by L. V. Lane
His look was appraising, and I pulled my psychological cloak around me, determined not to allow any of his emotions to leak in.
“I understand the recommendations,” I said, hoping to stem his comprehensive information share. Although I didn’t understand the recommendations, especially not now. I knew I would never commit to investment ever again.
“Good,” he said with a wink I found too forward. “And investment might not be optional for much longer if that law is passed.”
I blanched and swallowed down the urge to empty my light lunch all over his pristine office floor. The senior mentors at the Omega community had been canvassing for more information, but I had heard no updates. How could a recruiter know more about it than us?
“I’ll notify him you’re on the way, and you can get settled on the ship. Twenty-four hours before launch isn’t much, but he’s been jumping colonies for a while, so he knows his way around this class of ship. Let me get you his name—”
“I don’t need his name,” I snapped, my voice sounding as brittle as I felt. I took a deep breath; relieved investment was still optional and wondering how I would survive if the proposed law changes came through.
I just wanted to get this over with.
He inclined his head with a smirk, pressed the panel on his desk, and he stood, indicating the opening door.
We walked together along an empty white corridor, through a security checkpoint, and on to one of many access bays. In the other bays, there would be queues of personnel, but I was a Singular and my status afforded me a more civilized induction for the boarding part of the process.
Silent security bots flashed us through until we arrived at the final gate.
Beyond was the ship.
“Safe journey.” Smile warm, he offered me his hand.
My mind became a little blank as I shook that clammy hand. That didn’t happen often. Usually, there was a maelstrom of information swirling around in there.
Bracing myself, I passed through the final gate.
My shattered soul would have welcomed chaos on the other side, but what I got was another stark, white room.
My allocated Controller was standing with his back to me, looking out a wide portal window that offered a spectacular view of the Trident class ship’s starboard side. The ship was a thing of beauty, vast, gleaming and built for war.
The man standing before it was also built for war, and in that sharp moment of awareness, I acknowledged that he was a thing of deadly beauty too.
He turned at the sound of my arrival, making me the object of his penetrating stare.
Alphas had a presence. Maybe it was part of the training or merely pervasive to the kind of soldiers who went on to reach elite status. He definitely had a presence.
A hint of a smile touched his face. “So, that’s what I’ve been fighting over,” he said.
My breath locked in my lungs and my heart rate galloped.
No…it couldn't possibly be?
He walked to join me, and I stepped back, fighting to gain control of the volatile emotions consuming me. I clung desperately to the psychological cloak I used to protect myself from other’s energies. But it collapsed around me. And his thick, dark, sinful energy hit me full force.
He recognized my reaction, and he liked it.
How?
Why?
My mind flooded with white-noise. It was hard to look at him, even to be in the same room with him. When he held out his hand, like the recruiter had, it took all my inner strength to return the mandatory gesture and allow that remarkable contact to be made.
“I’m up here.” There was a familiar note of teasing in his tone.
I found myself staring at our joined hands, and I became lost in consideration of how much larger his was than mine. The rough texture on the pads of his fingers, thick veins crisscrossed the back of his hand…along with mottled bruises in shades of purple, blue and black.
I jerked away when I realized I'd been staring—at the bruises.
He didn’t let go.
“I’m still up here.”
The bruises, I didn't want to think about the bruises, or how he got them, and I worried that I was hurting him, although my touch was light.
My face flushed so violently that I felt the throb of blood under the surface of my skin.
He was still waiting, and he wasn't letting go. I had a feeling he was never going to let go again.
I got as far as his chest, and with supreme effort, touched on his face long enough to get an impression of his handsome features—dark hair and a faint prickling of stubble covering his jaw.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I said, feeling self-conscious, aware of his fingers wrapped around mine, sensing intimacy from even that ordinary touch.
He finally released my hand, and that helped. “I’m sorry,” he stepped away abruptly and ran fingers through his dark hair.
The act dampened the prior onslaught enough for me to escape the incapacitating tension. I breathed; I had stopped doing so for quite a while, and the rush of oxygen made me a little giddy.
I wanted to touch him, but I felt like I was looking at a ghost and the part of my mind that had grieved for him could not reconcile that he was standing here, whole.
“There were days when the thought of this, of you, was the only thing that kept me going. I guess I was giving off—a predictable vibe. I’ve got to admit, seeing you is still a rush. I’ve only ever been gripped by such a comprehensive urge to fuck someone like that once before.”
“Don’t—” I couldn't get further. I had dreamed of this, fallen asleep weeping for the loss of this.
His countenance softened. “Almost worth a couple of days of getting the shit kicked out of me for that alone.” He shrugged and his lips tugged up at the corners. “Well, that and the possibility of smoking hot sex.”
I choked out a laugh. Reeling, wondering if this was it and if I had finally lost my mind.
“It kept me focused,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “Through the rehab—the thought of you—the fear of you with someone else.”
I sensed his writhing anger, desperation…and something else I barely dared acknowledge.
My hand sought his again, and there was the incredible sensation of coming home in feeling his rough, familiar fingers closing over mine. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I asked again. A great tide was rising inside me, pushing up out of my gut, into my chest, and settling at the back of my eyes. A single tear spilled out, and then another, and then a trickle. “They told me you were dead.”
