Chapter 15: Royce - Marked By Love

Buford unloaded and put away the groceries, checked Dr. Abbott, then left, promising to return later. Royce didn’t care. He was hardly aware of the bear shifter as he’d moved about. Instead, his focus had been on Doc.

Studying his face, searching for any minute change in coloration or a twitch that could mean something was amiss. Thus far Royce had been an abysmal mate; he wasn’t about to let himself fuck up when it could mean the difference between Doc waking up and his heart stopping.

Shifting his position on the floor next to the sofa, his hand hit something cold and metallic. The tin. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, Royce hid it from Buford and Dr. Shera. He pulled it out now, bloody fingerprints smeared across the printed label of a truffle and mint leaves. What the fuck was in here that was so important?

“Sorry, Doc, but I gotta know what this is.” He popped the lid off and was further confused.

Papers, driver’s licenses, birth certificates, veterinary medicine licenses, all of them had Doc’s round face staring up at him, but each had a different name.

Of course, if he was hiding, he wouldn’t want to use his real name. His mate was smart and resourceful … and terrified enough to go through the illegal witch black market to get fake documents and suppressors.

Royce went through each paper and ID in the tin. At the bottom of the pile was a solid black rectangle, the name of a tech company stamped on the side. Seizing it, he removed the lid to reveal a USB insert. It was a flash drive.

Moving across the cabin, Royce grabbed Doc’s discarded backpack and retrieved his laptop. It was charged but had a thumbprint security lock on it.

“Sorry again, Doc. I won’t read your emails, I promise.”

Pulling Dr. Abbott’s hand from the cocoon of blankets, he pressed his thumb to the keypad. When the laptop unlocked, Royce replaced his arm under the blankets, then set the laptop timeout time to ‘never.’

He inserted the USB.

A black window popped into existence with three folders: payroll, medical record, and unnamed. He went through the first folder. It was exactly as it was named, a record of payrolls for alpha security guards from Seerinoga.

It was well known the omega settlements had round-the-clock guards consisting of mated alphas. The pay stamps in question raised no alarm Royce could think of.

Odd, why was this worth dying over?

Next was medical records. These were also from Seerinoga, all omega. After the third medical file, Royce was scowling at the screen … age nineteen, no previous record, deceased after one day in the hospital, cause of death, flu. On and on they went, some as young as ten. Why were so many young omegas dying of the flu?

Confused, he went back to the payroll folder. He missed something, he had to have … Reading each line on the first payroll, Royce went cold. The pay listed for this guard was twenty units an hour, so how come he had a random paycheck over ten thousand units? Same with the next guard, and the next.

“No!” Royce went back to the medical records. The inflated guard checks aligned with the date of death on different omega records. First five deaths, then ten, then twenty … And he still had one more folder to open.

Dozens of video files filled the black screen, meticulously dated and timed. He clicked on the most recent one, dated over four years ago.

An omega’s round face filled the screen; his hair was streaked with gray and his skin wrinkled, but the resemblance was uncanny. This was Doc’s parent.

He played the video.

“There was another transfer today. Twin boys, age seventeen. Rory and Ray Bruston, I don’t know what their destination was. I’ve lost count of how many they made me do, how many lives I was complicit in destroying. I started these video logs late, too late … most of them will never be found again.

“I’m sorry for that.

“I’m sorry for the role I played. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them.

“This is going to be my last log. I’ll probably be dead before this is found. I’m hoping that’s a good thing. I’m hoping that gives my son the time he needs to get away.”

The man’s voice cracked, and he covered his eyes with one hand.

“They were going to kill him. Not just kill him, but send him to the worst of the worst. That’s how they got me to comply. It’s a terrible excuse. It’s no excuse, but after they killed my wife, he’s all I had. But he’s older now, too old for them to be interested, and he’s left Seerinoga.

“I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused. I’m sorry for everything. I know I can never make up for it, but I hope this information is a start.”

The man on camera broke down before the recording stopped.

Royce didn’t watch all of the videos, there were too many to consume in a single day. Scrolling to the end of the video logs, he found still images. Pictures of emails from the offices of sitting members of the North American Union to the heads of various breeding clinics and brothels.

They knew.

