Vonn: The Boundarylands Omegaverse: M/F Alpha Omega Romance by Callie Rhodes (13 inch ebook reader .TXT) 📗

in the midlands and down south, not to mention the entire Southeast Boundarylands."

Vonn wasn't making any sense. That, or he was lying. "That's impossible. There aren't many in women in the military anymore, and definitely not enough dormant omegas for what you're describing."

Vonn shrugged. "I never said he sent soldiers."

"But—but they'd never send civilian volunteers for this kind of mission. It's way too dangerous. If the public found out, the backlash would be—"

"Volunteers?" Vonn gave a derisive laugh. "Who the fuck said anything about volunteers? The two omegas Fulmer sent before you were a blackmailed photographer and a political prisoner."

"But that's…no," Stacy said, feeling like her head was about to explode. "Everything you're saying is a lie."

Vonn's chest rumbled with a low growl. He rose to his feet with considerably more grace than a man his size ought to be able to and wiped the dew off his hands. Stacy tightened her grip on the poker, but she needn't have bothered. Vonn didn't seem interested in fighting anymore, much less threatened by a two-and-half foot iron rod.

"You've been fed so many lies you've forgotten what the truth sounds like, Sergeant. But you've got to face the fact that all Fulmer cares about is the data you could provide him. He would have told you anything to get you to agree to come here." He paused to let that sink in, then added, "Even if you had said no, he would have sent you in by force. You didn't know it, but there was never a way out."

Stacy shook her head, even as the last of her denials crumbled to dust. Too much had happened in the last ten minutes for her to make sense of, much less know what to do next. She was exhausted—physically, mentally, emotionally.

She'd tried to forfeit her life over her primal attraction to an alpha. The fact that she hadn't succeeded was beside the point. She'd almost died—and for what? The lies of a corrupt official?

As soon as the thought entered her mind, Stacy pushed it back. She couldn't—wouldn't—accept that Fulmer had been using her as Vonn accused, not without proof. Not everything Fulmer had said was manipulation. There had to be greater good at the core of the Department's work, some classified reason that she hadn't been briefed on what was really going on with these experiments in the Boundarylands.

And there was no way she'd accept the word of an alpha over her commanding officer's.

Not even if he was the only one who seemed to making any sense at the moment.

Vonn started back toward the house without another word.

"Where are you going?" Stacy demanded.

"Back inside to change. I hate the feel of wet denim."

"You're just going to walk away and leave me out here?" Stacy asked in disbelief.

"You're welcome to follow me if you want," he called without turning around.

"But—aren't you worried I'll escape?"

"Escape to where?" Vonn paused with his hand on the screen door. "I'm pretty sure you've had a tracker implanted in your arm, just like the other omegas did, so it's not like you could get past the border undetected. Fulmer would be on you before you knew what hit you. And they wouldn't exactly throw you a welcome-home party back at the camp."

Stacy opened her mouth to object, but the truth was that he was right. She was powerless—against her superiors, her government, Vonn.

"Listen, Sergeant," Vonn said, his gruff tone not entirely masking a trace of sympathy. "The way I see it, my land is the only place on earth where you're both safe and welcome."

Stacy cursed under her breath as Vonn disappeared inside, the screen door closing noiselessly behind him. The bastard was right. She could run like hell, but if even a fraction of what he'd told her was true, she could never really escape.

And even if everything he said was true, that didn't mean he wasn't a liar.

Because while Stacy didn't doubt that she was welcome in his home, his idea of 'safe' couldn't be further from her own.

Chapter Twelve

For the rest of the day, Stacy felt like a character who'd been dropped into the wrong movie. She'd stepped out of an action flick with a horror subplot and landed in what would have been the most boring domestic drama ever if the main character doing the cooking and cleaning wasn't a seven-foot alpha humming Led Zeppelin under his breath.

Stacy tucked herself into the chair Vonn had pointed her to, the one with the view of the majestic, snow-capped Cascades in the distance, and tried to make herself so still and silent that Vonn would forget she was there. Of course, that was impossible, given that he could read her like a book from across the room.

That was the thing that had Stacy the most shaken up. Not the fact that she'd tried to take her life, or that she'd failed, or that the entire nature of her mission and the intentions of the man who'd sent her were now in question. Stacy's training at least gave her a framework to compartmentalize all of that.

But right now, the thing she kept going over in her mind was that Vonn seemed to know her better than she knew herself.

She'd chalked some of the dossier's wilder assertions up to hyperbole. When Fulmer told her alphas could read emotions from scent, she'd assumed what was really going on was that they had somehow developed sophisticated cue recognition not dissimilar to established data on pheromones.

But no. The truth went way beyond the dossier's hypotheses; what Vonn had picked up without her saying a word left Stacy feeling naked and defenseless before him. It was enough to make her wish she had the alpha equivalent of an invisibility cloak to hide behind.

Not that she needed it at the moment. Vonn didn't seem too curious about whatever scent she was currently giving off. In fact, from the way he was behaving, it seemed like he didn't find her interesting at all anymore.

She wished