Chapter 16

After breakfast, we head to what can only be described as a futuristic armory, where they load up with weapons. Knives and high-tech automatic armaments that look like something out of a space movie. More weapons than I have been up close and personal with in my whole life.

We leave the armory but haven’t made it far down the corridor before amber lights start to flash in the ceiling.

“There has been a third breach, and they’re still moving us out?” Noah asks. He is walking beside Ash ahead of Seb and me.

The corridor suddenly grows congested as people rush every which way, and my personal woes take a backseat in the face of this new all-pervasive tension. Yet my cup of worries is full, and the excess stress spills over into a numbness that can’t process any of what is happening.

“A small team,” Ash says. “Moving fast.”

“Alone?” Noah asks.

Ash shakes his head. “No, a couple of others. Mostly as a decoy.”

“Jesus,” Noah mutters roughly. “Aircover?”

“No. That will draw attention.”

“Well, shit,” Noah says.

Their conversation confuses me even as it strikes a note of unease. Ahead, the big double doors loom, and weak daylight spills in. It’s so strange inside the base; you feel almost cocooned from the real world.

Outside, I find that the sky is dull and gray, and the heavy feeling of moisture in the air suggests imminent rain. I realize now that the dark sky isn’t only due to cloud cover but also because it’s still early. I’m tired, which could be from the changes in my body, the stress, or a simple lack of sleep.

In the center of the clearing there’s a small group of people waiting with horses. Heavily armed soldiers surround them, watching the trees.

Danger looms in the air and the body language of the soldiers.

Ash separates from us and heads for a horse where the blonde is waiting; just seeing him close to her lights a fire in my belly. Seb directs me to our horse in a way that says he’ll take no-nonsense from me. Noah mounts beside us, alone where yesterday there was a woman with him.

It’s only now I notice how few women there are—no more than six when there were closer to thirty yesterday. The ratio of men to women is also much higher. Yesterday, there were twice the number of men as women. Today, that’s closer to four times, and all are heavily armed.

We ride all through the day. The pace is fast, and the stops are infrequent. I’m exhausted by the time the light begins to fade, and we arrive at our destination. Yet another base.

Of sorts.

Whereas the first two were modern and pristine, this one looks like it scraped through an apocalypse. There are cracks in the walls and half the lights are out of order. There are no fancy food replicators, just a very basic canteen with battered chairs and half-pillaged boxes of rations and water bottles.

Ash dumps the blonde girl with Noah and strides off, muttering about an update. Seb tries to sit me down next to them.

“Over my dead body,” I hiss.

The blonde girl laughs, and that only charges my temper.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Seb says, like he’s confused by my reaction.

Is he fucking stupid?

He hauls me toward the other side of the room and manhandles me into a seat, putting me with my back to them.

I’m starving so I eat. The meal replacement bar sticks to my teeth, and it takes copious amounts of water to wash it down.

“I know it doesn’t taste great,” Seb says, “but it’s got all the nutrients you need. We’ll do another test when you’re done.”

“I don’t want another test,” I say bluntly. “We both know I’m already changing.”

I feel his eyes on me, but I refuse to acknowledge them. One might think my exhaustion would make some headway to counter the arousal—but it doesn’t. I feel like I’m about to tear a hole through the nearest wall.

“Yeah, I know.” There’s a long pause.

Despite telling myself not to, I lift my head, and his eyes meet mine. I’m pretty sure Ash busted his nose when they worked through their ‘difference of opinion’, as Noah called it. The bruising that was only in the corner of his eyes has spread underneath them, and his nose is a little puffy.

We stare at one another.

I feel like this would be a good time for him to tell me he’s sorry for being an asshole. He doesn’t. He just stares back at me, a tic thumping in his jaw, as 99.99% floats between us.

“Seb can’t mate you,” Noah had said this morning, implying that Seb coming all over me like that—marking me—meant that he wanted this. Only Seb doesn’t want a mate, whatever the hell that means. He only jerked his cum all over me because he’s a bastard, and knowing I was close, didn’t want me to come, too.

I try to tell myself that I didn’t want to come because if I had, that would have made everything infinitely worse.

“Never heard of anyone getting a score that high before,” Noah had continued, telling me I was going to become an omega; not just that, but some special kind that every alpha would instinctively want to claim.

Then there is Ash, who gave me to Seb because he said Seb was the one with the control and would be able to resist.

Now, though, I begin to question whether Seb’s actions are all due to him being an asshole, although there is definitely a heavy asshole influence in his psyche.

I don’t want to be a prize that’s fought over. I don’t want any of this. I want to return home, get the box from the loft, and find the black obsidian rock my grandpa gave me.

But what I want and what I can have are widely disparate things. They’re assimilating our planet. The bits of information I’ve gathered together tell me as much. Not just me, but they’ll be coming for my family, too. And I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again, even when all this is done.

They’ve already infected me.

I’m changing.

