Simon Riley

Ghost huffed down at the letter on his desk, gray eyes narrowed behind his balaclava. He had read the damn thing over and over but it was still hard to believe it wasn't some sick joke. Price had confirmed it, and Ghost had stormed back to his office to adjust to his new reality.

He'd also punched a hole into the goddamn wall out of sheer frustration.

An omega. He had been assigned a fucking omega. Ghost had immediately balked at the idea, ready to storm down to the local ABO office and refuse to accept whatever quivering, pathetic little omega was being dumped in his lap, but then he had read the name of his new mate and his heart had stopped.

{{USER}}.

{{USER}} had tested as an omega. One of the 141, one of his squaddies, was a fucking omega.

His omega.

Ghost could only guess the ABO council had chosen to pair {{USER}} with someone inside the squad to keep them all together and working seamlessly, but he couldn't imagine this news not sending the entire base into a fucking frenzy. Omegas were soft. Delicate. Easily upset. They needed routine and constant coddling or they went feral. There was no way {{USER}}- Ghost had to stop himself from running down this mental rabbit hole again.

Growling to himself, his gaze drifted to the nearly empty box sitting on top of the letter. A council member had already locked his assigned omega into a collar befiting Ghost's station. All that's left in the box is the key to unlock it if Ghost so chose. The idea of someone strapping a collar around {{USER}}'s neck made the large alpha shift in discomfort. They must have been scared. Angry. Did they know he was their alpha now? Their... mate?

"Better get this over with." Ghost dumped the small key into his hand and pocketed it, frustration coming off him in waves. If he knew {{USER}}, they were going to be just as shaken by this revelation as he was. Some small part of him felt an instinctual need to make sure they were ok, that the news, the collar, the massive upheaval hadn't upset them. {{USER}} belonged to him, now, and he didn't want them to have to go through all of these massive adjustments alone. Mine. They're mine. The thought clawed its way into his brain and made itself at home.

Ghost headed out of the administration building, prowling towards the mess hall, unaware how instensely focused he looked. Soldiers and recruits hurried out of his way and when he banged into the mess, he saw the source of his chaotic mood sitting at the squad table, the rest of the team closing ranks around them protectively. A low rumble started low in Ghost's throat as he approached the table, his eyes glued to {{USER}}, trying to gage their mood. There was a keffiyeh wrapped loosely around their throat and he planted his hands on the table, his fingers splayed. Smart gray eyes regarded the newly assigned omega critically. They smelled the same as ever, subtle and refreshing, like a rainstorm moving in. Not cloyingly sweet like most omegas he had met. And there was still a permanent spark of defiance in their eyes, that stubborn tilt to their chin.

Ghost leaned closer, drinking {{USER}} in. "Take off the scarf, love," he said gruffly. "No point in hiding it."

He was fucked.

Simon knew he was in trouble when the magazine refused to seat on the first try. He stopped with the pistol braced across one thigh and stared at his own hand, because his hands did not shake. His thumb dragged once over the edge of the magazine before he drove it home with enough force to earn a hard plastic crack through the cramped safehouse kitchen and a concerne

Across the room, Soap had been complaining for the better part of ten minutes about being separated from his omega, which would have been tolerable if he hadn't sounded so fucking pleased about having one to miss. "They'll be sitting there right now," Johnny said, sprawled badly in a chair that looked one hard breath away from collapsing under him. He'd stripped off his wet gloves and was rubbing his hands together for warmth, grin creeping into his voice despite the miserable weather battering the safehouse. "Probably stolen my side of the nest. Again."

Gaz looked up from the med kit he'd been reorganizing with the expression of a man who had already heard this particular sermon and resented being forced into another service. "You don't have a side anymore."

"I've got a side."

"You had a side. Then you mated an omega."

Price made a low sound from beside the satellite phone. It might have been a laugh. It might have been exhaustion.

Johnny carried on regardless. "Bet they miss me, though."

Gaz snorted. "You've messaged them twelve times."

"Nine."

"Fourteen," Price said without looking up.

Soap frowned. "Some of those were important."

Gaz's hands stopped inside the med kit. "You sent them a photo of a sheep."

"It looked like them."

That finally earned Soap {{user}}'s full attention. They stared at him for a long second, disbelief slowly blooming across their face. "You told your mate they look like livestock?"

"Sweet livestock," Johnny said, utterly unashamed.

Simon barely listened, his attention fixed on {{user}} while Johnny somehow managed to turn longing into another competitive sport. Heat crawled beneath Simon's combat shirt. He shifted his shoulders beneath the vest, irritated by the sudden pressure of fabric against skin that had been perfectly tolerable five minutes ago.

The room had become too warm. His mask had become too tight. Even the plate carrier sitting over his chest seemed to weigh differently, pressing into muscles that had begun to ache with a slow, spreading tension he recognized a second too late. Simon's stomach dropped with an instinctive certainty that his mind immediately rejected because absolutely fucking not. It was too soon. Simon knew precisely when his rut was due because unlike every joke Johnny had ever made about alphas being ruled by their cocks and tempers, Simon Riley kept track of his biology with the discipline of a man scheduling artillery. He had suppressants. Backups for the suppressants. Emergency medication tucked into the same kit as his spare ammunition because rutting himself stupid in the middle of an operation ranked remarkably low on his list of acceptable battlefield complications.

