Stacy crossed her arms, shooting these ladies the same withering glare that had been known to silence an entire class of new recruits. "And what makes you think I'm going to let you do that?"
Maybe she was losing her touch, or maybe after living with alphas these women had grown spines of steel, but the omegas didn't appear afraid of her at all.
Mari took pity on Stacy and came over to place her hand on her bicep, her touch gentle. "They're not just using the chip to keep tabs on your location. It also sends them information about your…um, status."
"Status?" Stacy echoed as the women looked on with sympathy.
She hated sympathy.
"What you're doing." Mari leaned in closer to whisper in her ear. "Who you're doing."
Oh, God. Fulmer had been able to tell when she was with Vonn? Every time? The thought wasn't just mortifying, it was anger-inducing. Fulmer hadn't told her any of that.
"As well as any change in your nature," Olivia added.
"Your omega nature," Vonn clarified. "Which is why it has to come out. If Fulmer sent you to test a suppressant, then you're only worth anything to him while you're still a beta."
The pieces all fell into place. If the moment came that Stacy changed…if her mission failed…
Then Fulmer would cover his ass.
Shit.
Stacy felt the approach of panic at the knowledge that Fulmer, the division he ran, her superiors who'd signed off on reassigning her, the entire US beta armed services—all of it was corrupt. The oath she had taken with such pride when she enlisted meant nothing now. She could not continue to serve, and if Stacy wasn't a soldier…then who was she?
A goddamn warrior, that's who.
She started unbuttoning her shirt and spoke in a strong, clear voice. "Let's get this thing out of me."
"I'm sorry," Olivia murmured for what had to be the hundredth time as she probed deeper into the incision she had made in the upper bicep of Stacy's left arm.
She had made only a tiny cut to start, pinpointing the small black mark Josie had inked, but when the tracker continued to elude her, she'd had to widen the incision. "I'm going as fast as I can, but there's no way around it—I know it hurts."
"I can take it," Stacy said woodenly.
And she could—she'd trained for this, having outlasted all of her classmates in her interrogation course. It was what had allowed her to endure basic training with her arm in a cast and sling after she broke her arm in a fall from the ropes course. A fall that would never have happened if a fellow recruit hadn't pushed her.
That was what really hurt, of course. Not the physical pain, but the indignities her male peers and superiors had subjected her to, lashing out at her simply for being a woman in a man's job.
Stacy hadn't survived all that just to cry over a poke in the arm. And so, as Olivia continued to turn her arm into chopped sirloin, she gritted her teeth and imagined doing the same thing to Fulmer's balls. She could rely on her training to carry her through the white-hot pain.
Ten hours later—at least, that's what it felt like— Olivia exclaimed, "Got it!" and, with a triumphant grin, pulled the object of torture out of Stacy's arm.
"Damn, lady," Josie said. "Why couldn't you be that quick when you took out mine?"
"I'm getting better with practice," Olivia shrugged. "By time the next omega lands here, I'll be an expert."
Mari handed her a bottle of iodine and gauze. After Olivia had cleaned up, she got to work with the surgical needle in her kit, making tiny, neat stitches. Stacy did her best to ignore the sharp sting and listened while the others chatted.
"It was also a good idea, sending Vonn away before you got started," Josie told Olivia. "Having Knox breathing down your neck probably didn't help that first time."
Olivia smiled without looking up. "You can say that again. Poor Gray had to take mine out on his own. I think it might have hurt him every bit as much as it hurt me."
Stacy couldn't keep silent any longer. "Are you trying to tell me that your alphas—the ones you're chained to—actually cared about your pain?"
"The alphas we're what now?" Mari was obviously amused. "You're kidding, right?"
Stacy rolled her eyes but bit back her sarcasm when she realized that Mari couldn't be older than she'd been when enlisted. Just a baby.
Olivia had tied off the stitches and was carefully smoothing tape in place over a gauze pad covering the wound. "Don't give her such a hard time," she told Mari. "We all thought the same things when we came here."
"You're right," Josie admitted. "Hell, it took days before I truly believed Knox wasn't going to break our deal and jump on me in the night."
"Yeah, I guess I was more afraid of Ryder than of freezing to death that first night," Mari reflected.
Stacy looked from one woman to the next, certain she was only getting half the story. "But…none of that happened? The things you were afraid of?"
"My mate has saved my life a total of three times now," Mari said quietly.
Stacy struggled to absorb this claim. Alphas didn't save lives; they took them. "But only because he needs you alive to mate with, right?"
Mari shook her head. "That's not how it is. Two of those times were before either of us knew about my true nature."
"You'll learn that most of what the beta authorities taught us about alphas was wrong. But it's worse than that." Josie's voice was impassioned. "All the lies they tell? Their whole purpose is to keep women under their control. Not just dormant omegas, either. All women."
"You had to have seen that for yourself," Olivia said. "I mean, how many
