Chapter 6
Kincaid reentered Jen’s condo about fifteen minutes later, having gathered a few groceries from his own home on the fifth floor, the bag full of them dangling from unconcerned fingertips as he glanced up and down the hall before shutting the door.
There was no explaining the sensation that crept across the back of his skull, warning him that danger was approaching him. He turned just fast enough to open his chest to what would have otherwise been a back stab.
She wasn’t very strong at that moment, and his muscles, ribs, and sternum had been pretty impressive even before his transformation into a Morphate.
That was why the knife never made it past the first two inches.
It certainly wasn’t for lack of fury or determination on her part.
Instinct had him dropping the groceries and grabbing her by the throat, kicking her feet out from under her and following her all the way down to the floor as her back hit the tile.
It also made him snarl viciously into her face as he reached to pull the knife out of his chest. Blood struck her face, splattering over her cheek, nose, and forehead.
She cried out, the sound a combination of frustration, fury, and pain.
“Fuck you, you son of a bitch!”
She kicked at him, tried to rake his face with her nails, anything she could possibly manage as he threw the knife away hard, sending it four inches deep into the drywall across the room.
His reaction had no human component to it.
He flipped her over, pushing her facedown into the floor, a deadly snap of fangs at her ear as he covered her body with his own.
There was nothing human to the instant erection he felt shudder through his body, the incredible wave of arousal that was so powerful it made him weak in the knees.
That was the reaction of an Alpha Morphate male getting bitch-slapped by his mate, just as a Morphate female would do to get his attention and force him to recognize he was supposed to be taking better care of her.
What was human was the part of him that kept him from fucking her to within an inch of her mortality, as an Alpha male might normally do to his female.
But she was not Morphate, he forced himself to remember.
She was fragile by any definition in his world, and even more so right now because of what he had put her through earlier.
As he used a bloodied hand to pull her head back by her hair, he felt how limp she was. How quickly her strength was fading.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouted into her face, trying to blow off the kinetic fury of energy and craving clawing through him.
“Are you trying to get me to kill you?” Because he knew she wasn’t trying to kill him.
He knew she was well aware of how impossible that was.
But perhaps that was the point. Perhaps she really was trying to get his attention, to smack him around and force him to pay closer attention.
“You’re a pig,” she said through her teeth. “A lying, spying, untrustworthy, voyeuristic swine!”
Ah, hell. She really was too smart for her own good. He now knew exactly what had changed between the moment he had left and the moment he had returned.
He rolled her over onto her back between the brace of his thighs, sitting back on his heels as they both panted hard.
She glared at him angrily as she swiped at the blood on her face.
He had already stopped bleeding, but there was still a long ribbon of red down his chest and belly.
The stab wound was just to the left of his right nipple.
But that wasn’t his main concern at the moment.
He knew that it would heal rapidly and was of no consequence.
“It’s not just you,” he tried to explain to her. “All of the apartments … hell, every inch of this building is covered by cameras.”
“Well, clearly not for protection or I wouldn’t have claw marks down my back!”
He winced at that. He didn’t like the reaction. He didn’t like the feeling that he had failed her.
“I had to protect my project! I had to keep an eye out. Watch for suspicious activity. I need to keep this project from turning into another Phoenix Project!”
“It became another Phoenix Project the minute you chose to rob people of their basic human rights like privacy!”
“Not people, scientists,” he sneered at her. “Untrustworthy, scum-of-the-earth scientists whom I am forced to work with in order to understand myself!”
Her eyes went wide with disbelief as he flung the vicious insult right into her face. He realized his blunder a second after she reacted to it.
“Wait …”
“Get off of me and get out of my house! Get off!” She shoved at him with hard hands, proving herself to be much stronger than he had imagined her to be.
“You can’t take care of yourself,” he argued even as he did so, letting her struggle up into an upright position. “Look at you! You can barely move.”
“I’d rather drop dead naked in the middle of this floor than take one ounce of help from someone like you!
I spent seven years putting distance between myself and Eric Paulson only to end up right back where I started!
You have all your human subjects under watch, noting their every behavioral shift.
What’s next? Are you going to start putting drugs in our food supply? ”
“I’m not Eric Paulson!” he shouted at her with ferocity.
“No, you’re worse. You know what it’s like to be one of those dehumanized subjects, and yet here you are, willing to do it to someone else. You disgust me. Get out.”
“Don’t you get it?” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know who to trust!
I trusted my brother to lead me out of that lab and into this City, but since then …
I have nothing. Nowhere to put my faith.
Nick has his own life. His own family. His own City.
I can’t let him worry about me. I’m the older brother and he doesn’t need to be worrying about me.
“Everyone else in this place is subordinate to me because of some biological imperative, but that same biological imperative will tell them to take me out if I show an ounce of weakness, Jenesis. I feel like they are plotting it every damn second. I’m seething with paranoia because every time I think things are settling down, someone else wants to challenge me for Alpha.
So what am I supposed to do? I don’t know where to turn, who to trust…
. All I want is two seconds of goddamn stability, and I can’t even get that! ”
Jenesis looked at him and for the first time saw the terrible vulnerability that was just beneath the surface of all his bravado. It went beyond his struggle with himself and his anger over the hand he had been dealt. He was truly alone.
Worse. He was lonely. There was a difference.
“Who is your Beta?” she asked softly. “In a social group there’s an Alpha, a Beta, a Delta, and an Omega. The Omega is the group’s weakest member, but the Beta should be your second hand. Your lieutenant. Devona…?”
“She’s Nick’s Beta. Actually, I guess you’d call her Amara’s Beta. Amara and Nick just lent her out to me for the project because she has one of those egghead degrees that I need. I … I don’t have a Beta.”
“You mean you don’t trust anyone enough to choose one, because the Beta tends to be the second strongest in the group and the most likely to succeed the Alpha.
You’re afraid choosing a Beta will give that Beta delusions of grandeur.
There is that chance, yes, Kin, but if you choose right, your Beta will be a source of relief for you.
The protection and trust you are looking for. ”
Kincaid didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t know how to explain what it felt like to be in his position.
The responsibility for an entire City’s well-being, the dependents looking to him for food, shelter, and the medical evolutions they needed to stabilize their futures.
On top of all of that, he had to cope with humans who didn’t trust Morphates at all and a maniacal scientist who apparently wanted to regain control over his former test groups.
Paulson’s threats to Jenesis earlier told him that.
He could easily imagine where Paulson’s endgame was headed.
Jenesis could see the expressions warring over Kin’s face, anger, doubt, and mistrust. It reminded her just how difficult his life had been these past seven years.
As hard as it had been for her, at least she hadn’t had to struggle with a volatile stranger inside of her the whole time.
At least she hadn’t been forced to adapt to rules of a new social order that she didn’t understand.
Or at least he didn’t think he understood them.
With a sigh, she sat to face him, crossing her legs and relaxing.
“It’s like when you were a cop. You need others you depend on to have your back, Kincaid.
Do they want your job? Sure they do. There’s nothing wrong with ambition.
But you have to find the ones who you know won’t try to go through you to get that job.
They’ll wait until you retire out of it naturally or until you stop being effective in the role.
Is that added pressure? I don’t think so.
No more than there will always be. No more than there was when you were just a cop in charge. ”
“Except this time if I screw up, a whole City suffers.”
“And cities didn’t suffer if you screwed up before? Of course, they did. Don’t make this harder on yourself than it needs to be.”
And it was at that moment that Kincaid finally realized why his Morphate self had chosen her as the perfect mate.
Because she was.