The alpha 14 protect pro.., p.8
The Alpha 14: Protect. Procreate. Prevail., page 8
My omegas didn’t wear pajamas in bed, and neither did I, but Lian did. Because to her, she wasn’t in a room with just her partner, even though she was in a room full of omegas.
However, because she grew up in a society where people should only show off their bodies to their partners, she found it slightly strange walking into a room where we were all naked.
But my other omegas didn’t say a word. They covered themselves with the bed covers until Lian had made herself comfortable beside me, she whispered an apology, but we all said the same thing:
There was no reason for Lian to apologize for something she couldn’t control.
Then my other lovers started giggling about all the cute pjs they should buy together, and I smirked as I imagined having a full-on slumber party with my omegas all in adorable nighties and silk shorts and tank tops.
Before I knew it, it was the following morning, and Carlo Abella and I walked past the gray and sandstone buildings of George Street as we headed for our meeting with Ewan Miller.
“This is an insult to my country, sir,” Carlo mumbled in his thick Italian accent. “You say you come from Italy, but you cannot make a good cup of coffee? Honestly! A child could make a better espresso!”
I always relied on Carlo to make me laugh when things were tense.
“I suppose that’s what you get from a pop-up shop on the side of the road,” I chuckled. “Even if it did have the Italian flag plastered all over it.”
“I should have just gone to Costa…” Carlo huffed, then he shot back his espresso with a strong wince on his face. “I’ve learned my lesson, sir.”
I had to agree, it wasn’t the best coffee in the world, but the line in Costa was out the door, and we needed something quickly before we arrived at the UK ESD headquarters.
I was exhausted, so I didn’t care how bad the coffee was, or how expensive it was, either.
I just needed caffeine.
I really could have used a day in bed with my omegas, which sounded pretty fucking good to me. But the issue with Asia wasn’t going to handle itself, and there was time to sleep later.
Carlo and I crossed the busy road in the middle of George Street as number eighty-two came into view. It was nearing nine o’clock in the morning, and from what I’d gathered, there were a lot of businesses and offices on George Street, so the sidewalks were covered with people rushing to work, and it was rare for us to come across a free parking space.
Fortunately, Ewan warned us about that when we first came here, so we knew to park a few streets away and walk over.
Like with all shifter agency headquarters, the building was practically camouflaged against the others around it. Unless someone knew what they were looking for, they wouldn’t have been able to find these buildings. There weren’t any signs above the doors, and the locations weren’t even on Google, so it was almost like the headquarters didn’t even exist.
Even though we worked for secret branches of the government, when the entire world was starting to wonder whether shifters were real, it was good to have some safety and privacy.
But even when we were buzzed into the building, there were still no clear signs of what the building was used for. The red tartan carpet took us to a small, oak reception desk, and the lady on the other side wore a simple, elegant suit with a plain name badge on her chest.
“Good morning.” She smiled, and then she glanced down at her computer for a second. “Jesse Rafe and Carlo Abella, correct?”
“That’s us,” I replied as Carlo and I handed over our SDD ID cards.
“Excellent…” The receptionist typed away on her computer, and then she clicked a couple of buttons before she looked back up at us with a smile. “Mr. Miller is waiting to see you in his office. Do you remember how to get there…?”
“Up the stairs, first door on the right?” Carlo checked.
“Got it in one,” the lady laughed.
We thanked her for her help, and then we took the stairs to the first floor, which was still confusing to me, but that was just one of the subtle nuances between the UK and the US.
Before we even arrived on the first floor, Ewan Miller pulled open the door to his office and stepped out to greet us.
Ewan was tall and slender, with ginger hair and freckles all over his face, and even when shit hit the fan, he always had some sort of welcoming smile on his face.
“Mornin’, mornin’,” he said as he shook our hands. “Thanks for comin’ so quickly.”
“Of course,” I replied. “We weren’t going to delay it.”
