Page 21 of Marked Omega

“I. Want. These. Chains. Off.”

She speaks in a patronizing tone that I don’t like, pronouncing each syllable as if I were a child or an old woman.

“Too. Bad,” I tell her, mocking her accent.

When we take her back to the city, we can remove her shackles. We have the tools there for such things.

“Do you like keeping me chained up like an animal?”

Before she has a chance to retreat—before she even has a chance to blink—I’m on her with a snarl. I grab the thick iron chain in my fist and yank her narrow wrists forward.

“Don’t talk to me of animals, outsider,” I snap. Hot rage is rising in my chest. “Your people are the ones who penned us inside these lands like beasts.”

She whimpers and tries to pull away, but I hold her chains tightly. I fist her hair, and she winces as I pull her head back. Part of me wants to tear this insolent outsider omega into shreds, though I know that would not heal the wounds her people left on my heart.

And another part of me wants to do something else with her altogether. I want to punish her and force her body into submission with my hard cock unloading inside her.

“Besides,” I growl as my fury starts to snowball. “I didn’t put you in these chains. This was the doing of your own people. Here in the zone we don’t use chains, neither for beasts nor for humans.”

I’m letting my emotions get the better of me. I shouldn’t be letting this omega rile me up this way, and the fact that she is riling me only serves to piss me off even more. I’m speaking too quickly and fiercely for her. Her face is a mixture of confusion and terror.

“Understand?” I growl stupidly, knowing full well that she could not have comprehended what I just said to her.

As she stares up at me, her eyes two big white saucers quivering with tears, I get a flashback. It’s not the outsider girl staring up at me anymore.

She is Talia. She is my mate.

The illusion is gone in an instant, but I can still see echoes of my mate in the outsider’s face, and the wound on my heart burns like it has been seared with a hot brand.

My savage roar booms through the cave. My hands seem to move of their own accord. I snatch up the iron spike and a nearby stone. The omega cringes away, thinking I mean her harm.

There is a sound of ringing metal and a spray of yellow sparks as I bring the stone down with all of my might on the top of the spike and the point of it shatters the chain link near her left wrist.

The omega cries out. Those tears that were wobbling in her eyes begin rolling down her face. She tries to scramble away but I catch her and pin her other wrist to the ground. With another hard strike and an explosion of sparks, I break the chain link at her other wrist.

The stone cracks in two.

“Hasker.” I whirl around ready to attack, but of course it is only Kadmon. “Hasker, what are you doing?”

He is coming toward us from the entrance of the cave. His hands are cupped together, and he is carrying something. His eyes dart toward the omega who is lying on the floor crying. The shackles are still around her wrists like a pair of ugly bracelets, but the chain at least has been broken. Kadmon kicks it away as he looks the omega up and down, breathing a sigh of relief when he sees that I have not harmed her.

Not physically, at least. But I gave her quite a fright.

“And you chastised me for making too much noise?” he says.

When he sees the pained look in my eyes, he decides not to press the issue.

He kneels beside the omega, and she clings to him. She sees him as the good one. Her protector. Meanwhile, I’m the enraged monster. That’s fine with me.

At last I see what Kadmon is carrying in his hands.

Berries.

No wonder he was taking so long out there. He was out gathering berries for his new girlfriend. I can’t blame him, of course. He has never had a woman before, and he is understandably excited about it. I was once like him, I remind myself.

I stalk off to the other side of the cave and settle against the wall, watching as the youngster gradually soothes the distraught omega. After a minute he gets her to sample some of the dark berries he picked for her. A few minutes later she is even smiling.

They look like me and Talia when I was young and she was still alive.