Pack of Lies, page 2
“Oh, really?” I said. “The Centre is done experimenting on me and has been for years. You’re not looking like an attractive option, considering the backpack full of stolen goods. What do you three plan on doing with that?”
Jubilee was floored, his fingers twitching uncontrollably as he avoided eye contact and shoved papers back into the bag.
Denzel sighed. “That’s a long and complicated explanation we don’t have time for right now. You need to come with us.”
“I don’t need to do anything you tell me to,” I said. “I’m staying here.”
The growl Denzel let out echoed through the room.
Everything had gone quiet again.
I assumed they weren’t the only intruders, but whoever they’d come with was in a distant part of the building. No gunshots. No footsteps. Only that growl and the piercing sound of my gun rapid-firing warning shots at the ceiling tiles.
All three men cursed and ducked, little pieces of ceiling falling onto them.
My migraine grew to be almost debilitating. I should have been wearing earplugs while shooting this thing. Bile rose in my throat, triggered by the pain in my head, but I portrayed a calm facade.
“Don’t growl at me,” I said. “You’re not my alpha, and if you try to take me, I’ll shoot you.”
Denzel was wide-eyed with shock, Reese had an impressed little smirk on his face, and Jubilee was caught between being terrified and aroused, based on the bulge in his pants.
“If you’re so adamant about staying here, fucking stay here,” Denzel hissed after taking a second to compose himself. “The GPRE is coming after us to shut this place down. It’s already been reported. See how well you do in their hands.”
Fuck.
Gold Pack and Rogue Enforcement wouldn’t know what to do with me.
And what did they do with gold pack omegas they didn’t know what to do with?
They locked them up. Kept them under surveillance. Did any manner of things because they didn’t have to follow the laws with a gold pack omega like me — they were the law.
If they raided a secret lab like this, they might go so far as to kill the subjects. Gold pack was dangerous to begin with. But gold pack omegas who had been experimented on and had our biology altered? No one knew what our impact might be on society.
That’s why I was so adamant I stay here. I didn’t have a warm, fuzzy place in my heart for the doctors and nurses who’d given me drugs until the side effects crippled me. This was simply the only place I could exist and not worry about the GPRE or the other horrible things that happened to gold pack omegas every day.
“I’ve been here for over five years, and they’ve never shown any interest in shutting the Centre down,” I said. “You’re lying.”
My weapon dropped, though. In case they weren’t. How could I tell? I couldn’t even know if they were telling the truth about being my scent match pack.
“Not lying,” Denzel said. “We reported this place. Before that, they didn’t know about it. Come with us or take your chances with the GPRE.”
I bit my lip hard enough it bled, but the pain didn’t register over the migraine. Black was bleeding into the edges of my vision. This was going to be a bad one. I might lose consciousness. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Put up a fuss and shoot holes into the ceiling, only to drop like a rock.
Neither of my choices sounded appealing, but I’d been taught to fear the GPRE since childhood. At least my supposed mates were an unknown.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go with you.”
Denzel nodded at Reese, and the other alpha stepped toward me with a hand held out. I unwound the strap of the gun from me and handed it to him. He engaged the safety and slung it over his shoulder, then held out a hand.
I took it only because I wasn’t sure I could walk in a straight line without someone leading me. His scent wafted toward me, tickling my nose but not eliciting the kind of reaction I would have expected from my scent match. Or any reaction at all, really. He vaguely reminded me of a wheat field in the heat of summer. That was it.
As the pack of alphas led me out of the building through disabled security doors and past dead guards, I fought the migraine and the panic. This was the end of an era and was bound to come eventually. Whatever came next, I could handle it.
TWO
TWO
In the backseat of the SUV, every bump in the road threatened to make me puke. I’d thus far hidden my fragile physical state from the three men accompanying me and I was trying to keep it that way, but I wasn’t sure how long I’d last.
“What’s your name?” Denzel asked from the driver’s seat without looking back.
Jubilee turned around on the passenger side to look at me and Reese was equally intrigued beside me in the backseat.
We’d briefly met up with another group of men who had been shocked to see me, before piling into this waiting getaway car. The other men had left separately. With the Centre in a remote area hidden from view of all main roads, we were hitting plenty of potholes on the dirt path they’d taken in.
In my understanding, visitors to the Centre usually arrived via helicopter. It was much classier.
“Two,” I said.
Peering out the window, all I saw was forest in every direction. Rain came down heavily, water dripping off the vegetation and pounding the car.
“Two, like the number?” Denzel asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s your real name?”
I cringed, partially from the question and partially from the bile rising in my throat. It only got bumpier as we moved along, and I doubted the muddiness of the path was helping any. My legal name was Hannah, but the word made my mouth feel dry. I’d never go by it again. It was too sweet and reminded me of how naive I’d been when I first revealed.
“Don’t have one,” I lied.
“We can’t refer to you by your patient number,” Jubilee said.
His teeth were nibbling his bottom lip, and I realized he was uncomfortable. They’d gotten me from a discreet medical facility. Surely knowing I had a patient number as a name wasn’t shocking.
“Why not?”
