“You alphas breed like rats,” Cassian grunts.
Alphas, omegas, betas. They are all part of the problem. The only one working toward a solution is Cassian.
Turning, he pulls the blade from the soldier’s heart and peeks at the omega copies dancing near the bar. They glide up and down the gleaming poles, lights decorating their ornamental bodies.
Looking back at him blankly, the copies keep their smiles trained.
He lowers a cloth against his blade to clean the blood. “I am a cultural engineer,” he says. “It is my duty to rid the world of unnecessary clutter.”
For generations, alpha rulers feared power. Knowing it could never be eradicated, they believed they could manage it instead. They built kingdoms, designed rules, and turned the planet into a wasteland.
Their foolishness created chaos. It led to Cassian’s rise. And now he will rule a thousand lifetimes.
His thirst not only begs for conquest. He wants to bask in the glories of history, like the noble fools before him. Like the alphas who ruled with elaborate wear and décor.
But as powerful as he has become, he still doesn’t own the stars.
Alpha-kind was destined to build, destroy, and make new messes.
Rae isn’t the only mess on the table. He has bigger plans. A new world built entirely from scratch. That is the obvious next step.
A new tree of life.
He whispers a prayer. “For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”
A few seconds of silence pass.
“When you reach a certain goal, you find you can no longer stop,” Cassian mutters. “You enter a role different from yourself. Once an alpha. Now, a god.”
The women stare as he meanders throughout the space of the club. Tracing his hands across the slick stage, he stops when he feels the indent of one of the copy’s feet.
“I’ve grown tired of the soldiers,” he says. “They can be put to work, but they always cause trouble.”
The women still don’t understand. How can they? They were his first set of Rae’s copies, made purely for men’s pleasure. Their feeble minds can hardly grasp pictures, let alone words.
That’s the problem. The omegas’ minds are necessary for his satisfaction. Nothing more.
Mother is growing old. Soon, she will pass. She needs a successor, or he will rule the earth into a solitary pit.
Mother keeps his mind ageless. She allows for the appropriate flow of energies. Her suggestions have weighted every decision.
“Do any of you listen?” Cassian barks.
Again, his earpiece rumbled against the cartilage. Mother speaks, “Let them please you. You’re so close, darling.”
“I can feel it, Mother. But she has been soiled.”
Power coursing through his veins, he relies on her words to paint a picture of the future. “When you rescue her, you can mold an additional set of copies.”
“The variations are too difficult to get around,” he says, analyzing the dancers’ eyes. A common thread connects them all. Yet, they aren’t the same. A mosaic of abstractions.
Rae is a total fluke.
“You will find the girl.”
“When I do, I’ll rip the babes from her womb,” he says.
Cassian tears out the earpiece and lowers his pants. One by one, the omegas fall to their knees. Crawling to the foot of the stage, they knead the limp shaft between his legs. They moan in automated unison. “Daddy…”
No, they aren’t listening to him. They correctly assess that something is bothering him, but they can’t appease him with any new revelations.
Leaning forward, he lets the curious sex dolls seek their milk and cookies. His entrenched pleasure sits dull like rocks at the bottom of a vast, flowing river. He shakes, but he ends up feeling worse.
Broken and well nested, Rae will give in to the compulsion to gather new knowledge. If she is anything like his mother, she will come looking for him.
Patiently nurturing his cock onto the kittens’ tongues, he waits for his deflowered empress, Rae. The next time she sees him, he will offer her a seat on his lap.
Chapter Sixteen
“Something isn’t right,” Rae mutters through the tight convulsions that shocks near her bladder. “My babies… Something is wrong.”
Her pregnancy issues are her own fault, she thinks. They come as a punishment for thinking about running away, for thinking about finding Vash.
This guilt haunts her. Each night, she wakes from terrifying nightmares. The dreams feel like premonitions. She pictures Vash, lost in the middle of the cobalt seas of Dagon, flailing and gasping for air.
Night after night, she watches him drown, the life dragged out of him before he even hits the shoreline. His face is a deep shade of blue. And the more she shakes his rigid body, the more dead he appears.
She wakes the others, but because of her constant outbursts, they do not believe her.
“Please,” she whispers. “Something terrible is happening.”
Silently, Killian places his hand against the underside of her belly. He presses and analyzes the movements. “Does this hurt?”
Rae shakes her head. No, it does not.
The shocks are more than physical pain. It feels like the walls inside her are giving out.
“Explain the experience to me,” Killian says, eager to put her mind at ease.
Lucas eyes her, forehead creased.
Rae searches for the right words to use, but she can’t explain the feeling. Maybe she is losing her mind. Maybe all of this is inside her head.
Regardless, she can’t sit still. She cannot stay here any longer.
“If you can’t help me, I will find someone who will,” she states.
Exhaling low, Killian sits behind her. He kneads the tight clumps of muscle, relaxing her body. “Vash will be back any day now.”
She tenses and pulls away. Reaching behind her neck, she feels the subtle teeth imprints. “I need all of you during this process.”
