Page 26 of Fever

Sotay

Leah enters the office. She left in the middle of my fight, so I level a glare at her. She won’t meet my eyes but walks straight to me and wraps her arms around my waist. My breath catches, and I glance at my king, who nods and jerks his head. Everyone files out of the office. Raven even slides the manual tint over the glass doors separating the office from the lobby.

My heart still pounds with excitement over brawling with Seer. He’s tough, an excellent fighter, but bulky. Plus he wore the stupid metal armor that slows him down. Armor or not, I’m faster than Seer. Got some excellent jabs into his jaw that made it hard for him to speak. He’ll heal, no doubt. As will I. He dislocated my knee. It fucking hurts to stand, but I’ll live. As a matter of fact, I will stand here for as long as she needs me to stand.

Leah isn’t letting go. If anything, she squeezes me tighter. I stroke Leah’s hair, inhaling deeply, trying to sort out the scents she emits. Arousal, fear, inder, my soap. Great sobs erupt from her, and I don’t know what to do. Tears. Sometimes, Mother cried too. I once saw Dad just stroking her hair. That’s all I’m doing too. I’m ill-equipped to deal with Omega emotions.

My knee twitches. A sign I should either sit down or topple over.

With a grunt, I pick up Leah and sit on the throne, then arrange her on my lap and stroke her hair. I lift her chin. She doesn’t let me look at her. She throws her arms around me and buries her tearstained face in the crook of my neck. My dick hardens, semen leaking out. I scrub my face. I know it’s not the time to want to bury myself in her pussy. Aggression rides me. Her tears make me want to rip the world apart so I can right whatever it was that caused them.

“I’m going to presume,” I say, “as my dad always presumed, it’s my fault. What did I do?”

“You wouldn’t relent. You came, and you wouldn’t leave me alone.”

She’s right, and I have nothing to say. I still won’t leave her alone. “You’re mine, Leah. It’s done. I’m as good as bonded. But you can refuse. I’m not gonna force you. I can walk away. I will put you in the compound. I will. Then I will try again. We fit, baby girl. I know we do.”

“You brought me into the Stronghold.”

“I have orders. I follow them. I do not fail.” In following the crown, I failed my Omega. I promised she wouldn’t be collected, and then I collected her myself. She’s right. I have failed her. “I’m sorry.” An apology comes with no excuses. Mom taught me that. If she were here, she’d know how to handle the tears.

“Thank you.” Leah pats my shoulder, and I kiss her wrist. The scent of a Telean male hits my nose, and I barely suppress a snarl. I choke on it, but a rattle rips out of my chest anyway. Leah startles, leans back, and finally looks at me, a question in her brown eyes.

I contemplate saying something about the Telean male scent, but before I do, I take her hand and sniff from the wrist up her arm, to her neck, hair, and face, then between her breasts. I pick her up and put her on my desk, rattling like a mofo as I sniff down her body. I sniff every inch of her. Nothing. Just the wrist. I can live with a Telean male scent on her wrist. I can. I really can. “Who is it?” Or maybe I can’t.

Leah swallows audibly. The scent of fear overloads my senses. She should not fear me, but her reaction makes my armor erect. “Baby, who is it? Which Telean male?” I press her wrist against my nose and rattle as I inhale. They all fucking smell the same. Teleans train their minds. They show great restraint, and this restraint suppresses their natural chemistry and odor. They’re so well trained for so many years, it’s difficult to believe we come from the same ancestors. Their scent suppression is a flawless art, and while I know it’s a Telean, I can’t tell which one. “Tell me who touched you, baby. Because if you don’t, I’ll challenge them all.”

Leah steps away from the desk.

“Nobody touched me. A Telean male, I don’t know his name, brushed against me as I walked into the break room.”

I breathe a sigh of relief.

I stand behind her, wrap my arms around her. She holds my biceps, and I flex them for good measure, then kiss the top of her head. I scent her arousal. I’m sure she feels my hardness on her behind. We can resist for only so long before the heat, or worse, my rut, takes over.

“Did you ever catch them?” Leah asks.

Awkward question. “Catch whom?”

“The Swarm.” She clears her throat. “In the news, I read about bodies floating near the Frontline Hotel. They said you’re searching for the yacht, and people think there’s a massive Swarm army somewhere in the sea.”

“Ah, I see. We haven’t caught them yet, but we will.” As Leah just pointed out, I have more pressing problems, a decision to make on how to approach the search for the Swarm male. We need a new tactic, might even have to mobilize units and send them out to sea. The Teleans can’t seem to locate the yacht. The king will be rid of Raven today, so I can take over these decisions. Raven has not been in his right mind ever since the Telean doctor said the baby is simply too big to pass through the birth canal. We presume his son will be born with armor, and that’s why he’s so large.

Jewel, the Queen of Regha, passed away from the pain of Raven’s labor, and a healer resuscitated her. She barely returned to the living. The king swore they would stop at three children, which, by all Regha standards, is extraordinary on its own. The saving grace on Earth is access to Earth and Telean tech that can cut a woman’s belly open and get the baby out while not killing her. I shudder. This concept doesn’t disturb anyone but the Regha Alphas. Here, they’ve normalized this practice. Voluntarily subjecting your Omega to cutting is a difficult thing to normalize for us. We don’t trust the tech.

A knock comes at the door.

“Come in,” I say, and peel myself away from my Omega, who moves to her desk in the corner, left of mine.

Tamika pokes her head inside. “Dreikx wants to see you,” she says.

“Let him in.”

She disappears and lifts the tint from the glass doors. Behind it stands Dreikx, looking like he came to challenge me. Maybe he has. My uncle Loven thinks Dreikx is suicidal and just waiting for one of us to kill him. Dreikx marches inside and flings a bunch of papers onto my desk. He points. “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.”

I stare at the pictures and drawings. They’re the control’s computer-generated coordinates, dots connected by lines that make up a messy web we use to travel through the gate. One paper shows hand-drawn coordinates that look familiar. “This is mine.”

“Not the original drawing. It’s a copy of your map.”

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