Roman: The Boundarylands Omegaverse: M/F Alpha Omega Romance Read online

  Roman

  The Boundarylands Omegaverse

  Callie Rhodes

  Contents

  Roman

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About the Author

  Also by Callie Rhodes

  Roman

  Bartered into the hands of an alpha, there was never a chance of escape.

  No woman willingly travels to the Boundarylands.

  It's where they are—the Alphas.

  They keep to themselves in the wilderness, and beta civilization knows to keep its distance. Especially beta women…for fear they may not be a beta after all.

  Unfortunately, Phoebe never had a choice, not when the family business is smuggling black market goods to the alphas who live deep within the borders. She knows enough to keep her distance, but when a heated deal goes wrong, Phoebe finds herself offered up as a sacrifice—her freedom for her family's lives.

  Now, she's trapped with a creature who views her as nothing more than another possession…so why does his feral nature call to her in ways she's powerless to control?

  Welcome to the Boundarylands. A place where the only way to know your true nature is to feel the touch of an Alpha. Omegas may be rare, but every woman knows their fates are hellish—held captive, broken, mated, knotted, and bred.

  Chapter One

  "I've got a bad feeling about this, Dad."

  Phoebe Whitfield tried to corral her racing heartbeat as she leaned forward to get her father's attention. With her younger brother Holden riding shotgun, there was nowhere for her to sit but on the thin mattress in the cramped sleeper compartment behind the cab of the eighteen-wheel tanker that her father and Holden had stolen several hours earlier.

  "Hush," Ed Whitfield whispered over his shoulder as he slowly turned off the winding two-lane road onto a narrow dirt drive—no small feat for a vehicle of that size. "You know these guys can hear everything."

  Phoebe rolled her eyes at Ed's words. Her father made it sound like he was talking about a couple of his old drinking buddies down at the corner bar instead of the pack of massive, brutal alphas who lived in this remote mountainous territory.

  "We got this, Sis," Holden told her, full of brash confidence and warmed by the contents of the flask he and their father had been passing back and forth. "This ain't our first run."

  Maybe not…but Phoebe was willing to bet it was their first hauling a half-empty tank of fuel when they'd been paid to deliver a full one.

  But she knew bringing that up wouldn't do a bit of good. She'd just get hushed again.

  After all, this was the first time she'd ever entered the Pacific Northwest Boundarylands, while the men of her family had been working it for years.

  After a decade spent running black market goods in and out of the Boundarylands, Ed considered himself an expert on all things alpha. Holden had joined the operation a few years ago after graduating from high school and was only too happy to back their father up.

  It was true that the two of them knew more than most betas about the alpha world. Unfortunately, that hadn't made them any smarter. There was a reason Ed Whitfield was still a two-bit hustler after all this time, and Holden hadn't exactly graduated at the top of his class.

  But half-witted or not, they were family, and Phoebe loved them to pieces.

  She'd even done her best to convince Holden to go to community college, maybe even get a certificate in medical transcription as she had.

  But Holden wasn't interested. Like their father, he had a taste for a quick buck. They liked to think of themselves as criminal masterminds when the truth was that their competition knew that it wasn't worth the risk to short-change angry alphas. But a recent fuel shortage in the Boundarylands had convinced the two of them that they'd stumbled on a sure thing.

  From what Phoebe had gleaned from their conversations, as supplies of gas ran low, the alphas had started looking beyond their usual suppliers to fill the gap. Ed and Holden figured it would be just as easy to meet the demand as it was to move untaxed liquor and illegals furs.

  The problem was that the tanker they'd stolen was only half full, even though they were being paid for a full shipment.

  Phoebe had been livid when she'd heard the plan. She'd begged them to reconsider, but they refused to listen to reason.

  "You just don't get it, sis," Holden had told her the night before as he leaned against the chipped, worn tile of their kitchen counter. "This is the score of a lifetime."

  "I don't doubt it—since it's also the last con you'll ever pull in your lifetime," she countered.

  "You worry too much, Phoebe," her father snorted, popping open another beer. "The plan is foolproof."

  Of course, it was anything but.

  Phoebe tried to make them see all the ways things could go wrong, but her words fell on deaf ears. Her father and brother were convinced that it would be a piece of cake to pass off a half-empty tanker as a full one, collect payment, and hightail it out of the Boundarylands before their alpha mark figured out he'd been duped.

  But despite what her father and brother thought, Phoebe knew that alphas weren't stupid. They might be big and mean, but Phoebe had heard enough stories from the locals she'd met to know that they were a hell of a lot sharper than her family took them for.

  But no amount of arguing could make them see reason.

  "There's only one hitch," Holden had said as he crushed his empty can and tossed it at the trash can in the corner of the kitchen. He missed, and the can fell to the worn linoleum floor, where it would stay until Phoebe picked it up. Sometimes she felt like Snow White taking care of the two laziest dwarves. "We're gonna have to get the hell out of town right after we make the drop. We'll head down to the Central Valley and lay low for a while."

