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“It’s fine, Dr. Hopkins.”
Her mouth twisted to the side and her brows furrowed, reacting to Clint’s words, before she looked over at the guards in the corner before tilting her head in the universal sign to go on.
“We’ll be outside if you all need anything.”
Ethan’s grip on my hand tightened to the point of pain but I would let him crush every bone in my hand if it brought him comfort. I focused on how I felt about him, let that love and desire fill me up as my scent flooded the space and a soft purr reached out to him. The desperation that had him clinging to my hand eased as his body and instincts responded to me.
He cleared his throat and moved us forward. I reached out to pull two chairs out for us. We sat at the same time but I turned toward him, spreading my thighs and tugging his chair until he was between them so I could surround him.
Turning his face toward me, some more of the tension bled from his face and a little teasing humor showed in his eyes. Of course, the elephant in the room took that moment to make itself heard.
“I’m so sorry. I know that doesn’t make up for anything I did but I am truly?—”
“That doesn’t mean I owe you anything. Trying to get me here to absolve you in exchange for working with the police is a cheap trick.”
The Alpha flinched and a vicious grin split my face. My sweet Omega wasn’t in the room right now and I fucking loved it.
“I don’t expect that from you, really. If you had said no, I would have worked with the police. I just had to try to speak to you to explain, so I could warn you.”
Ethan and I looked at each other, equal parts confusion and suspicion before Ethan turned back to the Alpha.
“My pack has been attacked by monsters who have killed, kidnapped, assaulted, and trafficked people using whatever you created in your lab to make it easier to force a bond on me. I don’t know what you think you have to warn me about but save it for the police.”
Ethan started to stand but Clint reached out and the chains rattled.
“No, wait!”
I knew he couldn’t get to my Omega but Ethan’s near terror-filled scent flooded me, and I pushed him behind me as I reached out to grab the other Alpha’s throat, snarling, and ready to end him.
“Please… I have told the police and they dismissed me but you all will listen because you have seen the other side. I know you have the resources to do what the police won’t.”
He forced each word out around the grip I had on his neck and the pressure on his windpipe.
“Do not fucking move your hands from that table again.”
He nodded as much as he was able and I released him, sitting back again but moving Ethan’s chair so he was further back, and I was angled between them more. I put a hand on Ethan’s knee and he held onto the material of my jacket on my back. To Clint it would just look like he had a hand on my back but I could feel how he was fisting the material to hide the tremor in his arm.
“I’d worked for the Omega Foundation for more than a decade, first on the team developing the tests that locate genetic markers then running the testing operations, but it wasn’t good enough. Three times my pack has been a match for an Omega in the last several years and all three times the Omegas chose someone else. I could have dismissed it as not the right fit but the third Omega was perfect and he liked us. I know he did. He told me he did.”
A silent tear tracked down Clint’s face as he spoke but he kept his hands flat on the table and his eyes downcast.
“Then the Foundation liaison asked him to meet with a match they found from out of the region and suddenly he stopped texting and didn’t want to see us anymore.”
“He was allowed to change his mind. You didn’t own him.”
Clint just nodded and his posture deflated more.
“You’re right, and I would have accepted that if he’d told me that he’d changed his mind, but it wasn’t like him. We’d been courting for months, and the match percentage wasn’t as strong with my pack as it was for me individually…I would have left. I would have broken with my pack if he’d asked. I loved him.”
I hated the fact that, for a brief moment, I saw myself in this man’s shoes. What would happen to me if Ethan suddenly left without any word? If I didn’t have Jade or the rest of my pack? It didn’t excuse shit, but fuck. He wiped his cheek on his shoulder, still carefully following my order.
“I dug around and found out the other pack had given a substantial donation to the Foundation just before the Omega stopped contacting us. I understood then. It wasn’t enough to find an Omega that fit, that you could love, make each other happy like the Foundation preached. You had to buy them.”
Disgust curled his lips and a quiet snarl leaked out of his words but, strangely, that sound didn’t seem to affect Ethan like it had before.
“I received the West siblings’ samples to run for compatibility a few weeks later, and when my pack came back as a match for Ethan, something snapped. I don’t remember everything that I did in the next several days. I knew that the act of erasing the results of compatibility testing would not only end my career with the Omega Foundation, but also make me unhireable anywhere else. Not to mention that it would likely end with me in jail, but I just didn’t care.”
Ethan’s grip on my shirt had loosened and he was leaning closer to me but not in a way that heightened my urge to protect him; more like he was interested in what Clint was saying.
