“And that is?” Sam demanded. He was watching me so intently I felt an irrational urge to check my forehead and make sure there wasn’t a hole burned through it.

  I looked around at the dark forest again, feeling uneasy. No-one from the farm should be out here beyond the gates at night, but the number of fence alarms we’d had since Maia arrived worried me. Anyone else could be out there. The sound of the river should cover our voices from any betas overhearing, but I wasn’t sure about alphas.

  Sam shifted impatiently, and I turned back to him.

  “Can you scent any alphas nearby?”

  He spun his head to look at the forest, then scented the air in all directions, knowing instantly where my thoughts had gone.

  “The only things I can scent are dogs and cows. The herd is nearby. I’m assuming if anyone was out there, the dogs would alert us, the same way they did for Dio and I this morning.”

  I relaxed slightly, but Sam was too impatient to wait for me to gather my thoughts.

  “The question?” He bit out, trying not to bark at me.

  “How are we going to protect Lexie from the Palace?” Sam just watched me carefully as his gaze turned speculative and his mind worked overtime. I could almost see the gears turning inside his brain.

  “They’re hunting Maia because she hid on a remote farm, masking and subduing her scent until she was twenty-one and betrayed by your brother,” I said. Sam flinched at that, but stayed silent once again.

  “What do you think they’ll do when they find out Lexie suppressed her scent completely until she was twenty-four, living openly in society as a beta?”

  I kicked at the rocks uselessly in my frustration, feeling like I was the one out of control now while Sam watched me carefully. I rarely let my temper get the better of me, but the attack this morning and seeing Lexie hurt had rattled me.

  I didn’t have the resources I needed to keep her safe, and all my connections were in the military. So I couldn’t trust any of them right now, even if we could reach them.

  “She’ll be an even bigger target now than Maia or Ava. They’ll want to run tests on her and figure out how she did it and why she’s unique.” The thought alone made me want to punch things.

  “I’ll die before I let the Palace grab any of them, but I can’t protect them alone. I don’t even know if Damon, Leif, Hunter and Max will be enough.”

  I shot a look at Sam. “Having your team here will help, but we need more. We don’t know what resources the Palace can call up. We need allies.”

  Sam and I watched each other as I waited to see what he would say. It was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. He was far too calm, standing casually with his hands in his pockets.

  My brain started trying to puzzle him out. Sam had a whole military unit with him, but they clearly weren’t answering to the military right now. He had ordered eyes on the military’s movements at the Palace and had backed us up against the soldiers we had trussed up in the cellar without question.

  “Spill it. You have an ace up your sleeve, and I want to know what it is. We’re going to need it.”

  I could see his lip twitch in response to either my deduction or my demand. But instead of answering me, he lifted his chin and countered with his own question.

  “Why did you retire from the military? You had a decorated career as a highly respected commander. Even if you’re in your early forties, I’m guessing at that, you’re fit and strong. You could have worked operationally for a decade yet. Or demanded a cushy desk job higher up the chain of command. You’d earned it.”

  Damn. He wasn’t pulling any punches with his questions tonight. I decided to be brutally honest, without giving too many details. It was the only way we were going to figure out if we could trust each other.

  “I had to choose between my career and my morals. They were demanding I order my men to do things I couldn’t stomach asking them to do.”

  “Does Damon know?”

  I shook my head as I watched the river rushing past. I remembered standing on a different river bank with Damon, just before I retired, holding all my secrets inside. It felt good to let some out. “Some of it, but not all. It was my decision. That man takes on enough of the world’s problems. This one was on me.”

  “So he’s a man and I’m a pup? Good to know,” Sam said with a sly grin.

  “Yep, for now. Unless you prove otherwise.”

  “Fair enough,” Sam said as he chuckled and I relaxed. If Sam was laughing right now, he had to be confident in his ability to call in reinforcements.

  “Last question. Why did you trust Dio with Lexie?”

  “It wasn’t my call. Bear trusted Dio with Lexie. I just backed him up.” I smirked at Sam. Bear whuffed gently at hearing his name and sat up. He had relaxed since Sam had gotten out of the water, and had been laying at my feet. He was still keeping an eye on Sam, though. I reached down and stroked his giant head, and he turned to look up at me.

  We were in sight of the gate and I had left it open slightly in case Bear had felt the need to go back to Lexie. With Sam now calm, I wanted another set of eyes on her. I figured Dio was probably too distracted right now to keep eyes on the perimeter of the treehouse.

  “Go keep watch over Lexie, Bear.”

  Bear looked at Sam and gave him a light warning growl before he affectionately nudged my hip with his head and took off towards the gate.

  Sam sighed heavily, and his shoulders slumped. “I’ve got my work cut out for me with him, don’t I?”

  “Yep.” There was no use sugarcoating it. “But it will be worth it when he accepts you into his pack.”

  Sam raised his eyebrow at the use of the word pack, but I ignored it.

  “So, did I pass your test?” I asked.

  Sam tilted his head and looked me up and down speculatively. I kept my posture open and casual, standing with my hands behind my back. It was a habit from my military days.