Ewan ushered us into the grand office. The walls were covered with paintings of eagles, stags, and various landscapes. The same red tartan carpet seeped into the room, and the rectangular windows overlooked the glorious Edinburgh castle which stood proudly on Castle Hill.
“Right, before we start, do you’s want coffee?” Ewan asked. “Or tea, fizzy juice, water?”
“Soda at nine in the morning?” Carlo chuckled. “We’ll pass, but we do need some decent coffee, please.”
“Mate, I have’nae slept a wink,” Ewan laughed, and his green eyes held the honesty behind his statement. “I’m surprised I’m no on the drink yet. But we’ll save the good shit for later, once we’ve taken down these bastards. I did, however, have a wonderful roll and square for breakfast, so that’s soothed the anger for now.”
“A roll and square?” I frowned.
“Square sausage,” Ewan explained as he typed something into his phone. “Fuckin’ banging creation, served on a morning roll… hunners ae butter… Wee drop broon sauce. Mhmm. Right! Coffee’s ordered, and Molly’s gonnae bring them in shortly for us.”
I noticed that Ewan’s accent deepened when he was angry, but also when he was passionate about something, too.
So instead of the word “of” he used “ae.” “Brown” became “broon,” and “haven’t,” and “gonna” became “have’nae,” or sounded more like “gonnae.”
It took me a while to get used to the slang at first, but I assumed it was the same for Ewan when he came to the States.
A few minutes later, Ewan’s assistant, Molly, brought a tray of coffees into the room. The tray came with jugs of milk, a silver bowl of sugar cubes, and even some shortbread cookies on a small China plate.
Carlo and I both drank our coffees black, unless we wanted something specific like a cappuccino, so we leaned back in our chairs as Ewan added sugar and milk to his mug.
“Okay…” Ewan said once his coffee was prepared the way he liked it. “So, Hazel and Wyatt are good to join the call?”
“Yep.” I nodded. “They have the link you created, so they’ll be calling through in fifteen minutes.”
“Braw.” Ewan gave me a thumbs up.
Even during stressful times, Ewan always tried to remain positive.
“So…” He stacked some papers into a neat pile on his desk. “Throughout the night I’ve been talkin’ to other European countries, and the Australian Shifter Agency, and they’re all happy to join us. So we’re gonna hear from Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Croatia, and Sweden. Who are all separate parts of the European Shifter Department.”
I blew out a breath as the realization seemed to hit me.
This wasn’t just some friendly group chat. This was serious business.
“Now, I dunno if you’s know this, but Australia’s agency is split up for each province,” Ewan explained. “Hudson Helman is in charge of the entire agency, so we’ll be talking to him in Sydney, New South Wales, but we’ll also be talking to Felix Elliott, the Head of Agency in Western Australia.”
“Okay…” I nodded as I took in all the various names and information.
“We also have a special guest.” Ewan smirked. “Dernov Vladimirovich is joining us from Moscow, Russia.”
My jaw dropped open, but as I glanced over at Carlo, I noticed he didn’t seem as excited. In fact, the frown on his face told me he was more confused than anything else.
“Are you sure having Russia join this conversation is a good idea?” Carlo asked as he ran one hand over his heavy stubble. “I mean, they are a part of the Asian agency, who we’re trying to take down at the moment…”
“Aye, I get that,” Ewan chuckled lightly. “But Dernov is just as pissed as we are right now. They were fucked over by Shen, too. If not more than we were.”
It didn’t take me long to work out whose side I stood on.
“Ewan’s right.” I nodded as I drank back the last of my coffee. “Having Dernov on our side is actually a smart move. They could essentially be spies for us, especially if China has no idea Dernov has moved sides. They can be our guys on the inside, so if we need any assistance with the Asian Shifter Agency, or maybe even getting to the Chinese branch specifically, Dernov might be able to help us with that.”
“You’re right, sir,” Carlo replied after a minute of thought. “I never thought I’d be friends with literal Russian spies.”
