Chapter 8: Royce - Marked By Love

The omega screamed and yelled about not being returned to him. Him who, Royce had no idea. His main priority was ensuring the little shit stopped shooting at him. The omega had guts, Royce couldn’t deny it. After the pistol was wrestled from his tiny hand, he continued fighting, successfully headbutting Royce in just the right spot to make his eyes water and blood trickle from his nostrils.

To Royce’s utter horror, the omega had then started to bawl. That release of raw terror and unfettered emotion released a pheromone too strong for the suppressor. It was subtle and diluted, but Royce’s wolf caught an inkling.

Moving the omega’s wrists to one of his hands, Royce removed the neck guard, leaned in, and huffed. The scent was still too weak to get the full effects, but he could finally identify it. Chocolate. Chocolate was the undertone to the mint he hadn’t been able to recognize, and maybe a small trace of berry. It was pure bliss.

“Mate.”

Going rigid, Royce sat bolt upright. His canines elongated and his skin flushed as his chest tightened.

The omega tried to scramble away, tears falling freely down his round cheeks from behind his glasses.

“Mate. And you made him cry!” his wolf snarled.

Damn it all!

“Would you shut up? None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you,” Royce shot back at his wolf. If the furry bastard had told him why he was obsessed with the mint-smelling omega, he never would have handled it this way.

“You’re hurting him!” his wolf snapped.

Lifting his knees from where they were pinning the omega down, Royce carefully scooted back and sat down across from the doctor. To Royce’s utter horror, Doc scrambled backward until his back hit the sofa, then curled into a ball and started sobbing.

“You jackass! You behaved like a brute, now he’ll hate you and me by association!” Royce couldn’t argue with his wolf’s assessment.

“I didn’t come here to hurt you,” Royce said. “I came here because—”

The omega gave a derisive snort, sob combo. “Could have fooled me.”

Instead of putting his foot in his mouth, Royce removed the blister pack of pills from his jeans pocket. He slid them across the floor.

The omega glared at the pills, then at Royce.

“You expect me to believe you’ve been stalking me, and you broke into my home, to return my pills?”

“Our mate is spunky. I like that. He’ll want to bite us back.” His wolf was practically purring with excitement. Royce ignored him.

“I knew something wasn’t right,” Royce said. “I knew omegas taking alpha pills was bad business. I was trying to get a read on you. When I couldn’t, I decided to come here to ask you outright.”

“You hit a dog!”

“I didn’t do that on purpose!” Damn it, Royce had known no one would believe it was an accident after he’d been caught stalking the vet.

OH!

Realization smacked him upside the head. His wolf thought he’d scented their fated mate, but because of the pills hiding his scent, the wolf couldn’t find him. Scott said he’d wandered the town aimlessly, but it hadn’t been aimless. Scott’s wolf had been tracking his mate. Since Royce’s wolf couldn’t smell him, he’d dug his heels into the last known location—the omega house.

Dr. Abbott fixed him with a glare. He’d shifted position so he was still huddled against the sofa, but now his hands were wrapped protectively around his neck. It broke something in Royce to see this beautiful, delicate omega so afraid, so hardened and untrusting. It also hurt that his mate didn’t want Royce to scent him.

He tried not to take it personally. Logically, he knew this omega had been through some shit. If he’d been thinking clearly these last few days, he would have seen that. His training as an enforcer combined with his alpha instincts to protect omegas would have made him want to help this omega, not stalk him and tackle him to the ground.

His mate needed a gentler approach, deserved a gentler approach. He internally cussed out his wolf before trying to talk to the omega again.

“Who are you hiding from?” Royce asked, doing his best to keep his voice gentle. “You’re taking suppressor, and you kept saying you wouldn’t leave, you wouldn’t go back to ‘a him.’”

He waited. Instead of responding, his omega shut down and was glaring at a wall.

Royce replayed the fight in his head, thinking hard to recall every syllable the doctor said. His skin went cold, and his wolf barked.

“You called me a trafficker,” he whispered. “Is that who you’re running from?”

The omega’s body shook. That was all the confirmation Royce needed. His mind was reeling. What the hell was he supposed to do?

Looking around the cabin, it was cozy and habitable, but terrible to defend. Surrounded by woods, all on the ground floor so anyone could crawl in through the window in the omega’s sleeping space, and it had two doors, both of which had pitiful excuses for deadbolts. Not to mention it was practically freezing in here. Not terribly cold for him, but omegas ran on the chilly side.

Mind made up, he slowly crawled closer to Dr. Abbott. He glared daggers at Royce.

“Okay, Doc, that’s what you prefer to be called, right? I need you to listen carefully.” Royce kept talking when Doc didn’t answer. “Despite the suppressors, my wolf was able to scent you, which I’m sure you’ve been able to figure out by now, but you’re my mate. Whoever you’re running from, I won’t let them get you, but I sure as shit can’t keep you safe here. So, I would appreciate it if you would pack a bag and I’ll take you back to my place.”

