Stacy didn't answer…she couldn't, not with the effects of an adrenaline crash setting in now that her makeshift surgery was over.
"I know it goes against everything you've been taught," Mari said, "but we're asking you to trust us. We've all experienced things that would shock the public if they ever found out."
Stacy felt as though she'd been standing on an ice floe. As each lie was revealed, pieces of the ice broke off and floated away, leaving her in danger of losing her foundation. Any more, and she'd simply go under.
And that terrified her. If Stacy lost the thing that had given her pride and purpose, she'd be no better than the many bitter, beaten former female soldiers who'd been forced out. Wasn't it possible that this was just a corrupt corner of the service?
Stacy had known many good, honorable, brave men and women in her career. Just because Fulmer had put civilian lives in danger in service to corrupt ideals, that didn't mean that the whole system was broken.
"I'll admit that people stepped over the line. That there are bad elements that must be rooted out. But you have to admit that the alphas contributed to the situation."
"Contributed how?" Josie demanded, her face darkening with anger.
Stacy's blood simmered, the pain of the last moments forgotten. "Have you really been so blinded by your mates that you've forgotten about a national tragedy?"
"What tragedy?"
"For starters, alphas kidnapped a senator's daughter and then ambushed the elite rescue squad sent to bring her home. Alphas slaughtered every last one of them."
"That didn't happen." Josie held her gaze.
Enraged, Stacy was instantly up on her feet, ready to make Josie take back her words by force if necessary. "It sure as hell happened! I know because those were my friends on the rescue squad. My friends were murdered in cold blood by savages."
Before she could make a move toward Josie, Olivia stepped between them, putting her hands on Stacy's shoulders, carefully avoiding the wound site.
Stacy could have shaken her off easily. She could have flipped her onto the ground with almost no effort. Instead, she felt frozen as Olivia regarded her with sympathy.
"That's not what Josie meant. We all know about the lives that were lost that day. But the story you've been told about that day…it isn't what happened."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm so sorry for your loss. I didn't realize those soldiers were your friends. But it doesn't change the fact that Mia Baird wasn't kidnapped."
"She wasn't?" Stacy wasn't sure what to believe. She'd been lied to so many times by so many people, she was beginning to doubt her own ability to recognize the truth.
"And those soldiers weren't killed in cold blood," Josie said. "They trespassed onto alpha land with orders to kill Mia and anyone around her. I'm sure they were also lied to, just like you were, but it doesn't change that all of it was a setup to help Mia's father retain his power."
"No," Stacy whispered. It couldn't be true. "You're the ones who have been lied to."
"I'm sorry, Stacy," Olivia said sadly. "But it's true."
"How can you possibly know that?"
"Because we know Mia Baird, and she told us the story herself."
Chapter Seventeen
When the omegas finally left, Stacy wandered out onto the patio and took a seat in one of the Adirondack chairs. Shortly after that, she heard the front door open and close. For a while after that, there was only birdsong, the sun on her face, and a bit of a breeze ruffling through her hair.
Slowly, Stacy's eyes drifted closed, but she wasn't drowsy. She needed to think.
The omegas had come here to protect her, and Stacy knew she owed them a debt of gratitude. Even now, Vonn was out there in the woods burying the crushed tracker somewhere on his land. If the thing still worked—which she seriously doubted given how many pieces it was in—and Fulmer sent someone to retrieve it, they'd suffer the consequences. Even with the government's best efforts at destroying the settlement, the treaties were clear: the punishment for breaching an alpha's land without permission was death.
Vonn had told her she was safe, but Stacy wasn't sure she even knew what that word meant anymore.
How could anyone be safe in a world where there was no clear line between right and wrong? Between truth and lies? If the powers that be were willing to sacrifice innocent civilians on missions that left them trapped for the rest of their lives at best, and brought down by their own country in the worst case?
Everything she'd been told about the Baird mission was wrong. Her superiors had been lying to her all along. They'd used her anger and grief to manipulate her into another shortsighted and ultimately failed mission in the Boundarylands.
But wanting something to be a lie didn't magically turn it into the truth.
Stacy had seen the honesty on the omegas’ faces as they reluctantly told her what she so desperately didn't want to hear. She'd heard the sincerity in their voices. And when they shared details about the mission that would be impossible to guess, she had to accept that they knew what had happened that fateful day because they'd heard it straight from the source.
Even now, they told Stacy, Mia and her mate Ty were living happily in the lowlands settlement and were expecting a baby brother or sister any day now for their little daughter Ellie.
Adjusting to this new truth would be difficult and painful, but Stacy could do it. She was a fighter, and she wouldn't back down. Ever.
Even in a battle with herself.
There had been monsters in the Boundaryland that day, but they hadn't been alphas.
If Stacy was scrupulously honest with herself, the past few days had planted more than a few seeds of doubt about her beliefs already. It was easy to keep the fires of prejudice burning when she was far away in the echo chamber of Fort Blanchard, where
