Beta (26 page)

But nobody really looked at her. The residents of the sanctuary were so trusting that they hadn’t noticed Stark’s highly televised Beta walking through their midst.

She’d gotten away from Trevin scot-free.

Deirdre passed one of the open fields to find a group of shifters playing volleyball in their human forms. She lingered at the side of the road, watching their bodies leaping around in play.

Shifters were truly perfect human beings, strong and agile. Even the gangly, long-limbed teenagers looked graceful as they moved, bouncing the ball back and forth between them.

There was only one adult in sight. He rested in a nearby hammock, leg dangling off the side, holding a beer by the neck. Deirdre leaned against the tree beside him. “Looks like they’re having fun,” she said.

He grunted. “I’m tired just looking at them.” He shifted in the hammock to glance up at her. He stiffened. “Who the hell are you?”

She looked at him in surprise—really looked at him. His skin was dark brown, with his facial hair trimmed into a neat goatee. His golden eyes glowed with accusation.

Scars marred one half of his face, all the way down his neck and disappearing into the collar of his shirt.

It was Abel—the male Alpha of the werewolf pack, and Rylie’s mate.

He was no longer unconscious in bed and hooked up to an IV drip to keep him hydrated.

She’d managed to accidentally strike up a conversation with the worst person possible in the entire sanctuary.

Deirdre wished that her guns hadn’t been confiscated by the OPA.

“Are you deaf?” Abel asked. “I said, who are you?”

The wild urge to run struck Deirdre, but she resisted. It was too late for that. She’d seen how fast Rylie could move. Abel could knock her down and rip her throat out before she took three steps.

“Tombs.” The name came out hoarse. She cleared her throat. “I’m Deirdre Tombs.”

His suspicious glare eased a fraction. “I’ve heard about you. Haven’t I?”

“We’ve met before.” Deirdre was twitchy, scratching her fingernails along the inside of her left arm, and she made herself stop. “You identified me after Genesis. I was in one of the hospitals.”

He chewed on the end of a long piece of grass, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. “What’d I identify you as?”

“Gaean,” she said.

“And?”

“And nothing. Nobody knows what else I am.”

Recognition sparked in his eyes. “You’re the Omega.” He said the word like the insult that it was meant to be. After all the weeks that Deirdre had spent trying to inure herself to it, she still twitched. This was the man who had first declared her to be too dangerous to live at the sanctuary, after all. It didn’t look like he regretted the decision.

Abel swung his legs over the side of the hammock and stood. He was a beast of a man, easily as broad as Stark and far taller, probably at least six and a half feet.

Where Rylie always looked too sweet to be the head of a werewolf pack, this guy looked too mean. More like he belonged with Stark than the idealist shifters at the sanctuary.

Deirdre couldn’t see them as a couple, much less one that would have produced seven kids together.

He was also much more intimidating now that he was awake.

As Abel loomed over Deirdre, she had to force herself not to back away from him. She’d stood her ground against Stark. She could stand up against anyone.

He pulled the grass out of his mouth and flicked it to the ground. “Nice to meet you, Deirdre Tombs.” He shook her hand. His callused palms were rough and his fingers were damp with condensation from the beer bottle.

Deirdre blinked. “Uh, yeah. Same.”

“Rylie told me about what all you’ve been doing,” Abel said. “It’s good. You didn’t have to do any of that. We appreciate it.” The kind words didn’t sound natural coming from him, but they did sound genuine. Maybe he was Rylie’s mate after all. “What are you doing here now, wandering around? I thought you were still tailing Everton Stark.” It didn’t seem like he knew that she was supposed to have an escort.

“To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing yet,” Deirdre said. “Rylie told me that she’ll send me to a safe place in Jamaica. Or I can go back to Stark.”

He took a long swig of beer. “What do you think you’ll do? Go back to a murderous terrorist, or go somewhere you can smoke weed and have drinks with umbrellas?”

“Seems like only one of those is a sane choice, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“None of us are sane.” Abel strolled along the edge of the clearing, and Deirdre followed him instinctively. He was that kind of guy. She felt like she would follow him anywhere without needing to think twice about it. “You must have gotten to know Gage pretty well before he died.”

