by L. V. Lane
I did not know what to do anymore. Aloneness felt like a form of claustrophobia, and I found it difficult to breathe. I risked a glance over the cabinet. Gone, they were all gone.
The urge to search for Hudson was overwhelming. I could not stay in this room a moment longer. It still took great effort to rise from my hiding place, and I crept quietly to the open doorway and peered out into the shadow-filled hallway. The guards were no longer here, nor were their bodies, which meant they had been taken and not killed. Four apartments led off the landing, and as I worked slowly around, I found all the entries lay open.
To the left, flickering flashlights shone illumination through an open doorway. I headed right, watching the occupied apartment on the left as I did. I had made it to the top of the sweeping stairs when the flickering light grew brighter.
I darted into the nearest apartment, flattening my back against the wall behind the door. The layout of this apartment was different, and instead of a spacious reception room, there was a long corridor with doors leading off.
As voices and footsteps approached, I pressed tighter back into the shadows. Gunshots rang out, and a surge of death and pain preluded dull thuds.
What the hell am I doing?
I had to get down the stairs and out of this building, but there was so much fear within me that I could barely see or think.
“Clear,” someone said.
Was there someone in this apartment?
I don’t know how I forced myself to move. With fast, light steps, I made it inside the bedroom a heartbeat before the footsteps passed, heading out. I didn’t dare to close the door, I just hid behind it, trying desperately not to make any sound.
As the minutes ticked, it grew quiet again. Distant flashlights illuminating the floor in flickering sweeps.
Farther in would be safer. They had said this apartment was clear. When the light faded, I fled the bedroom and crept toward the end of the corridor.
Opening the door, I froze.
I had just walked blindly into an occupied room. The quiet conversation ceased abruptly but even had it not, I was sure I could not have heard them over the manic pounding of blood rushing through my veins.
There were five men present, wearing the gray Uncorrupted uniforms, absent of exoskeleton.
They were facing toward where I had entered, looking at something on a data tablet.
All eyes lifted and settled upon me.
There was no light in the room, but illumination filtered through the shattered floor to ceiling windows behind them. Only one of them still wore a helmet, the rest held them under their arms. My mouth opened, and my feet moved back, under slow motion, as my eyes locked on the man in the center.
He was bigger than the others by a head and shoulders, with a tall whipcord build and wild, dark hair that reached his shoulders. A fallen angel, no a demon—there should have been black wings fluttering behind him. Compelling was the word that came to mind…and utterly absent of a soul.
Dark eyes widened as they landed on me. Then he took out a gun and shot two of the men beside him. A precise, point-blank shot in each of their heads.
Blood sprayed, and bodies hit the floor with a thud.
I stopped moving; stopped breathing.
The other two men beside him jumped, and their heads swung to the demon brandishing the gun.
Voices came from behind me, approaching along the corridor.
The demon’s cold, dark gaze cut from me to the corridor. He came straight at me.
My mind whited out, and I turned a full circle even knowing I had nowhere to run. Fingers bit into my arm, a huge body inserted itself between the approaching men and me. He shot the left man in the head and the right man in the leg. They both dropped, one dead and the other contorted in agony.
“Fuck it!” the demon muttered, crouching over the wounded man, and closing his thick fingers about his throat. “You call it in?”
The man on the floor gurgled incoherently. The demon put his gun to the center of his forehead and pressed. The fallen man jerked once—I stared at the pooling blood.
“He called it,” the demon called over his shoulder to the other two. “Tell them it’s clear before we have a fucking party.”
I ran. I don’t know how I made my feet move, but it felt like I was flying they moved so fast. Out of the apartment and back to that place behind the cabinet where I had once been safe. And here I fell to my knees, shaking uncontrollably. In the back of my mind, I knew my actions lacked even the most rudimentary logic.
“You may as well come out, little Omega,” a voice said. “You haven’t shot me yet, and you’re wearing armor, which means you’re either a particularly inept kind of soldier or the prize.”
I heard his footsteps drawing closer, but terror held me immobile. Hiding here was pointless, but there was so much trauma everywhere, I felt saturated with it.
As the heavy footsteps rounded the cabinet, my eyes shifted left and down to where boots came into view. A long thin thread of viscous gore dripped over the tip of the left boot—I had to fight the urge to empty what little lay in my stomach. They were not our soldier’s boots, nor was the armor above and I looked up, and up until I met those cold eyes.
The demon held out a hand as if to help me up.
I shook my head.
He tutted, seemingly amused by my defiance.
Then lifted his rifle and shot.
The world was swaying when I came to, and there was an unpleasant pressure under my stomach. I blinked and my blurred vision solidified into a blood-splattered, black and white tiled floor…and the back of a pair of gray boots.
I really wished I hadn’t recognized the boots.
I was upside down, hands hanging and bound at the wrists, my long hair had come loose to trail over them. There was a gag in my mouth. I’d had a chance to scream, I hadn’t taken it, and now that chance was gone.
