Chapter 2 #2
I might not trust Omegas thanks to my own personal history, but I’m more than aware of the innate biological response they provoke in Alphas.
We are made to protect them. Nurture them. Keep them safe and loved. I’m not so jaded that the idea of fifteen women forced to endure horrors no one should ever face doesn’t affect me.
I’ve just had time to work through my own anger.
The rest of my team hasn’t.
In an attempt to escape the heavy blanket of pheromones, I stand and cross toward the alcohol cart across the room. We all wear descenters outside of our personal rooms, but despite the absence of scent, Alpha Pheromones still carry a heavy, suppressive feeling that makes your bones itch.
I return once I’m sure it’s safe, carrying a decanter and glasses with me. I pour myself a drink, then pass the whiskey to Gav.
“It’s not just humans being taken,” I continue, wrapping my hand around my glass. “Vampires have also disappeared, and two days ago a wolven Omega went missing.”
“Fuck,” Silas snarls, never one to hold back. “Fifteen is like… more Omegas than we see go missing around here in an entire year.”
“A wolven?” Vae whistles low, dragging his hand through his dark auburn locks. “It’s been decades since I’ve even seen one outside of packlands.”
I take a long pull of my whiskey. “She wasn’t technically supposed to be outside of packlands from what I understand.
She went with two Alphas and a Beta on a supply run.
Saline— the Omega— is an apprentice healer, and their Elder healer was sick, so she went in her place.
” I pause, jaw flexing. “She never came back.”
Opening another folder, I pull out her photo and pass it to Caelan. I don’t look at it. I already know what I’ll see.
A girl around nineteen, with dark skin and intricate braids. Brown eyes, the color of honey, and a smile so bright and genuine it hurts to look at. She’s delicate and slight in stature, but with the soft curves Omegas are known and coveted for.
“What about her packmates?” Caelan asks, scanning the photo I procured by… less than legal means. Wolven are notoriously private, and sometimes I have to get creative to work around their safeguards.
“They said she just vanished. She wanted to visit the Apothecary at a Farmer’s Market. Their Omegas are always so fiercely guarded that the Alpha assumed she’d taken the opportunity to slip away for some alone time. When they still hadn’t found her after two hours, they called their pack Alpha.”
“This happened two days ago?” Evander asks, glancing at the Omega’s photo before passing it to Ford. “How have we not heard about it until now?”
Gavran answers before I can. “The wolven are secretive. They always have been. They’re not our enemies, but they’re not our friends, either.
Once the treaty was signed and our species stopped fighting, the wolven made their homes in packlands and basically ignored everyone else.
They’re happy like that—alone with nature.
But blood remembers, and even if it didn’t, they’re nearly as long-lived as we are.
They won’t forget the crimes vampires committed against them, just as we won’t forget what they did to ours.
” His eyes take on a distant look, like he’s remembering those days in vivid detail.
I’d barely been in my first century of life when the wolven/vampire fighting came to a head, but Gav is a bit older than Caelan, Vae, and me.
And he’s much older than Evander, Silas, and Ford.
I was alive when the treaty was signed, and know the history well, but those three are too young to grasp what actually happened. They understand it no better than they can understand what it was like to live through the American Revolution or the Jacobite Rebellion.
It’s a story in a history book to them, but we were alive to see the devastation that led up to the signing.
“I’ve met the Alpha for the Eastern pack a few times.
He’s an honorable male, and his son, Soren, seems to be taking after him.
Alpha Fenric would want to keep this contained.
He was there at the treaty signing, same as I was, and he remembers all too well how dangerous things were for the wolven leading up to it.
” Gav shakes his head, taking another sip of whiskey.
No one speaks. Gav rarely discusses his life before my pack met him a few centuries back, and he’s not the kind of male you push for answers. Nor is he the kind of male to be free with his words.
“They wouldn’t reach out to anyone on the outside unless it was a last resort. Even then, they’d reach out to other packs across the US and Canada before they’d allow word to get out to us.”
Silas scoffs. “That seems ignorant. If we can help, why wouldn’t they ask us? Is this Fenric’s pride more important to him than that Omega?”
Ford shoots Silas a disapproving look, but doesn’t admonish him for his outburst. Silas tends to open his mouth first and think never. He’s the best tracker I’ve ever met, though, and loyal to a fault.
