A low growl penetrates my daze, and I blink, finding Zeb staring after the healer, his jaw locked and his face like thunder.
I bite my lip, and a giggle bubbles up. Fine, I’m a little high on whatever that healer was packing.
He turns back to me, huffs out a breath and shakes his head, his rage easing.
“Commander Thorne, Governor Brach is requesting a briefing, sir,” a soldier calls from the open doorway.
“I’ll be right out,” Zeb says, never taking his eyes from mine.
Damn, you’re so pretty.
He grunts and looks away, almost bashful.
Opps, did I say that out loud?
“Yes.”
“Yes?!”
“Sir! Governor Brach?—”
“Yes, I heard you the first time,” he cuts the soldier off. Eyes on mine, he mouths,mine, and then he turns and leaves.
I stare after him. The healer bustles back in to check on me. By the time I’m escorted off the ship and into the familiar omega community on Chimera, I’m convinced I imagined it all.
Chapter Twenty
Esme
One month later…
“I’ll petition to see you get whatever time you need, Esme,” Lilly says.
I’m on Chimera, the Empire’s cultural capital and Lilly’s office. A familiar setting, although we speak more often over a video call. She has a formal desk to one side of the room, but we’re sitting on two facing couches that offer views across the city.
And quite a view it is.
“Thank you,” I reply. “I understand it won’t be forever, but I appreciate this chance to rest and recuperate.”
Her face softens. Her emotions are fierce and compassionate all at once and they make me want to cry.
She’s worried about me. The girls at the omega community have been much the same, always checking in on me, bringing me treats to cheer me up. If only I could shake off this depression and stop giving them cause for worry…
“I can’t believe the military kept what Tsing was doing from me, even after that monster was dead,” she says vehemently. “Especiallyafter he was dead. You’d think they would want me abreast of this so I could get ahead of the curve on the fallout. But no. Can’t have a delicate omega worrying about that.” She shakes her head. “We’ve come a long way, but we still have more to go. It’s time they stopped closeting omegas from life like we might break. They send us into war for goodness’ sake, yet don’t trust us, well, me, with vital information. I’d call it double standards, but I don’t even know what this nonsense is. I just know I don’t like it. If I had only known sooner, maybe you never would have been in such an impossible situation at all.”
She’s talking about me abandoning my post and entering an enemy ship on a crazy mission to save my controller. Who turned out not to be a controller at all, but a high-profile undercover agent on a mission for the government. He’s not even an alpha. He’s a zeta… with a beast.
Worse, he’d already completed his mission and had gotten off the ship. He had to go back on for me!
The self-recriminations go deep, the guilt, deeper. They didn’t even blame me. I might feel better if they did. They never blame omegas when they fuck up, that is all on their controller.
Not that they’re blaming Zeb, either, from what I can tell. No, he’s a veritable hero by all accounts.
A zeta… I’ve never even heard of the dynamic. Given what he can do, it makes sense that they would keep it a secret.
I feel so duped.
And angry.
