by D. J. Heart
“Having some trouble?” Mick asked, looking out over the crowd of people. The workers seemed agitated, but they were just standing around waiting.
“I think we’ve got a handle on it now. We’re splitting them up into groups and taking them back to their barracks,” their commander answered.
As Chad watched, three of the Tank Security guards moved into the crowd and started separating them into smaller groups. The process was quick and efficient, though the sight of the much larger alphas shouting at and bullying the betas to do as they were told didn’t appeal to Chad’s sense of fairness.
“We’ve got barracks five here,” one of the guards shouted over at them, herding a group of eight betas away from the rest of the crowd.
“You got this?” their commander asked, nodding toward the angry betas.
“We got it,” Mick said. “Come along, Chad.”
Chad followed Mick, and he was a bit surprised when Mick raised his gun and pointed it at the betas.
“Move!” Mick shouted, making the betas wince. Mick turned to Chad with a grin. “You’ve got to let them know who’s boss.”
Chad didn’t feel particularly great as he marched the workers back to their barracks at gunpoint, but they got them back inside without problems.
With the betas escorted back to their barracks, Mick radioed back for further instructions, but was told he and Chad could head on home.
“Fucking finally. I’ve got sand crawling up my ass,” Mick said, clapping Chad on the back and starting the walk back to their jeep.
Chad walked with him, eager to get back in the shower and into some fresh clothes.
***
Chapter 29
The next two weeks passed without incident, but then it all went to hell. Chad was out on patrol near the north side of the oil field, driving along the inside of the tall barbed wire fence, when he spotted a young beta trying to scale it.
It was obviously one of the workers from the camp, his jumpsuit dirty and his hands wrapped in thick cloths, and he couldn’t be older than twenty. Chad was supposed to shoot when someone tried to cross the fence, but that was for people breaking their way in.
“Hey, you!” Chad called out, climbing out of his jeep and walking up to the fence. The beta only climbed faster. Chad called out again, “Get down here!”
The beta didn’t listen, and he was just a few feet away from the rows of barbed wire lining the top of the fence. If he tried to cross those, the cloths wrapped around his hands weren’t going to do a thing to protect him.
“Hey!” Chad called again, preparing to go up after him. The beta slipped, but he only dropped a few feet before he found his grip and started climbing again. His movements were clumsy and jerky, and his nerves were making his climb extremely inefficient.
But he was making steady progress.
Chad radioed his commander.
“Sir, I’ve got a worker trying to climb over the fence up near sector ten. He’s not obeying my orders to come down. Please advise. Over,” Chad said. There was a brief pause, and then his commander scoffed.
“Shoot him down, Brand. Those are standing orders. Over.”
Chad pushed down the button on his radio, exasperated. “Sir, it’s a worker. He’s trying to leave, not break in. Over.”
“Were you dropped on the fucking head as a baby, Brand? Shoot. Him. Down. Over.”
Chad stared at his radio and then up at the beta, now trying to get over the barbed wire, with disbelief. He wasn’t firing at an unarmed beta. Were they crazy?
Chucking off his vest and putting his gun down on the ground, Chad jumped up on the fence and started climbing. Unlike the beta, Chad made the climb in a matter of seconds.
“Hold on, you’re going to get hurt if you try to go over that,” Chad called up to the young man just a few feet above him. The beta caught sight of him for the first time, his eyes going wide with panic. He scrambled over the rolled-up barbed wire, Chad calling out to stop him, cutting himself up but managing to get to the other side.
He climbed down much faster than he’d gone up, falling the final few feet, landing on the ground with a pained exclamation. He took off in the opposite direction, running like his life depended on it.
Dropping down to the ground, Chad put his vest back on and picked up his gun. He radioed his commander.
“Sir, beta made it over the fence and now running straight north from sector ten. Over.”
There was a long pause, the radio crackling. Looking down, Chad was surprised to see that his hand was shaking.
“Come back to headquarters. Over.”
The words were clipped and angry, and Chad’s stomach sank. Trudging back to his jeep, casting one last look at the beta still running into the desert, he got behind the wheel and headed back to face the music.
***
Peter was in a good mood when he got the call. Merchant had just come back from demolishing the factories contracted by Biotech Universal, and the new CEO of Novotech had personally apologized to Peter for the behavior of their previous CEO and affirmed his company’s intention to maintain their working relationship.
“Mr. Tank?” David interrupted him over the intercom.
