Shaded Soldiers || Gay MxM || Omegaverse

48. Familiar Presence

I woke up feeling a little nervous on Saturday morning, two days after we visited Vincent and Bruce. I'd tried my hardest not to think about my new secret job to find traitors in our midst, and I'd been quite successful... until now.

We were going to have that barbecue with Zero-Six today. I'd get to meet and greet the entire team in person. I'd already fought with them, yeah, but I hadn't talked to any of them yet. I tried to keep in mind that this team was close to ours, that Captain Lewis was Captain's good friend, and even Vincent believed they were on our side, but I still was a little nervous. It was one thing to meet ten new alphas I knew nothing about, but on top of that... If they had traitors on their team... I mean, my team considered them good friends...

Would my own team believe me? Would they rather believe their old friends, people they'd known for ages, instead of me, a rookie who joined this team less than two months ago? Could I trust them to take my side, or would they think I was lying or imagining things? Or worse, would they turn a blind eye just because they were old friends?

That thought scared me... In a way, I was glad I wasn't supposed to let my team know about possible traitors, anyway. It didn't matter who's side my team would take, because I would report my findings to Vincent, not them. The governor would deal with the traitors long before my team learned about them, so I didn't need to get caught in the middle.

I let out a deep breath, tossed my covers aside, and got out of my bed. I took a few steps away from my bed, but then stopped to stare at Reid, who still slept soundly under his covers.

Could he ever side with a traitor? Could anyone in my team actually be able to side with True Order? I didn't know any of them well enough, but... I wanted to believe they'd take my side if I found out someone in Zero-Six was a traitor.

Building trust, huh...? This was probably exactly what Captain and Reid had talked to me about. I trusted my team, but the level of trust we'd reached so far clearly wasn't high enough if I had doubts like that. I just didn't know them well enough yet. At least I could tell none of them were bad alphas, so they probably wouldn't side with terrorists, old friends or not.

But it didn't matter. Not right now, anyway. Zero-Six was probably all good, after all, and if not... Well, I'd only tell Vincent about it.

Since Reid seemed to be still sleeping, I quietly went to turn my laptop on to read the news, but I didn't even get to sit down before my partner started groaning and coughing under his covers. It was probably his alpha who had alerted him awake, since I hadn't made a sound.

"Morning," I said and stepped back to take a better look at him. "You all right?"

He growled at me. I hid my smirk from him when he tossed his covers aside, but didn't try to get up just yet. He was wearing only his pajama pants... My grin turned into an apologetic one when I stepped closer to see his fine body still covered in large bruises and shallow cuts. He still wasn't quite bounced back from the beating he'd received at Bruce and Vincent's place.

"I think you look worse than yesterday," I noted, and sat down on the edge of his bed. "These bruises are definitely darker..." I mumbled and carefully touched the edge of a deep, dark spot on his arm.

He trembled a little under my touch, so I pulled my hand away in case I was hurting him.

"I'll live," he mumbled, and slowly pushed himself to sit up next to me, groaning.

"Maybe you should take it easy and stay in bed. I can bring your breakfast here," I suggested, but he shook his head.

"And give Captain the satisfaction of seeing how bad he messed me up?" he asked with a grunt, and shook his head.