His team had gotten in late after the expedition down south. Technically, it had been a success, but he knew there’d be problems with the DEA agent.

He didn’t care. Sometime while he’d been out there in the brush, he’d decided that he was tired of being used for what he was, instead of valued for who he was. It had been okay when he was younger, when the pride of providing for his family even if it meant never seeing them again had still been shiny and new. Now he was just sick of it all, sick of the isolation, sick of having no real connection to the world unless he was hunting something with the intent to kill it. Sick of the constant threat that any misbehavior on his part would be taken out on his family.

This was no life for a shifter.

The question was what to do about it.

He could go feral—others had done that, though not from the Agency, he thought. He had the skills to slip across borders, to establish a new identity.

Finding a new pack who would take him in would be the hardest part of it all—no one liked a feral and no one wanted a fugitive on their books. It just invited all sorts of trouble. And he really had no skills other than the ones he’d learned in the Army.

But all packs had a security force—maybe that would be his way in.

Or, he could stay here and wait for his brain to go completely to the Barrens, and then Oscar would take care of all his problems for him. Probably with a .45, just to be sure.

North across the border it is.

With the decision made, even if he hadn’t set a deadline for it yet, the tension that had been tying knots in his shoulders for the past months eased.

Damian tossed his bag into the closet with the rest of his dirty laundry and poured himself a shot, then made himself comfortable on the couch and opened the new laptop he’d picked up on the drive home. He finished his drink and poured another while the machine went through the long, tedious process of updating itself and rebuilding all his accounts.

The anticipation made his head spin, or maybe that was the rum and the lack of sleep. It had been several weeks since he’d looked, trying to wean himself off the useless emotional flogging. My ritual. He was a fool—that omega was long mated and probably big with…

Fuck me to the Barrens.

A discreet banner down the side of the page announced the annual specialty offerings, a heavily pregnant shifter gracing the top of it. And the image beneath it was none other than Salem, presenting his pregnant belly to the world as if offering it for sale.

Which, when Damian clicked through to the webpage, was exactly what he was doing.

Damian stared at Salem’s picture, completely aghast. Why? Why would an omega be doing something like that? Was his alpha that poor a provider? Or…

Memory took him back those months, all the way to November, to that night with Salem. He hadn’t smelled mated…

He hadn’t smelled mated. And the beta at the door had mentioned Salem was in heat…

How did that happen? Weren’t there things that could stop a pup from planting itself in those fertile wombs? He’d just assumed when Salem hadn’t said anything… You lunar fool, you dosed yourself to smell like a human. He didn’t think you were a risk.

Well, and what would his Sargent have said back in Basic if he’d assumed something?

You are an idiot, Montana Border.

But what to do now?

He stared at the picture and noticed the little video icon beside Salem’s name. Don’t click it. Don’t… But his fingers had already moved on the touchpad and the little screen popped up in front of him.

The first video, the one that still had to be salvaged from his old hard drive, had just been Salem sitting in an old wing chair talking about why he liked working in the public houses. It had been sexy, but a kind of polite sexy. Classy. Almost like a dating service.

This one was very different.

Salem had been…arranged…over a pile of pillows, loose pants covering the bottom half of his body, an unbuttoned shirt showing off his chest and the swollen belly that proclaimed his pregnancy to the world. He lay there like one of the pin-ups that graced the walls of the garage where Damian took his car. Undeniably sexy, unavoidably available.

Rage settled in a blood-red ball under Damian’s heart. No, it couldn’t have been him. What were the odds? But if it wasn’t him, then… What kind of alpha would send his omega mate out to do this kind of work? Even more when the omega was heavy with his pup?

And especially an omega like Salem, who had shown Damian the most kindness he’d experienced since he’d left home for the Army so many years ago.

A shocking chill raced over him. He reminded himself that Salem hadn’t smelled mated. There’d been no scent of alpha on him, and the omega would have believed he was dealing with humans—he’d have no reason to try to eliminate that scent.

And probably no reason to bother with any kind of birth control, since humans and shifters couldn’t make pups together.

The truth of what he was seeing hit him like a runaway Humvee.

Oh, Damian, what have you done? Barrens, and I left him there, with… that has to be my pup in his belly.

He had to know, even if there was nothing he could do. He was a ghost, caught in the spaces between the human world and shifters—he had nothing to offer. There was no room for an omega in his kind of life.

Unless he could escape his keepers and find his way back to the shifter world. And then, maybe? Would Salem go with him into exile, in a different country, never to see his family again?

And when it came down to it, would he wish that life on the bearer of his pup?

He finished the rum and stared at the picture on the webpage for a long moment before he snapped into action, packing everything that could be useful to him, all his cash, all his fake identities and the weaponry that went with them. And then he was in his car, speeding through the night toward an omega that was either going to be his death or his life.