“Killian is right,” Lucas says. “Any day now.”
Rae sucks in a tired breath and swallows. More shocks reverberate through her insides. “I need a doctor,” she grunts. “Otherwise, they will die. I will die.”
Killian stops massaging. “We examined you to the best of our abilities. Everything appears normal.”
“Normal,” Rae repeats.
Lucas takes her hands and squeezes. “Precious, the city is crawling with hoarders now.”
Rae closes her cracked lips together and nods. “I know what can happen.”
“One more week,” Killian says. “If he’s not back by then, we’ll seek a doctor.”
“We can’t wait that long,” Rae cries.
But they are at their wits end. “Stop talking, or we’ll break out the cuffs again,” Killian warns.
The tension eases inside her womb, but it will be back. It always comes back.
The alphas do not understand the strong intuition pregnancy offers an omega. Because of this, she has to take matters into her own hands.
Breathing through her flared nostrils, she comes up with an alternative plan.
“Okay,” she says. “Fine. A week.”
“You got yourself a deal, Precious,” Killian says, smiling.
She wraps herself in guilt as the alphas realign her bedding. They kiss her as she leaves, and she inhales their scents with stronger passion.
She can’t stay in the house any longer than she has. As important as her rest is, she knows the alphas can’t understand her forewarning. Her dreams paint a picture for her. It is one she feels obligated to follow.
She i
s still missing something. Like a ghost pain, she feels the absence grow inside her.
Rae waits for the night to wrap over their heads like a warm blanket of deception. She knows where they hide her revolver, knows how to sneak past the sleeping alpha bodies. And before she heads outside, she makes sure the weapon is loaded.
She is ready to venture into the unknown.
Walking over the ruinous landscape, she feels free. But there is a heaviness to this privilege. It comes with great responsibility and danger.
She wonders how many wars they fought just so she could get to this moment. In some ways, it feels like the world was meant for her. Is it possible she is the answer to the planet’s suffering?
The hardest things seem to fall on her back, but she is ready for them now. Her time as a captive has made her aware of certain rhythms that seem to guide the world. She can feel the earth’s pulse.
An alpha would disregard her perceptions. But time and time again, she proves herself correct in judgment. She knows there is more to her story, that she has a destiny. She has sensed it the moment she talked to the other omegas in the facilities. The other clones were empty, devoid of imagination, but her—she is everything to so many people.
She embraces her intuition with a strong and confident attitude. She isn’t immortal, but she is incapable of failure.
The quiet pasture of land leads into a wasteland of eroded tools of energy extraction. Large fences enclose the area, and the sea’s curling foam rolls in the distance.
Searching for the way toward the water, Rae finds a cut in the gated perimeter. She steps through, onto the wet rocks, and she lowers to a separate platform.
Faint slivers of sunlight breaks through the infinite darkness of night. As her feet hit the sand, she can feel the minute breaths of day, but the rumblings of thunder overpower the sound of crashing waves.
She scans the rough waters for a sign but isn’t able to see any detail. Near the shore is a rocky jetty that points to a damaged standing watchtower.
She runs toward it.
The alphas will check on her soon. Maybe in ten minutes time. Maybe fifteen. Either way, they’ll run after her.
She pulls the revolver from her holster and releases the cylinder. Inserting the cartridges, she rotates the cylinder back into the weighty frame.
Sucking in huge breaths, she calms her nerves. Sometimes, the thunder dies down, and the crashing of the waves against the jetty can finally put her mind at ease. The noise reminds her that things are in a constant state of ebb and flow. But now and then, the world aligns itself to better ideas.
Misty salt hangs against her cheekbones as she steps to the foot of the lighthouse door. Reaching for the crystalline knob, she feels the smooth ridges open with a noticeable hitch. The door clears with a heavy thrust of her shoulder against the wood.
Sawdust lifts around her, suspended inside shards of light. The entire structure is a wreck. A small staircase rounds upward to the top balcony. Still, the thunderous cracks of violence in the sky resound above her.
Rae takes the steps to the top platform and makes her way through the narrow helix. At the top of the stairs is a door which Rae feels obligated to open.
This is it. Her dream, the nightmare that spoils her mind, night after night. Will Vash be on the other side?
Her stomach sinks with despair. Has she undergone a lapse of judgment?
One foot at a time, she steps onto the balcony, throat closing with anticipation. As her eyes meet the shoreline, acid burns inside her belly.
Her pulse quickens to a machine gun rhythm, and she recoils in horror at the scene in front of her.
Cassian stands, towering above her, ready to snatch her back into his evil grasp. “You came,” he says. “I love it when you come for me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Vash forces his way into the alpha’s quarters within the barracks, hands gripping the rifle propped against his chest. “Where the fuck is he? Where is Cassian?”
Aden stares back in disbelief. A large cast wraps around his leg, weighing him down. “Please. No more,” he shouts, hands in front of him. “I don’t work for him anymore.”
Vash keeps the gun aimed. It has been a hell of a lot harder to get into the barracks the second time around. He isn’t stepping out of this place empty-handed.