“Yes, David?” Peter looked up from Merchant’s report, leaning back and stretching his legs out under the desk.
“You have a call on line two. It’s Alvin Chambers from the Desert Energy oil field.”
Not really worried, Peter picked up the phone. “Chambers, what do you need?”
There was a brief pause, Chambers clearing his throat, and Peter got a bad feeling.
“Mr. Tank, is Chad Brand your mate? I mean, did you claim him?”
“I did,” Peter confirmed. He gripped the phone tight. “Why?”
“We have a situation, sir. Mr. Brand disobeyed a direct order and allowed one of the workers to escape. The rep from D.E. is furious.”
“What was the order?” Peter asked.
“Excuse me?”
“The order he refused, Chambers. What was it?” Peter’s voice came out low and angry. He knew that it shouldn’t matter—Tank Security employees were expected to obey all orders—but he needed to know if only to know how fucked he was.
“The worker was trying to scale the fence, and Brand was ordered to shoot him down. He refused, and the worker escaped.”
Peter closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his fingers. This was exactly the kind of thing Peter had hoped to avoid by sending Chad to work for D.E.
“Send him home. I’ll deal with him. I’ll give D.E. headquarters a call and smooth things over.”
“Yes, sir,” Chambers said.
“Where is he now?”
“He’s locked up in his apartment. We’ve got guys on him, but he hasn’t been touched.”
Peter’s hackles rose at the thought of someone other than him restricting Chad’s freedom, but he knew it couldn’t be helped.
“I’ll send someone to pick him up tonight,” he said. “Just keep him where he is, and don’t let him talk to anyone.”
“Yes, sir.”
Peter hung up, his good mood from earlier vanishing. He didn’t know how to feel. On the one hand, Chad had humiliated him and made him look like he couldn’t control his mate, but on the other hand, he had known that Chad wasn’t suited for the type of work that was Tank Security’s bread and butter.
Picking up the phone again, Peter made arrangements for Chad to be picked up and put on a plane back to the states. If everything went according to plan, his mate would be back in the city by morning.
***
Chapter 30
Chad waited inside the living room of his small apartment, wishing Chambers hadn’t taken his phone away from him. Then again, maybe he should just count himself lucky. Until he’d blurted out that Peter Tank was his alpha, he was pretty sure that Chambers had intended to challenge him over his disobedience.
With two alphas standing armed guard right outside the door
, he couldn’t have felt like more of a prisoner.
He still couldn’t believe that he’d been expected to kill someone who didn’t pose an active threat to his life or the life of someone he was guarding. What the fuck kind of shit was Tank Security doing here?
The door opened, and a pair of alphas stepped into the room. They were both taller than Chad—about Peter’s height—and they looked like the kind of guys he wouldn’t want to mess with.
These were the kind of alphas Chad imagined Merchant would select for his team.
“Brand, you’re coming with us. You have five minutes to pack up,” the guy on the left said. He had a scar running down the side of his face, and though his voice dripped with dominance, he wasn’t being mean or aggressive.
Chad made quick work of packing his bag and threw it over his shoulder.
“Did Peter send you?” he asked. He wanted to talk to his alpha, and the fact that Peter hadn’t called him made him feel simultaneously furious and abandoned.
“He’s bringing you home,” the guy confirmed. He shook his head. “I’d hate to be you right now.”
Chad licked his lips, suddenly nervous. “Why?” He hadn’t done anything wrong.
The guy on the right snorted. “You’ve humiliated him. He claimed you, and the first thing you do back on the job is refuse an order over a beta? Are you insane?”
“I wasn’t going to shoot an unarmed civilian in the back,” Chad said, angry.
The two alphas just stared at him.
“This isn’t any of our business,” the alpha on the left said. “Mr. Brand, are you ready to go?”
Chad nodded.
“Good. The chopper is waiting. Let’s go.”
Chad followed them out of the apartment, and they bracketed him like they were escorting a prisoner. It was humiliating. As they crossed the ground to where the helicopter waited, he saw Mick watching him from the crowd of curious onlookers.
Chad turned his head away, fury welling up inside him to eclipse his humiliation.
He couldn’t believe that this was the kind of operation Peter ran.
His parents had been right all along.
***
His escorts stayed with him all the way to the airport, handing him his ticket and walking him to security.
“Your orders are to go straight home. Mr. Tank will be meeting you at the airport,” the guy who was still standing on Chad’s left said.
Gripping his ticket, feeling like a child being chastised, Chad nodded. “I understand.”