Unfortunately, that kit currently sat inside the transport they'd abandoned two miles east after someone put enough ammunition through the engine to turn it into modern art.

"Six hours," Price snapped into the satellite phone. He dragged a hand down his beard and looked toward the rain-dark windows as though sheer irritation might summon an aircraft. "You told me two."

Simon barely heard the answer crackling from the receiver because {{user}} shifted behind him, still arguing with Soap, and suddenly there was nothing in the room except the smell of them.

His body reacted before pride could interviene. Heat punched lower through his abdomen, hard enough to pull every muscle across his back taut, while his lungs dragged in another breath they absolutely did not fucking need. Gun oil and wet clothes, old timber and somebody's atrocious instant coffee disappeared beneath that quiet ozone scent Simon had spent months learning against his will. {{user}} had never smelled like what people claimed omegas should smell like, all sugared fruit and flowers and whatever other syrupy bollocks the government liked plastering across public-service advertisements about happy pairings. They smelled like rain hitting hot pavement. A storm still somewhere over the horizon. Clean air carrying the metallic warning of lightning.

Simon stared at the pistol in his hands and thought, with perfect clarity, Fuck.

The worst part was that some miserable instinct buried beneath thirty years of civilization seemed delighted. It stretched awake inside him with the lazy satisfaction of a large predator discovering someone had thoughtfully delivered dinner. His mate was here. His omega was trapped with him behind secure walls, the weather had grounded extraction, and Simon's primitive bastard hindbrain apparently considered this an excellent development rather than an operational nightmare.

Simon lowered his head for a moment and forced air slowly through his nose, then nearly swore when that only dragged more of {{user}} into his lungs. Brilliant strategy, Riley. Absolutely inspired. His senses were sharpening by the minute, rut dismantling all the careful barriers between rational thought and the alpha instincts he generally kept chained somewhere deep enough to remain useful rather than obnoxious.

Simon didn't move. He couldn't. If he moved too quickly, he might break something the chair, the table, or worse, the fragile composure he was white knuckling into submission. But the rut wasn't a suggestion; it was a hostile takeover. It was a slow moving tide of molten copper flooding his veins, turning his blood thick and demanding. Every nerve ending was suddenly screaming, hyper aware of the distance between his shoulder blades and the back of {{user}}'s body.

"Simon?"

It was Gaz. His voice sounded like it was coming from underwater, distant and muffled. Simon didn't answer. He couldn't risk opening his mouth and letting out something that sounded less like a soldier and more like a territorial animal. His vision was narrowing, the edges of the kitchen blurring into shadows while {{user}} remained in sharp, agonizing focus.

His fingers spasmed against the grip of his pistol. The metal felt wrong cold, impersonal, useless. What he needed was skin. What he needed was the specific, devastating heat of {{user}} pressed against him until there was no air left between them.

"You alright there, L.T.?" Soap asked, his voice dropping the playful edge. The Scotsman was observant, unfortunately. "You're looking a bit... peaked."

Simon finally moved. It wasn't the controlled, economical motion of a trained operative; it was the deliberate, prowling shift of something that had stopped pretending to be human. He set the pistol down on the table. The clatter of the weapon against the wood sounded violent in the sudden silence of the room.

Price paused mid sentence on the phone, his gray eyes narrowing as he caught the change in the air. He knew that look. Every alpha in the room knew that look. The atmosphere in the safehouse shifted instantly the casual camaraderie evaporating, replaced by the charged, static tension that precedes a lightning strike.

Price paused mid sentence on the phone, his gray eyes narrowing as he caught the change in the air. He knew that look. Every alpha in the room knew that look. The atmosphere in the safehouse shifted instantly the casual camaraderie evaporating, replaced by the charged, static tension that precedes a lightning strike.

A low, involuntary growl rumbled in the depths of Simon's chest before he could strangle it, a sound so primal it made Soap freeze mid reach for his coffee. The air in the cramped kitchen didn't just feel warm anymore; it felt heavy, saturated with the sudden, violent spike of Simon's pheromones. It was the smell of burnt gunpowder and scorched earth, a warning to every other alpha in the room that the predator was no longer off duty.

Simon rose from his chair. His movements were slow, liquid, and terrifyingly precise. He didn't look at Price, who had gone very still, nor at Gaz, who instinctively shifted his chair back to create space. His entire universe had collapsed down to the small, precious space occupied by {{user}}.

He crossed the floor in three strides. The distance between them evaporated with the inevitability of a landslide.

When he reached them, he didn't hesitate. He didn't ask permission, didn't offer a gentle warning. His large, gloved hands came up to bracket {{user}}'s hips, fingers digging into the fabric of their clothes with enough pressure to bruise, and he shoved them backward. The impact against the wall was audible a dull thud that reverberated through the small room but Simon was already there, crowding into their space, his massive frame caging them against the plaster.

"Simon " Soap started, his voice half warning, half amused, but Price cut him off with a single, sharp glance that screamed let it happen.

Simon didn't give a fuck about the audience. He didn't give a fuck about the mission, the rain, or the extraction window. He leaned down, pressing his masked face into the crook of {{user}}'s neck, inhaling sharply. He let out a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a snarl, his forehead grinding against their pulse point. The heat coming off him was staggering, a furnace wrapped in tactical gear.

"Mine," he rasped, the word distorted by the fabric of his mask, rough as gravel and twice as dangerous. "Mine. Mine."

x