Page 51 of Knot All Is Lost: Part 2

“Well, why didn’t you say so earlier? Let’s get going,” Alton urged, waving for me to get a move on.

I headed for the door then paused, looking over my shoulder. “If you could listen in then, how come you didn’t know this already?”

Alton looked chagrined. “Let’s just say I got nosy and turned on the sound when you pulled up to the door. I only caught the last bit of what he said.”

Shaking my head, I held the door for the old coot as he exited and offered him the front seat. “I’m not sitting next to him, he thinks I’m an old crippled man.”

“Cut the act, Alton, and get in. How Marla doesn’t smother you in your sleep, I’ll never know,” I muttered.

Alton tried to look offended but gave up and climbed into the front seat. I got in the back and we were off to whatever secret location Rick’s men were holding Yoram. When we pulled up to the Capitol Building I was confused, but he kept going to the back side, which I’d never seen before. We unloaded and were led down a flight of stairs into an underground area that seemed to be where the main security office was.

Men at stations were looking over monitors that had video feeds on them, which made me nervous. Alton always told me not to trust any room of the building and now I could clearly see why. None of the offices were watched as far as I could tell, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other ways they were keeping tabs on us.

“Are you sure it’s safe to have brought him here?” I questioned.

Rick just waved off my concern and kept going deeper into the space past the offices. Now we were in an area that felt more like a dungeon, with holding rooms and glass windows that I was sure the other person couldn’t see out of. This was where we found Yoram handcuffed to the table, with guards on either side of him and one outside the door.

“Any problems, Seth?” Rick asked.

“Still trying to kill himself any chance he gets but he hasn’t been successful yet,” Seth informed us. “The two in there with him are also on the medic team so if he does do something stupid, we have the right help ready.”

Rick clapped the man on the shoulder. “Thanks, man, we’re gonna talk to him for a bit but I want you all to be right outside this door just in case.”

“You got it, boss man,” Seth answered, swiping a card to unlock the door.

Rick signaled for the other two to leave the room as we entered, until it was just the three of us and one pissed off Yoram.

“I should have guessed it would be you two that fucked this up,” Yoram grumbled, sounding completely and utterly unlike himself. “After I got word the mansion was raided I should have guessed that bastard of a Beta would sell me out. He’s never been loyal to me, only that bitch of his.”

“That’s some way to talk about your pack,” Alton murmured before he sat down and faced off with the devil himself. “It’s a wonder they didn’t have any sense of loyalty with that kind of loving care showered upon them. Tell me, did you even like any of the people you brought into your pack? Or did they just serve the purpose of making you look like you have a heart?”

“What do you even care? You got what you wanted, just leave me be so I can die and leave this godforsaken world. None of you will see what I’ve done to make this country great, all you’ll look at is the perceived evil you stumbled across today,” Yoram accused.

Alton sat back in his chair crossing one leg over the other, while I was ready to leap across the table and throttle the bastard. I felt Rick as he shifted at my side, probably getting ready to ensure I didn’t do that very thing.

“Now would be a good time to tell us all the wonderful things you’ve done, because none of it makes sense to any of us,” Alton pointed out. “Let’s start with why you felt the need to steal Cambrie.”

Yoram’s face clouded with rage at the mention of her name. The need to defend my Omega rode me hard but I managed to hold myself back as my hands balled into fists.

“What I do with my own offspring is none of your concern. In fact, you have no right to take her from her family home, that is the house she was born in and should have been raised in. Instead, one of my own pack betrayed me and ran off with her to a man worse than I’d ever been to any of my people,” Yoram announced as he slammed his fists on the table with the slight slack the cuffs gave him.

“Now, why on earth do you think she would feel the need to do that? If you treated all your people with respect, why is it that you think a woman would steal a newborn away?” Alton pressed.

Yoram didn’t seem all that willing to answer as he picked at his thumbnail, not looking at us. He wasn’t going to answer that, I could just tell from the way he closed himself off to us. We needed to try things from a different angle and see if that worked better.

“Yoram, you were testing the drug again,” I stated, knowing that was a fact, having had Cambrie’s blood tested. “Did you really think that was the best way to help boost our chances at more Omegas?”

This seemed to pull the man out of his funk. “It did before, we all saw it. Before the EQ tried to destroy all the Omegas with that blasted attack there were record numbers, it’s in the data. Why wouldn’t we want to revisit something like that?”

“Because it killed your own Omega,” I countered.

“Bah, she was sickly as it was. The only chance I had to guarantee that I’d be able to provide the world with another Omega was to ensure it with the drugs. Her own family made it, but they refused to do anything with the power they had. Instead, they hid away in their country manor and just made fools out of themselves,” Yoram ranted. “They had the science and money to start over but they were too scared, so I had to do it myself. Cambrie is proof that it still works.”

I scoffed at him, seeing how delusional he was under his carefully crafted mask. “You and I both know that from an Alpha and Omega joining that Cambrie’s chances of being an Omega were fifty-fifty if Isabelle managed to conceive. Why not give her the normal drug just to help her fertility? Why mess with the DNA?”

“I didn’t want a chance, I needed to be sure. Even before I’d been voted into the Circle of Four, I had plans for this world. I was going to single-handedly unite Oscad and Shearia. Bridge the two countries that had been working together since the beginning. We are so similar but struggled in different ways, so it would be possible for us to help each other. Their infrastructure is far superior to ours while our women are more fertile,” Yoram explained. “Did you know that in their country males could also be Omegas? What is the purpose of that? They can’t reproduce and the female Alphas are so infertile there’s hardly any chance they will become pregnant.”

While Rick had told me about his son, I didn’t realize how that was viewed in Shearia. It made sense why he wouldn’t ever want to take his family back there. Yet, I wasn’t all that convinced Shearia was better off, the way Yoram did. I’d seen the numbers our peacekeeping teams had brought back with them. That was one reason I hadn’t been all that keen on making a trade deal with them. Although it seems it didn’t matter, since Yoram did it on his own.

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