“Do you get the digital shit before you cut the power? Or does he just steal hard drives?” Sidian asked.
“Hard drives, I think. Not my area, though.” Roman had never asked about that. It was something he never needed to know; Silver was already a professional long before Roman showed up. “Ghost used to be aligned with a criminal pack, but the boss stepped in when he was arrested. I think he was going to take the fall for something heinous. He won’t share the exact details, and neither did the boss.”
“And the last two?” Sidian pressed.
“Locke and Keay.” Roman rolled his eyes when Sidian snorted; he’d had plenty of time to get used to their ridiculous names. “Not their real names, I don’t think. I don’t know where they came from, and they keep to themselves. Less social than I am. They’re our main infiltrators. Physical locks, digital locks if Silver can’t access them. I’m not sure what goes into that.”
Sidian fell quiet for a moment, staring at nothing in particular before he knocked Roman in the shoulder with his foot again. “What was your specialty in the group? Anything important?”
“I killed people.” Would he have been surprised if it were anything else? “That was what I was chosen for. I’m stronger, faster, have higher endurance and stamina, and a much higher pain tolerance.”
“Sounds about right.” Sidian swung his legs over so he could sit up, stretching his arms and stifling a yawn against his palm. He still dozed off in the car, but his dark circles were almost gone. “They wouldn’t believe me if I told them you used to be a bookworm.”
Roman still spent a fair amount of time reading, but that was time he spent with his bedroom door shut, and the others only came to bother him if they needed something in particular. “That’s fine. That’s not who I am anymore. At least, not to them.”
Who did he used to be? Quiet, soft-spoken, polite to a fault. He shoved his nose in books because fictional people were easier than real people, and stories let him escape the mundane qualityof his lackluster life. Sidian was the first genuine spark of color amidst the black and white, someone who was real and alive and who captivated every moment of Roman’s attention. He was always important, mate or not.
He was more important now. Roman’s life had slipped back into black and white, spotted with crimson from time to time, but he could recognize how easy it had been to fall into old habits. Working out kept him healthier than staying in his bedroom all the time, but it was similar.
His mind was far more active now; he needed to keep them ahead of whatever might be coming for them, to plan out their course, to prepare for what it might take to kill a pack of alphas. It wasn’t just sitting around and waiting for orders; Roman wondered if he’d ever have broken out of that rut if Sidian hadn’t come back into his life.
He would have just continued to exist, waiting for something to change.
Sidian leaned his shoulder against Roman’s, snuggling up to him, his lily scent subdued. “Did you know I wanted to be a mom? I don’t think I ever told you about that.”
“What?” Roman blinked at him, caught off-guard. “We never discussed children.”
He thought he might have imagined Sidian wincing. “I mean, it’s not something you just talk about with people when you’re locked up in a psych ward, but… I thought about it. My mom was a piece of shit who let my dad do whatever he wanted to me, but I always told myself I’d be different. Pick a good alpha. Take care of my kid.”
“Just one child?” Roman tried to imagine that, but he found it was far simpler to visualize than it should have been. An omega, perhaps, with Sidian’s black hair and violet eyes.
“Well. I guess as many as we wanted. It’d depend on a lot of things. Money. Fertility. How hard it was to raise the first one.”Sidian wrapped his arms around himself, and Roman frowned at his words. He must have been thinking about it an awful lot at the breeding center. “Guess I’m lucky my heats never worked out for Kincaid. I don’t know what he’d have done if they had.”
Bile rose in Roman’s throat at the thought of his omega forced to carry and birth a child he would not get to raise. That would never happen. If Sidian wanted a child, they would discuss it when they were in a better place. “Do you know why they didn’t?”
“Ttress. Omegas don’t conceive when they’re super stressed.” Sidian shrugged, and the slight change in his voice told Roman the conversation was over.
They sat in silence for a while before Sidian slipped off the mattress, mumbling something about taking a shower, and Roman watched him go without a word. He could feel the frustration still simmering under the surface, but there was nothing he could do about it. Even if they ended up in New Jersey tomorrow, there was no guarantee that Pack Kincaid would be back in town. And while Roman wanted justice to be served, he wanted to be prepared. No rushing in just to get killed.
The anger swelled and shifted inside of him for a moment, choking him from the inside of his throat. Blood and viscera, gore and death, bodies strung up and ripped open, oozing and gushing and dripping. Bone jutted through pallid flesh, organs glistening on the floor.
It took several deep breaths and standing to pace around the small, cramped room for the anger to abate. At least with no target to fixate on, it lolled back to sleep, returning Roman’s clarity.
He wondered if he would make it once they reached Pack Kincaid, or if losing his self-control over his mate’s rapists would push him beyond the point of no return.
Chapter Seventeen
When the fuck is Pack Kincaid supposed to go home?
The question dug its claws into Sidian as he stared at the scenery passing by outside the window, his jaw locked and pure tension coiling through every part of his body. Not having answers was pissing him off. He knew it wasn’t Roman’s fault; he knew it wasn’t the fault of the people Roman kept in his life, but the anger was there just the same. The irritation at the fact that those assholes couldn’t be in the one place Sidian needed them to be, the one place theyshouldbe. He wanted Amey back, and he wanted the pack dead.
They would never suffer enough for what they did to him, so he would just have to settle for the grave.
The monotony of driving was getting to him, too. While he liked just having time with Roman alone, the long hours were wearing on him. He could only sleep for so long before an inevitable pothole or dip in the road shook him awake, and besides, he didn’t want to just sit around and sleep. He wanted to do something. He needed to.
Something more productive than just sitting there and waiting.
“Can we stop somewhere?” he asked, and Roman cocked a brow at him. “Just… This is going to sound fucking stupid, but the car’s gonna give me cabin fever. If we can’t go straight to Jersey, is there anywhere we can just hang out for a little while? Just today?”
