Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Rhett
The room is dark; the only light source is the bank of monitors directly opposite me.
Information. Systems. I’m hacking in through the backdoor of a local hotel chain’s network so I can dig up some dirt.
A nobody politician is campaigning to get Lucian’s fight club shut down.
On some noble crusade to remove what he calls the scourge from our great city.
Lucian fucking loves that fight club. It was one of his first acquisitions when he quit the military and returned to civilian life. A special sentimental attachment and all that.
No one fucks with my brother. Not on my watch.
I already have suspicions that Councilman Stevens is going to be dirty.
When they preach family values and talk about cleaning up things that no one is actually wanting to clean up, you just know they are overcompensating for their own failings.
Councilman Stevens is a man with aspirations above his mental paygrade.
And delusional if he thinks he can play hardball with Lucian.
All I need is some leverage to shut the fuckwit down.
Ah, this looks promising. A hotel booking. Business, but in a location that he could easily commute home to his pretty beta wife and family. Mrs. Stevens is not with him…
I dive deeper, searching for security footage. It’s basic hacking, and not even a challenge.
When I’m inside this room, I’m a god with a keyboard. Outside it, I’m a mess of broken instincts. Two entities in one body. One is the cocky hacker who knows he’s fucking good, the other’s a loser who can’t even step outdoors.
Jackpot.
I’m distracted from my pity party as the security footage from the hotel pops up on the nearest screen. Well, well, looks like Councilman Stevens has been a naughty boy.
“Your constituents will not be impressed with that, will they?”
I chuckle as I download the files. Photos. Time-stamps. Him at the door with a woman draped over him, her hand on his chest… another with her hand over his crotch. Cozy. Mrs. Stevens will get a kick out of that and, if she has any sense, a generous divorce settlement.
The media outlets will lap that shit up.
His voters will be all over this juicy gossip.
The printer hums, spitting out the last page.
I slip them into a manila folder and drop it into the chute that delivers it straight to Lucian’s office.
My brother will probably ask Jordan and Kade, his delta enforcers, to deliver it personally during Councilman Stevens’ charity function later this week.
Maximum drama. Maximum impact.
I send Lucian a quick message to say it’s on its way.
Ping. An alert sounds.
My head snaps back toward the monitors. My brows pull together. I have alerts on all kinds of things. Another alert pings. This one is on the empire comm division.
I drop back into my seat and drag the keyboard closer.
Black market shipments under fake clearance codes… Just a cover… Military, codename: Reaper. That raises a brow. Special operative Ethan Black. I wonder what he’s up to. I make a mental note to let my brother know. Ethan and Lucian go way back and went through military training together.
Black was born on Lyus like Lucian and me and, like us, turned to an alpha when the forced conscriptions came through. His current location gets a second raised brow. Deep in Uncorrupted territory.
I scrub the record. That shit is classified at the highest level… Also, isn’t his mate pregnant? Must be something important for him to leave her long enough to get all the way over there.
Something to keep an eye on.
It’s the early hours of the morning. I rub my eyes and push back from the desk. I’m not tied to any schedule, so this is not unusual.
My communicator dings and I turn it over to find a short video from two underwear models I know. It shows them living it up in Lucian’s club, with the caption: ‘Do you want to party?’
Do I?
Without responding, I stand and shove the communicator into my pocket. Then, after a few seconds, I take it out again, and shoot them a text before slipping it back and heading for my private elevator.
I spend a lot of time watching humanity and very little interacting. But sometimes I make exceptions. Sometimes I need to forget what I lost and just be in the moment.
Sex: gratuitous, no strings; an opportunity to escape my dark thoughts, and to feel good.
Release.
It’s better than some of the alternatives.
The elevator arrives and I step inside.
Larissa
We’re closing in on Pilgrim Point and will be docking within the hour.
The general has been unyielding with Jenda, refusing to let her test me, despite her numerous appeals. There is a power struggle happening between them, and I’m the omega toy they’re fighting over, each of them doubling down, determined to come out on top.
Which is worse? Jenda and her sick experiments, or Cohen using me to help the Uncorrupted win?
God. I can’t keep doing this. I’m alive on the outside, but inside, I’m already fading.
“I warned the general that you needed to be given to an alpha,” Jenda says as she studies me with her cold eyes during the regular appointment where she reviews my data.
“Your latest lab results suggest your heat is imminent. They are coming too close together, lasting longer, becoming more severe.”
Her words bring a sense of doom. They are also true.
Only, there’s no way I could stop myself from connecting with an alpha’s mind during the frenzy of heat. Bad enough when I’m forced to crawl through their minds under instruction while I’m in command of my own emotions and wits.
What would touching their minds during heat do to me?
There’s no way of knowing. But I have a terrible fear it might turn me into something dark… that I might finally lose the last of my humanity.
“Why the fool believes you might lose your gift is beyond me. We have a substantial body of knowledge that has accumulated over the years. No omega has ever lost a gift from rutting, no matter how rough an alpha might be during the coupling.”
