Omega's Run (18 page)

“Interesting.” I glanced up, surprised at the sound of Ava’s voice.

“Huh? What’s interesting?”

“You.”

I blinked, even more confused by the simple answer.

“You’re gonna have to vague that up a bit for me there, Darlin’. Not sure it’s obscure enough for me to latch onto your meaning.”

She threw a balled up napkin at me, something I didn’t remember grabbing but I guess she must have at some point and laughed quietly.

“I mean... I’ve always had this image of you.” I arched an eyebrow at her and she dipped her head, changing tracts pretty quickly. “Not you, specifically, but wolf-kind. We’re always taught that your people as a whole are... broken, I guess you could say. Lacking in social skills outside their own kind, lacking in normal skills that regular humans regularly use to care for themselves, such as cooking.”

She gestured to the three egg cheese omelet on her plate. “I don’t know how many times I’ve tried but I have never been able to make a proper omelet before. I always over cook it or it falls apart, I’ve never been able to figure it out.”

“So, in general you guys seem to have a lot of information about my kind that we lack, but the most basic information you have completely wrong? Is that what you’re saying?”

“More than that, I think. It’s not that the information is
wrong
. I mean ignorance isn’t an excuse but at least it’s an explanation. This isn’t about the hunters not knowing how your kind aren’t really that different from us. I think it’s more willfully lying to us about your people. Trying to make sure that we see you as nothing but animals and not as, well, as human as you are.”

I nodded. “It’s easier to put down an animal than it is to kill another person. That makes sense. It’s a kind of brainwashing, or desensitizing.”

We ate in silence for a few more minutes. By the time we finished I was feeling a lot stronger and decided that I could weather the potential storm.

“So if you don’t have a specific plan of attack from this point, I might have a suggestion,” I ventured. I tried to sound casual about it, but I think the very reason I sounded casual set off alarm bells in her tactically inclined mind because she gave me a sharp look and slowly set her hands on the table in front of her.

“And what might that be?” she asked, deceptively calm.

“We need to go to Washington and see my brother.”

She blinked, probably a bit confused. “But, your brother is dead?” It was more a question than a statement. I think I threw her off with my wording.

“Not my twin; he
is
dead,” I said, ignoring the painful stab in my chest at the words. “My
other
brother. William. The current Alpha of the Pacific Northwest Pack.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

I pursed my lips and gave a thoughtful sort of nod. “Possibly,” I admitted.

“I’m serious!” she snapped at me. “Did that silver fuck up your head or something? You’ve been banished from your pack if I remember the file correctly. That means you’re on a hit list if you go back into the state and I’m a Hunter. Do you really think we’ll get anywhere near William without getting our faces chewed off?”

“I think we’ve got better odds than I did a week ago, to be honest.”

“Why? Are you suddenly not banished anymore for some reason?”

“Nope, still an Omega,” I said, jerking a thumb to the brand on my chest. It still hurt, even months later it burned. That might have just been my imagination but it always felt like it was still burning. “Still banished from my pack.”

“Then why do you think that we won’t get killed just for setting foot in the state? On top of the fact, that doesn’t Mathias have people watching the routes in? You really think he’s not going to know that we went there?”

“Who gives a shit if he knows?” I countered. “You think he’s ready to launch a full out offensive against the entire pack? And if we get someone to send out the blast and call in the rest of the pack from out of state? It’s possible they’re being watched anyway, we might want to bring them in to be on the safe side.”

“So your pack might be ready to deal with the Hunters showing up, but you still haven’t explained to me how you intend to get to William without getting killed just for stepping foot inside the state borders. How do you plan on not getting caught?”

I couldn’t help the smug smirk that stretched my lips. “I don’t.”

She blinked and waited for a moment while I grinned at her. After several seconds passed where I didn’t say anything she finally sighed in exasperation and glared at me. “I’m not going to ask,” she growled.

“Then you’re not going to know.” I kept grinning and stood to clean up the dishes.

