Page 31 of Ruined Omega

“How?” I ask.

Her lips twitch, trying once more to form the words, but she is too weak, too cold.

That’s when I realize the drops on her face are not just rain. Some of them are tears as well. The Outsider is weeping, and she has been doing so for a long time. Those tears tell me everything I need to know.

Taliesin died protecting this female.

It’s up to me, Baen, to make sure his sacrifice was not in vain.

I must make sure this female lives. I must protect her, with my life if necessary.

There’s just one problem: to protect the female, I must take her into the Zone. And when I do that, she will be changed. The power of the Source will make her different. For most Outsiders, this means becoming a beta—an unthinkable fate, worse than death perhaps.

However, I was told that this woman is special. I don’t know why or how, but I know that if she is brought into the Zone, she will definitely become an omega.

That thought worries me too—because if this female becomes an omega, if she goes into heat…I know won’t be able to control my urges.

But that is simply a risk we’ll have to take together.

“Come, little one,” I purr. “Come with me. I will make you safe.”

CHAPTER 11: HINES

I open my eyes.

Flickering candlelight discloses a room barely more than eight or nine feet across, and perhaps three times that in length. The walls are metal, covered in white paint that is chipping away with age, and they curve smoothly upward into a rounded ceiling. It feels like being trapped inside of a giant tin can that’s been tipped on its side and filled halfway with concrete to form a floor.

The furnishings are spartan, to say the least. Along the far wall are arranged a row of modular metal shelves stocked with canned goods, jars, gallon jugs of water. Mismatched candles have been set without holders on the corners and empty spaces of these shelves, stuck right into the melted blobs of previous candles. Their drippings hang like waxy stalactites, and their orange light wavers and refracts through the fluid-filled containers of water and preserved food, casting eerie shapes along the curved walls.

This is some kind of emergency shelter from before the Cataclysm.

Preppers built this place. Survivalists. Maybe they were expecting a nuclear war. Or perhaps a pandemic of some kind. Zombies even...

But I’m sure they weren’t expecting what actually happened. When the Cataclysm came, nobody saw it coming.

Nobody expected Alphas.

The only other furnishing in the shelter—if it can even be called a furnishing—is the nest where my body has been laid. It is a deep, cushioned mass of swirled materials. As with Tal’s nest back in the city, there are blankets, quilts, random strips of cloth. But these are ragged, moth-bitten, and stained with time and God knows what bodily fluids. There are other materials woven into it as well—dead leaves and straw, rags of sod with dirt still clinging in the roots, plush moss.

A sense of repulsion grips my gut as I survey this dirty nest. But there is nothing I can do about it. My body is too weak to move. My flesh is still numb and unfeeling from the cold rain.

I have no choice but to relax into the soft depths of the enveloping nest, and I’m forced to admit that it is comfortable.

Then something jerks my body.

A firm but gentle tugging motion that shifts my weight inside the nest.

It is an Alpha. His thick masculine musk hangs heavily in the still air of this enclosed space. He is dressed only in a primitive loincloth of animal hide. His body is brutal, like Tal’s, but in a different way. His limbs are long and sinewy. His muscles are so deeply etched I can see the fibers twitch and contract in the shadowed candlelight. His forearms and neck are shot with winding veins. His dirty blond hair is cropped close to his skull.

Something glints on his face, catching the light.

He is pierced. His right nostril is pierced with a ring of steel.

And he is undressing me.

Tal’s heavy leather jacket has been removed. It now lies heaped in a wet lump by the wall. I’m still dressed in my red dress, but not for long. The Alpha’s brutal fingers are curled beneath the edge of the sodden cloth, yanking and tugging it down my body.

The zippered back splits. The black lace of my bra is exposed. Then my pale, goosebumped belly. The waistband of my panties comes into view.