Jubilee opened his mouth, but a sharp look from Denzel shut him up. My eyes narrowed. It helped with the migraine too, narrowing my field of vision and limiting how much light assaulted me. Thank fuck it was cloudy.
“A patient number is too impersonal for our mate,” Denzel said. “If you don’t have a name, you should give yourself one.”
When he called me his mate my stomach fluttered, but I was definitely putting that reaction down to the migraine.
I hadn’t wanted a pack in years. Accepting this one would be a bad idea. I wasn’t one of those omegas who resented their designation, but expecting a pack to deal with the laundry list of experimentation side effects I experienced on a daily basis wasn’t fair.
And Denzel rubbed me the wrong way.
He was too controlling, and having him tell me what to do made my skin itch.
“I don’t see anything wrong with a patient number,” I said.
“Pick a name or we’ll pick one for you,” Denzel said.
Clenching my teeth, I turned to stare resolutely out the rain-drenched window again. I had no idea how long we would be travelling along this dirt path, but I couldn’t see a break in the trees anywhere yet.
Everyone stayed silent, though their eyes burned into my skin. Within the tight confines of the car, I caught tiny hints of what must be Jubilee’s scent. He smelled sharp, like alcohol and antiseptic.
It triggered a load of sensory memories — most unpleasant — from back when I’d had my sense of smell at full omega capacity. Antiseptic had been abrasive then, and it was one of the only scents I could catch from a distance now because of how strong it was.
I watched the passing brush, noting thorny tangles of branches and leaves when we passed a thorn bush. Sighing, I turned back to the men watching me. “Thorn. I’ll answer to Thorn. Does anyone have a painkiller?”
This migraine wasn’t going away without the help of drugs and sleep I couldn’t afford. The only way I was functioning was through practice. At the Centre, I was expected to be in the cafeteria doing my job regardless of side effects.
We all were.
There were a couple times I’d passed out on the kitchen floor, but most of the time I persevered with gritted teeth and a white-knuckled grip on the counters.
“Are you injured?” Reese asked.
His expression was concerned, dark hair damp from when we’d wandered out in the rain. I watched his hand creep closer across the seat and looked pointedly between it and his face until he realized and pulled it back.
“No. It’s just my head. This is normal.”
Jubilee’s papers rustled and he pulled out my file. I caught a glimpse of my picture on the front page. That must be how he’d identified me so quickly. “The nurse’s notes say you get migraines,” he muttered so quietly I almost didn’t notice he was speaking to me and not the pages. “Our painkillers won’t help that.”
“It takes the edge off.”
The Centre didn’t give me strong painkillers either. I watched them pop open the name brand bottle of over-the-counter pills as if they didn’t have stronger ones that would actually help.
Denzel reached across the centre console and pulled open the glove box, hitting Jubilee’s knees. “J, get her the pills.”
He did as he’d been asked, tossing me a bottle that I caught with a cringe. The shaking of the tablets inside the plastic was a noise my head wasn’t keen on. Popping the top, I took one out and swallowed it dry.
Jubilee watched me. “You could take two.”
I shook my head, closed the cap, and handed them back. “One is fine.”
It wasn’t really but the less they knew about my fragile physical state, the better.
They kept their attention on me as we traversed the terrain, appearing to increase our elevation slowly but surely. This thing had better be four-wheel drive, because the mud wasn’t forgiving and the rain wasn’t letting up. When Denzel abruptly slammed on the brakes while turning a corner, it jolted my body and my brain sloshed around.
Numb fingers barely managed to open the door before I was leaning over and puking on the ground. The SUV crept along, the dirt path sliding by in my blurry vision.
My body tipped over when I’d relieved my stomach of everything I’d eaten in the past twenty-four hours and my barely-functional limbs couldn’t catch me in time.
A warm, thick arm wrapped around my middle. Even with my vision greyed out, I knew who it belonged to, as an attractive scent teased my nostrils.
He was close enough this time for me to tell. Wheat and hazelnut. That was what Reese smelled like.
My head lolled back, rain hitting my cheeks, and then I passed out.
“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not actually a doctor. And she needs one.” Jubilee’s hushed voice was the first thing I heard when I came back to consciousness.
My body ached, as it often did after a migraine, but the pounding in my head had dulled. Being unconscious had given my body time to recover faster. Oddly enough, the migraines always lasted less time if they got bad enough that I passed out.
“You have enough medical expertise to know if she’s in serious danger of dying. Is she?” Denzel asked.
Jubilee’s response was hesitant. “No. From my understanding of her file, this happens often. However, I’m not comfortable trusting the observations of the Centre for Omega Enhancement.”
“We don’t know what they’ll find if we take her to a hospital. We aren’t going to one. Don’t you have a doctor friend or something?”
“You’re well aware I don’t have any friends.”
I snorted a laugh, clueing them in on my consciousness. My eyes were closed and light shone against my eyelids, so I wasn’t planning on opening them. Denzel’s insistence on not bringing me to a hospital had gotten him a smidgen closer to being in my good graces.
I hated hospitals.
A silver metal medical room flashed in my mind, filled with people in light blue scrubs and blue personal protective equipment. Masks and gloves.
