Page 26 of Lone Wolf
Which, when Damian clicked through to the webpage, was exactly what he was doing.
Damian stared at Salem’s picture, completely aghast. Why? Why would an omega be doing something like that? Was his alpha that poor a provider? Or…
Memory took him back those months, all the way to November, to that night with Salem. He hadn’t smelled mated…
He hadn’t smelled mated. And the beta at the door had mentioned Salem was in heat…
How did that happen? Weren’t there things that could stop a pup from planting itself in those fertile wombs? He’d just assumed when Salem hadn’t said anything…You lunar fool, you dosed yourself to smell like a human.He didn’t think you were a risk.
Well, and what would his Sargent have said back in Basic if he’d assumed something?
You are an idiot, Montana Border.
But what to do now?
He stared at the picture and noticed the little video icon beside Salem’s name.Don’t click it. Don’t…But his fingers had already moved on the touchpad and the little screen popped up in front of him.
The first video, the one that still had to be salvaged from his old hard drive, had just been Salem sitting in an old wing chair talking about why he liked working in the public houses. It had been sexy, but a kind of polite sexy. Classy. Almost like a dating service.
This one was very different.
Salem had been…arranged…over a pile of pillows, loose pants covering the bottom half of his body, an unbuttoned shirt showing off his chest and the swollen belly that proclaimed his pregnancy to the world. He lay there like one of the pin-ups that graced the walls of the garage where Damian took his car. Undeniably sexy, unavoidably available.
Rage settled in a blood-red ball under Damian’s heart. No, it couldn’t have been him. What were the odds? But if it wasn’t him, then… What kind of alpha would send his omega mate out to do this kind of work? Even more when the omega was heavy with his pup?
And especially an omega like Salem, who had shown Damian the most kindness he’d experienced since he’d left home for the Army so many years ago.
A shocking chill raced over him. He reminded himself that Salemhadn’tsmelled mated. There’d been no scent of alpha on him, and the omega would have believed he was dealing with humans—he’d have no reason to try to eliminate that scent.
And probably no reason to bother with any kind of birth control, since humans and shifters couldn’t make pups together.
The truth of what he was seeing hit him like a runaway Humvee.
Oh, Damian, what have you done? Barrens, and I left him there, with… that has to be my pup in his belly.
He had to know, even if there was nothing he could do. He was a ghost, caught in the spaces between the human world and shifters—he had nothing to offer. There was no room for an omega in his kind of life.
Unless he could escape his keepers and find his way back to the shifter world. And then, maybe? Would Salem go with him into exile, in a different country, never to see his family again?
And when it came down to it, would he wish that life on the bearer of his pup?
He finished the rum and stared at the picture on the webpage for a long moment before he snapped into action, packing everything that could be useful to him, all his cash, all his fake identities and the weaponry that went with them. And then he was in his car, speeding through the night toward an omega that was either going to be his death or his life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Damian should have guessed they were tracking him somehow. Shoes, gun, ID. Maybe even something injected into his body during one of his many trips to the military hospital. Who knew? It wasn’t like they were going to tell him. But he’d made it almost all the way to Nevada Ashes before the rest of his team ran him off the road.
Luckily, he’d thought to put on his seat belt, though the air bag caught him square in the face and left him dizzy just long enough for them to cut the belt and drag him out of the car through the broken driver’s window.
He hit the ground fighting. At least one of them was going home with a broken arm—he heard the crack when he levered his weight against it. Someone caught him in the kidneys with something hard, probably an ASP, and it drove him briefly to one knee before he launched himself up and into the dark shape in front of him.
The human hardly made a noise when Damian hit him, just kept him occupied long enough that someone else could land on his back and get an arm around his neck. Slowly, precisely, the human tightened the angle of his elbow, cutting off the blood supply to Damian’s brain. He gagged and reached behind his head, hunting for an eye or a nose he could jam a finger into but they’d all had the same training. All he could find was the curve of the man’s head while the world turned darker around him.
“Get him up!” someone yelled. “We can’t do this here.” Oscar’s voice.Some partner.But the pressure let off on his arteries.
They dragged him to his feet and bound his hands behind him with zipties, then shoved him into the trunk of the car they’d followed him in. Dimly, Damian heard Oscar ordering one of them to stay and get rid of the car.My car.
If it hadn’t been for the omega, he might have just given up at this point. He knew he was facing his execution, that they’d been watching him more closely in the past months. Honestly, he wasn’t even surprised that they’d come after him when he’d left for Nevada Ashes this time—he probably wasn’t the first shifter they’d taken out to a quiet bit of desert and left for the buzzards.
