Ruthless Control

by L. V. Lane

  “What happens to the discarded pets?” I had asked him. Amused, he had replied, “They make their new masters very happy.” But when I had pressed him on the point, he had told me there would never be another master.

  And earlier, I had sat on Lucian's lap while he fed me and he had told me that I owned him—through the connection, he could not lie.

  As I approached, I noticed the backpack she held in her hands. I frowned at the pack when she held it out to me. Closer, I could tell Lucian’s scent wasn’t quite right, there was no sexual pheromones…it was more like she had rubbed something of his on her. A Beta's sense of smell was not as sophisticated as an Alpha or Omega’s, she probably thought I wouldn’t know the difference.

  She was faking her position in his life, and this realization frightened me more than if she had been his pet.

  Her emotional state was open to me, in the same way I could sense Lucian's. It was dark and unwholesome and filled with malicious intent.

  Am I gifted?

  Yes, I thought I was.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked quietly. My lips trembled. I feared what was coming next.

  “Take the bag,” she said, inspecting me in a way that said she found me wanting. “You can’t leave like that. You wished to escape, didn’t you? Well, now is your chance.”

  I ignored the bag. I could feel Lucian, but he was far away, and our connection was muted. Why had he left me?

  Safe. I had been safe, but I wasn’t safe anymore.

  “What if I don’t want to leave?”

  She laughed again and dropped the bag at my feet. “Playing for time, Omega?” She sneered at me. “Did you know he killed your brother? Kais, wasn’t it? Burned him alive. That’s how little he cares. He’ll sell you off to someone else soon. I’ve seen it before.”

  Her emotions were more volatile this time, and whatever my gift was, it was too new for me to unravel the nuances. She knew something about Kais, though, and I was convinced he was in terrible danger, and that she was part of this.

  I had asked Lucian about Kais, had all but begged him not to harm him. “I haven’t killed any non-dynamics who work for Malaxos yet,” he had said, like that might change down the track. I thought him capable of killing someone in a variety of ways, and there had been a time when he had returned reeking of smoke—it was the day I tried to leave.

  And the day he had put the tracker band on me.

  I resisted the urge to glance at the swirling pattern that looked like a tattoo on my wrist—it might be my only hope.

  She wasn’t helping me; she wasn’t my friend. Her core was rotten, and she wanted me out of the way.

  I was also equally convinced that the Beta standing before me would not accept no for an answer. I couldn’t defy her, the viciousness underlying her words suggested she might hurt me if I did. And if I left, Lucian would find me; I was sure of this. “What did you do to my brother?”

  She huffed out a little breath. “He’s not dead yet, Omega, but I suggest you take the bag. The elevator will take you to the basement. There are clothes, suppressants, and enough credit to see you go wherever you wish. Your brother’s life is in a perilous position. Don’t make me finish the job.”

  Truth—she was telling the truth.

  I cared for my brother, but there was a life inside me more precious than my own, and every instinct I had was screaming at me to leave.

  Like a sleepwalker, I opened the bag, took out the clothes, and got changed into the simple jeans and t-shirt. She inspected me through narrowed eyes. I took my time, still praying that Lucian might return.

  He didn’t.

  Finally, there were no more delays I could take. The tracker was on my wrist, and I had to trust in that. He was an Alpha, and no Alpha would allow an Omega carrying their child to flee. And my brother? Whatever was happening to him, I would beg Lucian to help.

  “You won’t be needing this.” Sharp nails raked my throat as she snatched the collar away.

  The collar that I had fought so hard not to wear, now felt like a part of me. I stared at it in her hand, then I looked away. If my life had taught me anything, it had taught me how to survive.

  I would get through this. There was a life growing inside me, and my determination was absolute.

  Resolved, I went to the elevator, finding the basement button lit.

  She watched me as the door closed. This time when it reached the bottom, it opened and remained so allowing me to walk out.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “WHAT THE FUCK is happening?” I stared at the screen, trying to work out what was going on. Someone was inside the complex again, the system didn’t show it, but I knew that something was wrong.