Eyes flying open, I winced at the assault of light, but at least I couldn’t feel the phantom pinch of an IV in my arm anymore.
“Fuck. Reese, get the light,” Jubilee said.
The overhead light turned off and I let out a shaky breath, blinking rapidly. We were in a hotel room with two queen beds set beside each other. I was laid out on one, the blankets pulled over me. The wallpaper was an offensive burgundy and yellow pattern, and they’d even plastered it on the ceiling.
Who put wallpaper on a ceiling?
I breathed a sigh of relief, though, because this was about as far from a sterile medical facility as you could get.
Reese came over to me, which had all three men hovering above my place on the bed. Despite the pain, I pushed myself up into a seated position. People hovering also made me highly uncomfortable.
“I don’t need a doctor,” I said, seeing their concerned expressions.
I’d made a couple noises I wasn’t proud of as I sat up. Pained whines. Something about having a heavy alpha presence made me more comfortable to be vulnerable like that. At the Centre, I’d have rather bitten off my tongue than let the nurses see how much pain I was in. They knew regardless because of the brain scans they’d done.
“You do,” Jubilee said. “These side effects—”
“Are something I’ve been dealing with for over two years, since their experiment failed and my eyes went gold again. I don’t need a pack coming in and telling me I can’t handle something I know I can manage on my own.”
Jubilee’s eyes widened. “Wait, it worked? You were a normal omega?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure that’s in their notes, but it was years ago. I was a normal omega with no complications for a year. The second year my side effects started coming in, one by one, until my eyes had gone completely gold again.”
He turned to a desk beside the bed, where his laptop bag was sitting. Trembling hands pulled out paperwork, unwrinkled pieces he hadn’t touched when we’d been in the Centre or the SUV. “Oh, my god. I never imagined… That’s a scientific breakthrough. They must have tweaked it after you. Did it work better? Has anyone stayed a normal omega for longer than that?”
“Do I look like a nurse? As a failed experiment, all I do is work in the cafeteria.”
Jubilee turned to me with a cringe, but he looked so disappointed and guilty that I sighed.
“Fine. I heard rumours, but I’m sure your stolen paperwork will have more information. Dr. Hellwood changed the formula, but there were whispers of them bringing in a different specialist recently. After they used it on me it only got worse. Worse side effects. Less time spent as a normal omega.”
Jubilee went white as a sheet, turning back to the desk and slumping down into the chair facing it. “By worse side effects, what do you mean?” he asked quietly.
“J…” Denzel said, his expression warning me not to answer.
I did, anyway. Anything that came out of my mouth, he would find confirmed in the files. There was no point in hiding it.
“Subject Ten died. The version of the formula they gave her was so corrupted she went brain dead. I don’t know the science behind it, but I heard them use the term euthanized, like she was a terminally ill pet. Eight was a normal omega for two weeks. Ever since, she’s suffered through severe epilepsy, an over-active thyroid, and heats so frequent they’re painful. If she wasn’t fervently committed to life and living it as best she can, they would have put her down too. She’s not useful if she’s bed bound, but she dragged her way through doing the laundry every day.”
Jubilee’s head dropped into his hand and I heard a soft ‘fuck’.
How long had they known about the Centre?
Was he lamenting how he hadn’t reported it to the GPRE sooner, or was he horrified about what had happened to the test subjects during a time he hadn’t known?
It was impossible to tell, and not knowing renewed my suspicion in the men. They could have been lying about being my scent match. I would be the easiest one to trick, and since I was also the most successful of the tests, I could be valuable.
“That’s enough,” Denzel said. His aura reinforced the words and I narrowed my eyes at him.
Of course the pack lead was going to try and control me with his aura. It was strong. Something about Reese’s was stronger, though. It had hardly come out, but there was a quiet intensity that matched the demeanour of the man himself.
“He can read the rest in the files,” I said. “Why steal them? There are copies, both digital and physical. It’s not like stealing them will prevent the GPRE from finding out what happened there.”
“We have our reasons,” Denzel said.
“Yes, and I was asking what they are.”
He didn’t answer. I stared at him, but he didn’t look at me. The man busied himself with going through bags and gathering clothing before tossing the black articles at Reese.
“If she’s feeling up to chatting, get her dressed in something else. We should move on. This place isn’t secure,” Denzel said.
Then he grabbed the handle of the hotel room door and yanked it open before slamming it closed, leaving the three of us in the room. Reese turned to me with the clothes in his arms. “I could say he’s not usually this much of a dick…”
“But he is,” Jubilee finished. He turned to me with a tight smile on his face. “I’m going to go talk to him.”
He looked shaken, his hands trembling again. The tick seemed to be anxiety driven. His steps were long as he strode from the room, leaving Reese and I alone. Out of the three, this man appeared to be hiding the least secrets, which somehow made him the hardest to figure out.
“How long have we been here?” I asked.
“Couple hours. It took another hour after you passed out to get out of the forest and we stopped at the first hotel we found. Denzel wasn’t pleased.”
“I’m sure he wants me to apologize for passing out,” I said dryly.
