Page 75 of Marked Omega

“Child?”

The interior of the transport is eerily quiet and dim while the landscape of sunlit grassy hills flows by outside. The vehicle rocks and pitches as Bishop throttles us across the terrain.

“That’s right.” Dr. Lucian speaks through that phony, too-perfect smile of his. “You’re pregnant, Lily. Congratulations. You don’t know how happy I am to be the one to break the news to you.”

The vehicle hits a divet, and Dr. Lucian’s pistol bounces precariously.

In the driver’s seat, Bishop rips off his helmet and tosses it aside, revealing his black beard and scarred face striped with sweat.

“That was too fucking close back there,” he pants as he glances in the rear view mirrors. “If we had just tranquilized the Alpha like I said—“

Dr. Lucian waves his free hand dismissively.

“No need for all of that,” he chuckles. “Our little guest is carrying something much more valuable in her belly. An infant Alpha. Perhaps an entire litter.”

I shake my head in disbelief. He’s bluffing. He must be.

“There’s no way you can know that,” I growl.

Dr. Lucian grins smugly.

“Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself, omega.”

Dr. Lucian keeps his pistol trained on my bare midsection. I’m naked, and I should be ashamed that these two outsider men can see my body, but right now I don’t care. All I care about is getting out of here.

With his other hand, and without taking his eyes off me, Dr. Lucian retrieves his data slate and flings it into my lap.

“There. Look.”

I pick up the data slate and turn it. There on the screen is some kind of dossier. My picture is in the upper corner. It’s my old SynerGen photo with my hair neatly pulled back in a bun—a far cry from the wild mess I’m sporting now—and my face is completely devoid of piercings.

That’s what I looked like only a few weeks ago, but it’s like looking at a picture of someone else. An image from another lifetime.

My eyes scan down the rest of the screen, which contains all kinds of information. Some of it is what you’d expect. My height. My age. Some other personal details. But some of the information is changing. There is a heart rate monitor showing my racing pulse.

And there are coordinates too. Longitude and latitude. The numbers are changing as the vehicle barrels southward.

“What is this?” I whisper.

Dr. Lucian chuckles again.

“Monitoring implant,” he says. “It was inserted into your body during your inoculations prior to our little excursion. You know, so we could retrieve you in the event that you should go missing.”

A tear rolls down the side of my nose and splats on the screen. I smudge it away.

“You’ve been tracking me all this time,” I mutter.

“That’s right,” Dr. Lucian says. “We were worried you would never leave the confines of the old city. The energy levels there are too strong for our shielding. But as soon as we saw your coordinates moving away from the center of the zone, we knew we would have a chance.”

Dr. Lucian snickers.

“All because you wanted to visit your little friend Evie.”

“Eva,” I say flatly. “Her name was Eva.”

Another patch of bumpy ground rocks the vehicle and jostles the pistol aimed at my belly.

“Whatever,” Dr. Lucian says. “Just take a look at the bottom of the screen.”