Chapter Thirty-Five
Halley
The training room is quiet, lit by sterile overhead lights that hum faintly and flicker as the ancient generator struggles to power the fortress.
I toe off my boots and step onto the sparring mat, rolling my neck.
The Pack forms a loose circle around me, casual in their postures but focused in a way that I’ve come to realize is reserved only for me. Today, we’re all less tense. Less formal. Our energy is warmer as we prepare for the session.
Hands brush against me as they pass. A touch at my waist, a hand grazing the small of my back, a kiss on the backs of my fingers before they’re carefully wrapped to protect my knuckles.
It’s just as hard a workout as yesterday.
Sparring against super-soldiers still majorly sucks.
But today, they’re more playful and it’s sending me wild.
It’s as though a switch has been flicked and I couldn’t stop thinking about sex if I tried.
My fast healing means I don’t ache between my thighs, but it’s as though I can still feel the imprint of Shade’s cock inside me and the heat of Viper and Blaze’s come on my skin.
“Focus. You’re telegraphing your right-hand hook again,” Viper quips, ducking under my feint and grabbing my shirt to yank me off balance. “Getting sloppy.”
When did Viper get so cocky?
“Can you blame me?” I don’t bother to pull away. Instead, I let my gaze rake over him, slow and deliberate, to where those rut-damn tactical pants hang low on his hips. I let the corner of my mouth twitch into a smirk. “You in those damn pants? It’s distracting.”
He falters just enough.
I twist myself free and spin low, sweeping his leg, but he hops back. His hands are up again, his laugh light.
“Almost gotcha,” I call, laughing with him.
“Cut me some slack, pretty girl. Never had to fight with a hard on before you came along.”
He shoves me backwards and executes a perfect version of the leg sweep I just attempted. It’s fast, clean, and has me hitting the mat with a surprised grunt.
He doesn’t waste a second.
He’s on me before I can recover, pinning me under his immense body, my hands restrained in one of his above my head.
I pant, looking up at him breathlessly.
His pupils dilate.
“Fuck…” he groans, squeezing his eyes shut. “You make it very hard to concentrate.”
I lick my lips. There is a solid bulge pressing insistently against my stomach.
“Uh-huh,” I nod and squirm under the guise of trying to escape his hold. “Very, very hard, LT.”
“Hey! Would you two knock it off. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get back to the nest,” Shade calls from the sidelines. He doesn’t sound too put off, though. I think he likes watching me with the Pack as much as I like them watching me.
It takes just under an hour for the shimmering, ethereal headspace to arrive.
For a moment, I’m thrilled. I’m making progress.
“Now try to use the Command. Something simple to start with,” Shade coaches, and suddenly, the warmth in my chest turns brittle, and a cold wave of dread crashes down like a warning.
Something simple.
There is no such thing when it comes to my Omega Command.
My body doesn’t forget.
It remembers how quickly the Command sank its claws into me, back in Rheamont. How it blurred the edges of my mind until I couldn’t tell where I stopped and it started. How it twisted what I believed in, until my morals felt warped and rotten.
My body remembers the pain, too. The nausea, the backlash, the piercing headaches, the sting of blood dripping from my nose.
I flinch and backpedal, feet stumbling off the mat.
“I can’t,” I say, shaking my head.
“You can,” Shade replies gently. There’s no frustration in it. He’s not pushing, but it’s too late. I’m already unraveling.
That night, I curl against Shade in the nest, tucked into the curve of his body where it’s warm and still. His breathing is slow, deliberate, like he knows I need something predictable to hold on to. It keeps me from spiraling into self-doubt and loathing.
Barely.
The next day, Blaze decides I need a push.
Does he tell anyone his plan? No. Of course not. That would require something resembling impulse control, and Blaze has never been accused of that.
I’m settling onto the sparring mats, still catching my breath from warm-ups, trying to focus. Shade’s off to the side reading my latest blood test results on his tablet, Viper’s halfway through a protein bar, and Knox is away on guard duty… again.
I’m mid-sentence, about to ask what drill we’re running today.
Then Blaze lunges.
No countdown or warning. Just a flash of motion and the sound of a rabid growl ripped from his throat. At the last moment, I catch the whites of his eyes and the glint of a knife in his hand.
I scream.
My body doesn’t ask for permission. Panic surges and the Omega Command blasts out of me.
I don’t know what I say. It doesn’t matter. The effect is immediate.