  “What I’m about to tell you could endanger people if word got out. There are protocols and a strict vetting process for bringing new people in, but the Crash has changed everything.”

  I nodded at him. “Understood. You don’t know me yet, but I will do almost anything to protect the people on this farm. The only line I draw is hurting other innocent people. If whatever you’re involved in doesn’t cross that line, your secret will be safe with me.”

  “I know more about you than you think, Dave. Have you ever heard of the Network?”

  I sucked in a breath. “It’s real?”

  It was Sam’s turn to give me a curt nod. “What do you know?”

  “Nothing. I came across a young soldier who wasn’t part of my team. He was dying from a gunshot wound while on patrol, but we weren’t in an active war zone area. The kid kept mumbling, telling me to find the Network. He tried to pass me a note, but it had his blood all over it and I couldn’t work out the code that was written on it. He died in my arms.”

  Sam tensed up at that and took a half step towards me. “When was that? Do you still have the note?”

  “It was a month before I retired. I burnt the note. There were too many eyes on me at that point. I couldn’t risk it being found. Somebody covered his death up and I never saw it in any official reports. I don’t know what happened to his body. Not being able to bury that young man honorably is one of my biggest regrets.”

  “Dammit, that must have been Kenny. He was deep undercover when he made contact because he thought they’d made him. We lost contact with him before we could get him out.” Sam rubbed at his face and closed his eyes for a moment, as he half turned away from me. I stood quietly and gave him space to grieve his friend.

  Sam shook himself after a moment. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for him.”

  “Don’t be. He knew what he was getting into. It’s good to know he wasn’t alone when he died though, he was a good man.”

  “Who was he working undercover for, and what is the Network?”

  “People like you, mostly ex-servicemen who saw too much and got out before they lost their lives. Most of them knew something was wrong within the military, but they didn’t know what. They formed a clandestine network to share information.

  “It started decades ago with a few men, but it’s grown to hundreds. Some recruits shared vague yet terrifying information about shady things the military was getting involved in. Including some kind of planned coup or shake-up of the current regime that involved the government as well.”

  I grit my teeth as he talked. What he was talking about felt all too familiar.

  “There were lots of rumors, but we didn’t know how or when, or even exactly what was being planned. There were too many stories that correlated, though, and a lot of disappearances. So now it includes active servicemen who are working undercover for the Network to find out more, get proof and hopefully stop whatever was being planned. It seems we were too late.”

  “Are you telling me the military and the government are involved with the Crash?” I asked.

  “You honestly think they aren’t?”

  “No, I’m sure they are. I’d heard whispers and rumors as well. I’ve been trying to find the Network since I retired, with no luck.”

  “You’ve been on our radar for years. You were on our list of potential allies, which is the only reason Kenny would have risked trying to pass you a note as he died. Damon, Leif, Hunter and Max were on the list, too. They’ve been watching you all since you retired. I don’t know why they hadn’t made contact.”

  “How did you get recruited?”

  “My gramps was a member. He sent me to the Network when I presented as a highly dominant alpha.”

  “Fucking hell, you must have been just a kid.”

  Sam just nodded matter-of-factly.

  “That’s where you’ve been all these years?”

  “I got moved around a lot, living with original members. Mostly old men and all betas. There aren’t a lot of alphas who are members, especially in the original old guard. I didn’t have any stability until I went to live with Dio’s grandfather. He saw how Dio, Dio’s best friend Pala, and I all bonded. We were inseparable. He kept us together until we were old enough to enlist.”

  He seemed intensely sad just talking about it and I got the impression there was a lot unresolved there. I wanted to ask more about why his gramps had sent him away, and why it went down the way it did, with Maia in the dark. I got the feeling, though, that it was intensely personal and something he needed to talk with Maia about first.

  He shook his head a little and got back to the point. “Dio, Pala and I, we were never working for the military. We were always undercover for the Network.”

  I needed a minute to take it all in. I’d never heard of the Network until Kenny. If the military knew about them, they were keeping it within the higher ranks. Or at least a group they didn’t invite me to join. I knew there were shady units within the military, but I’d always steered clear.

  “Can you still contact them? Or is the Network down, like everything else since the Crash?”

  “The Network is a bunch of batshit crazy, paranoid old military men who have been prepping for the end of the world since before I was born. It would take more than the Crash to take them down. They’re still out there.”

  I smiled at that. They sounded like my people. “Damon and his mates need to know. So does Maia.”

  “I know. We didn’t have long to talk this morning before the attack on the farm. I plan on telling them, though, as soon as they resurface. With Max’s help, making contact will be easier.”

  Max could definitely help with that. He was a tech genius and had stayed online during the Crash.

  “I still have one more question. Who is the alpha who signaled while we were tying them up this morning? The one Dio was pretending to rough up.”

  Sam stepped over to me and clapped me on the shoulder, as he looked at me with a new respect. Then he grinned, and the transformation was almost shocking. His eyes sparkled and his entire face lightened. I could suddenly see the resemblance to Maia. They had the same smile.

  “I’d like to introduce you to Pala, but we might not have time. He’s about to escape from the storm cellar and head back to the Palace so he can sneak into their secret server connected to the military, download everything they have and get it to us before his cover gets blown.”