Even if he makes me want to sew his damn mouth shut. Permanently.
“The way Alpha Fenric handles his pack is up to him,” Gav’s words sound more like a warning for Silas to tread carefully than an answer.
“I said I knew the male, and I do. He’s honorable and genuinely cares for the thousands of wolven under his protection.
I can promise you his pride doesn’t have anything to do with this. ”
“Then why—”
“Enough.” Gavran slams his tumbler on the table hard enough to shake the whiskey in my glass, and pins Silas with a glare. After a long moment, he shifts that glare around the room, meeting each of our eyes before speaking again.
“We will do what we need to do to help find all fifteen of these Omegas, including the wolven. We need to be on top of this. Should have made it a priority yesterday. This isn’t a Species-only situation, so don’t make it one.
We work to find and rescue all the Omegas, understand?
I don’t care if they’re human, vampire, wolven or an alien from planet Nebeneeser. ”
“Bless you,” Vae replies, not missing a beat.
Gav glares at my packmate, but Vaelenor’s gaze meets mine from across the table, green eyes twinkling with mischief. I ignore him. Vae always turns to humor to lighten up tense situations. It’s how he copes.
“Something doesn’t make sense,” Ford cuts in. “What do these two things have to do with one another? The Severed don’t deal in trafficking. They’ve never had any interest in Omegas before.”
I clench my jaw as memories from my past try to surface and beat their way out of the box I have them locked in. I refuse to let them out. That situation has nothing to do with this, anyway.
“It’s too much of a coincidence to be random,” I explain, forcing myself to focus on the present and leave the past where it fucking belongs.
“The timelines match too perfectly. Severed have also never met multiple times with a human. The fact that there’s been such a massive uptick in missing Omegas since the meetings between Alexander and Jonathan Varenthrall started is enough on its own.
Add in that the location of the missing Omegas correlates perfectly with a ninety-mile radius around the human’s estate? ”
I let the implication hang in the air.
“You’re right,” Evander speaks up. “This isn’t random. It just feels off, somehow.”
Caelan clears his throat, then asks the one question that’s been bothering me the most. ”What do they want with the Omegas, though?”
I shrug, sighing in irritation. “I don’t know. That’s what I need to figure out. That’s what’s bothering me so much about this. It could be plain old greed for money from the sales, or it could be the human that wants them.”
I grind my molars, the familiar ache of irritation bubbling to the surface.
This is what I’ve been trying to understand for hours. Days. What do they want the Omegas for? What’s the purpose? Why bother going after more supernatural Omegas than human Omegas? Is Varenthrall working for the Severed, or are they working for him?
“I need more information,” I bite out.
Anger threatens my control over my emotions, and nothing makes me feel more inept than losing control.
Gav tosses his dossier down and leans back, hands resting on his chair arms, his dark Henley pulling across broad shoulders. “We need eyes on the inside. I want to know what’s going on in that house.”
I think the same, but sending someone in isn’t my call.
I run ops and tech, which keeps me mainly in the compound. Field work isn’t outside my abilities, but I leave that to the rest of my team and the other teams not a part of our core pack, who stay at the compound.
I prefer working with technology—stats, opps, surveillance, hacking into any server I can crack, scouring it for information I can use to help my team.
Evander calls me a nerd, but that asshole carries a dog-eared copy of The Two Towers with him on patrol, so what the fuck does he know?
“I’ll do it.” I don’t even need to look to know Caelan volunteered.
He sits perfectly still, arms crossed and dark eyes focused on Gavran.
It’s no shock that he speaks up. He works best when there are no distractions and only one person to focus on keeping safe—himself.
“Fine.” Gav nods. He lifts the whiskey glass to his mouth, but hesitates before taking a drink.
“Tomorrow night. Daxen, I want a preliminary recon of the estate beforehand. Make sure Caelan isn’t walking into a trap.
I want everything you can get on the property.
Blueprints, layout, bodies, security. Whatever you can find. ”
I incline my head. He doesn’t need to tell me how important it is that the pre-mission recon is thorough; I would never gamble with the life of my packmate.
I’ll start as soon as they all leave, sending in a drone under the cover of darkness.