Deirdre swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

She expected for him to have more to say about that, but he didn’t. Abel just grunted in quiet acknowledgment of the man they’d all lost.

“What do you think I should do?” Deirdre asked.

“I want you to go back to Stark and give us everything we need to kill him before he kills us,” Abel said without hesitation.

“Easy for you to say.”

“We’ve got witches. We can hook you up with a remote communication spell. Make it easy for you to let us know if you need a fast extraction. What do you think of that?”

Deirdre stopped walking. “Why didn’t I get that before?” But before he could answer, she said, “No, wait. Stark has at least one witch on staff too. They’d know I’d been enchanted.”

“Tell them it’s something else. Like a glamour. We could give you one of them, too.”

“I dunno,” Deirdre said.

She didn’t really want Rylie and Abel to be able to find her.

A boy broke away from the volleyball game, jogging over to join them. “Hey! I don’t know you. I’m Benjamin.” He thrust his hand toward her.

Deirdre didn’t shake it. “Careful there. I’m an Omega. Could be contagious.”

“It’s okay. I’m totally human. I can’t catch anything that you’ve got.”

“You’re Rylie and Abel’s son, aren’t you?” Deirdre asked. Gage had told her that one of their children was mundane.

“Yeah, he’s stuck with us,” Abel said, ruffling his son’s hair. The boy ducked out of his reach.

Benjamin didn’t go far, though. He looked much too interested in Deirdre to leave. “I’ve never seen you around here before, and I’ve got a really good memory for faces.”

“I’m just visiting,” Deirdre said.

“We don’t let anyone ‘just visit.’”

“We do when they’re keeping tabs on our enemy for us,” Abel said.

Deirdre was surprised that he’d let his son know about any of that. Benjamin couldn’t have been older than nine or ten years old.

“Wow,” Benjamin said. He looked at her with a new light in his eyes, like he was meeting a superhero. “You know, Marion talks about Stark all the time. She’s kind of a news junkie. I bet she’d love to meet you.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Deirdre said.

But Benjamin had already run off, waving his arms over his head. “Hey! Marion! Guess who’s here?”

Deirdre groaned, smothering her face with a hand.

“Not too late to run off to Jamaica,” Abel said.

She gave it a moment’s serious consideration. But before Deirdre could decide where she would try to escape to, Benjamin returned. An older girl wandered behind him, eyes on her cell phone and thumbs rapidly typing out a text message.

“See, Marion?” He tugged on her arm. “She’s the person we have spying on Stark. A spy!”

“Stark?” Marion lifted her gaze to focus on Deirdre. A smile spread over her lips. She obviously recognized her from the news reports. “You’re Deirdre Tombs! Wicked!”

Deirdre didn’t want to enjoy the admiration, but it was a far cry from the chilly reception she’d gotten at the asylum. Impressing someone for once was kind of nice. “It’s not as cool as you’d think it is. It’s dangerous. I’ve almost died…a lot.” She added the last part with a slightly dramatic tone, unable to resist.

“That is
amazing
,” Marion declared. Her attention had already returned to her phone, though.

Benjamin rolled his eyes. “
Marion
.”

“What?” she asked without looking up. “This is cool. I said it’s cool.”

Gage had described Marion as a mage: a child of mixed angel and witch parentage, half-ethereal, half-mortal, and entirely too powerful for Deirdre to feel comfortable in her presence. The teenager addicted to texting didn’t look all that threatening, though.

The kids playing volleyball shouted to Benjamin.

“Your team’s losing,” Abel remarked.

“Oh, nuts,” Benjamin said. “Gotta go. Cool meeting you, Deirdre!” He ran off with a wave.

Marion didn’t go anywhere, so Deirdre peered over her shoulder. She wasn’t texting. It looked like she was on some kind of social media app, writing out a lengthy post. When Marion noticed Deirdre looking, she turned her phone off and pocketed it. “Sorry,” she said, cheeks pink. “I’m such a teenage stereotype.” Her accent wasn’t American. Her R’s sounded funny.

“Not all that stereotypical. You’re at a shapeshifter sanctuary,” Deirdre asked. “Where’s home when you’re not hanging out with the furry and four-legged?”