  Hot damn. I breathed deeply for what felt like the first time in weeks. We had allies, and we were back in the game.

  fourteen

  I woke up slowly, curled in blankets and a hot body. A hand ran up my thigh as I stretched, but I wasn’t getting distracted today.

  I jumped out of bed before Dio could grab a hold of me and pull me back. We’d spent two nights and an entire day mostly naked in bed together. It had been heaven. I’d never spent so much time intimately with a man. I’d thought I would feel uncomfortable, but everything with Dio was so easy. It had been a honeymoon, of sorts.

  I had shit to do though, and a farm to run.

  “Hey, no fair. I was about to grope you. Get back here.” Dio pretended to sulk while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes until a giant yawn broke through. He looked sleepy, rumpled, and adorable.

  I turned my back on him as I tried to figure out where my clothes were. I couldn’t look at him or I’d fall back into bed. The sexual high of the last thirty-six hours had been intense, but I felt like it had helped to settle the explosion of omega pheromones and instincts that had almost overwhelmed me the first night.

  “You know that view is no less of a turn-on,” he said to my back as I bent over to search through the bedding. I smirked to myself, silently preening under his praise. What a guy thought about my body had never been something I’d really cared about before. I’d only ever cared that I was fit and strong.

  Yet the obvious pleasure Dio showed whenever he got his hands on me, or even looked at me, fulfilled something in me I didn’t even know was missing.

  “Did I tell you I love your tattoo?” He asked.

  I halted my search through the blankets and turned sideways to him, looking down at the tattoo on my hip that read I am the storm, in a cursive script.

  “I noticed when we first met you that you rubbed your hip a lot. I thought it was an injury at first. But then I got you naked and noticed the tattoo. It’s from a quote, isn’t it? The devil whispered in my ear, you cannot survive the storm, today I whispered back I am the storm. Is that right?”

  “Something like that. There are a few variations around,” I said as I stroked it, feeling the power the words held over me. “I don’t always notice, but I rub it when I need to remind myself I’m strong.”

  “When did you get it?”

  “When my dad forced Leif to join the military, Leif moved me out of home and got me set up on my own. We’d both worked part-time and saved our money, so we had enough to pay my bond and the first few months of rent. He sent me most of his military pay after that to help keep me afloat. I got the tattoo the day he left. It was my sixteenth birthday.”

  “Fuck, Lex.” Dio jumped up and pulled me into his arms. He looked angry and as if he had a million questions he wanted to ask, but he was pursing his lips, holding them in.

  “It’s okay, it wasn’t a bad thing, Dio. It was an escape and a celebration. I felt free for the first time in my life. I was determined to never need someone else to protect me again, and I could finally figure out how to do that.

  “Leif spent his entire childhood protecting me, putting himself between me and our father. I missed Leif terribly at first, and I worried about him in the military because he has such a gentle nature. But he found his family there, and they had his back.”

  Dio stroked my hair gently. He’d become fixated with it. He often ran his hands through it and watched the pink, purple, and red shades fall through his fingers with a smile.

  “Just because you learned to protect yourself doesn’t mean you don’t deserve people in your corner, Lex. You shine so brightly, and you’re so strong. At the very least, you need someone around to worship you, and I’m the perfect man for the job.”

  I slapped him on the chest lightly, jokingly, to deflect how emotional those words made me feel. But any contact with Dio’s skin just made me want to purr and rub all over him. He’d just spent thirty-six hours worshiping my body, proving he meant what he said, but those words and the feeling behind them in the bond felt incredibly intimate. I wasn’t used to hearing such loving words, even humorous ones.

  I briefly considered telling him to get on his knees if he wanted to worship me, but then we’d never leave the treehouse. So I gently pushed him away instead, with a feather soft kiss and a smile. “I’ll keep that in mind, big boy.”

  “Big boy, huh? I’m okay with that nickname. We can keep that one.”

  I laughed. We’d been teasing each other with atrocious nicknames in between bouts of sexy times.

  I appreciated him not asking more about my dad right now. We hadn’t really talked in depth about our childhoods. We’d been too busy knocking boots. It was a conversation that would come; I knew that, but we had time. The thought filled me with joy.

  I finally remembered the antique chest in the corner and headed over to it. There were clothes in there for me, Leif, and his mates, that I’d put there in the past. I liked to stash things for emergencies. I knew it was a habit I should have long since given up, but it comforted me and made me feel prepared.

  I squealed like an excited toddler when I found my old favorite pair of denim overalls. They were baggy and soft, yet perfectly worn in. I’d been wondering where they went. I grabbed a white cropped t-shirt out as well, along with some new underwear still in its packaging. Like I said, I liked to stash for emergencies.

  I threw a pair of jeans and a tee, along with some new underwear, at Dio. He looked at me strangely.

  “Uh, whose are these? Did you have sleepovers up here with someone?”

  I could see his mind working, trying to figure out who I may have had up here. I got a flare of jealousy and possessiveness through the bond that wasn’t there when he mentioned Sam or Dave. Or even the mysterious Pala.

 

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