“Nice to have you back with us, Omega.” His hands tightened over the back of my legs in warning, but I was still deep in whatever he had tranquilized me with, and my body was uncooperative to notions of escape. His boots crunched over the rubble-strewn apartment lobby—that was a long way down. The body beneath me was not as slim as I first imagined, he was just freakishly tall. The chilled night air sent a shiver through my whole body. Where was Hudson? Why hadn’t he come back? Had this monster killed my team—and Hudson? Were they all really gone?
Despair crushed what little hope was left, and into that void where the hope had been, a surge of anger emerged.
Instead of the wide front entrance, we left via a narrow passage at the back. Other voices greeted my captor once outside. The heavy clunk of doors opening and closing, and then the growl of an engine. It was dark still. Our people were still here, they had to be. I couldn’t let them put me in a vehicle, it was over for me if they did.
Fury burning, I wrestled, but he handled me easily, and when my feet hit the floor, I was so weak that my legs buckled. His fingers bit into my arm, and he propped me against the side of a small armored vehicle while I fought weakly. Opening a door, he climbed in, dragging me with him, a protective hand over the back of my head when I found enough energy to thrash and buck.
Plucking my clutching fingers from the doorframe, he hauled me deeper and onto his lap, nodding at someone.
The door slammed.
I froze. Other soldiers climbed in, the engine revved to life, and we moved off.
“Behave, Omega, and I might untie you.”
My wide eyes stared into his cold ones. His wild, dark hair had fallen forward partially hiding his demon face. His body was hard and terrifying; I had never met a man this freakishly big. What would he do to me?
An injection of fear pushed through the fog of tranquilization. I fought and screamed—the cry muffled—and my fingers reached for the hated gag.
Catching my bound wrists, he laughed at my pathetic, anger-fueled rage until my flailing fingers caught his ear. I gripped viciously and twis
ted.
Grunting a curse, he prized my fingers away. “Gagged and bound it is,” he said.
The ride was short, and I cycled through fear and fury. The fear won as we pulled into a dank underground carpark.
He now had to pry my fingers from inside the doorframe to get me out. A pipe had burst, and water spewed over the concrete floor, our boots splashing through it as I was taken over to the far end. Other vehicles entered behind, and I strained to see. With a tight grip on my arm, he directed me down a set of stairs, and into an underground complex.
Two other people were present in the small room he stopped in, dressed in the same clothing, they were nowhere near as big—he was a freak even among his own kind. He put me on my knees in the corner, and told me to, “Touch the gag at your own risk.”
The other two men exchanged a few words with my captor and then left.
Bare stone walls fell into stark relief from a single light that hung down. An old couch rested against one wall, a battered metal desk, and a portable information tablet, which he picked up and began swiping through. The door remained open, but I could see nothing from this position, only hear the passage of boots against the stone floor and the murmur of conversation.
Exhaustion threatened to pull me under, but I was too wired. The gag was making my jaw ache, but I did not dare touch it. He hadn’t hurt me yet, perhaps the next person would. Finding his eyes on me, I shivered…and glared back at him.
The sick bastard looked amused by my defiance.
If he had hurt Hudson, I would find a way to kill him in his sleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Viral alterations occur during puberty for all dynamics, except the Omega.
Neuroplasticity is the normal ability of a brain to change over time. This occurs at an accelerated rate for non-Omega dynamics in the few days before they reveal. Blood structure undergoes changes at the same time, and this allows for a conclusive test.
All non-Omega Dynamics have what is known as an Awakening; a sudden, epiphany that they are different.
Omegas brain changes occur at a much slower rate (over several years). They, therefore, do not experience an Awakening and remain indistinguishable from a non-dynamics for many years.
Scent is the first Omega indicator. Their unique abilities, such as healing or psychic awareness, follow soon after. Scent change precludes their first heat, although this might be months or even a year later as Omegas follow non-standard reproductive cycles.
During heat, Omegas produce slick, but also experience increased tolerance to pain and a heightened level of aggression.
For the male Omega, the changes are far more profound.
Doctor Lillian Brach
Hudson
I WENT A little crazy. The thought of enemy soldiers finding her, of that fragile beauty with far more attitude than was good for her falling into their hands, put me into a white-hot temper.
They would break her, really break her.
I don’t even remember how I took the next enemy down, one moment he was standing and the next I had snapped his neck and tossed the lifeless remains to the floor.
That death settled me. I became cold and precise. My vision sharp and my purpose absolute. In my life, I had never known such clarity of thought.
I gave instructions. Instructions were followed. Like pieces of a bigger game everything connected, the safety of the fleeing civilians, the trapped enemy, and Anna.
I didn’t give a shit that we were outnumbered. I was ripped to pieces, healed, and ripped to pieces again. Stuffed full of so many pain-suppressants and chemical stimulants, in between the healing, that it was a wonder I did not have a heart attack.
People died. Too many people died.
Distantly, I knew I could not keep doing this to my body, and that there would be a price to pay later, but I was too deep in the shit to care.
