a huge vehicle, much bigger than any of our pack's trucks.
Dismay formed a lump in my throat. My heart sank and my guts began to roil.
Nausea bubbled up inside. The last time we’d had a truck this size up here, it had been to transport us here.
Were we moving camp again? Or were more omegas being brought here?
I couldn’t stop the cold tingle running down my back as I rushed to the kitchen window to peer out.
A large truck pulled into the yard and came to a halt near the dining shed.
Two men dropped to the ground – one was from our pack, the other I didn’t recognize.
The men disappeared into the shed. Moments later there was a shout demanding food, and we broke away from the window to put together the meal.
Lucey and Dracko carried a couple of large pots of steaming stew across to the shed for the beta’s lunch. They’d hardly come back through the door before they were being interrogated.
“Who’s there?”
“What did you hear?”
“What’s in the truck? Did they say?”
Dracko held up their hands. “STOP!” he pleaded. “We didn’t find out anything. When we were in there, they didn’t say anything except to tell us to put the food down and hurry up.”
“Yeah,” chimed in Lucey. “And they were kind of exchanging looks like they wanted to talk about something but didn’t want to do it while we were there.”
I drifted away from the group, because a strange noise was making itself heard beneath the chatter.
The sound was faint, and it seemed to come from a long way away, but it was totally unmistakeable – the high-pitched whine of an emergency vehicle. Ee-ew, ee-ew, ee-ew.
It sounded far away, but as there was only one road up the mountain, it could only be coming here.
“Listen!” I hushed the others with a finger in the air.
Wide eyes searched each other, trying to make sense of what was going on.
From the blank looks on everyone’s face, no-one had any more clue about what was going on than I did.
All conversation died away, and there was only the restless shuffling of feet as we listened to the sound grow closer and closer.
Suddenly there was shouting. The food shed door flung open, crashing violently against the metal wall as the betas – and the mysterious driver – streamed out.
As we watched, mouths agape, the driver rushed to his vehicle and soon the heavy growl of the engine mingled with the shouts and the thumping of feet over the hard ground as the betas rushed around.
Several of the betas headed for our house, and before we could move, they flung open the door.
“Get out! Get out!” they yelled, grabbing the shirt of the nearest omega and hauling them outside. More betas entered and began herding us towards the commotion outside.
Owen and I exchanged glances and in the mêlée tried to slip back into the corridor.
We would have made it too, except for the big beast of a man coming out of one of the bedrooms. In the chaos, we hadn’t seen him slip inside.
I bumped up against a wall of muscle, stinking of sweat and grease and something foul and bitter.
“Outside you two,” he growled, spinning us around by the shoulders and pushing us ahead of him.
We stumbled out the doorway where the omegas were milling around, surrounded by maybe half our pack’s crew of betas.
It was chaotic, with omegas stumbling around with confused looks on their faces, and the rougher bigger betas circling around them and cursing them as they pushed them into something resembling rows.
“Line up, two rows!” one of the betas was yelling. “Quick!”
“Where’s Zarbius?” grumbled one of the men. “He wanted to pick some out. Keep the better ones for ourselves, ship the rest off.”
“He’s got something going on,” said one of the guys, George, inclining his head to a distant part of the camp. I was too short to see above the others from where I stood in the raggedy back line.
“We’ll have to do it ourselves.”
The whine of the patrol car – because it was obvious now it was that sort of emergency vehicle heading this way – was distinctly louder, definitely closer. Some of the betas were frowning, their movements erratic and nervous.
“C’mon, just load ‘em up. We need to get them out of here. Zarbius will lose his mind if we lose the entire shipment.”
“Here, take these…” several omegas were pulled out of the front line, “start loading them. As many as you can.”
“Fucking hell,” muttered one of omegas near me. “I think we’re being trafficked.”
Overwhelmed and caught up in following the conversation, I felt Owen’s absence beside me rather than heard him move.
I looked around, startled, but he hadn’t been dragged off to the truck.
Instead, one of the betas had pulled him out of the line and was pushing him back towards the house before returning his attention to the assembled omegas.
A rush of relief washed over me – Owen was popular with the betas, they wouldn’t want to let him be sold, so he was safe. But what about me? Where was Agelius? Would he turn up to find me gone? And what then – would he just shrug and find another omega to take with him?
Panic drove a lump the size of a stone into my throat, and I began to perspire, and not from the heat of the afternoon sun though that was still warm enough to cause an uncomfortable prickle.
My eyes flickered around, looking for an escape route.
“Hurry! Load ‘em up!”
I was hustled forward with the others towards where the truck was waiting with its engine idling. The sound of sirens was deafening now. They had to be close.
I pushed back against the crowd of omegas being manhandled into the back of the truck, desperate not to be caught up in the crowd and shipped away.
Slight as I was, I could slither between the jostling bodies, almost unnoticed.
The betas had given up trying to choose which ones should go and which should stay, in their haste to make sure that a shipment went out before the camp was stormed by law enforcement.
Lucey was resisting being put on the trailer and the men were getting increasingly aggressive as the sirens loomed louder and louder.
They were so close it would be touch and go whether the truck as going to make it to the one fork in the road that led to another way down the mountain, through the dense trees of the back country.
So close now, the advancing ew-ew-ew had separated into several separate sirens, all close behind each other, as multiple vehicles sped up the curving road through the forest.
The creaking of the back grill of the trailer cut over the sirens, with a couple of omegas still ahead of me and I breathed a sigh of relief.
As I breathed out, shoulders relaxing, a hard voice interrupted.
“Wait! There’s room for one more! A small one.”
The man leapt onto the wheel guard and peered into the group where we all huddled together, and a demanding finger stabbed towards…
“There! That one!”
Rough hands shoved me forward. I dug my heels into the ground, hoping they’d give up.
“Get the fuck up there,” snarled a harsh voice behind me, urgency lending extra aggression to his voice.
Claw-like fingers dug into my bony shoulder propelling me forward despite my flimsy efforts to resist. But the beta was about three times my size and fueled by fear of Zarbius’ anger if they didn’t get this truck loaded and gone before the police arrived, and he mercilessly drove me forward.
Suddenly a body flashed past us and squeezed itself through the half-open tailgate. Owen! There were grunts and groans from the others already on the truck, as he squished himself into a space that was way too small for his large frame.
My mouth fell into a horrified “No!”, my heart turning to lead. Owen didn’t blink, his big brown eyes looking determinedly back at me between the boards of the truck’s sides. He was quiet, the only hint that he was scared lay in the whites of his eyes.
The ramp clanged up into place and metal chains clanked as the safety locks engaged. The engine groaned, gears ground, and the truck jolted forward uncertainly.
The engine roared as the truck surged forward, a couple of wheels spinning over the dry grass.
As I watched, a flicker of fear crossed Owen’s face.
A swirling djinn of dust and grass fragments kicked up behind the truck as it bounced over the uneven ground, blinding me and I blinked madly, my eyes watering.
When the cloud of dust settled and I could see again, the truck was gone - disappearing out of sight behind the screen of trees, taking with it my best friend.
I couldn’t believe it. Owen… Owen was gone. He’d put himself on that truck, because he knew I had an alpha to go to, and he protected me just like he always had.
A stray tear slid down my cheek, and a large masculine hand landed heavily on my shoulder.