Page 13 of Traded to the Alpha Wolf

“From me?” she laughs.

“I think you’d do a pretty good job of breaking something as you escape,” I say, taking a sip of my coffee before adding, “which we both know you’ll try to do if I turn my back.”

She doesn’t deny it, simply shuffles the cards and begins a new game, indicating for me to turn the first card. And that’s what we do, standing in the kitchen with her scent wrapped around us and the weight of everything we’re not saying sitting heavily as we see where the cards will take us.

Chapter 8 - Mara

My initial reaction was to deny it.

Absolutely not. No way.

I accused him of fabricating the results, faking the report. It’s bullshit. I know enough to know you can’t be an omega if you don’t have a wolf; they must think I’m stupid.

Cade doesn’t force the issue. He just says I obviously needed some thinking time—I hate the way he’s so unnervingly calm when I feel anything but. I thought my biggest obstacle was figuring out how to get out of here and back to the hunters' compound, try to pick up where I left off, or even leverage the situation to get them to trust me more.

Not Cade and the way his presence keeps affecting me, and certainly not all this.

The house is silent except for the faint tick of the wall clock, the splutter of the heater coming in, and the way the deck groans as the temperature drops outside. I’m curled in Cade’s library, a corner room lined in rough wood and crowded with shelves that smell like cedar and old books, pretending to read a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. The truth is, I’m just staring at the printout of the lab report, eyes tracing the same underlined sentences over and over until the letters begin to blur.

Omega DNA detected. No sign of active lycanthropic sequence. Dormant, possibly recessive. Subject does not present with classic omega phenotype but demonstrates biochemical markers consistent with the genotype…

I don’t want to believe it. I am not one of them. I know exactly who my parents were, and they weren’t shifters. I’m not a shifter; I have no wolf. I’m human.

But the evidence is right there, in black and white. It’s the same kind of report you’d expect to see from a high-end lab, and there’s another corresponding one from a university I recognize. It makes me think about all the mandatory blood draws at the compound. I didn’t even question it when they started, because everyone did them. But then they started calling me back, telling me I was a universal donor. At first, I thought it was a good thing, because it got me access to more of the Order, people who weren’t usually at the bar, but now I’m starting to wonder…

I let the report drop into my lap; it’s impossible to focus on the words. My head is a hive of anxiety; the more I try to make sense of it, the crazier it all seems.

Rowan’s mate, Willow, wrote a cover letter for the report. She tried to soften it with phrases like “it’s not a curse or a disease.” I keep telling myself I’ll burn the whole report in the log fire, but I keep coming back and reading it again, hoping the words will change.

I think about the blood tests at the compound again. About the vitamins. About the way they started watching me after every appointment, how they kept checking on me, how Trish began making a point of reminding me about the pills, about hydration, about my “unique health needs.” Looking at this report, the same thought keeps coming back to me: did they know? Not the idiots in the bar, but the higher-ups. Trish had a mainline on the situation with her husband, Stan, running the compound. If he knew, then she knew.

But if they did, why keep me around only to hand me over so easily? Was I defective? Or were they just waiting for the right buyer, the right moment to cash in? Wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen them sell a hostage or shifter, but they knew who they were. As far as they were concerned, I was just working the bar.

I haven’t taken any of the vitamins since I arrived, but they’re still in my pocket. Are they even really vitamins? Maybe I was just an experiment, and the real plan was to see what happened when they threw me to the wolves. Literally.

And how much does all this change what I do next?

Heat crawls up my neck as I replay the last three days with Cade. I hate that I notice everything about him. The way his voice drops half an octave when I think I’ve finally cracked his stoic exterior and he’s irritated by my banter. I notice the way he never lets his guard down, not even in his own home—not around me, anyway. The way he moves through the house, as if he could attack at any moment, should scare me, but instead it makes me feel something else entirely.

Intrigue.

I try to think back to everything I’ve ever heard about omegas, which isn’t much, because I’ve lived my whole life as a human, and anything I did hear was always wrapped up in rumor or the kind of barroom mythology that makes shifters sound like monsters. The hunters are obsessed with the idea that shifters need omegas to breed, and there’s a lack of them, meaning their numbers have been dropping. They’d say that omegas are so rare that if shifters find one, the packs would go crazy for her, fight and kill for her, and then chain her in a cellar to breed her like livestock. It was always said with the kind of disgust that told you the speaker got a thrill just thinking about it, but I never believed all of it. Some of the stories were just too stupid, too out there, that I didn’t think they could be real.

But now I’m sitting in this cabin, reading a medical report that says I’m one of them, and suddenly it’s not so far-fetched. I don’t feel any different, but the evidence is there, gnawing at the edge of my brain. The way Cade looks at me sometimes…I haveno experience with men, but I know when they’re interested, and I see flickers of it now and then. Is it because of what this report says I am?

What if the rumors are true? What if they do need omegas, and now he has one living under his roof?

Or worse, what if I need him? What if, like the stories said, it would eventually drive me crazy if nobody…bred me? The word itself makes me want to die of embarrassment, but it also sets off a prickle of heat in my chest that I can’t explain. I want to blame the “biochemical markers” in the report, but I know better. This is me, and I’m the one who can’t stop thinking about the way Cade looked at me last night, the way I feel whenever he’s near.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to push the feeling away. It doesn’t work. I’ve always been good at compartmentalizing desire, stuffing it down because ever since I decided to start tracking the hunters, I knew I’d never be able to let my guard down. I was only ever around hunters—and they’re the ones responsible for killing my parents and ruining my life, so why would I ever feel desire for one of them, anyway—but this is different.

It crackles inside me, a low, electrical urge that renews itself every time I hear his voice or catch the edge of his scent in a hallway. I want to resent it, to push it away, but instead I catch myself wanting to see what would happen if I just…let it take over. Would it feel good, or would I lose myself? Would I find something I didn’t know was missing?

Would it confirm that this report is true?

For a split second, I let myself imagine it: Cade, hands big enough to crush a skull, holding me down, but not to kill me or stop me escaping, but to pin me in place while he fucked me,hard and rough. I imagine the way his breath would rasp in my ear, the way he’d bite my shoulder, mark me, claim me so there would be no question about whom I belonged to. The thought is so intoxicating, I’m so caught up in the fantasy, that I don’t hear the door until it’s already swinging open. I lurch upright, the biography slipping off my knees, and snatch at the lab report, but Cade sees anyway. He looks almost too big for his own doorframe, and he seems to fill the room with the same silent, implacable energy as always.

He doesn’t come in, not at first. His eyes flick from me to the scattered pages, and I see a shadow of amusement on his mouth, like he knows exactly what I was thinking. My cheeks flame red; I hate that I can’t control it. I want to say something, a joke maybe, but the words are stuck behind my tongue, too thick to move.