When I finally made it into the building again, she was gone, and the Betas I had left were beaten unconscious.
As I stared at the empty place where she should have been hiding, my whole body seized like a giant fist squeezing down on my chest until I could not draw breath. I had failed her, and I wanted to lift my head and howl. Two years ago, I had saved her, and in my mind, she was mine. It wasn’t rational, but I was an Alpha, and our determinations weren’t always civilized. The governing council wanted us to be animals when it suited them. If the proposed law changes had already been passed two years ago, I’d have fucked her then and there—and she’d wanted me to.
Instead, I’d wasted two years. I’d had five fucking minutes with her, and it wasn’t nearly enough.
Despair was not a destination I was familiar with, and I was not about to linger there.
She had been taken.
I was going to get her back.
I didn’t care what the fuck I had to do.
But the storm was not done with me yet, it kept on pounding, and I stared at my shaking hands, seeing the blood dripping from the tips. Dull pain suffused my body, current injuries choosing that moment to make their presence known.
I was weary, a bone-deep weary that comes from driving a body beyond natural limitations.
My fingers fumbled for my pocket where pain-relief or a chemical boost should be. “I’m out,” I mumbled.
“Me too,” Dano replied. “We’re all fucking out, and out of fucking luck.”
That was when the second wave of enemy hit.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Anna
PLOTTING SOMEONE’S DEATH was a new experience for me. But as I watched the dark-haired demon, I thought I might become the first Omega to commit that heinous act.
As the minutes passed, I waded in and out of denial. On the one hand convinced that Hudson could not possibly be dead, and on the other sure that he must be. He was my Controller, it was his duty to protect me, and I could not reconcile that I would be here while he still drew breath.
I argued with myself about it, rationalizing that maybe he wasn’t dead, just injured, as if this would make me feel better.
It didn’t. The thought of Hudson in pain and not being the one to help him was like stabbing a rusty spoon into my heart.
All my ruminating led to three options: he was dead, severely injured, or simply did not care. I almost hoped that he didn’t care because that would mean he was whole. No matter how I tried to convince myself of this, it always felt wrong. The deeper this circle went, the greater my conviction became that he was indeed gone. That I would never see his face again, never feel his rough hands moving over my skin, never feel the completeness of him buried deep inside of me.
I might have wept then, had I not been so numb, realizing that my feelings for him were dangerously close to love and that he was gone. I think I’d been in love with him since the day I met him. I had not recovered since.
And every moment in his presence had driven that beautiful connection deeper.
I’d even begun to believe that he might feel something for me.
“I have a soft spot for petite brunettes,” he had said as we waited to board the shuttle that would bring us down to this decimated colony. “Started around the time we first met.”
I tried to read between the lines, but it was hard to be sure if it was simply a physical interest or something more.
Now I would never know.
Only I did know, deep inside I knew that this feeling wasn’t a one-way street.
The world lost color then, like someone had switched it to black and white. There hadn’t been enough time. I’d had a taste of perfect and my greedy heart wanted much more.
He wasn’t going to be dead. I wouldn’t let him be, wouldn’t allow that poisonous seed to take root in my mind.
And I wasn’t about to quit on life. I was going to survive.
But first, I was going to stab the demon who had captured me right between the eyes.
“What the fuck is she doing gagged and bound?”
Hearing that familiar voice, my he
ad snapped to my right. I blinked at the illusion and then realized it wasn’t an illusion at all.
I don’t know what the emotion I felt then was, but I knew I had never felt it before. I felt sick, drunk, terrified and elated all at the same time.
“Ethan, you sick fuck!”
Hudson’s roar was accompanied by him slamming a fist into the face of the demon who held me captive. The demon winced and rubbed his jaw, but otherwise appeared unfazed.
“Show some fucking gratitude.” My captor growled back. He slammed the information tablet he had been holding down onto the table behind him so hard the table rattled, and I feared the legs might crack. “Is she damaged in some way?”
“Damaged?!” Hudson roared.
Tears streamed down my face, and my garbled attempts to talk brought Hudson’s focus back to me. Crouching before me, he ripped the gag out of my mouth and pulled a blade out to slice through the binding on my wrists.
“It was a bloodbath in that building,” the man I now knew as Ethan continued. “And I had my own…problems to deal with.”
My eyes searched Hudson’s. Looking at that wonderfully familiar face was like seeing color for the first time. I tried and failed to blink the tears away as his hands roughly fumbled over me like he was checking all the parts were still there.
There was blood on him—everywhere, splattered over his clothing and the gloved fingers that stopped to massage my wrists. His face was bruised, and I pulled a hand from his to touch his cheek and felt healing warmth spill out. There was so much wrong with his body and limits to how much I could help. I could feel the layers of recent healing, chemical damage, and physical stress of muscles taken beyond natural purpose. He needed rest. A lot of rest.
I flung my arms around his neck, hearing his muffled grunt and squeezing as hard as I could like I might squeeze myself under his skin.