  "You mean we have to move again?" Phoebe had asked in shock and dismay.

  "It'll be fine, sis," Holden said. "You keep telling us you can work anywhere."

  Holden hadn't been completely wrong. It wasn't as if Phoebe was in love with living in their tiny excuse for a town on the edge of the Boundarylands. But just like most betas, she longed to move to the big city. These rural backwaters just weren't in her blood.

  "You haven't seen these alphas when they get mad, Phoebe," her dad had said, his expression momentarily serious. "It ain't pretty."

  Phoebe didn't doubt it.

  She had started working as a medical transcriptionist before her mother died, determined never to get sucked into the family business. But she'd heard plenty about the alphas who lived across the border. They were huge, musclebound creatures who could probably dead-lift the family truck without breaking a sweat.

  Phoebe prayed to God she would never have to see one when he was mad.

  "But they can't come over the boundary line," she'd said, mostly to reassure herself.

  "They can't," Holden agreed. "But if they can pay us a small fortune to steal gas, then they can pay someone to come to our house and settle the score."

  "Don't worry," Ed said. "That's why we're leaving right after. And I do mean right after. Of course, that means you're going to have to come with us, Phoebe girl."

  Remembering that conve
rsation now as the tanker rolled along the drive crushing everything in its path, Phoebe wondered if she should have refused—even if it meant leaving her family and heading out on her own.

  But the thought made her feel slightly nauseous. They might be good for nothing, but Ed and Holden were her family—and now that her mother was gone, Phoebe had a feeling she was the only thing keeping them all together.

  Still, she hated the family business and the place where they plied it. She was as repulsed by the Boundarylands as her father and brother were drawn to it—and for good reason.

  Everyone knew how alphas treated women. Phoebe heard the whispered horror stories when she went to the tiny market or picked up their mail at the post office. But it was almost as if the male members of her family couldn't wrap their heads around how terrifying it was for her in this place, as if they couldn't understand that women weren't considered equal or even human here.

  In the Boundarylands, women were just another kind of animal to be hunted.

  Phoebe closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing as the tanker's gears groaned on a slow incline, but it didn't do any good. With every bump and jounce, her anxiety only grew.

  By the time the tanker came to a shuddering halt in front of a surprisingly large and tidy cabin at the end of the drive, Phoebe was battling a full-blown panic attack.

  Her father glanced at her as he cut the engine.

  "Just stay quiet and still, and you'll be fine," he advised before snapping the privacy curtain closed.

  But Phoebe suddenly knew that she wouldn't be—knew it down to the marrow of her bones.

  Nothing would ever be fine again.

  Chapter Two

  It wasn't surprising that the fucking Whitfields had been planning to screw him from the very beginning—but it was still disappointing.

  Roman Fontana had picked up the sound of the tanker truck's engine when it was still miles away. He came out onto the stone patio in front of his house, coffee in hand, and stood there listening to the sound of gasoline sloshing against the sides of the tank.

  Most of the alphas in this part of the midlands had been forced to deal with Ed Whitfield and his son at some point. Unlike typical beta smugglers, they mainly dealt in black-market goods that no one else wanted to touch for fear of the beta authorities, items like rare furs, illegal cigars, and ballistic knives. But even though it was sometimes convenient to deal with them, that didn't mean that anyone liked the pair. The Whitfields had earned their reputation as unreliable, shifty, and stupid.

  Unfortunately, the recent interruption in the fuel supply had made them necessary.

  Roman wasn't the only one whose reserves of gasoline were almost gone. All over the territory, his brothers were running out of fuel for their trucks and equipment. Roman had tried every other legitimate beta trader in an attempt to get a supplemental shipment hauled in, but all of them refused.

  But not the Whitfields.

  They'd agreed without even stopping to think it over once they'd heard the price Roman was willing to pay. Though twice the usual price, the sum meant little to Roman. The money sitting in that bullshit trust fund had been untouched in all the time he'd spent in the Boundarylands.

  Roman didn't kid himself that the Whitfields would secure the gasoline from an official, above-board source…and honestly, he didn't care.

  What he did care about was the fact that the tanker they were currently parking in front of his house was nowhere close to full.

  Watching the two scrawny betas climbing down from the tanker trunk, Roman had to face the fact that he'd made a mistake. The younger one didn't even glance his way as he jumped down to the ground, wiped his hands on his pants, and started toward the back of the cab to unhitch the tank as if there was nothing wrong with the delivery. Ed Whitfield climbed down next and favored Roman with his trademark bullshit smile.

  So they weren't going to mention the short. Roman rumbled a growl from deep in his chest.