The two alphas looked at him like they weren’t sure whether to feel pity or contempt. They turned around without saying goodbye and headed out of the airport.
Chad went through security and got on the plane to London, the first-class seating reminding him of Peter and how furious he was, but when it came time to board the plane home he just couldn’t.
He knew it would cause problems when his bag was on the plane and he wasn’t, but he didn’t care. He booked a ticket home to his parents, maxing out his credit card, and settled down at the gate to wait until his new flight boarded.
Peter could go fuck himself.
***
Peter waited by the doors leading from the international arrivals area, his cool exterior belying the nerves he felt at having to actually face Chad.
He still didn’t know what he was going to say. Chad was his mate, and Peter didn’t want to lie to him. The fact was that Tank Security took a lot of contracts where his men were called on to do things that were morally wrong. That was the service Tank Security provided. Peter had hoped to shield Chad by placing him on a job where something like that was less likely to happen, but the plan had blown up in his face.
Chad now knew exactly what kind of person Peter was, and that scared the shit out of him. Sure, he could force Chad to stay and bend to his will—the claiming bite gave him that right—but the idea of subjugating Chad made his gut clench in disgust.
Heart beating fast, Peter watched the stream of people leaving international arrivals. He felt large and conspicuous, and for once he didn’t derive pleasure from it.
An hour passed, and Peter was still standing in the exact same position. Chad could just be waiting for his bag, he reasoned, but having flown first class his bags should have been among the first on the conveyer belt.
He called David, asking him to see if there had been a problem on the flight. A minute later, David called him back with the news that the ticket had been canceled when Chad failed to board the final plane.
“Find out where he is,” Peter demanded, practically growling. He took a deep breath, furious with Chad for acting out like this. They had a difficult conversation ahead, but running away wasn’t going to do anything but make things worse.
***
Chapter 31
“Do you want to talk about it?” Chad’s dad asked as they drove home from the airport. Chad had called him from London with his flight information, and though his dad had been surprised, he hadn’t asked any questions.
When he walked out of arrivals, his dad’s eye had been drawn to the bite still healing on his neck, but he hadn’t said anything then either.
Chad appreciated being able to talk in his own time.
“They ordered me to do something I couldn’t do and Peter had them send me home.”
“He sent you here?” his dad asked, shooting him a dubious look. Chad shrugged.
“No. I just don’t want to see him right now.”
They were silent for most of the rest of the trip, but when they were almost home his dad spoke.
“Are you going to get in more trouble for coming here?”
He sounded worried.
“I don’t know. He’s already mad at me, so I don’t think it matters.”
“That’s not really how it works, son. But I won’t get involved. Your mother and I are here for you no matter what.”
Chad nodded, a lump in his throat. He wondered how everything could get so fucked up so fast.
When they got home, his mother greeted him at the door with a hug. She pulled him inside and asked him if he wanted something to eat.
“I’d kind of just like to go to sleep,” Chad said.
“That’s okay,” his mother said. “Your bed is made up and ready, and there’s a towel on the bathroom counter if you want to shower. Whatever you need.”
Chad hugged her again. “Thanks, Mom.”
His dad came inside, and his mother tilted her head curiously. “Chad, where’s your bag?”
Chad shrugged sheepishly. “In London, I think. I sort of skipped out on my last flight and my bag was checked through all the way home. I’ll call the airline tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m sure it will all work out.”
Chad nodded, and after another hug headed up to his room to sleep. He was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and all he wanted was to close his eyes and forget that today ever happened.
***
Chapter 32
Once Peter knew that Chad had headed home to his parents, he booked a flight and drove to the airport.
He spent the whole flight imagining what he was going to do when he saw Chad—his ideas ranging from begging for forgiveness to sitting on him until he agreed to be good.
By the time he picked up his rental car and drove to the modest two-story house where Chad had grown up, he still hadn’t decided what he was going to do.
Parking his car in the Brand family driveway, Peter walked up to the front door and rang the bell.
There was a pause of about ten seconds before the door opened, and a middle-aged beta stared up at him.
It was obvious he was Chad’s father. They had the same open face, though Chad’s cheekbones were sharper and his jaw was more pronounced. He had blond hair, lighter than Chad’s, which he’d combed back in a style that was ten years out of date.
“You must be Peter Tank.” The words were said without any inflection. Peter narrowed his eyes, baffled by how thre
atened he felt by this unassuming beta. The man had a claim to Chad that Peter could never encroach on, and he hated it.