Page 25 of The Omega Project

“Think it through.” He doesn’t relax his hold, and while in a straight-up, physical fight I could probably take him, one alpha command and he’d have me on the floor. There’s dominantand then there’s Finn, just like there’s air and then there’s a hurricane. “If she’s a switch, you already have your answer.” He points to the smear of slick on my trousers. “And you and I can both smell the truth.”

“How?” I don’t try to barge past him again, but I shake off his hand. “Was it you?”

“No.”

“Then was it Soren? Did he trigger her?”

“Come up to my office. We shouldn’t talk about this here.”

“Why not?” My voice is almost a snarl. “This is the most secure facility in the world, remember?”

Finn runs a hand over his face, and for the first time I catch the sparkle in his eyes. The guy usually has the gaze of a ghost, but right now he can barely contain his giddiness. “You’re happy!” I choke out. “And you’re not fucking surprised, are you?”

“I’m pleasantly surprised. But given the data, it was a potential outcome.”

I shake my head at him.Is he for real?“Stop speaking like a computer, dickbag! What the fuck are we going to do?”

“We’re going to do the same thing we’ve always done. Observe, adjust, and protect.” His hand is back on my arm, and this time I can feel the authority in his hold. I could probably still shake him off, but do I really want to eat gravel in my best suit? Which of course reminds me of Emily’s sweet body rocking over me as she hummed in her throat and kissed along my neck…

“Come on, you’ll feel better if we pull up the feeds and check in with her.”

I shake myself out of the haze and scowl at him. “She’s not at her boyfriend’s. I dropped her at home, if you can call that place a fucking home.”

Finn just shrugs. “I wired her sister’s place a week ago.”

I can’t help but laugh, and he slaps my shoulder as he steers me towards the elevator. We bypass the security room where one of my team is monitoring the screens, and head straight up to his office. He pulls up multiple feeds, including three different angles that show Emily curled up on her sister’s sofa. “You’re fucking shitting me. You’re one creepy motherfucker, Finn.”

“Dry humping in the Merc?” He gives a low, dark chuckle, and there’s no mistaking the thread of satisfaction in it. “You won’t even let me take off my shoes in that car.”

“Yeah, well your feet don’t smell like her…” I stare down at my lap, words failing me as I take in the rigid line of my cock, pressing hard against my damp trousers. “Jesus. I feel like a goddamn adolescent.”

“At least it proves she’s not a null.”

I scowl at him, once again reminded that Finn views this as a puzzle to be solved. Not that he’s heartless about our situation, but his feelings of guilt are equally matched by his thirst for knowledge. With his big brain and unlimited resources, there’s not many unknowns in Finn Visser’s world.

“Stop spying on her,” I grumble, and he smirks as he pulls up the cameras to Derek’s place. The big beta is also on the couch, but he’s hard at work with a laptop on his knees. Every hundred keystrokes or so, he swipes at his red nose with a tissue and chugs from a Red Bull can, but otherwise his unblinking concentration reminds me of the guy standing next to me. “Can you see what he’s looking at?”

If it’s porn, it might be handy to know what he’s into. If it’s something on the dark web, that could be useful in its own way.

“He’s currently rifling through your discharge papers.”

What the hell?“He’s in the DOD database?”

“Mmm. Seems our boy is doing his own background checks.” He pulls up a few more screens, displaying the results of Derek’s search. He’s thorough, unearthing everything from mycommendations to my health records, and bank statements going back five years. “Don’t be too flattered,” Finn smirks. “He’s probed Lang so hard he probably felt it in his tonsils.”

I grunt, because it’s unsettling being on the other side of this kind of invasive shit. Although, I have to admit, it’s kind of nice to see how much he cares. “What if he decides he doesn’t want any part of this?”

Finn’s eyes gleam as he looks up at me. “You think he'd walk away from her now? From what I’ve seen, he'd marry her on the spot.”

“Exactly. The guy doesn’t have a great record with alphas. So why share, when he can keep her to himself?”

Finn gets that wolfy look in his eyes that tells me his beast is close to the surface. “Because with us, he canmateher. Why just marry when you can bond for all eternity?”

Hearing the Hallmark sentiment come out of his mouth is a little weird, but I get the point. With us, if we become a real pack, Derek will have the kind of soul-deep connections few betas ever experience. But does he want that? He already has the girl of his dreams, why take on a bunch of domineering strangers with baggage like ours?

“We’ll have to win him over first,” I warn Finn. “He doesn’t strike me as a pushover.”

Derek swipes at his nose again, while my best friend’s eyes gleam as he looks back to the screen. “Leave Derek to me.”

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