  If the two men heard the sound of warning, they didn't give any indication—none that Roman could see, but more tellingly, not in their scent. They either didn't hear well or were too damn cocky—or stupid—to realize the danger they were in.

  And not just because they were trying to short him.

  It seemed the Whitfields had brought a little something extra along in the cab of the truck, something that smelled like honeysuckle and dew.

  It had been a long time since Roman had smelled a woman, especially one whose scent was so tempting…but that didn't mean the girl was welcome.

  There weren't many laws here in the Boundarylands, but those that existed were inviolable, and the punishment for breaking them swift and sure. There were no appeals, no second chances. Everyone knew what happened to the poor fools who crossed over onto an alpha's land without permission, or took something that belonged to someone else, or cheated another man.

  Everyone except the Whitfields, it seemed.

  Roman didn't bother with a greeting as he approached Ed Whitfield, who was standing by the side of the truck, wiping his face with a dingy handkerchief. He didn't see anyone sitting in the cab, which meant that whoever the girl was, she was hiding. That made her the only damn beta in the group with a lick of sense.

  Though he couldn't see her, Roman had no trouble hearing her. Her heart was hammering against her breastbone. Beads of sweat collected at her temples. Shit, he could even feel the vibrations of her legs twitching nervously against her seat.

  Her scent was complex, laced with regret, fear, and anger. She clearly didn't want to be here, didn't want anything to do with the shit show that was about to go down.

  Roman couldn't blame her. He'd rather not be doing this either.

  He would much prefer that the Whitfields had kept up their end of the deal. If they had, Roman would be handing over the thick stack of cash lying on his kitchen table, payment for the five thousand gallons of gas he'd contracted for.

  Full payment for full delivery—that had been the arrangement they'd agreed on.

  Roman had assumed that the sum he had offered for a full tanker—more than double its market value—would have been enough to make the betas think twice about trying to pull a fast one. But apparently, the Whitfield betas were constitutionally incapable of honesty.

  "Hey, boss," Ed said when Roman reached him, planting his feet in a casual stance and shoving his handkerchief back in his pocket. "Got your gas, just like we said we would."

  Roman narrowed his gaze. The beta was committed to the lie…which was too bad for everyone. He'd woken up planning to spend the morning taking possession of enough fuel for himself and his neighbors—not taking part in a bloodbath.

  "Is that right?" Roman asked quietly, giving the beta one last opportunity to weasel out. One last chance to confess that he hadn't managed to come through on the terms of the deal.

  But Ed doubled down. "Hell yes, that's right."

  Roman sighed, disappointed, and irritated to the point of anger. He was known as being fairly even-tempered for an alpha, but if there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was dishonesty. That, and cocky little betas with way too much confidence.

  Roman kept walking, taking a lap around the tanker, Whitfield following at his heels like a mangy cur hungry for scraps. Roman stopped when he reached the back end of the tanker. He kept his eye on Whitfield's reflection in the shiny metal, which managed to make him appear even less substantial than he was.

  "The thing is…the load sounded a little light as you were coming up the drive," Roman said, keeping his tone casual.

  "Light?" Whitfield made a show of raising his eyebrows in confusion. "Don't think so, boss. As far as I know, it's all there."

  To give the beta credit, he was a convincing liar. Had Roman been another beta, he might have fallen for the charismatic sparkle in the man's faded blue eyes. Hell, he might have bought the whole ruse.

  But Roman wasn't a beta.

  He was an alpha—seven-foot-six, made of muscle
, and blessed with some of the sharpest senses on the whole planet. He could smell deception a mile away, and in Whitfield's case, the bastard reeked of it.

  Roman was making an effort to stay calm, keeping his expression impassive and letting his hands hang loose at his sides, but on the inside he was anything but. His nerves were stretched taut at the prospect of his plan failing.

  Especially since there was no Plan B, no other source to get the fuel he needed.

  Now someone had to pay. And who better than the beta shit who thought he could get away with lying to an alpha? Roman knew how to wipe that mock humility right off his face. It would be as easy as shattering the bones in the beta's jaw.

  Roman drew himself up to his full height and crossed his arms in front of his chest, looming over the runt and his son, who'd ambled over while still zipping up his fly. The little shit had just taken a piss on Roman's land.

  The elder Whitfield must have sensed that something was wrong because he looked around nervously, and his smile slipped a little. "Where you been, boy?" he demanded. "The customer is waiting."

  "What do you mean, where've I been?" Junior whined. "You wouldn't stop on the side of the road like I asked you to, so I had to…"

  At the look on his father's face, the younger Whitfield's voice trailed off, and he looked to Roman, finally catching on that there was a problem. The change in his expression was instant, his cocksure stance falling away, fear shining brightly in his eyes.

  "Mr. Fontana here thinks the tank isn't full," Ed said. "Says he could hear the gas sloshing around."