I’ll give her credit where and when credit is due, she lasted a lot longer than I thought she would. Almost five full minutes before she finally growled angrily and burst out, “Ok, fine!” she snapped. “What do you mean you don’t plan on not getting caught?”

“The entire goal is to get caught. If they catch me they have to take me to William to face judgement. I can’t make my case to William unless I get in front of him, and there’s no way I’m going to do that peacefully unless I’m dragged in front of him pending an execution order.”

The look on her face was priceless. Her jaw dropped open, and she just stared at me, completely shocked. “So your whole plan hinges on them pausing to talk before they execute you for violating your banishment?” she asked and I nodded.

“It’s not entirely as stupid as it sounds. They can’t actually execute me without a direct order from the Alpha.”

“And who is to say that he doesn’t give that order over the phone before you can talk to him?”

I shook my head. “Not how it works. I have to be brought before the Alpha so I can explain myself. Yes, violating banishment is a huge deal, but there is no wolf-kind that would do it without a serious reason. My reason is the information that I can bring to him about the packs vulnerability and information on the Hunters themselves.” I put the last of the dishes away after drying them and turned to face her, arms crossed over my chest. “I’m pretty sure he’ll let me live for that.”

She watched me for several long minutes, studying my face for any sign that I might be lying. Luckily I wasn’t. Not completely. So it was easy for me to keep a straight face.

Unfortunately, she didn’t buy it, even for a second. “Yeah, you’re shooting in the dark and probably going to get yourself killed, so why would I let you drag me down with you?”

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose between a thumb and forefinger. “Look, there aren’t a whole lot of other options. Your one or two contacts that
might
still be loyal to you isn’t going to get us in to kill Mathias. But a whole pack of wolf-kind attacking the facility might just give us a chance.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” she said. “I’m just saying that it won’t work and you’ll just get us both killed.”

I snorted a laugh. “That is saying that I’m wrong.” She gave me a mock surprised look and put one hand dramatically to her chest.

“Really?” she mocked me. “Why I had no idea that pointing out that you’re going to get us killed is the same as saying you’re wrong.”

“Yeah, yeah, cut it out. Look, the long and short of it is we need help and there’s no one that has more of a vested interest in helping us than my brother. And he needs to know that Mathias has his hooks in the pack. They might need to move territory over this.”

While we were talking a noise had been bugging me. Something in the distance so I hadn’t given it much thought other than the fact that it was irritating, to say the least. But as the conversation had worn on it had been getting louder and just a moment before it had cut off, suddenly.

“Are you expecting anyone?” I asked suddenly as a set of car doors opened in the distance.

Ava leaned forward in her seat, suddenly wary at my change in direction. “No,” she said. “Why do you ask?” Her voice was, once again, deceptively calm. I could practically feel her pulse quickening and her body reacting to the instinctive fight or flight response. She didn’t even know if there was anything to worry about, her standard paranoia was working overtime.

“I just heard a car stop some distance from here still and the doors opened.” I closed my eyes and tilted my head slightly, focusing on the sounds even I could just barely make out. Ava would have no way of hearing them.

“Three... maybe four people, I can’t be certain. They’re walking too close together.” I opened my eyes only to find that Ava was no longer in her chair, instead she was standing by the couch, peering through the curtains out the window. When the hell did she get up? I didn’t even hear her move and she was only a few feet away from me. Jeez the woman moved like a damned ghost.

“There shouldn’t be anyone at all coming out this direction,” she muttered. She turned her head, looking at a large black duffle bag on the far side of the room. In two strides I snatched up the handle and tossed the bag through the air in her direction. It landed heavily on the couch right next to her and she grunted a thanks, unzipping it quickly and began pulling things from the bag.

“Fuck,” she hissed a minute later and I slid up next to her, ignoring the dull throb in my leg to peek through the curtains over her head. Tubby and some chick were standing outside. I’d never caught the girls name but they had both been in the truck when they were transporting me to that damned holding facility. I really didn’t like that guy and without thinking my nostrils flared as I breathed in deeply.

It was that animal instinct that I couldn’t get away from and in that moment it might have saved our lives.

