Hide or Die (PAPERBACK, LGBT)

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ONE

Leona

CONSIDERING I’D risked my life to be here, I wasn’t enjoying this party at all. The ballroom inside the Hotel Epoque in Bucharest had been decorated to resemble nothing so much as an explosion at a wedding cake factory. Around me, the other VIPs who would be attending the upcoming Transatlantic Summit on Alphomic Policy were mingling politely, drinks in hand.

Like everyone else present, I was dressed to the nines. My forest green velvet evening dress had been chosen to highlight my fiery red hair. Makeup thick enough to hide my nervous pallor presented a facade of approachable feminine beauty to the outside world. Jewelry hovering just on the right side of gaudy dripped from my earlobes, throat and wrists, as I cradled the martini I was pretending to nurse and smiled pleasantly at everyone who greeted me.

Inside, I was waiting for the metaphorical ground to crumble beneath my four-inch designer stilettos. It was a feeling I’d grown used to over the years, since it was almost always present, hovering in the background of my sham of a life. Tonight, however, I had more cause than usual to worry.

Kameron Patel hurried toward me through the crowd, trying valiantly not to look like he was hurrying. Lithe and graceful in his tailored tuxedo, he slipped through gaps in the throng like a shadow, ignoring the appreciative looks he garnered from most of the female guests and more than a few of the male ones as he passed.

I smiled blandly as he reached my side and cupped his hand beneath my elbow—the small point of contact easing a fraction of the tension from my shoulders. Placing my untouched martini on the tray of a passing waiter, I allowed myself to be herded subtly toward the dance floor.

“He’s just arrived,” Kam murmured in my ear, his light, Indian-accented voice too low to be heard by anyone else above the rising hum of conversation.

I gave a tiny nod to let him know I’d understood, and settled into his arms. We smoothly inserted ourselves into the glittering whirl of other couples waltzing around the floor to the accompaniment of a string quartet playing Tchaikovsky.
“They say he has the sharpest senses of any beta alive,” Kam said, still too low for any other ears but mine. “Leona, I’m scared for you. This was too risky.”

Anyone watching us would see nothing more than a short, curvy, redheaded beta woman dancing with a black-haired, olive-skinned beta man of average height and slender build, but with an unusually beautiful face.

They’d be wrong on both counts.

Since the Purge began more than a century ago, omegas like us had three choices. Submit to slavery, undergo sterilization and become second-class citizens, or hide in plain sight as betas and take our chances in a world that despised us. Thanks to rich beta parents who’d cared more for their child’s freedom than their own safety, I’d had the luxury of the third option. The omega in my arms—who now played the role of my trusted colleague—had, in succession, experienced all three of those things during the course of his thirty-five years.

That we’d achieved as much as we had was almost unheard of in a world run by betas. Thanks to a combination of ambition and the subtle evolutionary advantages conveyed by my omega status, I’d enjoyed a meteoric rise through the diplomatic corps in the United Federation of North America. Black market heat blockers and pheromone suppressors had so far prevented anyone from detecting my ruse. Of course, that toxic cocktail also practically ensured that I’d succumb to one form of cancer or another within the next couple of decades, if I didn’t somehow manage to get off them soon.

Kameron, meanwhile, had escaped his fate thanks to help from the secret underground that acted as a support system for alphas and omegas lucky enough to find a contact there. Inserted into a new life stolen from a random dead beta, he was now my diplomatic attaché. Both of us had found a place in the UFNA’s new liberal administration, shaping policy that might one day help our kind escape from beneath the bootheel of the global beta supremacy movement.

I squeezed Kam’s hand, trying to convey reassurance as we whirled effortlessly around the dance floor. “It’ll be fine,” I murmured. “We knew the bastard wouldn’t let something as important as this summit happen without showing up in person to try and thwart it.”

“He’s a monster,” Kam whispered, barely audible even at such close range.

“Yes,” I agreed. “He is.”

* * *

Kostya Nikolayev was a familiar figure in the news media. Tall and broad-shouldered, his very presence seemed to draw all the air from a room. Even from across the dance floor, the effect was far more overpowering in person than it was when experienced through the filter of a television screen—unsurprising, since one did not rise to the top echelons of an influential worldwide para-governmental organization by being a wallflower.

