Rogue
My team is a bunch of immature assholes. Absolute assholes.
It’s like herding fucking cats.
“Ace,” I snap into my comms speaker. “Quit messing around and do what you’re actually paid to do.”
A snort is my only reply. A shadow flits across the dirty window lined up through my scope, completely ignoring my order to stay put.
Our team has been assigned to extract a pallet of illegal tranquilizer guns from a group of omega traffickers and get the two omegas they currently have in captivity safely to the Omega Compound.
We’ve been staking out this warehouse for two days, and tonight we’re moving in. It was all going well up until my team decided to completely ignore my orders.
Ace shimmies his body like a cat as he climbs up the drainpipe, his combat boots finding a hold in the wall as he hauls himself silently through an open window and into the warehouse.
I curse as Devlin hisses into my ear. “Rogue—"
Of course it’s a goddamned trap. I’ve been distracted by my team dynamics, and gunfire erupts from inside. Swearing, I push myself into a flat run, shooting at the door of the warehouse and slamming myself against it to burst it open. We’ve given away every advantage that we might have had, but I’m not leaving Ace in there to defend himself alone.Asshole.
I burst through the door, attempting to dodge the gunfire as Devlin crashes through behind me with a whoop. He lives for these moments – where everything goes to shit, and you have no choice but to fly by the seat of your pants. Me, I’m more of a planner than a pantser.
We take cover behind a pallet – hopefully, full of the guns we’re looking for – and Devlin covers me as I reload. He returns fire against the cocksuckers shooting at us as I hiss through the comms for an update.
It takes a moment, but Ace’s cackle comes through loud and clear. A lump of relief fills my throat before I force it back down. No time for sentiments in this shitstorm. After, maybe. Once I’ve battered them for being assholes.
“I’m clear, Rogue. Up on the beams – I’ll take them out, you get the girls and the guns.”
Apparently, Ace is now leading this fucking mission.
I wait to hear the gunfire switch to another direction before scanning the surrounding area. The light dips in and out as a few bare lightbulbs swing, highlighting the damp floor and a couple of rickety chairs.
The flickering light briefly illuminates two girls huddled in a cage in the corner. They’re young, too, and my stomach turns at what they might have been subjected to since they were taken two weeks ago. I turn to Devlin beside me, knowing better than to send him over there.
“I’ll get the guns,” he mutters before I even have a chance to get the words out, slinking out and keeping his gun up and ready.
For the love of fuck.
“Am I actually in charge of this fucking mission or what?” I snarl, before stomping over towards the cage. I can’t hear any more gunfire so I’m assuming that the traffickers are dead. Ace is an actual shadow in the field. No bullets ever seem to even get close. By this point though, I’m grumpy enough to tie him to a tree and use him for damn target practice.
The girls are silently gripping each other tightly for support and warmth. Motioning with my hand, I tell them to move to the back of the cage, before shooting the lock and pulling the door open. The oldest girl protectively covers the younger, keeping her eyes on me and refusing to move.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. I’m not the softest, but I try to keep my voice low and soothing. “We’re getting you out of here.”
She considers my words for a moment, glancing down at the shaking omega in her arms. I like the way she doesn’t immediately jump, even though I’m an alpha.
“What will happen to us now?” the older omega asks warily. I notice that her gaze keeps shifting to the gun in my hand, and I slowly reach to the floor and place it down, holding my hands up to reinforce that I mean them no harm.
“We’ll take you to a safe place. The Omega Compound.”
Her eyes widen at my words, and she frantically shakes her head from side to side. Far from the reassurance I thought it would be, the girl clutches the younger omega tighter and pushes herself even closer to the bars of the cage.
“No,” she states, her voice shaking. “Not there. We won’t go there.”
Her voice holds the barest trace of an omega whine, and I wince as Devlin comes up behind me, huffing in frustration at my slowness. I throw out a hand in warning to stop him from moving closer to the frightened girls. Dev isn’t a big fan of omegas, and I don’t want to scare them any further.
His gaze sweeps over them, lingering on the smaller girl. She’s even younger than I thought, barely a teen if that. Incredibly young to have awakened, probably why she was taken.
Nausea threatens at what would have happened to them in the hands of omega traffickers. Dev takes a step back, his hard eyes softening slightly at the two shaking females. It’s hard not to want to do as they ask. But then that’s the issue with omegas, isn’t it? They’re supposed to be master manipulators, using their hormones to influence others to their will.