“Those two shouldn’t be here,” she muttered.

“Who’s the girl?”

“Her name’s Harper; fucking bitch.” The last was added with an impressive amount of disgust for just two simple words. Outside Harper sneered suddenly and that was all the proof I needed for the suspicion I had been forming.

“Ava, we need to get out of here,” I hissed quietly into her ear, so quietly she probably only barely heard me. “Those two aren’t human anymore.”

She turned, her head whipping around toward me so fast I thought she was going to give herself whiplash for a second there and her eyebrows shot up toward her hairline in record time.

“Say what?” she asked, slowly and deliberately.

“I’m telling you, they’re not human. They’re wolf-kind.”

Chapter 18

Ava

I didn’t know how to feel, knowing that Donnell and Harper had apparently given up their humanity. I didn’t honestly know whether I believed it, but as I assembled the assault rifle with mechanical precision, the look on Remus’ face told me it was true.

Shit.

I did
not
want to kill one of my team, let alone two, but if it were me or them, I would do what I needed to do to stay alive.
Fucking Mathias.

“What makes you say they aren’t human?” I asked, ramming the magazine home and pulling back the slide on the side of my weapon.

“Silver in there?” he asked, by way of answer.

“Works on humans or were…” I stopped myself, “Wolf-kind,” I amended.

Remus flashed a feral grin in my direction, “The way they’re moving, fuck, a lot of little things. But mostly, I can smell them. Their scent has changed and it matches up with wolf-kind. You got that ready? They know you have it. They could hear you cock it.”

“They know I have it because they’re my team. They know almost all my secrets.”

I wasn’t happy about that, the good news is, my brother taught me to be paranoid as fuck before he’d died, so even though they knew
most
of my secrets, they didn’t know
all
of them. Or the depths of paranoia that James had gone into before he’d been sent out on his suicide run.

“Almost?” he murmured.

I went nearer to Remus and said to him, “Good catch, Fido. Where they at?”

He growled low in his throat and instead of scaring me, the sound just thrilled me. I smiled in spite of myself and ditched maintaining my badassitude in front of him. Kind of hard to maintain after writhing on his dick last night and this morning.

“You going to use that, or do you just think you look pretty holding it?” he asked of the gun in my hands, I raised the stock to my shoulder and sighted down the scope out the window, choosing to ignore the jab. Harper and Donnell had gone low to the ground and were moving fast, faster than human, but I’d been trained for that. We all were. I sighted just ahead of where Harper was, gauging where she would be and pulled the trigger.

The gun went off, the explosion loud in the cabin with the smallest footprint ever and Remus clapped his hands over his ears. I breathed out and wasn’t disappointed… Harper’s head exploded in a cloud of pink vapor but Donnell had disappeared.

Shit.

Remus growled and I held very still, waiting, breath held, checking the area for movement. Finally, Remus gripped my elbow lightly and I slung my weapon over my shoulder. He placed a finger to his lips and I nodded carefully. We stepped back cautiously into the center of the room and waited, the seconds ticking by into minutes. They were waiting us out, but we had the benefit of cover and I wasn’t giving it up.

Remus and I ended up back to back. I cleared my handgun out of its holster and held it, at the ready, waiting for something – anything to aim at.

“They’re waiting us out. It’s a siege.”

“Yeah, it’s what I would do.” I murmured back.

I went to the bag and held up a flash-bang grenade and Remus’ eyes widened. I gave him an evil little smirk and he rolled his eyes. He looked uncertain, and I could see the wheels turning, the calculations being made… finally, he nodded and covered his ears with his hands. I smirked and handed him the headphones I had in the bag; the ones I used out at the firing range. He smirked and shook his head and put them on, they would afford a hell of a lot more protection than his hands.

Me, I was used to loud noises and gunfire and they wouldn’t affect me nearly as badly so I put up my gun long enough to pull the pin and get the party started; hurling the flashbang at the window – the glass crashed, Remus grabbed me and pulled my face into his chest to protect me from flying glass which was sweet but unnecessary, and I let him do it, focusing instead on having my guns out.