Feral for the Pack’s Omega (Riverwell Omegaverse #3)

Chapter 1 Mirabelle

Mirabelle

I’m a good girl. I know the rules, and I don’t break them. I know what happens to girls who do.

Well, I don’t normally break them.

My feet shuffle forward, the gray fabric slippers—issued to all the girls at the facility—sliding along the shiny linoleum before I take a seat with my tray of food.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end when I feel eyes on me. Some of the handlers, who are always watching the common areas, murmur to each other.

My sandwich is even more tasteless than usual.

“What did you do, Mira?” One of the other omega girls, Gwen, hisses through her teeth as she sets her tray down across from mine.

She’s swallowed by the gray t-shirt and sweatpants we’re all issued.

Her mousy blonde hair looks darker than it normally does since it seems like she just came from her scheduled shower.

“Wh—what?” I squeak, my eyes darting around the room. The dry bread from the sandwich seems to have lodged itself in my throat.

“What did you do?” She whispers, her brows drawn down in concern. Her lemon meringue perfume sours, mixing with my own increasingly bitter strawberry shortcake. We probably smell like a bakery’s rejects that were left out for too long.

But I can’t help it. My scent isn’t its normal sugary sweet right now. Not when I know exactly what I’ve done.

I’ve broken the rules.

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumble, shoving another tasteless bite of food into my mouth.

Gwen’s russet brown eyes soften as she reaches out and squeezes my hand, but she still purses her lips as she looks at me.

“You never do anything that would get Mr. Sebastian asking questions about you,” Gwen murmurs, leaning down and pitching her voice low. “But he’s asking questions now.”

My blood runs cold, and I immediately regret my second bite of food. The sandwich falls onto the tray, almost in slow motion, dramatically falling apart like I want to do right now.

“You did do something,” she gasps, her eyes going wide. “I don’t believe it, you never do anything bad!”

I wipe my clammy hands on my gray sweatpants before reaching for my water and taking a small sip. It does nothing to get rid of the lump in my throat.

Gwen purses her already thin lips and narrows her eyes at me.

“Tell me what you did, Mira,” she says, her voice a surprisingly intense growl for another omega. “I can’t figure out a way to help you unless you tell me what you did!”

I open and close my mouth, trying my absolute hardest to just tell her, but the only sound that comes out is a strangled wheeze.

I’ve known Gwen for a very long time. My memory is terrible.

All our memories are terrible because of the procedures we go through.

But I know, according to the scientists and handlers, that I was one of the first girls brought to the facility.

Gwen came a couple of years later, and she was older, so she’s sort of become like a big sister to all of us.

“I—I’ll handle this myself,” I whisper, my gaze dropping to the table between us. It’s a hard, sterile metal, similar to a lot of the furniture anywhere in the facility.

“Mira, I don’t think that’s a—“

“No,” I shake my head. “I broke the rules. So I’ll face the punishment. No need to involve anyone else.” I force my expression to twist into my best attempt at a smile, but the muscles in my face feel stiff.

Smiling is almost like breathing to me. I guess it makes sense that I’m having trouble breathing right now, too.

Normally, I love finding things to be happy about. There’s nothing to be happy about right now, not when I feel this terrible pit in my stomach. A soul-deep foreboding that things are going to change.

The doors to the cafeteria slam open behind me, and Gwen goes pale, which is a surprising feat considering how collectively pale all of us are. The quiet chatter from the other girls scattered around the room stops instantly.

Every single muscle in my body locks up. I don’t want to turn around. I don’t have to, to know exactly who just walked in.

Collectively, the general sweetness of all our perfumes sours to the point that some of the beta handlers let out quiet coughs, despite hanging around the outskirts of the room.

“Grab her,” a drawling voice orders. At face value, most would probably assume he sounds bored, but I’ve known Mr. Sebastian for a very long time. There’s a dangerous undercurrent of fury in his clipped statement that has me biting back a terrified whine.

I don’t turn my head as I hear the heavy footsteps of a handler’s boots get closer to me. Instead, I watch as Gwen’s hands clench into fists on the table in front of her as she stares at me, her eyes wide with a hopeless sort of despair.