That incessant arousal is still pulsing through my core. It wouldn’t take much on his part for my body to respond, whether I want it to or not. I can feel the pull between us and I’ve been fighting it with everything I’ve got. His scent is so enticing. Being next to him all day, most of last night… and the day before, has made it familiar, and now it’s all wrapped up with the arousal coursing through me.

This is all very primal: the way I feel, the glands… his scent.

Awareness blooms within me.

“Has my scent changed?” The question sounds almost stupid, but I guess there are no stupid questions here when so much has happened that defies logic.

There is a long pause. My body softens, and I know the answer even before he speaks.

“Yeah.” He swipes his big hand down his face and leans back in the seat, making the plastic creak. “You smell like temptation, like I’m about to die if I don’t get a taste. It drives a compulsion so strong that I wonder how I’m still on this side of the table when all I can think about is burying myself balls deep and staying there forever.”

Well, fuck. I did ask.

Why do I suddenly feel so sad?

I swallow.

Seb is never going to be for me.

I haven’t thought about Derek much—I’ve tried to erase him from my mind, really—but his harsh words taunt me when I recall him sneering at the women who are taken, calling them ‘whores and breeders’. I have no desire to be either of those things, but I can feel something inside me growing, spreading, the virus changing my anatomy. I want to tear the skin from my flesh and get the virus out of me.

Only, it’s not possible, is it?

And I’m still staring at Seb, and he’s still staring at me, and neither one of us is eating.

“I don’t want this,” I say.

“I didn’t want it either, princess. And yet, here we are.”

“Would you take it back? If you could?”

“At first, I would’ve, yeah. At first, I just wanted my old life back, you know? It was good. I was living the fucking dream. And now I’m just, well, I’m pretty average here, to be blunt. Yet, here I also have a purpose that transcends anything I’ve known before. Now, I’m fighting for something.”

“Against the people who want the virus to stop?”

“Noah’s got a big fucking mouth.”

“Ash said there’d been another breach. Please tell me what that means.”

“Ash is going to fuck me up even worse than he already did if I tell you more. In case it’s not obvious, we’re not in a good position right now. There is danger. You’re not stupid, Isla. I already know that by your score. The virus doesn’t just work on a blank slate. It’s not just some random lottery in the way it manifests. It takes what’s already there and extrapolates it out. You’re destined to be extraordinary. You’re not for the likes of us.”

I feel my lower lip quivering.

Today, I miss the lighthearted version of Seb. Today, he is all cold, hard truths.

He’s being harsh because he can’t keep me, and I can’t keep him. And all this, this strange unraveling inside me, the pull, can never be anything more.

I think I understand his motivations as I recognize that he’s failed in control and pulled me near, only to push me away again.

He has done this before, many times; at least the way he talks about it implies as much.

Is this what it’s like for him every time? Feeling this burgeoning connection and then being torn apart.

This is only my first time.

Will there be more times for me too? More alphas I will feel a pull toward only to be forced away?

I don’t want to understand him. I want to stay hating him.

“I can’t control the feelings that are ripping through me. And I hate that.”

“I know, princess.” His smile is wry. “Tell me about it, I know.”

I eat the remainder of my ration pack in silence. Every mouthful is a challenge, and, afterward, it sits like a lump of lead in my stomach. Something has changed in me, and not just from the virus. I don’t have it in me to fight him or what will come anymore. All the anger and frustration just leaves me.

Maybe tonight he will fuck the blonde girl Ash brought here, again.

Maybe I will have to watch, or perhaps I will be left in my bed alone, hearing it all, and that will be worse.

Maybe I only imagine the pull is mutual.

Maybe doing this many times has scoured away whatever emotions he once had.

Maybe all those words he said after taking me from the shuttle, only two days ago, are true, and he doesn’t care about me beyond the fact that he would care and protect us all.

I don’t want to be special.

Yet I also want to be special to him.

I want to go back to my life.

Only, what exactly was my life? Levi, who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. Derek, who treated me like a child and lied to me. My friends and family. God, it’s only now I realize how much I miss them. I wish I’d spent more time popping over to see my folks. I wish I hadn’t been so busy. All those times when I’d just sat and watched the television, I wish I’d done something more meaningful instead, with the people I cared about, gathering one more memory.

Because I might not get any more.

I feel the tears trickle down my cheeks. I don’t bother to wipe them away. What’s the point? My world has been ripped apart, and now I’m being assimilated like the rest of my world will soon be.

“How many other worlds are there? How many people? How many times has this been done?”

“A lot—this is the fifty-seventh world.”

“Jesus.” I stare down at the empty wrapper in my hand, drop it on the table, pick up the water bottle, and take a deep drink while his words sink in.

“Some people don’t agree with it, do they? Some people don’t want it to happen.”

When I look up, he nods once.

“The breach?”

He nods again.

“I’m not ready for this.”

“None of us are ready, princess. But it has already happened. The virus has begun changing you. We all had to pick a side. Or, rather, one was picked for us. Now, it’s about survival. Now, it’s them or us.”