  I was sleeping less than three hours a day and had been for a week. A proverbial shit-storm had kicked off with Black while Lucian had been bonding with his Pet. Then yesterday, Black’s Omega had gone missing, and we were scrambling to work out where the fuck she was.

  On top of this, the formerly non-dynamic kid, infected by an unknown person while held in a secure cell, had just come awake, and he had quite a tale to tell. The genetic test I’d ordered the doctor to perform had confirmed he was telling the truth—he was Madelyn’s brother.

  I didn’t know what the fuck to make of the kid’s transformation…I couldn’t even call him a kid anymore. Nope, not fitting that description. That drug was suddenly a lot more valuable than we suspected, and some other fucker had access to it.

  Lucian was out, some shit to do with Black, and his communicator was off. Why the fuck would he turn his communicator off? He needed to know about Madelyn’s brother—he needed to know that something funny was happening again—right now.

  The hand I swiped over my face was shaking—I was so fucking tired, I could hardly see straight.

  I cycled through the monitoring one more time before returning to the diagnostics.

  Blinking slowly, I tried to assimilate what I was seeing.

  “Fucking no!” I pushed my chair back from the desk in a violent jerk like that could distance me from what was happening. Standing, I gripped my hair for a second before I punched the nearest wall. It hurt like hell, but it woke me up. “Fuck!” I sat scooting my chair closer to the console again, and my fingers flew. Seconds later, a wall of alarms started bleeping, and the mysteriously closed connection to Lucian opened.

  Fuck! I redirected all security teams to the basement.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Lucian growled into my ear.

  I was out of my seat, slamming through the door and racing along the corridor at a dead run. “Get back here now! There’s been a breach.”

  The teams I had sent to the basement were too far away, they wouldn’t get there in time.

  I heard his growl through the communicator, but I couldn’t focus on that now. I skidded to a stop as I reached the doors that would lead outside. “Just get back,” I said. “I don’t…Get back here, Lucian.”

  She was out there, and I needed to go out there to get her back.

  I switched the communicator off, I couldn’t listen to Lucian’s roars. He could communicate with the rest of his teams here now that the worm had been found, and I needed all of my focus for what I was about to do.

  “It’s just a fucking door!” I gripped my hair, so fucking angry with myself. I was a useless piece of shit. I couldn’t step outside and collect one helpless little Omega?

  I palmed the plate, the door slid open, and I stepped outside.

  My head started swimming the moment my foot passed beyond the barrier. My breath got trapped in my lungs, and my throat closed up. My face swung left where the elevator opened with a ping, a hundred paces away. She stepped out, and stopped dead as she spotted me.

  I shook my head. Don’t do it. Don’t fucking run because I don’t know if I can chase you down.

  My heart was racing at double time, and my chest heaved with the strain of pulling enough air into my lungs. A cold sweat enveloped my body, a
nd I began to tremble violently.

  Don’t think about it. Don’t think about being outside. It’s not even properly outside, it’s just the basement, still technically inside.

  Only my body was having none of it.

  Her whole countenance softened. Relieved. She was relieved to see me. Thank fuck! I don’t know what the fuck had happened in Lucian’s apartment, but she was wearing regular clothes, and there was a backpack on her shoulder.

  I motioned her to come to me, I couldn’t get any words out, and my feet were literally rooted to the spot—the only direction they were willing to take me was the two paces needed to reach the safety of the door.

  She came to me, slow, hesitant steps that gained speed. I prayed to every fucking god I could think of and a few I might have made up.

  I didn’t recognize the ground vehicle as a threat at first…the basement was full of them after all, but something in the way it drove, the acceleration when it should have been decelerating. My head swung like I was trapped in slow motion. I started to walk—but soon broke into a run.

  The big, blacked-out vehicle screeched to a halt. She froze, head swinging toward it. It wasn’t Lucian’s—but perhaps she thought it was.