Instead of nodding and jumping up to pack a bag with glee—which honestly, did Royce really think that’s what was going to happen?—the omega hocked a goober into Royce’s eye. Much to his wolf’s delight, the fuzzy butthead was barking with glee at each show of pluck from the omega.

Cleaning the glob of spit from his eyelid, Royce stood up.

“Alright, hard way it is then.” Without ceremony, Royce bent down and scooped the omega up, tossing him over his shoulder. He hollered indignantly; Royce ignored him. He paused to put the pistol into one of the bags on the sofa, then hooked the straps to all of them over his forearm.

Was he going about this the right way? Most likely not. But since the Doc’s trembling response when he’d asked about traffickers, Royce tossed decorum out the window. The only thing that mattered now was keeping his mate safe.

Carrying the doctor and his bags across the kitchen, he paused, gaze settling on a pile of dark chocolate tins on the kitchen counter. He balanced his mate’s stiff form on his shoulder so he could scoop the tins into one of the duffle bags, then left the cabin.

He carefully set Doc on the passenger seat of his SUV and buckled his seat belt. Then he drove them to the other side of town.

“I live with other alphas in a row of condos. Or townhouses, I don’t really know the difference. But Elk Cove offers them to any alpha or pair of alphas living without an omega, and they come furnished which was a nice bonus. I move a lot, don’t like staying in one place long—probably a byproduct of being in the military and growing up in the system. And I hate shopping … There’s a second story. You can sleep in one of the rooms up there. It’s harder for people to sneak into a second-story window. And I have alpha neighbors who would immediately get suspicious of unknown alphas casing the joint and trying to break in.”

Royce rambled the whole drive. Mouth going without end, he couldn’t make himself stop. His mate was still curled into a rigid ball with his hands over his neck. Royce was trying very hard not to take it to heart. They hadn’t exactly gotten off on the right foot … not to mention these traffickers he was running from.

“Kill them all!” his wolf demanded. “No, let me kill them! First, you need to claim him, fill him with your knot, and bite him before we leave so everyone knows we will return to him from our hunt. Our mate shall fall at our feet when we arrive victorious, painted in the blood of his enemies.”

Fuzzy was getting insistent. Royce was still pissed at him. He knew he scented their mate at the Town Hall and had gone silent while Royce was chasing his tail, oblivious to what was happening. Now all of a sudden the furry bastard had gotten chatty and was making demands. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Royce disregarded his diatribe, giving him a taste of his own medicine.

He pulled into the garage under his unit, shut the door using the remote, and turned off the car. He sat there, white-knuckling the steering wheel. His mate hadn’t unwound from his tense ball.

“Okay, this is it …” Royce said.

When his mate didn’t move, he forced himself to get out and grab the bags from the back seat. He opened the passenger door; the omega sat stubbornly, not looking at Royce. With a defeated sigh, Royce hooked all the bags over one arm, then unbuckled Doc and pulled him into his arms.

He continued to ramble as he walked the omega through his condo, unnecessarily telling him what each room and piece of furniture was. He felt like a dolt.

“And this can be your room.” As he set the duffle bags down, Doc kicked and rolled out of his arms. Royce held his hands up.

“Okay, you want to be left alone?” Doc didn’t answer. Instead, he scrambled onto the bed in the corner, curled into a ball, his hands clamped over his neck. “Ummm, I guess I’ll go make dinner?”

The omega glowered at him.

“He is not basking in our alpha glory.” His wolf was incensed. “Why is he not basking? You must slaughter his enemies, then he will bask!”

Royce disregarded his wolf and took a small step backward. He exited the spare bedroom and went to the kitchen. Not knowing what else to do, he grilled two steaks and put potatoes in the microwave. Twenty minutes later, he left his dinner downstairs and took a plate up to Doc with a soda and glass of water. He didn’t have a tray, so he used a baking sheet to carry everything at once.

To his dismay, the omega hadn’t changed positions. Royce set the baking sheet down and stared, debating if he should try and talk to the omega.

“You can cut the pretenses,” Dr. Abbott said at last. “Just get it over with and rape me, force a mate bond, that’s clearly why you kidnapped me.”

Royce’s stomach fell to his feet, his skin ice cold.

“Is that—why—That’s not what mates are supposed to do!” Royce spluttered. “Mate bonds are sacred and should be treated with respect, as should the omegas.”

“You’ve clearly lived a sheltered life.”

The omega narrowed his eyes at Royce but stayed curled up on his bed.

Leaving the room without another word, Royce went straight to his en suite and threw up.

His parents had been fated mates. Their example of love, patience, and devotion had lived front and center in his mind through everything that he’d been through. That beacon of hope and love, the promise that something good still existed in this world, is what pulled him through his darkest days. Even after he’d given up hope of finding his own mate.

To see an omega, his omega, utterly terrified of him, of their bond. To hear him disparage fated mates by suggesting Royce wanted to—he couldn’t force himself to even think it.

His stomach clenched and rolled again.