Omega Bound Chapter 250

Thane

"How many wounded remain untreated?" I ask my team.

"None, according to the clinic," Marcus reports. He isn't a member of my inner circle, but he is in charge of the clinic and making sure it runs the way I want it to. 

The job used to be my mother's, and she did it for my father.

I'm not sure how Ayla would feel about stepping into that role.

"How many dead?" I ask Cyrus. Stevens' shifters got to us quicker than anticipated. I have a feeling he was already on the way.

"None dead. 23 injured. Mainly from them getting into places downtown. Pack members who stayed in their businesses or apartments, a few guards. 

"Can we look into accordion security gates for the doors, and maybe something to pull down internally over windows? I point to Michael, who usually manages everything at the pack house, but right now, I need him to take on more responsibilities. With the bombing of the heat clinic, I should hire somebody for my head of construction, but I do not want to give Cyrus a green light to feel like he can just start blowing shit up either.

"Can do." He replies.

"Fires?" 

"Out." 

"Rhonda?"

"She has a handgun permit." I sigh. Rhonda with firearms could be quite scary, but I was thankful for them today.

"Cooter's?" I ask, afraid to know.

"It's supposed to be her dance studio, but there was a bar in it. Not operational, supposedly, and hasn't been inspected on paper, but it looked like she was running something illegally." Cyrus shrugs.

"Let her do whatever. She's earned it." I gesture with my arm toward Cyrus. He nods in agreement. "But get her some training on detecting who is on her team and gun safety lessons, please." 

"I'll tell Damon." Cyrus wiggles his eyebrows up and down, knowing he is her favorite.

"Can't. He just...Nevermind. He can't." I was close to causing a scene in the war room that I would like to avoid.

"He what?" Cyrus asks.

"Nothing," I grumble, hoping he will drop it.

"Tell me." He gestures with his head back with a sly grin as if I'm withholding some juicy information.

"I think you should bypass this information, Cyrus. Damon is out for a few days." I say a little more sternly

"Why?" Stubborn bastard.

"He...."I start, attempting to think of something quickly.

"He....what?" Cyrus furrows his brows.

"He... shit his pants." The words fly out of my mouth before I can think of something better. Of all the Alpha things I could say, that is what comes out. I put my hand on my forehead in embarrassment at myself.

"Shit... his.... pants?" Cyrus repeats slowly.

"Yeah, he became... symptomatic at my house, and then he had to leave, and he is still... symptomatic."

"What are his symptoms?" Cyrus asks suspiciously. 

"Well, he shit his pants....of course....and....he became sweaty.....and really hungry for something.....which he obviously couldn't have..." I attempt to cover."

"Couldn't have because he shit his pants," Cyrus states.

"Yes." I can hear the others in the room snickering, and I am quite sure I have probably caused Damon problems.

"Good, probably deserved it." Cyrus

"Where are we on surveillance?"

"According to Stevens' phone, he hasn't left his pack," Tyler states.

"How are we on hacking his systems again?"

"Stevens has his network wrapped tighter than a steel trap. Every line is triple-encrypted, and his firewalls are adaptive, learning my patterns the moment I make contact. Even his cameras are running on a closed loop, no external access, no wireless vulnerabilities. I’d have to physically plug into his system to get anything, and by then we’d be standing in his territory with a target on our backs. Whoever set this up knew what they were doing… and they built it to keep people like me out."

"He doesn't have nearly as many fighters as we do. We probably wiped out half."

"That doesn't make sense either. He is buying or making gifted pack members, but none that attacked were gifted." Cyrus mind-links.

"Maybe Raven was going to be the first. Perhaps they were going to do all of their forces since they have fewer numbers." I answer.

"A smaller number of gifted shifters could wipe out our entire pack," Cyrus states.

"You forget we have some here. Are you scared?" I question. 

"No, but I don't want the fight here." Odd. It is not like him to shy away from a fight, but I understand at the same time.

"Get an estimate on how long it will take to fix the storefronts and apartments. We may need to reach out to another pack for support." I point at Michael, and he nods.

"Did we locate Humvees anywhere?"

"No Alpha."

"Call Larry and tell him to get looking harder. Threaten his mom's cooter."

"What? Thane you animal."

"You know what I mean....the thing her scooter's business....."

"Cooter's." Cyrus interrupts.

"Yes, whatever, tell him I know about it."

"Blackmail." Tyler reminds me.

"I don't care, mail," I respond, and he laughs into his computer.

"I want some kind of motion sensor system. They were able to get too far in too quickly. I know we had to pull the guard to our fight, but I think there has to be room for improvement. We should have anticipated he would do something like this since it was both of his sons. He has no heirs left."

"I don't know why he thought he could win. It doesn't make sense." Cyrus states, picking under his fingernail with his knife.

"I agree. He probably reacted rashly because it involved his boys. I think that he planned on making gifted soldiers before attacking us, and his boys screwed that up when they came here."

"Sucks it happened, but I know a win when I see it. Plus, that torture sex is better than an anger bang." Cyrus groans in the chair, causing me to shudder.

"I..." I trail off as the lights go out in the room. I turn my head out the window, and from this height, I can see that the lights have gone out throughout every building within our distance. We can rely on our night vision, but the clarity and detail of what we see is still less than in daylight. We trade detail and color for light sensitivity and motion detection. I wouldn't care too much about it since we have the night vision but I care a great deal about it with it happening right after the fight we just had.

"Tyler.." I growl.

"On it." He uses his phone and does something to start the generators for the pack and town.

"Do you know what happened?" I asked.

"I'm working on that now.....no. I have nothing notifying me of any system or cybersecurity issues." He sighs before the power cuts again.

"What the hell?" we all say some variation of this as we watch the lights go out in the subsequent buildings.

"Something is wrong. The generators should be working....somebody has accessed them remotely. They would need to have access to them originally to be able to do that."

"Find out where."

"Already on it....looks like....." He taps away furiously on his phone, "In Pack Stevens territory somewhere, Alpha."

"Do something about it," I growl. "And see if you can find out who he contacted here."

"Working on it," Tyler responds and starts tapping away on his phone again.

"What is the point of this?" Cyrus asks.

"I have no idea...Food supply?"

I answer mind-links and notify the pack of new developments. Hopefully, we get this straightened out soon, or I'm going on a road trip. I mind-link Ayla for an update on Amani and find that she's progressing in her symptoms. Damon stated he was almost finished getting the things he needed, but now he can't with the dark. 

I mind-link the store holding Damon up and ask them to write down a tab for him in my name. 

*"Eric's here now for the appointment you scheduled me, and I'm going to have him check Amani. She's acting kind of strange. Maybe he can slow it down."* Ayla mind-links

I didn't schedule an appointment.