Chapter Eleven
Blaze
She smells the same.
Lavender and lightning. Sweet and sharp and dangerous. It hits me like a punch to the throat and suddenly I can breathe for the first time in months.
She’s filthy from the battlefield. Still coated in blood — part Knox’s, part hers. Still real. Not polished or fake or a hazy hallucination where her face melts and her voice comes out like static.
Nope. This one has warm skin and a pulse. I checked. Twice.
I follow her. Quiet as a ghost and fast as a shadow. This fortress is made for someone like me. So many hallways and alcoves. Plenty of places to disappear from sight.
The soldiers escorting us don’t even realize I’ve vanished. My brothers are lost in their heads. When they discover I’m gone, it’ll be too late to find me.
The Beta male, Jason, she called him, steers her with a reassuring hand on her upper back. The way he touches her sets my teeth on edge. She’s not his Omega.
The female Beta doctor, Everlyn, checks her thigh wound. It’s pretty, shiny, and pink. New flesh stitched together again. I wonder if it’ll scar. I hope it does.
“And you say this happened a few hours ago?” she asks my Omega, a brow raised.
“Yeah. Think my Omega magic kicked back in.”
“Does it have something to do with the murder brigade you showed up with?” Jason quips.
She purses her lips, but responds anyway. “Probably.”
“Murder Brigade?” Everlyn exclaims, pausing in her thorough examination.
“They…” Halley swallows and scrubs her red-stained hands over her face. “Scorch Squad was there. They rescued me.”
“Well shit. How did that happen?”
“I dunno. One minute I was alone, the next they were there saving me.”
“And how do you feel about it?”
“Like the sky is falling…” Halley mumbles, her words slurring.
The doctor frowns. “You can tell us all about it later, honey. You’ve lost a lot of blood and are still in shock. Here, take these with water and lay down on the couch in my office. I’ll keep an eye on you.”
She passes Halley a paper cup filled with pills of varying shapes and colors.
Jason steers her into a side room and lowers her onto an old couch.
I drift in behind them like a wraith.
She doesn’t know I’m here. Or maybe she does. Maybe she wants me to follow. After all, she knows how to hide and slip away unnoticed because I taught her.
Halley is trembling and pale.
“Steamin’ rut-damn, Sparks. What did they do to you out there?” the Beta utters to himself as he uses a damp cloth to wipe the grime of war from her face, softly assuring her she’s safe.
He shouldn't do that. Makes me want to shank him with a rusty screwdriver.
He pulls her filthy boots off, tossing them into the corner close to my hiding place. Still, he doesn’t see me. Stupid Beta.
Knox spilled blood on my boots. At first it made them shine a bright, pretty red. Now it’s congealed, crusted, and makes my brain itch.
At least our boots have matching blood splatter. Cute.
Jason helps her lean back onto the couch. She swallows a handful of pills, and her whimpering slows along with her breath. An old blanket, thick but fraying in places, is draped over her shivering body.
“Wait. Everlyn needs to check on Knox.”
“The big Alpha bleeding all over the place?”
She nods, her eyes fluttering with the effort to stay open. “Yeah. He’s… he’ll pretend that he’s fine. But she’s gotta make sure he’s not gonna bleed out. He saved me.”
And then she’s out cold.
Jason sighs deeply and leaves, shutting the door and unknowingly leaving his charge alone with a predator.
My mouth waters traitorously. My teeth feel too big. My jaw aches to bite, bite, bite. To puncture and scrape my imprint into her flesh. Let’s see her leave me then.
I slink from the shadows with silent steps that don’t make a sound on the cold stone floor, and crouch down beside the Omega I’ve spent months obsessing over.
I used to think she was home, a place long lost to me, ‘til she ripped it away.
It was a stupid thing to do, trusting an outsider so easily. So fucking stupid.
Sergeant Blaze of the Fathim Military, specialist in demolition and infiltration. That guy doesn’t get to dream of a home and he certainly doesn’t get an Omega for a mate.
Fuck. Her.
Fuck her and her delicious fucking scent, and her pretty fucking wavy brown hair.
And fuck those big purple eyes that looked at me in the truck with sadness.
She should keep that pity for herself.
I used to think my one true love was infiltration. Sure, making things burn is fun, and I enjoy playing games with rope, but sinking into the depths of shadows, untethering myself from the world and becoming a phantom. Now that is almost orgasmic.
She stole that haven from me when she showed me the light.
She showed me what it could be like if I had someone to love and protect and cherish. Someone to live for.
Now the dark doesn’t feel safe. It doesn’t feel good. It rips and tears at my soul.
She took that from me.
Halley Sparks.
Omega Specialist Sparks.
My mate.
No.
No, no, no.
No!