“Here and there.” She shrugged. “Las Vegas. Montego Bay. Valenciennes. My mother, sister, and I get around a lot.”

Sadness crept over Deirdre as she watched the girl speak. Gage had talked about Marion like she was his sister. It felt like Deirdre should have had something to say to her about him. But he hadn’t had a chance for last words, nor had he given her a final message to share with his friends.

His life had ended too abruptly, with the roar of a berserker and the bang of Deirdre’s gun.

“You were friends with Gage, weren’t you?” Marion asked, surprising her.

“Kinda,” Deirdre said. Given time, they could have been a lot more than friends, but they’d only known each other for a week.

Marion smiled sadly. Her pale blue eyes were shockingly pale against the darkness of her curly hair. “Nobody dies, you know.”

Deirdre gave a mirthless laugh. Gage had died, all right. She’d exposed his brains herself.

She could still smell his burning fur.

“Don’t believe me? But it’s true,” Marion said.

The girl swirled her hands through the air, one over the other, like the pedals of a bicycle.

Sparks flared from her fingertips, the same color as her eyes.

“Life is a cycle, Deirdre,” she went on, spinning the light into spirals. The rhythmic pattern of it was hypnotizing. “We’re born, we live, we die. But all energy is conserved. Nothing is ever lost. After we pass on, we dwell in a quiet place that is no more tragic than the place we dwell before we’re born.”

Marion opened her hands. The magic kept swirling between her palms.

Deirdre glimpsed a familiar face in the midst of the haze—a man with friendly eyes, an easy smile, and hint of sadness lingering around his lips.

“We haven’t lost Gage forever,” Marion said. “He’s become everything. He’s in everyone.”

She snapped her fingers.

The magical light vanished. In its place, a rose with dusky sapphire petals appeared. It dropped into Marion’s outstretched palm.

The girl offered it to Deirdre.

“Everything is remade,” Marion said with a big smile.

Deirdre didn’t reach out to take the flower. The rose looked so real, as though Marion had just plucked it off the strangest rosebush in the world.

That was magecraft. The magic of an angelborn.

But Marion was still smiling, and there was something so reassuring about her presence that Deirdre couldn’t resist. She took the rose.

“Watch out for the thorns,” Marion said.

Deirdre smelled the petals. Its perfume was strong. “How old did you say you are, Marion? Seventy-something?”

Her laugh was pleasant. “I’m almost fifteen.”

“Fifteen million,” Deirdre muttered.

“My mother says I’m an old soul,” Marion said. “But isn’t that true of everyone? We’re all old souls.” She peered deeply into Deirdre’s eyes, as though she could see something in them that nobody else could. “Especially you, Deirdre.”

With that, Marion turned and walked away, leaving Deirdre with a weird blue rose.

She set the flower down on a nearby rock. Her fingers were tingling where she’d touched it.

Only then did Deirdre remember that Abel was still there, standing back among the trees as though he hadn’t wanted to get too close to Marion. It was strange to see such a huge man acting like he was wary of a little girl.

“And she called herself a teenage stereotype,” Deirdre said.

Abel’s frown carved severe lines into his face. “That kid’s anything but.”

“Got a problem with angels?”

He just grunted. “I’m supposed to be all grateful because of the weapon they gave us and all the enchanted fortifications, but…” He shrugged. “You see what I’ve seen, you learn to be wary.”

Weapon? Fortifications?

Deirdre glanced up at the waterfall. She couldn’t see the memorial from where she stood, but she knew it was up there.

It was fortified with incredibly powerful magic. Deirdre wasn’t surprised to hear that it was ethereal.

But she hadn’t realized there was a weapon there, too.

“What have you seen the angels do?” Deirdre asked.

Abel gave her a long look, as though trying to decide if he wanted to say anything. “I’ve gotta go. Stuff to do. Alpha stuff.” He drained his beer and set the empty bottle on a rock beside the rose.

He walked away, leaving Deirdre alone.

He didn’t know that she was supposed to have an escort.

She turned to the waterfall again.

“What weapon did the angels give you?” she whispered.

There was one way to find out.