Chapter Fifteen
Halley
Of course it’s Viper.
He’s always been there when I needed someone to ground me. Whenever I felt like the rug was being yanked out from under my feet, he was there to catch me before I fell.
My very own emotionally repressed Alpha-shaped safety net.
I turn and jolt.
Sweet rut, he’s huge.
Why do I keep forgetting that?
It’s like my memory filed him under cuddly instead of a combat-ready killing machine.
There’s something different about him now. It’s not just the haircut which is shorter, shaved on the sides. Or the new scar, carved across his hairline, a clean, cruel slice that didn’t heal smooth.
No, the change is in the way he holds himself. As though he’s stifling a wave of something.
Acid scorches the back of my throat. When I speak, my voice scrapes low.
"What do you want, LT?"
I call him by his rank — lieutenant. Formal and cold. As if keeping things professional between us with dampen the emotional turmoil that is bubbling under the surface. We both know it’s useless. There is nothing professional about our relationship. There never has been.
Viper slides his hands into his pockets, eyes locked on me with that quiet, relentless stare that makes my skin itch and my chest tighten. I bite my lip and look away.
"You broken, Omega Sparks?" The words are rough, and they slide straight into the hollow space inside me.
Frack. His rut-damn voice.
It leaves me feeling shivery all over.
He’s taken my lead to be professional, using a military phrase. One the squad tosses around after a bad fall or a punishing hit in training. It means ‘are you okay?’ without asking anything so vulnerable.
"Not broken, LT," I mutter.
I drift farther into the cellar, fingertips brushing the curve of the barrels as I pass. The wood is cool and smooth. Solid in a way I’m not.
He follows. I feel it. That slow, silent gravity of him at my back. Always there. Always unshakable.
And oh, it’s alluring. Just being close to him makes my primal instincts sing.
"Where?" he asks simply, but I know what he means. It's nice to see that some things haven't changed. Viper is still a man of very few words.
I interpret his question. ‘Where did you go when you left us?’
“Here,” I reply. “I didn't get very far before the General caught me. Still haven't found the Omegas.” I hesitate. “You?”
"Front lines," he grunts.
I glance over my shoulder. That’s all he gives me. Just two words, but thanks to Rheamont, I know what they mean now.
Blood, fire, screaming, and violence that never stops.
I'm surprised they all came out unscathed. My eyes dart up to his healed forehead scar. Right. Not entirely unscathed.
"What did you do?"
"Whatever they told us."
His voice has gone flat like it was back in the truck.
I don’t like how it sounds on him. I miss the inflection he always adopted when speaking to me. An earnestness in each word that begged me to read further into each syllable, begging me to hear what he left unsaid. I want it back desperately.
"Is that why General Stone thinks you'll defect? 'Cause they're making you to do things you don't want to?"
He nods once.
I shift my weight. His stare hasn’t moved.
"Are you going to?" I ask. "Defect, I mean."
I doubt it.
Viper, Shade, and Blaze orbit Knox like moons around a sun. Their loyalty isn’t a question, it’s a law of nature. And Knox? He’s built from Fathim’s military code. It would take more than a miracle to unmake what shaped him.
Viper comes to a stop in front of me, so close that I can feel the heat radiating from his giant body. It's a stark contrast to the chill in the cellar.
Goosebumps rise.
I don’t move. I stay where I am, boots anchored to the stone floor, fists clenched tight.
I can feel that pull.
The bond is definitely back.
It’s more than our pheromones. More than Alpha and Omega biology, but I’ve always known that.
Something more profound binds us, and it’s clear that no matter how far we run in opposite directions, it’s not going to break.
And frack, the bond is tugging at me hard. It yearns. Craves.
Maybe they’ll let me stay close, caught in their orbit around Knox. Near, but never touching. Because whatever force is dragging us together doesn’t erase what I did.
I broke their trust. They don’t owe me comfort, and I don’t get to ask for more.
“Depends,” he answers.
"On what?"
I finally raise my eyes to meet his.
Oh.
In stark contrast to his cool tone, his gaze is fierce and possessive.
I feel it everywhere. My skin tingles and heat rushes to my core. The room shrinks, and just like that, I’m back in the hospital again, seeing my Alpha for the first time. The moment when he burst into my life and gave me permission to finally start living.
Back then I didn’t know what it meant to want someone so bad it hurts.
I know now.
Viper raises a hand to my face, slowly, like I’m a wild animal that might bolt.
I hold my breath, unable to move a muscle in anticipation, and when his thumb brushes against my cheek, my nerve endings sizzle.
"On you."