She's not my mate, not my Omega, 'cause an Omega doesn’t hurt her Alpha. Not the way she hurt me and my brothers.
From the very second she joined our squad in that training camp, it was game over. A new reality started. A branch splintered off and the old way of living suffocated and died. A bright new dawn, flooding the dark maw of my previous life with her magnificent light.
Hope. Fuck. She had me feeling hope.
I’ve never been one for denying myself pleasure. I usually see something I want and take it.
But I kept my hands to myself… for her. She needed time to discover what took me a second to know.
She would make us a Pack. A family.
For weeks, I watched her push through her fears and rise to the occasion again and again. I watched over her while she slept, gritting my teeth so hard they almost cracked when she’d toss and turn in her unsatisfactory nest.
If she allowed it, I would’ve been her nest. She could've dug a hole in my chest and curled up inside.
I don’t want that anymore.
No.
Now, I want to carve a hole in her belly and search deep. Somewhere in that little, treacherous body is the true reason she left me.
She told us we wouldn’t want her because she’s ‘defective’.
Infertile.
It makes no sense. Why the fuck would I care?
I crouch down beside her, barely displacing the air with my silky movement, and inspect the sleeping creature.
Is this what a defective Omega looks like? All soft skin and long lashes resting on her cheeks?
She told us we wouldn’t want her because of it.
But it changed nothing for me. Not the way I feel. Or how I burn for her to be mine. I don’t give a shit if she can’t have pups. I ain’t father material.
Yet, it seemed like a big thing to her.
… Maybe it was just an excuse.
A lie.
Just a way to justify leaving us.
Where is this defect? I need to verify it.
This is what I'm trained for. Infiltrate. Verify. Extract. No trace.
I could slit her throat so easily, just like dozens before her. They usually don’t scream. They can’t when I cut deep enough.
My Alpha claws at me from the inside, bloody and furious. Protesting the thought. Roaring against it.
She’s not for killing!
Halley is still sleeping without a care in the world. She thought she could survive without us, but look at her, she can’t even keep herself safe while she sleeps.
Useless. Vulnerable. Soft… and so fucking pretty.
I tilt my head left to right, looking for any hint she was telling the truth, that it's some hideous thing that will make me want her less. Because damn, if there’s a magic bullet to stop this endless yearning, I’ll take it.
I can't see it.
Where is this defect?
Nothing.
Only rut-damn perfection.
She’s a liar.
With steady hands, I pluck the blanket from her body.
She doesn't stir.
The pills the doctor gave her have knocked her into a deep, unguarded sleep. She won’t wake. Not if I’m careful.
That’s why I let myself touch her. Not because I want to, or because my fingers ache just being near her.
It’s not that.
This is a mission. A job. This is about answers. About verifying the defect she swore made her unworthy. Made her believe we didn’t want her. It is definitely not some pathetic excuse to touch what I lost.
I lift the hem of her shirt, exposing her creamy, soft underbelly.
A distant voice chirps, tugging at my brain and making it itchy. It tells me that I shouldn’t be touching her without her permission. It’s perverse. Wrong. Invasive.
I dismissed the voice as easily as a dog shakes off water.
She mumbles something in her dreams, but again, stays still.
I press my ear against her belly and listen.
I listen and listen and listen, my heart pulsing in time with the whooshing sound of blood pumping through her veins.
There is nothing out of the ordinary.
How does one find infertility? My eyes drift to her pussy.
I lower my nose, just slightly, so it’s hovering above her mound, and inhale deeply. I bite my lower lip to stop a moan from exploding from me.
Rut-fucking-damn, her cunt smells even better than I remember.
The scent of her perfume is imprinted on my brain, but it’s different straight from the source. I feel like an addict getting a fix.
I suck in breath after breath. Sweet and musky. A slight acidic tinge, and pure Halley.
Fuck.
Fucking fuck.
Blood fills my mouth as my teeth pierce my lip. The copper tang barely cuts through the scent of her cunt.
If she was injured or broken inside, I’d be able to smell it. Right? Decay or rot or wrongness. But there is nothing. She smells delicious.
Nothing is wrong with her.
Not a damn thing.
I pant in frustration, shuffling away from the sleeping Omega.
Liar.
She fucking lied.
Why not just say it? Say she didn't want us? Didn't want me.
My fingers are twitching. My jaw is clenching.
I don't give a shit about creating spawn. I couldn't care less that we can't breed our Omega, but the fact that she made it up enrages me. If she didn't want to be with us, she didn't need to make up excuses.
She's perfect.
A perfect, rut-damn, lying Omega.
Even now, knowing she left on a lie, I still want her. Still need her.
I’m not feral because Halley left, but because she’s the only one who ever gave me a reason not to be.
I want her light.
I need it back.
I'm stuck in the dark and it's eating me alive.