The government, at least at some level, knew and was personally involved.

With a strangled cry, he looked up from the laptop to Doc’s face, ashen and small. His heart thumped wildly, his hands shook, his chest tightened. The look of absolute terror plastered to Doc’s face whenever he spoke to Royce, the ferocity in his eyes when he fought. It all made so much sense, and a pit fell in Royce’s stomach—for everything this beautiful, brave, and resilient omega had been through, and everything Royce had contributed to that burden.

He was going to fix this, if it was the last thing he did.

First things first, he packed everything away. The tin he cleaned off the blood and placed it on a shelf next to the laptop. He put the flowers in a vase in the kitchen. Looking around the cabin, he searched for a thermostat—why the hell was this place so cold? It couldn’t be good for Doc on a good day, let alone while he was passed out on the sofa hooked up to an IV.

That’s when he noticed the little cast-iron stove in the living room. He scowled and searched the other rooms. Sure enough, the bedrooms each had one. Was this whole damned cabin heated by wood? And there was no firewood stacked inside. Which meant Doc had either used it all up his first week, or it had never been stocked for his arrival, and he’d been freezing since he moved in. Royce scowled at the furnace in the bedroom.

He paused to check on Doc—he was unchanged—before tromping outside. When he was circling the cabin as a wolf, he hadn’t gotten close enough to inspect the little lean-to by the back door, but that’s the most logical place he thought he’d find wood.

Pushing the tarp aside, his scowl deepened. The lean-to had a large open area with chips of bark and half-rotten wood pieces, but no firewood. He did, however, find an axe.

Cussing under his breath, he took the axe out to the forest edge. Who the hell had been responsible for getting this cabin ready for the new doctor? Royce had half a mind to find them and yell at them for their negligence.

There was a large stump covered in divots that had obviously been used for splitting wood. Next to the stump was a pile of fat logs. They were wet and covered in moss, but better than no firewood at all.

Setting up a log, he gripped the axe and swung. A loud crack and shattering filled the air as the log split into two pieces, still too large for the furnace.

The image of Doc’s face, with blood-stained lips and bloodshot eyes, came to his mind unbidden.

Royce swung.

Crack.

The despondent look on Doc’s face as he fell unconscious, gripping the tin of documents for dear life.

Crack.

Doc’s tear-stained cheeks as he cowered in the corner, covering his neck with his hands.

Crack.

His parents, covered in blood and glass, their bodies twisted and broken, pronounced dead at the scene.

Crack.

Doc lying crumpled on the cabin floor.

Crack.

His sisters in the sterile hospital room, their brains dead.

Crack.

Doc living in terror as he ran for his life.

Crack.

The countless files of omegas going into the Seerinoga hospital to never be seen again.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

With each swing of his axe, new visions and memories filled Royce’s mind until he couldn’t tell them apart. He was wound up, his muscles taut, his chest tight, his blood pumping furiously as indignation and wrath coursed through him.

What the hell was wrong with this world?

Was nothing protected? Was nothing sacred?

What was the point of it all, living, loving, when all it amounted to was suffering?

Covered in sweat and his arms full of firewood, Royce went back into the cabin. He lit every furnace and got them smoldering before he went to the kitchen. He found a bucket and a scrubber and a pile of old rags under the sink. Filling it up, he started the terrible task of cleaning up the blood. Royce would need to chop more firewood, but it was less pressing now that he got the furnaces started.

He probably should have cleaned up sooner, before it had the chance to dry and settle into the little woven rug, but blast it all, he couldn’t leave Doc shivering in the cabin.

Royce toiled under his labors for hours. Not that he minded, but the thing about cleaning and chopping wood is it kept your hands busy while your mind was free to wander. That was a dangerous thing for Royce right now. Suppressed memories of the car crash and decades of lonely nights engulfed him, threatening to pull him under.

When he aged out of the system, Royce vowed he would never revisit the darkest recesses of his mind, forcing himself to move on from the terrible memories and the nightmares of blood and hopelessness. His had been a solitary existence, but it was content, quiet even once he left the service. Meeting his mate, learning what he was running from, and almost losing him, all within twenty-four hours, was forcing it to the surface in a spectacular mess.