The words barely register. I inhale sharply as he runs over the cut from Blaze. The new skin stings at his touch, just a little, and I lean into it.
"Me?" I squeak and blink hard, trying to focus. “I don’t understand.”
He grunts and runs his thumb over my jaw and under my chin, anchoring it gently at my throat.
I swallow. He strokes the bobbing throat muscles as they work.
“You're my mate, pretty girl. My Omega. Always have been.”
“M— mate? No, I’m not…” I stammer, and gesture to my mating gland, unmarked beneath my leather collar. I’m no one’s mate.
Viper catches my hand and pulls it up to his lips, pressing a chaste kiss to the back of my fingers.
He shakes his head. “I don’t need to bite you to know you’re mine.”
I gape in confusion even as my eyes sting at his confession, doubt battling against the elation catches in my throat.
"You still want me?” I squeak.
He exhales, a little puff of disbelief, and gives me a look like I’ve just asked if the sky is blue.
“But I betrayed your trust, compelled you against your will. I ran away.”
He just huffs, a soft expression of exasperation tugging at the light crow’s feet beside his eyes.
“I was upset. Angry and hurt. But, Omega, hear me when I say nothing you ever do will make me stop loving you."
Love.
He said love.
"Viper..." His name is a plea on my lips as my tears spill.
Massive palms cradle my face, sweeping his thumbs to wipe my tears.
Before I can reply, he leans down and presses his mouth to mine. It’s a whisper of a kiss. So soft and careful, like he’s asking a question.
My brain blanks out. Just… static.
He pulls back slightly, his gaze sweeping over my face, eyes flicking between mine, searching. Mapping every tiny flicker of emotion as if he’s committing my reaction to memory. His thumb traces the curve of my cheek, reverent.
“The prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,” he breathes, like he doesn’t mean to say it out loud.
A little whimper slips out of me. It makes his pupils blow wide, black swallowing green.
Fingers weave through my hair, drawing me closer and tugging my head backwards. I arch for him, offering myself wordlessly.
His lips return to mine, but this time there’s nothing tentative about it.
It’s heat and hunger and months of aching restraint followed by months of yearning snapping all at once. Viper doesn’t touch me like this. Never. He’s always gentle, slow, and reverent. He’s not holding back anymore.
His tongue sweeps over mine, and I make another whimpering sound.
My inner Omega roars to life, chanting with elation: ‘Alpha, Alpha, Alpha.’
His grip tightens in my hair. The kiss turns downright filthy with our tongues entwined and lips wet. There’s nothing polished or practiced about it. He eats at me like he wants to consume me whole, as if he’s afraid I’ll turn to smoke in his hands before he’s taken his fill.
I don’t want to stop him.
It’s wild, consuming, and frack, it feels right.
So, so right, and after months of being starved for touch, I’m quivering with desire.
My perfume blooms, thick in the stale cellar air, mixing with his scent and sweeping us up in a fog of needy pheromones.
I playfully nip at his lower lip, and just like that, whatever cliff Viper had been wavering on the edge of, I shove him over the side.
With a roar, he pulls back.
He seizes my ass, hoists me up, and presses me against one of the sturdy oak barrels.
I wrap my legs around his waist and yelp into his mouth. His hard length is pressing against my aching, heated core.
We've been here before, on the precipice of indulging in our basest desires, but this time, I don't want to hold back.
This time, I’ll give him everything he asks for. My heart, my soul, my body.
My body.
My broken, defective body.
Rational thought breaks through my delirium.
I break our frantic kiss, breathless, pushing at his chest until he reluctantly drags himself away. His lips are swollen, kiss-bruised, and dazed with want.
“If we do this…” I start, but he doesn’t stop touching.
His hands squeeze my ass, greedily playing with my plush flesh, his fingers dangerously close to brushing my already aching apex.
"Viper, you need — oh, rut-damn…”
Denied access to my mouth, he diverts his attention to my throat. He nips and licks and sucks at the space beneath my jaw and above my bite collar. My eyes cross. The skin there is hypersensitive. So very close to my mating gland. Only a scrap a leather between us and a claiming bite.
I can’t let that happen. I won’t do that to him.
“We can’t. You can’t — I told you all,” I gasp, trying to remember how to speak.
“I’m defective!” I finally holler, “If we do this you’ll want to claim me, and once you do, you’ll be stuck. With me. Forever.”
He doesn’t answer. Just rips the gusset of my pants with one brutal motion. The fabric digs into my thighs as it tears, but I don’t register the pain in the wake of my wave of arousal.
“Oh frack, Viper!”
It bursts out of me, more praise than protest.