Walking so she can hear me, I drop my backpack on the ground beside her and sit so her back is pressed against my chest. Sitting quietly, I kiss her temple and hold her as she sits lost in thought. It’s my day off, I have nowhere to be. Any emergencies, I have good people who can figure it out, and I texted the department so they’d know I was out of town for a few hours.
Isidro blends into the background, because I can’t see or hear him. The least he can do is let me work.
“You found me,” Silva sniffles. “Do I want to know how you managed that?”
“I put a tracker on your truck,” I mumble. “I have anxiety about losing people.”
That was a much more truthful response than I expected to give her.
“Okay,” she whispers, turning to snuggle against me. Since losing my sister, I have been neurotic about taking care of peopleI care for, which is one of the reasons I began meeting Silva at her club after work to follow her home.
Once we started dating, that was no longer enough.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Maeve,” I say against her hair.
“You don’t owe me anything,” she says. “I do want to hear about her though. Do you think she’s out there somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “A part of me hopes she isn’t if it means the difference between being in pain or being free. Is that awful of me to say?”
“No,” Silva says. “Knowing how bad life can be, how it feels to have your insides ripped apart for the pleasure of alphas while you cry and scream, I don’t think it is.”
Fuck.Closing my eyes against the pain in her voice, I force air into my lungs. I hate that she’s been hurt by the dipshits she lived with as a kid.
“I’ll happily kill your foster brothers for you,” Isidro says. I have to curb my flinch, because I’d almost forgotten he was there. “Unless you’re against killing too.”
“You don’t know me,” Silva says. “Don’t act like you do. I’m not lying about who I am, but you are.”
Opening my eyes, I watch as Isidro drops onto his ass next to us.
“I hide so no one can tell me I’m a liability when I’m working,” he says. “I’m the mole for my team. I figure out how to get close to people, and since I seem pretty innocuous, they trust me. It’s why I don’t have a Spanish accent, even though I wasn’t born here. My parents immigrated here when I was six and my sister was ten. She was kidnapped, raped, and dropped off dead at my parents’ doorstep when she turned twenty-two.”
Silva and I are silent as we listen, and her fingers dig into my forearm. I cuddle her closer, because I can tell this is going to be really fucking hard to hear.
She’s right, the world is harsh for omegas, and she and her friends have built a place that offers a moor in the storm.
“She went out with her friends, and one of the guys there was offended when she refused a drink. My parents always told her to be careful when she went out because she’s an omega. I was still seventeen at the time, but I wish every day I was older so I could have protected her. The bastards drugged her, and left without her friends noticing,” Isidro explains.
“Sounds like her friends were shitty,” Silva says softly. “I’m so sorry about your sister. Being an omega doesn’t make you a liability.”
“In undercover work it does,” Isidro says, making a disgusted face.
“Certain scents are easier to remember,” I explain. “It’s shitty that omegas are more memorable, but in a town full of omegas, you stick out like a sore thumb when you smell of your alphas.”
“A miscalculation on my part,” Isidro says, shrugging. “Ugh, what I wouldn’t give for a cigar right now. I fucking hate talking about myself.”
“So why are you here?” Silva asks.
“He stowed away in my car,” I say, smirking. “Isidro insisted that he needed to talk to you.”
“Very funny, Beta Asswipe,” Isidro mutters. “This town that you and your friends have built is amazing. Even as distrustful as people have been, I can see how wonderful they are with each other. Shep was ready to go fuck my alphas and I up on your behalf.”
“He still might,” I add. “Shep may be scared shitless of Silva, but he’s loyal.”
“I’m not that scary,” my omega grumbles.
“You can be,” I say, at the same time that Isidro says, “You’re pretty fucking scary.”
We glance at each other smugly before I remember he’s on the community shit list. If Silva doesn’t like you, neither do I. Solidarity in pettiness.
