It was all terribly neat... and parts of it made no sense whatsoever upon closer examination.
“What about the summit?” I asked, since her report had been focused on the nuts and bolts of our kidnapping and subsequent rescue.
“Cancelled,” she said. “Or rather, postponed. As far as I’m aware there’s been no firm date or location announced for a future meeting.”
I placed the spoon in the empty bowl and set them aside, lifting both hands to rub at my temples in hopes of banishing my throbbing headache.
“Okay. Let me think for a minute. We should be able to spin this in the administration’s favor somehow. Paint this so-called Beta Liberation Front as a symptom of the wider problem of anti-alphomic extremism. It could shift public sentiment, at least back home.” I let my hands fall abruptly. “That is, assuming you’re not waiting for me to get my shit together and get cleaned up so you can arrest the two of us. Which... I mean, you seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to avoid that so far, but...?”
“You’re not under arrest,” Alex said stiffly.
I exchanged a glance with Kam, whose expression clearly said,could you please not pick at this until she ends up changing her mind?
“Why not?” I demanded, ignoring his silent plea.
“I have no orders to arrest you.” The words were delivered in a wooden monotone.
“And you take your orders from Beckett.” I studied her as best I could in the soothing red-tinged light of the makeshift nest, but there was nothing to see. That granite poker face had probably been honed in the military alpha program, and I wouldn’t be seeing past it anytime soon. “Does that mean he’s a sympathizer?” I prodded.
There wasn’t so much as a flicker in response. “You’d have to ask him, ma’am. It’s not my place to speculate about my team leader.”
Her striking green eyes finally moved to mine, pinning me. So close after heat, the alpha power in that gaze sent a purely physical jolt through me, strong enough that she almost certainly saw it. “That being said, you’ve both got a decision to make,” she continued. “The cave system where you were being held had at least two exits, and we’re pretty sure some of the terrorists got away. That means that somewhere out there, someone else knows your secret.”
Ah. That probably explained why Kam still looked like he wanted to curl up and sink straight through the floor.
“You’ll have to decide whether or not you’re going to disappear. Maybe start over somewhere out of the limelight,” Alex said. “You know it’s possible with the right connections—and there’s no way you two got where you are today without help from the underground.”
While every word of that was true, I had no intention of scuttling off to Jamaica to huddle in obscurity with my parents—not now, when the next few months would be more important than ever. Not after everything they’d sacrificed to hide my omega status. But... it wasn’t just about me any more. There was someone else to consider.
“Kam and I will need to discuss that privately,” I told her. “In the meantime, though, I have vague memories of there being a shower in this place.Pleasetell me I wasn’t hallucinating that part.”
“I’ll show you where it is,” Kam muttered, uncurling from his miserable hunch.
“Of course,” Alex agreed. “I’ll be outside if you need me, patrolling the perimeter of the property.”
With that, she turned and left. Her stride was purposeful but unhurried—and yet, I couldn’t help the impression that she was somehow fleeing the scene. When her footsteps had faded and the muffled sound of the front door opening and closing reached us, I turned to regard my packmate.
“I think she’s been really uncomfortable scenting you,” Kam said. “She wasn’t in here at all, if you’re wondering. Not in the nest. Not...during.”
My utter and complete mortification at what I could remember of the past few days threatened to rise up and swallow me whole, but I didn’t have time for it.
“Okay,” I said. “Good to know, I suppose. Now, about that shower?”
But he stopped me from rising with a hand on my arm. “Leo.Odama. Please—I need to know. Are we... okay? You kept telling me it was all right... what I was doing. But you weren’t yourself, and I still don’t know if—”
“Kam.” My voice was as soft as I could make it. My heart ached for him, once I pulled my head out of my ass long enough to consider what he must have been going through these past horrible days. I scooted forward and wrapped my arms around him. “Of course it was all right. You kept me from unraveling... from boiling away until there was nothing left. My dearest heart... ofcoursewe’re okay.”
The tension in his shoulders flowed out, on the back of a heavy sigh of relief. His arms wrapped around me in turn, squeezing so tight that I couldn’t breathe for a moment. He tucked his face against the crook of my neck, and I felt his lips press a kiss over the sensitive skin covering my mating gland. It was still inflamed after my estrus cycle, and the nerves throbbed with wanting under the light touch.
I thought of what he’d said earlier—that I hadn’t been myself during heat. “You’re wrong, though,” I whispered against the shell of his ear. “Iwasmyself. In fact, it’s probably the first time in fifteen years that I’ve been who I was born to be.”
“Me, too,” he said unsteadily. “Oh, Leo. What are we going to do?”
I stroked his beautiful black hair. “We’ll talk about the rest of it later. But right now,odama, we’re going to take a shower.”