  “Run!” My throat finally cooperated with my needs. Her eyes flashed to me. I was closer now, I saw her eyes widen in shock as all four doors opened, and Alphas spilled out.

  One, two, three, four.

  I was still too far away.

  Dropping the backpack, she ran.

  Too late.

  One man caught her around the waist. She screamed, an earsplitting sound that turned my blood to ice. Where the fuck was the backup? How the fuck long did it take them to get their asses here?

  Fuck!

  I had nothing, no weapons—nothing. I wasn’t even wearing shoes. I smacked into the nearest one as they tossed Madelyn into the back. I had no real plan, I was just trying to delay their leaving. We both crashed on the ground. I didn’t see the bat coming toward my head, but I felt it.

  The world swam, my ears rang, and the rest of the blows landed against the backdrop of Madelyn’s high, terror steeped scream.

  I tried to fight, to roll away, but there were too many, and my world faded to black.

  I had felt something off even before Rhett had called, had started heading back. At first, I thought it was Madelyn’s anxiety in my absence, but it had grown increasingly worse.

  I broke every speed law that existed on the way back to Peppermint Moon. No one knew what the fuck was going on. Rhett wasn’t answering his communicator, and Madelyn’s tracking band had ceased working.

  As my driver turned into the basement complex, I finally got some information. Rhett was down, convulsing in a pool of his own blood.

  He’d tried to take on four Alphas—alone.

  He wasn’t combat trained. He’d had his share of scraps back on Lyus, but he’d still been a kid back then. We’d been here for ten years, and he didn’t know shit about the real world.

  I cursed myself, I cursed Rhett, and I cursed Ethan Black and every other fucker who had brought me to this point.

  Flinging the door open the moment the vehicle screeched to a stop, I was presented with a scene worthy of nightmares. My security had cordoned off the area, but there on the floor, outside, was Rhett. A doctor was kneeling beside him, and there was so much fucking blood. His face was beaten bloody—someone had taken a bat or a boot to him.

  Jesus fucking Christ!

  “Stable,” the doctor said. “Badly beaten, but nothing critical. We’ll move him to a room.”

  Rhett’s eyes opened and met mine. His whole body was shaking—shock. It could have been the injuries, certainly from what I could see they were comprehensive, but it also could have been because he was outside.

  What the fuck was he doing outside? He never stepped outside. I wanted to hug the dumb fuck and punch him at the same time.

  “She’s gone,” he said.

  A cold shadow entered my soul. I needed no clarification on who she was, I knew. Inside a rabid animal howled. Gone? How the fuck was she gone? “You know where she is?”

  “It was Dino’s men,” Rhett replied. “I recognized one of them from the surveillance. Someone infiltrated us again—I don’t know how or what happened…Her brother can help—he’s awake.”

  “How the fuck can her brother help?” Had the doctor already given him too many drugs?

  “The non-dynamic kid,” he said, and his swollen mouth tipped up in a grin. “He’s not a non-dynamic anymore. Hates Dino. If he knows she’s been taken, he’ll help.”

  Thank fuck I hadn’t killed the little prick. I nodded, but when I went to stand, his bloody hand gripped my forearm.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I could have gotten to her, but when I stepped out, I froze. Then they drove up and took her. I failed. I always fucking fail.”

  Another shadow enveloped me, darker this time. So, she had tried to leave, which explained why he was outside. “Shut the fuck up. You weren’t going to take on four trained thugs and come out on top. I’ll deal with this—rest.” I shook my head. “You’re a fucking mess. I’ll find her.” Even if I have the rip the planet apart to do it.

  I stood, just as Jordan and Kade arrived. “Come with me,” I said.

  The doctor was waiting for me when I entered the private medical room where he had been treating the non-dynamic kid—who wasn’t a non-dynamic anymore—because he was a fucking Alpha.

  “What happened?” I demanded. The doctor started talking, and I immediately told him to shut up.

