Gray (The Boundarylands #10) - Callie Rhodes Page 0,38

yelled. "My name is Olivia, and I know what the betas are trying to do."

What the fuck did she think she was doing?

Gray plowed through the crowd, knocking alphas out of the way. He'd seen that determined look in his hellcat's eyes often enough to know it would be pointless to demand that she climb down from the barstool. Instead, he grabbed her and pulled her down himself.

"What the hell are you doing, Gray?" a voice from the back of the room called. "She said she knows what's going on, so let her talk."

"She's exhausted, brothers," Gray explained. They should have been able to figure that out for themselves, but if he had to spell it out, he would. "She's just been through her first heat, and she doesn't know what she's talking about."

"The hell I don't," Olivia snapped, struggling to free herself. Looking down at her face, Gray saw that she wasn't about to be stopped, and there was a new confidence in her scent.

"This isn't the time or place," he muttered in a low voice, though in a group of alphas there was no such thing as a private conversation.

"You're wrong." She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. "When else am I going to be able to talk to everyone? Or are you planning on inviting them back for tea and cookies?"

"You sure that one's an omega?" an alpha at the bar jeered. Gray looked up to see Knox, a pain in the ass who liked sowing the seeds of chaos. "Cause it sounds like you've found yourself the world's first female alpha."

Gray growled at both Knox and Olivia. The warning he'd brought tonight—the need to communicate the seriousness of the threat to every alpha present—was too important to be hijacked by some drunken idiot.

"She's all omega." Gray raised his voice, knowing he had the power to silence the crowd—for now. And he was determined to settle the matter before it got further out of hand. "I should know."

Olivia's cheeks turned pink, and Gray barely had time to regret embarrassing her before realizing he'd also pissed her off.

"And I'm an omega who, until seven days ago, lived in the beta world." Anger seemed to have only increased Olivia's confidence, and her voice rang out loud and clear. The alphas across the room strained to catch a glimpse as she continued speaking. "I watched the news. I read articles. I followed politics. I know what's going on out there. And now that I've listened to you all sniping at each other, I think I know what's going on in here."

"So, tell us." Ryder lifted his glass from down the bar, encouraging her.

"For the past year or so, there's been a lot of buzz about women disappearing into the Boundarylands and refusing to come home."

"Yeah, because they found mates," Gray said impatiently.

"Maybe, but there've been nine in the Pacific Northwest Boundarylands alone," Olivia said, addressing the entire room. "And another dozen in the Southeast. That's more than in the last entire century."

"But that could be explained by an increase in travel over the border," Ryder said, as alphas stepped aside to let him move closer. "I haven't heard any hard numbers, but everyone here knows it's more than doubled in the last few years."

Olivia nodded at the young alpha. "I agree. But the spike in numbers has beta society nervous. And scared people—beta men especially—only care about gut feelings, not reasoned arguments."

"And why is that our problem?" someone asked.

"You have to understand," Olivia continued. "This is a big deal out there. It's reached into all levels of society—rich, poor, even a senator. No one is immune, and that makes them terrified."

"You make us sound like a disease," Gray objected.

Olivia shook her head. "I'm just telling you what's said beyond the boundary line. Before I came here, everything I heard suggested that this place was hell on Earth. I would have done anything to avoid it. Why do you think they had to threaten my family to make me come here?"

"She's not even making sense," Knox sneered, talking to the room at large. "Gray tells us she was sent here because the beta government knew she'd become an omega. Now she's saying that they're doing everything to keep women like her from turning."

Gray started to answer the asswipe himself, but Olivia stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"That's exactly why they had to send me," she told Knox. "They must have discovered how to detect dormant omega markers