“Well, now we will be,” Ewan laughed. “Just a couple more wee things before we start the call. I also thought about getting in contact with the African and South American agencies, but neither of them have fully taken off yet– unlike Asia, who made us believe they were new. Fucking backstabbing bastards… But this call is just to get the word out there, and then we’ll rely on our new allied friends to spread the news further.”
“What about Shi Mu?” I asked about the Spanish weretiger. “He’s home now, right?”
“Aye, he flew home yesterday morning,” Ewan explained. “He had to complete some work in Spain. His boss will be joining in on the call, so Shi won’t be left in the dark. But he told me he could fly back if we need his help again.”
Shi had been a great help when it came down to locating Shen. Shi was the only weretiger we knew of at the time, so he was able to offer us all sorts of knowledge and information about his rare shifter species.
“Okay, excellent,” I replied. “It sounds like we’re all sorted, then.”
“Trust me, I went through everything last night.” Ewan ran his hand through his ginger hair. “Whoever we don’t talk to today, will be informed of the information through others. But when I spoke to everyone, they all seemed to be fairly on board, so let’s just see how that goes.”
I sent off a brief message to Hazel and Wyatt and told them the call was about to start, and then I made myself as comfortable as I could in my chair.
To the left of me, Carlo shrugged off his blazer, loosened the knot of his tie, and then rolled the sleeves of his white shirt up to his elbows. Ewan had his laptop set up with the screen facing us so we could see when people joined the call, and he brought out a pad of paper and a pen to take notes.
As soon as the time reached nine-thirty, the first number appeared on the screen, and it just snowballed from there.
Lukasz Bakula from Poland was the first to call in, followed by Vinko Leskovar from Croatia. Hazel and Wyatt’s names appeared seconds after each other, followed instantly by Maffeo Lo Rivera from Italy.
By nine-thirty-two, all ten names and numbers had been added to the screen, and the grand office was filled with crackly connections, people clearing their throats, and the sound of paper, or something rustling on the other end of the line.
I was almost glad it was just a call and not a video conference, because it was daunting just having the various noises and voices, let alone adding the different faces to keep track of.
I was even certain that I heard the click and a spark of a cigarette lighter, which wasn’t overly surprising given the mess the Chinese agency had caused everyone, not just me.
“I think that’s everyone,” Ewan said as he leaned in closer to his laptop. “Can everyone hear me?”
A chorus of responses hit us at the same time, and a variety of languages and dialects were mixed together in the group reply. I knew everyone spoke somewhat fluent English, or they had translators to help them, which made the conversation even easier.
But it was easy to hear Hazel’s sweet voice appear from the crowd, and it took everything I had to stop myself from starting up a conversation with her and asking how she was feeling that morning.
I wasn’t there to speak to my girlfriend, and I was sure she wouldn’t have appreciated having a conversation like that in front of important alphas and Heads of Agencies.
But the realization that the vast majority of the people on the call were alphas, and hopefully we all agreed to rally together, was mind-blowing to me.
“Okay, so you should all know what’s been going on, but just in case you aren’t sure, I’ll run through it all briefly,” Ewan continued, and I noticed his accent was much, much smoother, probably to help others understand. “Actually, Jesse, why don’t you take over?”
Ewan gave me a short nod and a small smile.
“Sure.” I returned the expression. “Um… So, thank you all for joining this call. I know it’s very late at night for some, and very early in the morning for others, but we appreciate you being here. Er, so… My name is Jesse Rafe, I’m the–”
“We know who you are, Jesse,” Rayko Pohl from Germany spoke up, but there was humor in his voice. “We’ve all heard about you.”
“Jesse is good man,” Dernov said in his thick Russian accent. “He helped shifters from Russia, and he gave them home when they were lost.”
“I did what anyone else should have done,” I replied. “Azarov and the wild cats were lost and scared, and Shen Shui, the weretiger, had just murdered his alpha and omega. Laza and Valya were good, innocent people, and they were killed without a second’s thought, all because the Chinese government decided on it. And that’s exactly why we’re here today, and why we need to do what we can to put an end to this war and rivalry the government has started.”
