No one—betas included—could mistake the visceral punch behind that orange blossom and honey scent for artificial perfume.
Flynn, Jax, and I exited the limo, scoping out the crowd before parting to allow Nikolayev, Leona, and Kam out behind us. At Leona’s appearance, the scrum of reporters burst into a confusion of Russian.
Nikolayev raised a quelling hand. “Questions in French and English only, please,” he said.
“Is it true that the Committee intends to recognize equal rights for alphas and omegas?” asked a woman in heavily accented French.
“The Euro-Soviet branch now recognizes alphomic rights,” Nikolayev replied. “The UFNA branch is still mired in decades of propaganda and corruption, under the leadership of the war criminal Enoch Sloane.”
A male reporter shoved to the front. “You call Sloane a war criminal, yet you brutally murdered your own sister for being an omega?”
“Not true,” Nikolayev said. “When she presented as an adolescent, my family and I faked her death in order to move her to an undisclosed location for her own safety.”
“So she’s still alive?” the man pressed. “That’s quite a claim. Where is she? Can we speak with her?”
Nikolayev raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you should investigate the definition of the word ‘undisclosed.’”
“Isn’t Leona McCready a wanted international fugitive?” called another journalist.
Leona stepped forward to speak for herself. I felt Jax and Flynn tense, their hard eyes raking the assembled group for threats.
“I do not acknowledge the validity of so-called laws designed to violate the human rights of a marginalized group.” Leona met the reporter’s gaze, refusing to back down as she continued. “My parents risked jail to protect me from slavery or forced sterilization as a child. A few months ago, I was pulled from my bed at three a.m. by an armed SWAT team who broke down my door without offering any sort of identification, or presenting a warrant for my arrest. That isn’t the rule of law. That’s fascism.”
Silence fell, broken only by the frantic scratch of pens against notepads.
“Where are your parents now?” someone asked. “Do you have contact with them?”
“My parents are deceased,” Leona said without breaking expression—a blatant lie, but I couldn’t blame her for holding that card close to her chest.
“We are due inside for meetings,” Nikolayev said. “Good day.”
He ushered us toward the statue of Lenin and the massive doors beyond, ignoring the overlapping babble of questions chasing us. It remained to be seen how the press would spin our presence here, but on the positive side, at least none of them had been undercover assassins with guns hidden in their camera bags.
* * *
The conference draggedon for days, boring and surprisingly free of drama. I’d been surprised to find that there were other alphas here, working as security for some of the attendees. Other than that, it was in many ways reminiscent of all the times our team had acted as security for one diplomat or another during overseas summits. Beckett’s presence would have been reassuring, but so far it had been quiet duty.
I could only follow the parts of the debate that happened within my immediate vicinity, and then, only if the speakers were using French rather than rapid-fire Russian. The goal had been to gain commitments from as many officials as possible to introduce new laws related to alphomic rights into their various legislatures. As far as I could tell, roughly half of those present had agreed, or were at least receptive to further talks.
In other words, it was going to be a painful slog—unless Leona and Nikolayev managed to shake some big names free in Western Europe. And once again, thinking like that was the reason I was standing against the wall with a shoulder holster under my black suit jacket, rather than determining policy somewhere. When it came to saving alphas and omegas, I simply wasn’t that patient.
Personally, I would have been more inclined to fuel up those Black Hawk helicopters Nikolayev had somehow acquired in Cuba and go lob a few missiles at Sloane’s house.
This was the third day we’d been here, and every day it grew just a little bit harder to wrench my attention away from Leona and Kameron as they worked the room. Yes, I was supposed to be watching them—but only in the sense of making sure none of the people around them posed a threat. Definitely not in the sense of ogling the way Kam’s mouth curved when he offered someone a polite smile, or trying to catch a glimpse of the silvery bite scars at the juncture of Leona’s neck and shoulder.
Shit.
A server passed, pausing to offer me a drink from his silver tray. I took one of the glasses and sipped at it mindlessly, needing something to both cool me down in the stuffy room and act as a distraction from my unwanted thoughts.
I nursed the clear sparkling water for a few minutes before tipping the rest of it back and returning the glass to another server’s tray. It was growing late. I got the sense that things were winding down for the evening, and still without a satisfactory conclusion. There had been talk of extending the talks for one more day, but after that, we would leave.
Even this deep in Euro-Soviet territory, Nikolayev was unwilling to tempt Enoch Sloane or the Beta Liberation Front into attempting something rash. It was probably the right call. By all accounts, Sloane’s frustration at his own impotence was spilling over into fits of temper and unhinged screaming at his staff. As for the BLF, there was almost no useful intelligence available about them, leaving the terrorist organization an unpredictable and potentially deadly threat—as Jax could attest firsthand.
Something crashed from across the room, setting my instincts alight. An unintentional growl rose in my throat as I methodically scanned the venue, trying to localize the source of the disturbance while also keeping watch for anyone who might be intending to use the noise as a distraction for something more sinister.
My earpiece crackled. “Assailant near the north entrance to the hall,” Jax reported. “It’s one of the alpha security grunts.”
I craned to see. A large figure near the door roared, throwing a clumsy roundhouse punch that didn’t seem to be directed at anyone in particular. People scuttled away, opening a bubble of space around the crazed alpha.
