Page 61 of Ruffled Feathers

My heart stopped at that moment, and when it restarted, it beat only for her.

I’d been attending my VA group therapy sessions pretty regularly since I’d been discharged. Sometimes, back at the beginning, they’d been the only thing that had kept me going. Kept me from sinking completely into the darkness. I’d made friends—well, acquaintances, at least—and I knew back then that my death would hurt their own recovery processes.

I’d already let enough of my brothers down.

As I walked into the church hall we used for meetings, Rio was already there, standing beside the coffee machine. He was the guy I was the closest to at these things, because his experience had been a lot like mine. Different branches of the military, but the same spec-ops training. Same tragic outcome. His whole team had been taken by the enemy, and he was the only one who’d survived the torture until he’d been extracted.

I was physically fucked, but Rio was mentally scarred in ways I couldn’t even understand. How he was still walking around was amazing, and it probably had more than a little to do with Max, his Beta Packmate. Max was also fucked up, but neither of them wanted to do anything that would cause the other to spiral. It was a delicate balance that eventually had to tip, and then they’d both be gone. They needed an Omega, and I felt kind of bad hoarding two, but fuck it. They weremine.

Besides, there wasn’t a realm of reality in which Rio and Max could take care of an Omega yet. If my darkness sat heavy in my bond with Otillie-James, then Rio and Max’s would drown an Omega in their pain. They needed to heal a lot more first.

Walking over, I shook Rio’s hand, and he reached down to ruffle Akio’s fur behind his ears. “How are things?”

I felt the smile on my face, and as much as I tried to wipe it away, I couldn’t. Instead, I pulled my shirt down and showed him Otillie-James’s claim on my pec.

His eyebrows rose so high, they almost touched his hairline. “The Omega you’ve been living with bonded you? I thought you didn’t want that. Didn’t want your pain to affect her.”

I hadn’t been wrong, but Ihadunderestimated the sheer amount of love that Otillie gave me. It chased away the darkness, and when it couldn’t disappear anymore, she held the broken parts of me close to her heart and soothed them.

I shrugged at Rio. “She didn’t give me much of a choice.”

“She claimed you against your will?” Rio’s frown was a dark and ominous thing. Everyone wanted an Omega, but consent was still key.

Shaking my head, I instantly defended the woman who was everything to me. “It wasn’t against my will. Fuck, I wanted her to bond me more than anything. But I guess she knew I would never get past my own demons, so she barged past them herself.”

“So you’re happy?” he asked, his eyes still narrowed, like he was convinced I was being body-snatched or coerced or something.

“Happier than I’ve been in a long time.” Or maybe ever. Someonelovedme. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had loved me. But that wasn’t the kind of thing you said to another guy at a meeting for people with war-induced PTSD.

He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Good. That’s good.”

Deciding a subject change was the right idea, I asked, “Where’s Max?” I needed them both here, so I could pitch some illegal activities to them as a team.

Rio lifted his chin at the door, just as Max bustled in. Where Rio was hardened to the point that there was no way you could look at him and think that he was anything but a killer, Max looked like he’d just stepped out of the computer lab and had forgotten his retainer on the school bus. He was in his late twenties, but somehow, he looked sixteen. Like he’d never even seen boobs, let alone bloodshed.

But you’d be wrong. He was a highly qualified naval intelligence officer. He was a fucking spy. Well, a retired spy. He came to these things for Rio, but I sensed he got just as much out of it as his Packmate.

He cooed at Akio as my service dog wandered toward him, wagging his tail like mad at the tall Beta. “How is the most handsome boy here today?”

“I’m fine,” I joked. Rolling his eyes, he straightened and fist-bumped me. Dorky, but kinda endearing.

“Now that you aren’t pretending to be a yeti, you might almost have a chance against Rio, but Akio has you both beat, sorry.”

More people trickled in, and it looked like it was going to be a busy night. I cleared my throat. “I’m glad I caught you both. I was wondering if you might, uh, like to do a little mission with me. Nothing dangerous”—I hope—“and you’d be getting a lot of good karma. And I can probably pay you.”

Rio narrowed his eyes. “What kind of mission?”

Max raised an eyebrow. “The illegal kind?” he asked in a quiet voice that couldn’t be heard outside the three of us.

“Of course it is, or he wouldn’t be asking us,” Rio muttered with a snort.

I pulled out my phone, showed them the photos, and told them the whole situation. We might be all bathed in blood and suffering, but I knew these guys had joined the military because they wanted to do what was right. And you couldn’t look at the miserable faces on those animals and notknowthat what we’d be doing was right, even if it was a legal gray area.

In the end, I knew I had them. But Rio gave me a hard look. “I want to meet her.”

I frowned. “Who?”

“Your Omega.”

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