Something was wrong.

Dron didn’t know what it was but he knew something was off with this entire situation.

There was no reason for the Mark Chief to be here in the military class. He should’ve been deployed to the battlefield. The last time Dron had heard anything, Mark Chief still had three more months of active duty before he was due to leave.

"Come, we’ll talk in here." Mark Chief gestured to a small business. One that sold drinks and food for those coming back from active duty. Unfortunately, it was where most of the soldiers spent their first nights back before they went off to their homes. It meant that they were all inebriated or well on their way to being so.

"Is there a reason we can’t speak out here?" Dron asked as he looked around and noticed that once again everyone was giving him a wide berth. So much for people taking to him thanks to Tempest.

"It’s more private. You never know who may be listening." Mark Chief replied.

Dron knew that to be true, so he followed along. He looked over his shoulder once to see that his superior wasn’t lying about putting two armed guards in front of the shop where Tempest and Clik were.

What surprised Dron was the fact that Mark Chief Tuliq had them ready at his disposal.

It felt as if Dron were about to walk into an ambush. It shouldn’t be possible, but he was still on his guard.

Dron followed behind his superior, making sure to keep an eye out for what might be going on around him. There didn’t seem to be anyone making any movements in his direction.

No one looked as if they were willing to take him on, but still it didn’t mean that it wouldn’t happen.

Dron sighed and readied himself as Mark Chief opened the door to the small shop. The smell of burning drugs and desire clung to the air like a thick cloud.

Dron pulled his shoulders back and looked around the room for anyone he might recognize. There were a few soldiers there who he knew would be coming off their deployment and others that he’d never served with.

"The cursed one has arrived. Everyone hide your dicks. I’ve heard he can make them drop off with a glance." Someone shouted from behind and there was a round of grunts and bangs.

"Is this truly necessary?" Dron hissed at Mark Chief. He didn’t come to places like this for this exact reason. If he wanted to be ridiculed he’d simply walk around town on his own. He didn’t need to go looking for people to put him down.

"Don’t mind them. They are not in their right mind. Come." The man barely stopped to address what Dron had said, he was already walking toward the back.

Thankfully, no one was brave enough to say anything to Dron’s face or to stand in his way as he followed his superior.

Mark Chief walked to the back. At first Dron couldn’t understand where they were going. That is until the Mark Chief pressed a small lever on the side and a secret door whooshed open. It was a hidden room. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Dron walked in behind the alpha, and the door slid shut nearly silently. He was surprised to find that while they were in the room, he couldn’t hear anything that was happening on the other side of the door. He strained with his alpha senses and still couldn’t hear anything. Whatever the Mark Chief wanted to talk to Dron about was clearly for his ears only.

"Is there a problem, sir?" Dron questioned, ready to get whatever this was over with.

"There isn’t a problem. I just wanted to talk with you for a bit. Catch up."

Ridiculous. Never in all his time in the military has anyone, Mark Chief or anyone else, wanted to just chat with him.

Still, he didn’t dare call his superior out on it. Instead, he pulled up a chair and sat waiting for the conversation to get underway. The sooner he was finished talking with the Mark Chief, the sooner he could get back to Tempest.

Mark Chief Tuliq sat behind a large desk after slowly pulling off his jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair. He sighed as if he’d just had the longest day. Instead of getting right to the point, the man opened a drawer and pulled out a large bottle of something to drink.

He poured himself a glass and then actually offered Dron some.

"No, I’m good." Dron denied it. He couldn’t be certain it wasn’t poisoned or anything like that. Right now he couldn’t afford to take any chances.

"Suit yourself." Mark Chief shrugged as he downed the drink straight from the bottle before he leaned back in his chair and looked at Dron hard. "Marriage seems to suit you."

"It’s not without its difficulties, but I’m learning more and more every day." Dron answered.

"That’s good. As a soldier, it’s our duty to assess every situation. Even those we don’t realize need to be assessed."

Dron waited for the man to continue. He couldn’t see where he was going with this conversation or why he would need to take him away from Tempest to have it.

It was annoying.

"I agree." Dron said.

"So tell me about your mate."

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything. As you can imagine, many of us are curious about the foreign omega."

Dron sighed and got a little more comfortable in his seat. "She doesn’t see herself as an omega. She says she’s just a normal woman where she is from."

"That is of no matter now. She is an omega here; that’s all that I care about."

"Is that what you called me here to discuss? The fact that she’s an omega?" Dron could hear himself becoming more angry. He needed to remember to keep his cool. If the Mark Chief even thought that he was being challenged, it could result in a duel. One that even if Dron won, he wouldn’t live to celebrate.

"No, I’ve called you in to find out what she’d told you about her people and what the royals have been working on. We know about the repopulation."

"Repopulation? You mean the fact that they want her to have a child or see if that’s even possible?"

"No, I’m talking about the fact that the royals are trying to eradicate us. They want to see if mating is possible so they can get rid of the dying breed. She’s not here to help us; your mate is here to replace us."

Dron blinked a few times. That was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. He shook his head in disbelief. He’d never taken the mark chief to believe in fantastical stories.

"How would she be able to do that? She is only but one woman. We are millions of people."

"It only takes one to infect us all. If the royal council sees that her people can live full lives here they will bring more. More and more we will be overrun by her kind. They will pick and choose what bloodlines are continued, and before any of us know it, we will be the last of our kind."

Dron tried to think of something to say. Some way to prove to the Mark Chief that this was all nonsense, but he had to wonder if it was at all possible. If Tempest being here was just a test run to see how other humans would react to the planet.

"She has nothing to do with whatever the royal council has going on."

"Don’t be so damn naive, Dron. Why do you think she chose you? You think it was simply serendipity or ..." He grunted, "Love?"

"No, I never said that."

"It was a calculated choice. They let her choose the worst of us so they would know for certain the humans could survive with the best of them. It’s just a form of control. She’s working with them. We know she is. Have you checked her communicator? Has her guide been around to see her? Maybe she is keen to learn more about the world. Explore? Experience?"

Dron swallowed hard. It was all that Tempest seemed to want to do. It was like she was a sponge searching for knowledge, and Dron had been more than willing to give in to what she wanted.

"It’s not like that...she’s just trying to learn how to survive."

"Why would she need to learn how to survive? You’re there. You’re all she needs to survive. She’s just gathering more information to share with her people. We are under attack, Dron, and the battle is raging right under your nose."

"No... I... It’s wrong...." Dron didn’t want to believe it. He refused, but the more he denied it, the more the accusations began to make him feel sick.

"Ask her about the other humans and the colony they have set up in the forbidden lands. We’ve seen them. We know they are there."

Colony? Dron’s eyes widened. He didn’t know anything about a colony. He was told all the other humans perished.

"That can’t be true. Tempest is the only one of her kind left. The rest succumbed to the wild."

"They didn’t succumb, Dron. They flourished. You think your Tempest would willingly stay with you knowing that after she left you she’d be left to fight on her own. No, she’s with you because she knows that when its all over, she’ll have a cushioned life in the forbidden lands with the rest of her people. All of whom are waiting for their chance to take over. There are dozens of them, Dron, hundreds even. She’s not here alone. She just wants you to believe she is."

It didn’t make sense to Dron. Why would she do all this? Make him promise to help her off the planet if she knew about the other humans. Why hadn’t they come for her when this all started? None of it made any sense. Still, he couldn’t deny that what the Mark Chief was saying could be true. It could all be one large ruse. Just like he thought from the start.

He’d been so caught up in the fact that he was chosen that he stopped wondering why or how.

Dron was feeling like he’d been duped.

It was time he stopped being a fool and figured out what was really going on here.