Page 26 of Ruined Omega

After it becomes clear that Tal isn’t going to volunteer an explanation, I ask, “How do you know?”

“Lily, the Source-speaker, has interceded on your behalf. She has discussed it with Seraph. He can alter the Source to ensure that you become an omega.”

An omega.

That’s almost as frightening as becoming a beta.

A beta doesn’t feel anything.

An omega’s feelings, by contrast, are uncontrollable. Sooner or later, I will enter estrus. I’ll go into heat. My urges to be dominated and bred by an Alpha will be overwhelming. Painful even. I’ve witnessed first-hand an omega lost in the throes of her heat. The thought of going through that is terrifying.

Who will be the one to quench the fires of my estrus when it happens? Tal?

And who else?

Omegas are always mated to a pack.

A shiver spasms up my spine. Is it from apprehension? The chill rain? A combination of the two?

Perhaps it is something else entirely.

Tal takes one hand off the handlebars and touches the control buttons on the small dash which is somewhat protected from the rain by a short windshield.

“Baen. Do you copy?” Silence. He tries again. “Baen? Come in. Do you read me? Is anybody there?”

A small but effective speaker crackles with static, and then a voice replies. A voice every bit as deep and guttural as Tal’s. There’s no mistaking the fact that it’s another brutal Alpha speaking.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. What’s going on?”

Tal grunts behind me, and I sense that he’s annoyed at the other Alpha’s lack of communication protocol. Actually, I’m surprised to find Alphas communicating this way at all. From everything I’ve studied about Alphas—and I’ve studied them quite a bit—they are primitive. Intelligent, but primitive.

Tal, however, is clearly no ordinary Alpha, as evidenced by his ability to stay concealed within the city hive all this time.

Did Lily and Sloane teach him to use this technology?

He presses the comm button again.

“We had to flee the city hive,” He shouts against the wind. “Be at the meeting place in two hours. I’m in transit with the target.”

“The target?” I pout.

I have a name, after all. Calling me the target makes me sound like some…object.

The voice comes over the speaker again amid another tangle of static.

“Shit, what’d you say? I can barely hear you, Tal. It sounds windy as fuck. Where are you?”

Tal growls with annoyance. He reaches for the comm button again, but before he has a chance to speak, there is a burst of gunfire from somewhere behind us. The bullets fly in at an angle, one of them punching a hole through the small windshield of the bike.

“Source!” Tal shouts.

I look back and see a black car roaring toward us down the broken highway, lights off, half-obscured by the slanting rain. Farther back, the city hive is now little more than a featureless gray shadow looming in the distance.

“Shit,” Tal snarls. “How the hell did they get through?”

He had eased up on the throttle a bit after exiting the undercity, but now he cranks it again, and again I feel that sickening drop in my stomach as the force of acceleration pushes me back into his hard muscles.

I feel his weight shift. I sense he’s drawing his pistol.