Her words come with clinical detachment as she wastes no time putting her thoughts into action. Her lips tighten as she collates the accompanying data. As is the way within the ranks of the Uncorrupted, any opportunity to scheme and to further one’s own ambition is embraced like a potent drug.
She’s been pissed that Cohen won’t give her leave to experiment on me.
While she respects and envies Cohen’s achievements, she takes smug satisfaction in him not being an alpha when she is.
I watch triumph surge through her as she seizes this opportunity to leverage her position as head of their viral program in order to screw the general over.
“It’s done,” she says. “I’ve recommended you be bonded, given your age and the lack of prior attention from an alpha.
Otherwise, should Cohen be allowed to closet you much longer you might suffer irreversible damage.
” She indicates her console. “I’ve said as much in my report.
I’m confident the dynamic board will accept my recommendation. Dismissed.”
I flee her room, reeling.
For ten years, I have lived in a bubble, escaping the cruelty most omegas endure. Never given to an alpha. Never rutted.
As unbearable as my years with the Uncorrupted have been, it appears a new, more terrifying time is about to begin.
Rhett
My apartment takes up an entire floor of the soaring residential and leisure tower complex owned by my brother. It’s both spacious and dark, even during the day, courtesy of the floor to ceiling windows that all carry a heavy tint. Even so, I prefer the night sky. It never feels as threatening.
Beyond the window are flashing shuttle lights, billboards, and the tiny dots of apartment windows where people are still awake. Despite it being the early hours of the morning, I can still see snakes of ground vehicles.
Billions of people down there moving under the sky.
Unlike me.
I wish there was a reset switch for the human brain. A system reboot. You know, the whole turn-it-off-and-on-again thing that even with all the technological advances techs still go to when a system has a glitch.
The elevator doors open—I dropped a message to the club security on the way up to let the women through—and they emerge in a cloud of perfume and giggles.
“Rhett,” Lacy says, throwing her arms around my neck and kissing me. Her hand trails down my chest and snags my belt.
Her friend Etta slips her arm around my other side. “We’ve missed you,” she purrs.
Escape awaits me with them. They know the deal. They come over when I choose, and when we’re done, they leave.
Clothes begin dropping to the floor as we make a haphazard path for the couch, lips locked and hands busy.
I’m twenty-five. Most alphas my age would be in the military. Serving the greater good. I tell myself that my life is meaningful. That I serve a different cause—my own—and that that’s the way I like it.
A partial lie.
Lacy wraps her lips around my cock. I don’t recall when I sat down, nor when she dropped to her knees. But I have a handful of Etta’s generous tit and her tongue in my mouth so I could be excused for being distracted.
The sweet suction on my dick, the heat of her mouth—it should be enough. Lacy is really good at giving head, they both are. And, well, I’m an alpha, so it goes without saying that I can keep going when a beta man might need a break. They always leave satisfied.
But do I?
Why the fuck am I questioning this now when a hot woman is sucking my dick while her companion rides my fingers?
Because they’re betas. And, deep down every alpha, at least the unmated ones, thinks about what it might be like to experience an omega’s touch.
Their scent is different. Their bodies are different.
Betas don’t get slick. They can take a knot, if you train them.
Maybe these two could. There are drugs you can take to get your knot up even without mating or having an omega in heat.
I’ve never tried, even though my brother is the kind of man who can acquire anything.
Never wanted to.
Now I wonder why.
A faint, impossible tendril of something forbidden curls around the edge of my awareness. Not their perfume, not alcohol or sweat. Something soft, rich: phantom omega pheromones…
My body responds, a climax bearing down on me… Maybe they’re messing with me? You can buy the chemical substitutes for a price.
Yeah, I’ve never been interested in that either.
It’s gone in a heartbeat, but my body is still coiled and detonation is inevitable. I almost want to shove them off me so I can chase it.
Just my fucked-up brain inventing what I want and can’t have.
Bitterness calls even as my chest heaves and I pump my seed down Lacy’s throat.
Etta is coming all over my fingers, but I really couldn’t give a fuck.
Neither woman wants me beyond the fact I’m wealthy and an alpha.
Something to brag about to their friends.
But no one wants anything more than a quick sexual fix with a broken man of any dynamic caste.
My chest heaves, skin damp with sweat. The women climb over me, taking turns to kiss me before they turn their attention to each other right there in my lap.
It’s hot.
At least it should be.
My dick is still hard so there is that.
We take it to my bedroom. It’s good. But it’s not enough.
Not what I want.
Not what I need.
But it’s all I deserve.
Larissa
We dock. The rush of arrival takes priority over Jenda’s games.
The following two days pass in a blur. They have several Empire alpha prisoners, and I’m forced to sit through their interrogations where I extract their secrets from behind a privacy screen.
Close enough to sense their thoughts, but not close enough to scent them.
But I’m a wreck. Teetering on the brink of a breakdown. The constant pressure, the fear of the unknown, of what is next, of not being able to keep doing this—whatever fucked up reality this is—has me in a stranglehold.