As the newly installed head of the Euro-Soviet branch of the Committee on Alphomic Suppression, Nikolayev had a vested interest in ensuring that the upcoming summit didn’t strip any power from his organization. For decades, most of the world’s major nations had allowed the Committee to take the lead in defining policy related to the subjugation and eradication of alphas and omegas.

Apparently, our very existence perverted the natural order of things, or so the argument went. We flew in the face of beta religious teachings about the roles of men and women in family and childbearing, with our polyamorous mate-bonds and ‘unnatural’ decoupling of the concepts of sex and gender.
Never mind the fact that alphas and omegas had been around every bit as long as betas. Female alphas had been siring pups on male omega carriers—and vice versa—since before humanity started banging rocks together. For us, gender didn’t matter—only reproductive plumbing. Alphas sired pups. Omegas carried them. Mated packs formed on the basis of emotional compatibility, regardless of the number or gender of the pack members involved.

The perennial hostility of those in power toward beta homosexual liaisons was multiplied a hundredfold when it came to alphomic social structure. Betas feared alphas as being generally stronger and more dominant. Meanwhile, they secretly desired omegas, seeing us as both inherently submissive and inherently corrupting.

Alphas were mindless brutes that would take over if given the chance, immediately hurtling humanity back to the Stone Age. Omegas were weak slaves to their own sexual natures, who would drag good, upstanding betas into their sinful ways like sirens luring sailors to their doom. Those were the old slurs… the old lies. For millennia, the push-pull of hatred and reconciliation had rolled over human civilization in never-ending cycles. For a few generations peace would reign, until eventually some group needed a convenient scapegoat and turned on alphas and omegas to provide it.

The latest round of persecution—and the rise of the Committee—had started some eighty years ago in response to increased global poverty, climate change, and the mechanization of jobs at the turn of the century. ‘Alphas are stealing all the good jobs!’ came the rallying cry. ‘Look at all these good-for-nothing omegas squeezing out pups! They take resources and give nothing back!’ And so began the calls for ever-more repressive laws and ever-more stringent penalties, until it became a full-blown witch-hunt of anyone with a knot or a mating gland.

People whose parents would have loudly proclaimed against the evils of slavery began clamoring for controlled breeding programs to produce chemically castrated alphas for use as unpaid labor. Laws requiring omegas living outside of the breeding plantations to be permanently sterilized became commonplace. In most parts of the world, being an unregistered alpha or omega was now a capital offense.

At the heart of it all stood the Committee. And at the heart of the Committee stood Kostya Nikolayev—a beta renowned for his cruelty. He was said to have personally tortured and executed his adolescent female omega sibling when she refused to report to the slave camps. According to those who’d confirmed the death, the body had been barely recognizable after he’d finished with her.

The fact that he was from an impure beta bloodline—one that had historically interbred with alphas and omegas—should have been an obstacle in his rise to power. His reputation for ruthlessness ensured that it hadn’t been.

And now he was here, in the same room as me. The same room as Kam. A man who was said to be able to sniff out any omega within twenty paces, regardless of pheromone suppressors.

It was probably an exaggeration.

Almost certainly.

I hoped.

“He looks like a Bond villain,” Kam muttered, sotto voce.
I elbowed him as discreetly as I could manage. It would be more accurate to say that Nikolayev was feared by those in political power than to say that he was liked—but there was no reason to tempt fate by saying things like that in public.

Not that Kam’s observation was entirely inaccurate. Broad shoulders… iron-gray hair streaked with silver… thick, neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard… two-piece charcoal suit at odds with the sea of black tuxedos around him… he looked like a man who considered this entire soirée beneath him. It was clear that he’d come here for the sole purpose of ensuring no ground was lost in the political battle to subjugate my people and wipe out dissenters—not to waltz or hobnob with political dignitaries.

A hand touched my shoulder, and it was all I could do not to jump.

“Madam Ambassador,” said a pleasant male voice.

I turned to see a vaguely familiar face and immediately started flipping through my mental Rolodex to attach a name.

