“They hid so much, Ram. What did the dead Board do to us?”
I let her talk without interrupting her thoughts.
“That’s the connection to Gamma Pharmaceuticals too. It has to be. God, come on.”
She rubs her face aggressively in her frustration and I gently pull her hands away before she does it again. Heidi stares, I’m not sure she can see me, but she starts talking after a few drawn out minutes.
“I remember a report John tabled a long time ago. Essentially, he was looking to start trials on a new drug that could possibly sever pack connections. The report came out of nowhere…”
She stops speaking again, her eyes flare before she goes back to staring at me. Clearly she’s scrambling through memories for a better timeline.
“It’s okay.” I rub her arm.
“No, Ram, it’s not.” Heidi squeezes her eyes shut, digging her palm into her eyes. “Think, think, think.”
And then she freezes. Before dropping her hands to her side in defeat, her eyes opening up again. “It was immediately after I got attacked.”
“What?” I snarl.
“Keep talking, it will come. You have an incredible memory,” Douglas says watching her with admiration and confidence in his eyes. “Give me a timeline and I’ll pull up our notes.” He grabs his phone, his fingers flying over the screen, handing it over to Heidi for her to log into what I assume is the Verdune mainframe.
“Check the meeting before and immediately after,” she says, though it’s easy to see she’s already moved past that time in her thoughts. She looks at me a few times as her thoughts race.
“What if that’s the reason they wanted the Alpha to attack me? Allan said they Board admitted to having the Duratious spray because they wanted it tested despite us not being at testing stage. But what if they also gave it to him so he could initiate a pack bond.”
The near feral noise I make is completely involuntary and can’t be helped. She reaches out for my hand while she gets lost in her thoughts again. Her touch calms the rage inside me enough so I can let her figure how everything is interwoven in peace and relative quiet, without me Alpha-ing out.
Douglas interrupts her thinking, guiding her to consider another angle, “I’ll check the Pharmaceutical Patent register. Let’s use Gamma Pharm and those rough dates and the key word bond as our search.”
“Do it using any of the Executives or Pack Lowly as registered owner,” she suggests, nodding her head in support before sinking back into me and watching Douglas work.
But she also drifts away, her scent clouding before she turns to look at me.
“What else, baby?” I ask, being as unobtrusive as possible.
How anyone could overlook Heidi’s intelligence and insight is beyond me. The Board handled her by constantly undermining her foundations, demoralising, or belittling her at every chance they had. And when they saw her rise above that, they tried restricting her by monitoring and controlling everything. If those fuckers were alive, I’d lock them under The Great House, to torture for the rest of my life.
Heidi grabs my hand, nodding her head as her thoughts all come together. “Ayden.”
I lose it again to snarl like a rabid bear, making her smile. But she leans against me and her touch once again soothes, before she puts me right in my place. “I love you, Ram, but shh.”
She snuggles up against me before the both of us sit so she can climb into my lap. While she thinks out her theories, I hold her tight and we watch Douglas work.
The small break while Douglas works gives me the chance to sort through my head too. There probably should be a desperate fear in me to lock her away after how close we came today to being torn apart, but strangely I’m okay if you don’t count the last two minor outbursts. I’m fucked off and ready to kill but that’s more to do with wanting Heidi to have the best life ever not just responding to a threat because one thing I know with complete confidence, is my Omega has a strength people underestimate.
“Ram, did you hear me?” she asks, tipping her head up when I don’t answer quickly enough. Her brown eyes are tinged with the lingering after-effect of today, but by tomorrow she’ll be back to herself. I’ll make sure of it.
“Tell me again,” I suggest, leaning around her.
“Ayden should have had an iron disposition and an unbreakable loyalty to his job like all good servicemen and women do. But I think we’ve been looking at it wrong because we thought his behaviour was related to me. What if he was a dick because his commitment was somewhere else entirely.”
“No argument from me on what a dick he is,” I say, pushing her hair from her face.
Her eyes squint in concentration as she explains. “Okay, let’s go back to what Allan said about Ayden being Leigh’s son. Now, we don’t really know his motivation as to why he applied to be a part of my security, it might have been to get closer to Leigh but maybe not too. But once he was a part of the team he met me.”
“Go on…” I nod at her, half following her train of thought but needing some more of where she’s headed.
“I was a mistake, Ramses. I wasn’t meant to be his scent match which is why he was so hot and cold,” Heidi says, shaking her head like she’s disappointed. “But then Ayden turned our connection into an opportunity for him to get his father’s attention. And he wanted his attention because Leigh kept refusing to accept him as family.” She twists around to look at me and Douglas again. “You know I’m completely hypothesising, right?”
