Page 4 of Beta Lies and Cursed Lives
My eyes widen a fraction. He’s more clever than I’d give any bigoted GBE lackey credit for, but maybe that’s why he’s in charge.
Despite my racing heart and the ringing in my ears, there’s no reason to even attempt lying. They’re going to find out everything soon enough.Almost everything.
“The second option.”
His stubbled chin dips in a single nod before he reaches down with gloved hands to grab my bound arms and yank me to my feet in a move surprisingly strong for a Beta. “Do you freeze everything you touch?”
I swallow hard. “No.”
“Objects?”
“No.” My voice is air.
“I am going to loosen the binds for a moment. Try anything, and we will detonate the charge in your collar. Understand?”
My throat too dry to respond, I nod in confirmation.
“Good.” He does as he says and loosens the bindings, easing some of the pain in my shoulders and wrists. “I’m going to remove one of your gloves and place your hand on a scanner. You are to stay completely still, or else my second-in-command will blow your head off. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
As the soldier who’s apparently his second holds a small device in front of him, his thumb hovering over the surface, the leader’s gloved fingertips glide across my wrist to lift my sleeve and find the edge of my right glove. He slides it off with care, certainly because he doesn’t want to die. I feel the cold, smooth scanner flat against my palm behind my back for a moment before there is an audible beep, and the device is gone. Once he’s fiddled with my glove and returns it to my hand, he pulls my sleeve back down, and the bindings are again cinched tight. But not quite as tight as before.
“Miranda Amato, twenty-two years old, born in Sector Two-B,” he states as he swings back around to face me. “Your family name...”
He continues to read the screen in his hand, the blue glow reflecting off his chiseled jaw, highlighting the salt and pepper stubble there and the slight cleft in his chin. His eyes flick back up to me, narrowed.
My heart pounds, racing. What did that scanner tell him? About my mother’s death?
Those hard eyes blink twice before his head swivels to look at the soldiers around us. Then he commands, “We leave now. This one is going to the academy.”
"This one” is, but what about my father?
No matter how much I want to shout and scream, demand to know what they’ve done with my dad, I keep quiet. There’s no choice now. I’d only make things worse for him and me.
“Yes, sir,” a new voice responds, this one female.
Before I can blink, a solid cloth is placed over my head, carefully maneuvered so as not to touch me in the process. The whirring of a helicopter in the distance I hadn’t heard before draws closer. The chatter of the soldiers grows louder over the sound, and the air grows choppy, shifting the cover over my head enough that the bright spotlight from above peeks through the gap.
As I’m guided to the craft, my head pushed down to enter, my body and still bound arms wrapped in some form of harness to secure me, a new panic sets in.
They caught me. I’m going to the military academy.
I don’t know where my father is being taken, and I don’t know how I’m going to save him now that I have this infernal collar on.
Miranda
Timelostallmeaning.The journey by helicopter transitioned to a large ground vehicle with a noisy diesel engine, then to some kind of airplane for the longest flight of my life, before I was stuffed into another ground vehicle for the last leg of the trek. Not once had the bag over my head been removed. I was both frustrated and grateful that the fabric was completely opaque but breathable. Never before had I wanted to both live and die with such equal fervor.
Being transferred to the Cursedblood Military Academy was only a temporary stop on the way to being sold like cattle to the highest bidder anywhere in the world and used for whatever the buyers wanted.
Being an Omega would usually make one a hot commodity. Rumors swirled heavily that Cursed Omegas were put into experimental facilities and forced into breeding programs to find the perfect combinations of curses. “Perfect” being another word for “most profitable.” Although the Cursed are feared, shunned, and disowned, everyone knows that certain abilities are deemed more valuable than others.
While these soldiers know that touching my skin is a death sentence, they don’t know the whole story. And that hidden knowledge would get me killed if discovered.
The world had been at war long before I was born.
Instincts and pheromones drive Alphas and Omegas. Betas are driven by logic and intellect.