“Secretary Fouchet,” I replied, forcing warmth into my voice. “What a pleasure to see you again. Heavens, how long has it been?”

The departmental official from Luxembourg smiled, obviously pleased that I’d remembered him. “Oh, a good year at least,” he said. “It was that meeting of the western regional authority in Paris, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, I believe you’re right,” I said, slipping into my role with the ease of long practice, despite the presence of the mass murderer in the room.

“You’re looking particularly lovely tonight. May I request the honor of a dance?” Fouchet asked, extending a well-manicured hand to me, palm up.

“Of course,” I told him. “It would be my pleasure.”

I took his hand and flashed Kam a brief look, meeting his unhappy brown gaze before heading off to play the part of the socially competent diplomat.

Fouchet was a pleasant enough dance partner—prone to the subconscious beta attraction to an omega-in-hiding, but too polite and self-possessed to step outside the bounds of professionalism. He also waltzed well enough that I was in no danger of mashed toes—at least, not until the moment I caught sight of Nikolayev and another official I didn’t recognize looming over Kameron. Kam’s absolutely straight spine spoke of base terror barely contained.

I nearly stumbled over my own feet, and Fouchet steadied me as we came to an ungainly halt in the middle of the dance floor.

“Forgive me,” I managed, in response to Fouchet’s solicitous murmur of concern. “I must have slipped on something. I’m not usually such a clumsy dance partner.” The words sounded far away to my own ears, and I was barely aware of the details as I extricated myself with enough grace for it not to seem out of place or unusual.

After thanking him for the dance, I walked in something of a daze toward the potential train wreck in progress across the ballroom. If he can sniff out hidden omegas, he’ll also be able to smell fear, I told myself. You’re a respected UFNA ambassador. Act like it.

Shoulders squared, chin up, I approached the little cluster of three, aware that others in the immediate vicinity were also turning to look. Kam formed the uneasy vertex of an acute triangle as the other two stood side by side, facing him.
“Ah,” he said, in the tones of someone who wasn’t two seconds away from losing his shit. “Madam Ambassador. I was just telling Chairman Nikolayev and his associate that you would be pleased to discuss the proposed policy changes with them once the summit begins tomorrow.”

“Ambassador McCready.” The Chairman cut across any opening gambit I might have made, foregoing the proper ‘Madam’ honorific as he addressed me. “Is it true that Prime Minister Fairbanks intends to negotiate new restrictions on the current alphomic extradition treaty between the United Federation of North America and the Committee’s international tribunal?”

His deep voice seemed to press down on my shoulders, accented with the sharp vowels and growling consonants of his native Russia. I had to physically fight not to bow beneath its weight.

“All of the proposed points of debate are included in the documents outlining the summit agenda, Chairman,” I replied pleasantly, no hint of my struggle coming through. “And as Mr. Patel has indicated, I will be happy to discuss them with you once the summit is underway.”

Gray eyes a few shades lighter than his utilitarian charcoal suit jacket pinned me, as though trying to peel back the layers of my skull and see inside. I wanted to grab Kam by the hand and flee. I wanted to fall to my knees on the marble floor and roll my head to the side, baring my throat in submission. I wanted to scan the room for our security detail, just to make sure they were there.

That last impulse was the hardest to quell, and while it might not prove quite as disastrous as either of the other two options, it was still an unacceptable show of weakness. I had no doubt Kam was fighting the same urges, and the knowledge that he was strong enough to resist them gave me that same strength. I raised an eyebrow, projecting unconcern.
The nameless sycophant at Nikolayev’s side shifted restlessly. “The Committee will not countenance interference in the great work by an upstart administration barely six months into its tenure.”

“Then we will have much to discuss, it appears,” I told him with false brightness. “I look forward to it. But for now, I’m afraid I must return to a discussion with Secretary Fouchet. It was a pleasure to speak with you.”

I gave them both a polished smile and gestured for Kam to precede me toward a larger knot of dignitaries near the buffet table, having glimpsed Fouchet among them.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Kam said politely, before turning and forging a path through the ever-shifting crowd. I followed, feeling the back of my neck prickle almost painfully under Nikolayev’s gaze.

End of excerpt