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“When do you envisage that being accomplished?”
I sighed. It wasn’t that easy. “Years from now. People don’t trust outsiders readily, in this world. The fact I’m an alpha counts against me.”
“Keep trying. How is Natasha settling in?”
I nodded. “She has made contact with a local gang. I’m not sure what arrangement she has made with them, if any.”
“What is her attitude like?”
Was Urgoth fishing for reasons to drop her from the assignment? It was such an odd question, and one I’d never been asked before.
“Good. She is working hard on meeting her tasks.”
Urgoth nodded. “I will catch up with her later today. But it’s useful to have another perspective. Let me know if she goes into heat and I’ll have to pull her out.”
“Are you planning to bond with her?” I don’t know why I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“No. She is to bond with no one until her mission is complete. Her position is too important, and we know mating can change an omega’s scent, their behaviors, even their outlook. And what if she were to become pregnant? Omega pregnancy is so much shorter than beta ones that her cover would be blown within weeks.”
She wasn’t allowed to bond until the assignment was over? My chest tensed. I’d no intention of rutting with her but at the same time, I thought it should be her choice who she bonded with. Not the government’s.
“Imperial Command are overstepping,” I growled. “They shouldn’t be fucking with her fertility by deciding if or when she is allowed to bond with someone.”
“Their reasons may not be apparent to you or I, Ryon, but our job is just to follow their commands. We must further Imperial Command’s goals to ensure the world is a better place.”
It took all my self-control not to attack him over this. I wasn’t usually a violent man, beyond the contract killings I sometimes had to carry out, but it really pissed me off to hear Urgoth talk as if Natasha was a commodity to be owned and controlled.
I left the meeting feeling pissed off and disillusioned with my superiors. I’d never been their biggest supporter. Some of the things I’d been told to do had led to arguments. Flat-out refusal, in one case. They thought I was their rough-around-the-edges lapdog but I played by my own rules. I wasn’t working for Imperial Command by choice, any more than I was involving myself in gangs through my own volition.
I hated that Natasha was being forced to participate in the shitshow that was the government vs. the people. I was starting to get seriously pissed off with them. And when I was pissed off, bad things happened to people who should have stayed out of my way.
I returned to the apartment and took a nap on the couch. The night hadn’t been restful and I was shattered still from my last mission. Some of the bruises hadn’t healed, yet. Maybe I was getting too old for this job. Not that they’d ever let me quit.
Sounds drifted through the walls.
“Every night it’s fungoid soup, you waste all day making it, Ihatefungoid soup!”
“Well if you showed up for work more than once a month maybe we’d have the cash for something else!”
“They put me on short time because there’s no work!”
“Then maybe you should’a finished school and got a real job instead of working down the factory!”
The argument was interrupted by some loud banging. The walls were thin. The couple upstairs often shouted at each other. She was frustrated he was a layabout. He was resentful that she couldn’t make steak out of a packet of fungus.
Sometimes one of them threw something or hit the other, but they never changed. Never listened to each other. It wasn’t my place to get involved. I was more concerned with the sounds coming through the wall.
“Aaargh! Aarrgh! Help!” The guy next door was a sick fuck. It sounded like he’d grabbed someone off the street again. The cops wouldn’t do anything. The prison planet was an expensive journey. Public money didn’t prioritize making the poorest part of the city safer. What did it matter if one more girl was broken and lost?
I’d learned to keep my head down in prison, but the sounds I was hearing now were nothing short of messed up. I decided it was time to pay him a neighborly visit. With my disruptor blaster.
