AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How many have joined the rebellion?” I finally asked. I had no idea how long the drive would be, but Orion took the roads with an almost careless ease, so I assumed we were safe. For now.
“We’re spread across six underground compounds,” Orion said, his voice clipped. “Sixteen Alphas, about two-hundred-and-twenty Betas, and seventy-five Omegas. Most of the Omegas have been assigned espionage roles, so almost none of them are in the compounds.”
My brow furrowed. “Sixteen Alphas and only six compounds?”
Orion cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, yes. There’s been a vie for power, but most of them seemed willing to get along long enough to see if Bryn’s plan would be successful. I think they’re expecting you to take the place as Head Alpha in our compound upon your return.”
It wasn’t unheard of for other Alphas to serve under one stronger—and I had been stronger, once. “How many do we have?”
“Five,” Orion said. “They’ve set up the Council and it’s going…” He trailed off, and I could hear the tension in his voice. “They’re making it work, but most of them are waiting for you.”
Most of them. “I don’t know if I’m up to the challenge.” I rubbed at my eyes, but there was just endless nothing, the utter absence of sight unnerved me more than anything else. My body was healing rapidly—though I knew I still had a long way to go—but my eyes showed no progress.
“They’re willing to be patient,” Orion said.
I let out a small breath and shifted so I was facing him. The last time I had seen him, he was war-torn and exhausted with filthy, rust-colored claws from all the blood, eyes dark, faintly glowing blue. We were all scarred—inside and out—and I wondered if he was worse now. “We need to consider the possibility that I won’t be able to heal entirely. Ever.”
“Kor…”
I held up my hand to silence him, and the fact that he so readily obeyed allowed me to settle the Alpha inside me. “We need to face a potential reality. I might get strength back, and my ability to fully shift. But I don’t know if my wolf can heal everything. I’ve been strapped to a bed, starved, and tortured for months. We’ve already seen what their chemical weapons can do to us in the short term. We need to consider that long-term exposure can’t be fixed.”
“We have a full medical team,” Orion said gruffly. “Don’t be so fucking eager to give up.”
There was a cold note in his voice, and it sent a chill down my spine. “Something went wrong, didn’t it?”
“You mean besides finding out you were sold by our government after fighting for the freedom of our people for years?” he spat.
I closed my eyes, though it made no difference, and I bowed my head toward my knees. “Do you know who it was?”
“I have my suspicions,” he said, and so did I. “Marion seized power after the treaty—he’s appointed himself the Alpha of everyone. He’s been spreading word he wants it to be an elected position, but he’s been lining the pockets of local Alphas. Everyone loves him.”
Marion had been a charismatic Alpha who had been disturbingly neutral on the war. It was a comfort to so many though, at the time, and there had been whispers about him taking power once the war ended. But years stretched into decades, and the fighting hadn’t slowed. It was no surprise to hear his name now though. And he was one of many I had no trouble believing would sell out his Generals to the humans.
“Sophie took a job with him,” Orion said after a beat, his voice harder.
Sophie, his fiancée. His Omega. They’d been planning their wedding when our city was hit, and he’d sent her to the mountains with the children as he took to the front lines with me.
“She’s not coming home.”
I let out a soul-deep breath and shook my head. “They’ll see the truth eventually.”
Orion scoffed. “Will they? He’s rebuilt everything. Schools, businesses, cities. He’s gotten money from human governments all over the world as reparations. They’ve been funding everything in the spirit of peace, and they’re all willing to turn a blind eye. Some of them—” He stopped when his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat again. “Some of them don’t even bother. They think a few Wolves here and there are worth it.”
“Sacrifice the one,” came the human voice from behind us. I felt Orion tense, heard the creak of the steering wheel as he gripped it too hard. “It’s an old adage. Sacrifice the one for the many. It never works out the way they want it to.”
I wanted to tell Misha to be quiet, if only to save himself. He wasn’t going to endear himself to someone like Orion—not now, not ever. No matter what he sacrificed. Orion had lost too much at the hands of humans—his parents, his siblings. And me.
But I couldn’t bring myself to stop him. His voice was a balm to my frayed nerves, and if I knew it wouldn’t cause Orion to lose the threads of patience he had left, I might have crawled back there and gathered Misha in my arms just to be near him.
I knew the feeling—I knew what that newly forming bond meant, what it might have meant if he was an actual Omega and not a genetically modified human. But I couldn’t allow myself to think more on it now. We had too much at stake, and I had no idea what was going to happen to either of us once we got to the compound.
“I’m going to stop for gas and food,” Orion said after a beat, and the car began to slow, the blinker clicking gently. “I’m gonna park over there so you can use the bathroom if you need it.”
My jaw tensed hard enough it made the inside of my temples ache. “Over where? I can’t see. You can’t just drop me off on the fucking corner, Orion.”
Orion let out a subvocal growl of frustration. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Cut the ties off me, and I can guide him,” Misha said. “You can put new ones on as soon as we’re done.”