  “Fuck me, he’s a big bastard,” Jordan stated the obvious. I shot him a glare—he shut up too.

  They had him cuffed to the bed, but I fully expected he could have ripped them off should he have set his mind to it.

  Kais, she had told me his name once. He just stared at me, and finally broke the silence. “What’s happening? Where’s my sister. If you’ve hurt Mads, I’ll kill you.”

  Half a second later, I had the muzzle of my gun pressed into the center of his chest. “Try it, prick.”

  His eyes flashed murder. Whatever the fuck had happened to him, hadn’t improved his attitude. “You know why she would flee to Dino-the-dog-Malaxos while pregnant with my fucking child?”

  “What?” His face showed genuine shock. “She’s pregnant? She's been here, like five minutes, asshole!” The cuffs creaked, and his face contorted with rage. He might be a mouthy prick, but he cared about his sister.

  That was a start.

  “Like I’ve told the doctor a dozen times. Some blonde Beta bitch drugged me with the Omega drug. The same drug they gave Mads when she turned eighteen and didn’t reveal. I can’t believe you gave her another shot of that stuff. And she hates Dino. No way would she go to him.” He leveled me with a scowl. “Unless you’re an even bigger asshole!”

  The cuffs rattled. The doctor took a couple of steps back—I holstered my gun. “She was happy to be pregnant,” I said because she had been. The truth of this statement took the wind out of her brother and lifted some of the darkness clouding me.

  Already an Omega? My growl wasn’t deadly this time, but it was filled with dire consequence. My sneaky little pet. My gaze shifted to the doctor, who was clearly busting to speak. “She was already an Omega?”

  The doctor shrugged and nodded.

  “Of course, she’s a fucking Omega!” Kais roared like I was the idiot. Mouthy punk!

  Too many pieces of information had arrived together. “Describe the blonde Beta.”

  He did, and I knew exactly who it was. I nodded at Jordan. “Get a team on it. I want her found.” Then I turned back to Kais. “She’s been taken. You know where they would take her?”

  Kais nodded. “I do. If you’re going to get her back, I’m going too.”

  My lips twisted into a humorless smile because there was nothing remotely joyful in this scenario, but despite still wanting to off the little punk, I thought there was a risk I might
like him too.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE SOUNDS OF the wooden bat connecting with Rhett’s head haunted me as the dark land-vehicle hurtled through the streets. A light drizzle was falling outside, blurring into thin horizontal streams against the windows.

  I was in shock, quiet, and docile between the two hulking Alphas. A bat sat across the right one’s lap, dark and sticky with blood.

  My body twitched at the memory of Rhett’s plaintive cries as they meted out the swift attack. I had screamed and fought until the nearest Alpha had punched me in the stomach, shutting my fight down. My arms still wrapped around my waist. It ached, but the fear for my baby hurt a thousand times worse.

  The tracking band, my point of hope as I left the apartment, had been disabled within seconds. The once shimmering tattoo was dull and gray, and now Lucian would not be coming.

  And nor would he know where to search because we were going nowhere near my former home and Dino’s power base—we were heading toward the opposite side of the city.

  The Alphas didn’t talk, and I felt myself sinking further into my mind, and further from reality. Their dark, oppressive emotions leaked out and polluted me. My Omega gift—whatever the exact nature of it was—felt like more of a curse in my predicament. My thoughts flittered like an overactive butterfly that could not land on any one place. Hope and despair chased in circles that finally landed on despair.

  Outside the rain-drenched window, a giant sign flashed up for Chimera’s cargo docks.

  “Five minutes,” the man at the front said into his communicator as the bottom dropped out of my stomach.

  The cargo docks led to a multitude of destinations, but they all had one thing in common—they were off-planet.

  It felt like forever since I had first made a deal with Lucian. There had been a too brief hope that I might escape to another world far from Chimera and the people who knew me. The time since I made that deal could be counted in weeks. Somewhere along the journey, all the lines had gotten blurred.