My anger seeped through my voice as more and more words left my lips, but I was pissed, and I didn’t see a reason to hide that.
I wanted to show these additional alphas and Heads of Agencies that I might have been young, but I wasn’t weak. I stood my ground when I wanted something, and I made sure to make that clear in every word I said.
“Shen was ordered by the Chinese branch of the Asian Agency to start a mad killing spree all because they wanted to prove some ridiculous point,” I explained. “The Asian agency wanted to be the strongest shifter agency in the world, and they tried to use me to get there. They thought they could get the upper hand if I was seen to be a threat, so they sent Shen across the fucking world, killing every innocent shifter he came across, just so that it would look like I did it. If I picked up betas along the way, which I did do, then it might have looked like I killed the alphas to begin with. But now that Shen’s gone, what is the agency going to do next? Who are they going to weaponize or kill now? We have to get there before they try anything, so that has to stop.”
“I agree,” Elton Nilsson said firmly in his Swedish accent. “Enough is enough.”
“Apparently the agency, or maybe just the Chinese side of things, wanted the population of shifters to outnumber the population of humans, right?” Hazel asked.
“Yeah,” I snorted out a laugh. “Because in their eyes, shifters are the superior species. Which isn’t wrong, we are stronger, but that doesn’t mean we have to outnumber the humans.”
“But what if the Chinese branch started aiming for humans next?” Hazel asked anxiously. “Do you think they would stoop that low if they wanted shifters to be the superior species?”
“Murder?” Lukasz growled, then followed it by saying something angrily in Polish.
“What is the difference between killing shifters and killing humans?” Carlo shrugged. “Any of us who have taken part in a shifter fight, I’m sorry to say, have committed murder. On multiple occasions, no doubt. So it may seem different killing humans, but is it really?”
“There is a big difference!” Vinko Leskovar from Croatia shouted.
“Really?” Rayko Rohl asked before he spat something in German.
“Unfortunately, there is no real difference,” Dernov sighed. “What is difference between woman walking to shop and get killed, or omega walk to shop and get killed? Both women, both innocent, both killed in same place. One might be physically stronger, yes, but both cruel murders, and both did not deserve to die. There is no difference. Murder is murder.”
“I don’t think the Chinese branch will drop to that level,” Luca said in his thick Spanish accent.
“Do you know that for absolute certainty?” Wyatt asked. “Because they’ve already dropped to that level by sending Shen on a killing spree against innocent and completely uninvolved shifters. Why not aim for humans, too?”
“Okay, okay.” I held out my hands like everyone could see me. “Let’s not drop down this rabbit hole until we know where we’re going. We don’t know for certain if their agency will aim for humans, or if they’ll find a new alpha they can manipulate and take control of. But because of that uncertainty, that’s exactly why we need to stop them.”
“We also need to work out what we’re going to do about the humans, too,” Ewan spoke up. “We might have been able to get away with the shifter videos after Jesse put a stop to the raven alpha, Zander Nevin. But now Shen’s made it a lot worse with the two videos he posted, and we’re walking a veeeeery fine line.”
“Everyone I know has seen the videos in Italy,” Maffeo mumbled.
“Same in Sweden, too,” Elton added.
“And France,” Guillaume Baudet replied with a muffled sigh.
“The entire world knows about these videos,” I grumbled. “They were plastered everywhere, and Shen’s were another part of his government’s evil games. We can’t do much about the videos themselves now, it’s too far gone, and we can’t just remove them from the internet. But if we focus on taking down the agency, whoever it has to be, we can try and save ourselves from the videos at the same time.”
“I need to hold my hands up and admit something, Jesse…” Vinko cursed in Croatian. “I… At first, I thought you might have caused this because of everything in Canada, then you went to UK. But I see different now, and I want to apologize.”