“Go on,” Vash says. “Tell me where my brother is, or I’ll dismember every tendon in your body.”
Aden lets out a defeated breath. “I have nothing now. My omega has been eliminated. You made sure of that.”
“You were whoring her out to hundreds of alphas throughout the sector. Don’t play the victim card. You’re no fool,” Vash says.
“Thousands,” Aden corrects him.
“You’re proving my point.”
Stolen goods line the wall of Aden’s quarters. Kits, desensitizers, swords, and more. All for sale.
Vash chuckles. “You don’t give a damn about your omega.”
“You have ruined my profit margin,” Aden growls. “I was this close to paying off my debt and getting the hell out of here.”
Vash forces the barrel of the rifle against Aden’s cock. “Fuck your profit margin. There are more omegas waiting for you. Do not lie to me.”
Aden sweats. “Cool it, Vash. I don’t need anymore shit.”
The trader swallows, glancing down at the wounds the other alphas gave him.
“Looks like you’re healing up fast,” Vash says. “What do you got under there? Titanium prosthetic?”
Aden pauses, weighing his options. “I don’t hear a counteroffer,” Aden says.
Aden knows the game better than anyone. Loyalty means nothing to the rats on the outside, but the trade is sometimes worth a lifetime of hassle.
“I’ll give you all of my chips for the information on the whereabouts of my brother,” Vash says.
“What am I going to do with a few chips?” Aden asks.
Vash drops the bag onto the floor. “Five hundred thousand.”
Aden’s eyes light up. “That must have taken ages to collect.”
“Hundreds of raids,” he says, nudging the bag closer to Aden’s bed with his boot.
Before Aden unzips the sack, he freezes and turns a lighter shade of skin tone. “Do the others know of your fortune?”
Vash shakes his head. “No.”
He hadn’t told the other alphas about the money. They would have dissuaded him.
“Why would they? I don’t care to let others in on private business, no matter how close,” Vash says.
Aden shows his teeth, grinning. “What else don’t you care about?”
“This world. People like you. I’ve grown tired of the desperation,” he says.
“You’re beginning to sound like Cassian,” Aden says.
“The difference is I know I can’t save the world.”
Aden unzips the leather sack. The silver coins magnetize him. “What will you do with this information?”
It isn’t a question Vash wants to answer. The only thing he can count on is the knowledge that he will undo his brother’s soul.
He will cut through his lungs until the blood meets his airways. Whatever the world does after is of no consequence to him. He’ll find safe refuge for Rae, Lucas, and Killian.
He will no longer be a prisoner.
“What I do with your information is none of your business,” Vash says.
“Ninety-three miles into the ocean from the shoreline,” Aden says. “That’s where the omegas ship in from. I deposit most of them at the clubs. But you knew that already.”
Vash knows more than Aden does, but he can’t picture this facility. As far as he knows, the Republic’s structures on the seas were all demolished by the hurricanes and naval fleets.
“A secret facility on the water?” Vash asks.
“For Cassian’s brother, you don’t know too much about him.”
“He has left me out of the decision-making process,” Vash complains through c
lenched teeth.
“It’s where he hides the best clones. The ripest cunts you can imagine,” Aden says.
“I need the coordinates.”
Aden writes them down, a sly smirk on his face. “And you trust that I’ll lead you to him?”
“If these coordinates don’t lead me to him, I’ll string you up inside the pipes of Dagon,” he says. “Consider this a warning. I do not die.”
Vash has no time for games. Releasing the trigger of his rifle, he sends another bullet into his robust shin.
Shattered fragments spray across his body, and Aden’s harsh cries ring out.
“Fuck you, Vash,” he grunts, drooling. “I’ll get my revenge.”
Maybe someday. But today is not that day.
Vash doesn’t believe the world is capable of any more change.
Alpha-kind, as far as he is concerned, has repeated the same mistakes, over and over again. His entire life has been devoted to watching alphas work to their ruin. He doesn’t need any history books to tell him what happens next.
The end. The final redemption.
He can’t help but blame himself. Cassian too. His brother got him to think of an unconventional life, promising him vast fortunes of empire, as well as control over production of life itself.
Life became an exploited industry just like everything else.
In his humble opinion, the world deserves its ruin. However, Cassian clearly feels differently. He wants to become a God.
How many other secret facilities does his brother own? What is he testing there?
These thoughts give Vash a feeling of emptiness, leaving him hopelessly alone. The world has no more excuses to fall back on, and all Cassian wants is the chance to rule.
If Vash has his way, Cassian’s obsession with power will be his own demise.
Reaching into his pocket, Vash feels his hollowness consume him. Vash is not the soldier he once was. He is a man on the verge of complete surrender.
He floats in the dark cargo hold of a freighter. One trip. No return.
Vash’s stomach twists into knots, and his head spins with relentless images of death and despair. The waves roll the boat, keel clacking against the curl of the next. They never seem to cease.
Broken Angel: The Complete Collection: A Dark Omegaverse Romance Page 15