He was staring out the window, and a dark, lonely cloud settled over his shoulders. “I signed a termination clause in the eventuality of permanent disablement. I couldn’t live with that. I know you’re supposed to find a way, but they give soldiers the option for a reason. I couldn’t do that to me…or you. It would be like a different sort of death. Until I was certain, I would recover…Then they told me you were being redeployed.”
He stilled noticing my tears, and his entire focus shifted back to me. It drove the sensations rushing through me even higher.
He swallowed. My eyes lifted and became lost in his dark ones.
“Don’t do that again, you don’t have the right to do that on your own.” I was angry now, but I knew I loved him more than life. Loved? He was right, it would have been terrible, but we would have found a way. If his heart still beat, I had the right to know.
I wanted to have the right to know.
“I’m an Alpha, we come with an overabundance of pride.”
My temper snapped. “I don’t give a damn about your pride! I thought you were dead!” I shook; a full body tremble.
“I felt—dead. They reconstructed seventy percent of my body. When they change so much, the mind can struggle to reconnect, to accept. They put the clause in for a good reason, sometimes you just can’t come back.”
My fingers itched to touch his cheek, to feel him against me, on me, in me. His
anguish and fears were open to me. I remembered what he looked like as the doctors took him away in that bag—he gave his life for me. “I want to be part of it…if it happens again.” I prayed it would never happen again, but there was a war, and tomorrow was an uncertain destination.
He took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay,” he said.
I expected more arguments, but that simple acceptance was a balm over my mental scars.
In the wake of the acceptance came shared relief and understanding. And after all this, we still had a job to do, a ship to board and another star system where we were about to be deployed.
“Are you okay with this Eloise?” His earnest question startled me. Underneath it, I felt his naked emotion and his need for reassurance; for something familiar between us. His focus centered on my lips. “I’m going to need to touch you. You know that, right? I really want—need—to touch you.”
I nodded and smiled. It was so good to smile. I thought I had forgotten how to.
He smirked.
“A lot.”
I nodded again, eagerly.
“And I suspect you’ve been very disobedient in my absence. Picked up lots of bad habits, so I’ll have to start all over again.”
My heart stuttered, and my breath caught as need pooled in my lower stomach.
He stepped closer, into my space, crowding me.
“I don’t want it to end,” I said. “This feeling between us.”
“It doesn’t have to,” he said.
“All things end,” I whispered.
His lips touched mine, gentle, coaxing kisses that stole my breath away.
“Yes, I suppose they do,” he replied. “That’s why we must savor what comes before. All the in between parts. There’s a lot of middle, a lifetime in the middle, and I want to savor it all…with you.” He didn’t need to say it. Love had a color, and it was a vivid turquoise. The glow was so bright that I thought I might go blind as he pressed his forehead to mine. “I love you, baby.”
My world tilted. My heart swelled.
“I love you too,” I replied.
GLOSSARY
Controller: The Empire uses Alpha soldiers to train and control Omega Dynamics when they are needed to join the war.
Copper virus: DNA altering virus. The virus may enhance characteristics already present in an infected individual.
Dynamic: If the Copper virus hosts, it changes the individual into a dynamic. There are twelve viral induced dynamics, Alpha through to Mu, and Omega. Each dynamic offers different physical and physiological benefits: intelligence, strength, memory, natural leaders or followers, or heightened skills such as mathematics or art.
Healer: Healers are a common Omega type who are able to heal physical and mental trauma through contact.
Singular: Singulars are rare Omegas with unique traits known as singularities. Predominantly psychic, although other physical or physiological changes may occur.
Empire: Governing council of the United Planet System
Non-dynamic: If the Copper virus does not host, the individual remains unaltered, also known as a non-dynamic.
Uncorrupted: A faction formed by those who fled the Empire during the first mass viral awakening. Many non-dynamics follow their cause and flee the Empire.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I love a happily ever after, although sometimes the journey to get there can be rough on my poor characters.
An unashamed fan of the alpha, the antihero, and the throwback in all his guises and wherever he may lurk.
I’m a new author, learning as I go and appreciate feedback of all kinds.
Drop me a message and let me know what you think.
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Taking Control: An Alpha and Omega dark science fiction romance
(The Controllers Book One)
There is a war, and people with skills are deployed when and where it suits the cause. Even Omegas.
Where necessary, they are allocated protection.
A Controller.
And they are told to submit fully to the Controller. That it is recommended.
But the war brings many changes. Omegas must be protected at all costs and what was once a recommendation might soon become a mandate.
Eloise is an Omega, and with her first deployment imminent she has already decided that she won’t submit to full control—not while the law still protects her.
But they haven’t allocated her to an ordinary Controller, they’ve let the best of them fight for the right. And nothing is going to stop the one who comes out on top from claiming his prize.
Complete Control: An Alpha and Omega dark science fiction romance
(The Controllers Book Two)
There is a war, cities are falling, and prisoners are being taken.
With her city in ruins, Anna is on the run. Enemy comb the streets and she knows what awaits her if they find her—death if she is lucky, imprisonment if she is not.
Cornered, and out of hope, she is rescued…by an Alpha.
She has just been revealed as an Omega.
Law changes are coming.
And her new fate might be worse.