Blaze’s whole body locks up, and his knees hit the ground hard.
He flicks the knife, spinning it to face him, and plunges it under his collarbone.
I scream again.
Blood wells and spills around the blade.
“No!” My voice cracks, raw and high, and choked on a sob. I shove at the Command, try to pull it back like it’s a poison I could spit out in reverse. But it’s too late. The Command has been fulfilled, and the damage has been done.
Blaze blinks, his eyes clearing like he’s just surfaced from a deep dive. He wrenches the knife out of his chest and drops it.
The room smells like my fear and Blaze’s blood.
I crawl to him, my shaking hands darting over his chest, tearing at his black compression shirt.
There is a lot of blood, and my fingers are slick with it.
Blaze wipes at the flesh with the back of his sleeve, and I blink dumbly at the already sealed wound.
It’s just a pink line of freshly healed skin.
I know he’s an Alpha. That a stab wound is nothing to him. But my heart won’t stop pounding.
Blaze looks up at me, smile crooked, like I haven’t just forced him to stab himself. “You’re bloody brilliant,” he says, already reaching for me. “Fucking knew you had it in you. You did great.”
“No.” My voice is quiet now. Small. “No, I didn’t mean to...”
The others congratulate me. Proud that I defended myself so effectively. They praise my quick reflexes and how powerful my Command is.
I don’t share their joy. I feel sick to my stomach.
I still don’t know what words I said. They didn’t come from me, I’m certain. They came from this thing inside me. My Command. I could have easily have told Viper to pull his gun and shoot Blaze in the forehead. He would have done it. The Command is too powerful. I could have killed my mate today.
Blaze spends the rest of the day being Blaze. Makes jokes, calls me Sparkles, does a handstand off a crumbling stone wall and pretends to sprain something until I kiss it better. He’s trying to make me laugh.
I don’t laugh. I can’t bring myself to feel anything but horror.
Viper sits cross-legged in front of me, calm and focused.
I’m the opposite. I’m a ball of vibrating tension. My jaw aches from clenching. My shoulders are locked up so tight it feels like I’m holding my own skeleton hostage.
I didn’t sleep last night. No matter how comfortable and cozy the nest is with my Pack, I couldn’t shake the sickly feeling in my gut.
My Command acted without my control. It barked words that could have killed Blaze.
“Stop trying to dominate it,” Viper says, voice low and steady. “The Command isn’t something outside of you that needs to be controlled. It’s part of you. You don’t force it. You guide it.”
I don’t agree.
I know Blaze would never have hurt me yesterday. Not really. Even when he was acting feral, the worst he did was give me a little scratch.
He still scares me sometimes, sure, but he wouldn’t have gone as far as stabbing me. I believe that.
So why did my Command react like he was a real threat? It didn’t hesitate. It just struck.
If the Command is supposed to be part of me, then shouldn’t it have known Blaze is my Pack mate and I wasn’t in actual danger? Shouldn’t it have chosen a cleaner solution? It could have just told him to drop the knife. That would have been enough.
But it didn’t.
It told him to stab himself.
And I don’t understand what that says about the Command.
Or about me.
“I’m not like Knox. A lieutenant doesn’t have the authority of a Prime Alpha to use Command on others, so I haven’t used it often. When I do have to use it, I come from a place of control, and calm. I try to respect the weight of that power.”
I don’t know if I’ll ever respect this toxic thing within me.
Viper spends the morning teaching me about intention.
“It’s not just the words,” he says. “It’s what lives beneath them too. You have to understand why you’re saying them completely, or they’ll twist into something else.”
I think back to my Commands in Rheamont.
There wasn’t any direction or plan. I just needed things to happen. It was broad and sweeping. I gave the Command too much scope. Too long of a leash and it took off running.
We work on thinking through a simple Command. To get Viper to drop a spoon.
We talk about why I need him to drop the spoon.
There is a lengthy discussion about whether drop is the right word to use. Is there room for misinterpretation? If I Command “let go of the spoon”, a target could still throw it at me and be obeying the Command.
“Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Never more, never less,” Viper says in a strangely philosophical way, and it makes me wonder who taught him that. It sums him up. Viper certainly never says more than necessary.
By the end of our session, I feel more confident that the voice inside me won’t so easily twist my words in the future.
“I’ve been logging your training patterns from the beginning and I thought it would be useful for you to see the trend.”