Chapter 13 #2
I flex my fist. “You got any more alphas on hand. They need someone. Got a divergence in progress, and you know what shit goes down when that happens. Walls will be painted with blood and guts.” There better fucking not be a drop of blood on my woman or I’m going full psycho.
“I’m going. Unless you want to explain why you ignored an urgent request for backup… ”
“They don’t pay me enough for this shit,” the dipshit on the right says. “Let him the fuck through.”
The left-hand one palms the plate. The door pops open.
I step through, then pause and look back. “Which way?”
“Woah, man?! They must have really scraped your brains out.”
I glare.
He gives me directions.
I take off at a run.
I crash through the door of prisoner holding room 15C. There’s an outer area where the guards are stationed, and a bunch of dynamics behind real metal bars.
Her scent hits me before the door finishes closing on me.
But that’s not the most pressing issue.
There’s a battle taking place. An alpha, young and fresh-faced, although his expression is currently a mask of rage, has got his fists wrapped around one guard’s throat, while the other is zapping him with an immobilizer rod from behind.
I shove the one using the rod out of the way and lunge for the alpha. Unfortunately, the damn immobilizer is still going, and I get myself a maximum calibration jolt.
I grit my teeth and wrap my arm around the crazed alpha’s throat, getting him in a lock, which is not fucking easy when my body is jerking and thrashing under relentless zaps of electricity.
“Turn the fucking immobilizer off, asshole!” I roar.
“Shit! Fuck! Sorry!”
The current finally cuts. The snarling alpha releases the guard he was trying to strangle, and we tumble backward with his heavy ass landing square on me.
I twist, roll, taking him under me, driving my fists into his ribs fast and hard to take some of the rage out of him.
“Give me the fucking restraints!” I shout, wrenching one of the alpha’s arms behind his back while he snarls and thrashes. “Damnit! Hold him!”
One of them drops his weight onto the legs thrashing behind me. I smack the alpha’s head into the ground, once, twice. Enough to daze him and give me the opening to grab his other wrist.
The restraints land on the floor next to me. I snap them into place and stagger to my feet before dragging the asshole up with me.
My nose is bloody. One guard’s neck is turning a nice shade of purple and already swelling. The other is leaking blood from the tussle.
The alpha is still straining against my hold, roaring like a maniac. I shove him into the wall, and I’m not gentle about it.
“Where the fuck was the rest of the backup?” I bark.
“You’re it,” says the guard holding his throat. “No one wants to deal with an alpha when he’s diverging. Thanks, Jord. We owe you one. Hey, I heard you went through rehabilitation?”
“Yeah,” I mutter gruffly.
The crazed alpha jerks. I smack his head into the wall a couple of times to calm him the fuck down.
With the situation under control, let my gaze slide toward the back of the huddled dynamics in the pen.
And there she is, Esme, with her terrified eyes locked on me.
Her scent lingers in the air, all mixed up with that of the other omegas… only something is off. My gut tightens and my cock stiffens.
Heat scent? Faint but definitely present.
Not heat, manipulation.
My eyes narrow on her. And I see panic enter her eyes before she quickly averts them…
This alpha didn’t just turn rabid. My mind scrambles over her resume that I skimmed through before she distracted my ass back during transit. She’s spent some time with Doctor Tsing. It was classified as experimental. I didn’t have time to look into it and might not have had clearance either way.
Bad girl.
“The one at the back,” I say, keeping my voice low and jerking my chin. “Back right. Huddled in the corner.”
I drag my gaze from her and force the predator in me down. “Put her in a nesting room for me.”
“Yes, sir,” they say in unison.
The alpha snarls and earns himself and another a smack into the wall. Then I haul him toward the door, open it, and come to a stop. “Where do we hold diverging alphas?”
They both look at me blankly.
I tap the side of my head. “The rehabilitation,” I mutter. “They dug deep. Probably took a few things I needed.”
“I’ll show you, sir,” the purple-necked guard wheezes.
I pause to pin my naughty little prey with a look that her shiver tells me she senses. She’s probably fucking terrified.
Good. If she’s really done what I suspect she’s done, she’s earned herself one hell of a punishment. And this on top of the one she already earned for leaving the healer’s tent in the first place.
I’m so far off-script and off the mission directive, it’s not even funny.
But I want her, not just in the moment, not even because I’m supposed to be her controller. This goes deeper than my role and even my clone. This goes all the way to the very essence of me, the zeta, the outlier that has always sat apart from the rest of the dynamic world.
One who thought he would never experience connection—mind, body, and spirit—and who certainly never envisioned something so primitive as claiming a mate.
Does that make me selfish to want it with her? I’m not a true alpha, and I never will be.
The part of me I didn’t know existed, that’s been chained up all my life, prowls beneath the surface.
Too bad she caught my attention, and his.
Now there is no going back, no stopping this.
I’m going to break rules and the laws of nature, and I don’t even give a fuck.
Can’t let her loose now. Who knows what mischief she could get up to using her fledgling tricks on unsuspecting alphas.
God help the Empire if she ever has the opportunity to develop them fully.
Esme, sweet healer with a deviant side, is about to find herself mated and bound to life with the only dynamic who has a hope of beating her at her own game.
Then I’m gone, hustling the alpha whose mind she just broke, into a cell.