That look isn’t uncommon here. I’ve seen that expression on a lot of the girls, but normally, I’m in a position to comfort them. To tell them that everything will be alright and that even if they messed up, the punishments won’t last forever.

But as the handler, a sour-looking beta man with weathered skin, grabs my arm in a punishing grip, no one has any words of comfort for me.

When he spins me to face Mr. Sebastian, I see why.

If looks could kill, I’d be dead on the floor right now.

Mr. Sebastian is also a beta, but he’s the sort of beta that has a strong bitter aftertaste to his scent. There’s something about him that just makes the skin on the back of my neck stand on end. It always has. Something about him is unnatural.

Standing in his presence like this, locked in place by the handler that has my arms pinned to my side, makes my chest hurt.

“You stupid, stupid girl,” he growls, taking a menacing step forward until he’s staring down at me. His slicked back hair is as shiny as his shoes. “Are you going to tell me how you did it?”

If I thought it was hard to breathe earlier, then I’m actively suffocating now. My pulse roars through my ears.

“Did—did what, Mr. Sebastian?” I ask, my gaze darting away from him.

“You know what,” he hisses.

My entire body trembles under the force of his gaze.

I know exactly what I did.

“I thought I could trust you, Mirabelle,” he says with a mocking lilt. “You’re normally such a good girl, I thought I could trust you to take care of the new girl. Instead, you let her fool you with whatever psychotic drivel she fed you and you broke the rules.”

I flinch at his words. At the reminder of what I’ve done.

We don’t get new girls very often here. Reyna was the first one in a while, and I was sent in to feed and help her adjust. But she wasn’t like the other girls that’ve been brought in.

She had mates. A whole pack of them. And she loved them enough to show me her bondmarks with pride.

She was different than all the girls here. Angry and a little loud and so… brave? It’s such a foreign thing here. There’s no need to be brave. We’re clothed and fed and as long as we follow the rules, we don’t get punished.

She must’ve done something big to break the rules, because the handlers kept her in the restraints I hate with every fiber in my body.

But I didn’t see the defeat in Reyna’s stone grey eyes I see in the eyes of other girls here when they’re punished.

“Tell me,” he says, pitching his voice down so only I can hear him. “How the fuck did you help her contact those pesky mates of hers? They’ve been starting to sniff around the facility and something tells me you were a part of it.”

My gaze jerks up to him, and my brows draw down in confusion.

“What?”

That’s the last thing I thought he’d ask.

His hand whips out as he grabs my face in a painful grip.

“Are you denying that you did it?”

My body trembles in his hold. If it weren’t for the handler behind me, I probably would’ve collapsed to a puddle on the floor.

“I—I didn’t do that,” I gasp out. “I—I promise.”

I’m telling the truth, too. All I did was unlock one of Reyna’s restraints. I don’t even know who her mates are, how would I have tried to contact them? The only thing I know is this facility. I remember nothing from before here.

But I can see it, Mr. Sebastian doesn’t believe me.

His fingers dig into my cheeks so hard a whimper leaves me.

“But you did do something,” he spits, shoving my face away.

“I didn’t do that,” I repeat, slumping forward in the handler’s hold, tears pricking at the backs of my eyes. But I don’t let them fall. My coppery hair falls between us like a curtain as I rack my brain to try to figure out what to do.

One reason I hate Mr. Sebastian is because he seems to like making the girls cry. So, I won’t give him the satisfaction.

“Fuck this bullshit,” he mutters under his breath.

Those three words make my blood run cold. The girls here always say I’m a good listener, mostly because I can make people feel better when they talk to me. But I think I’m a good listener in a different way, too.

I know it before he says another word.

He’s going to make an example of me.

“We have the rules here for a reason,” he says. Even though his words are seemingly directed at me, he’s projecting loud enough for the entire room to hear. “And if you’re going to choose to break them, then you have no place here.”

With a wave of his hand, the handler drags me towards the door.

“This facility has done an excellent job taking care of each and every one of you, and you, Mirabelle, have taken that for granted,” he says.

“Wh—what! What do you mean?” I cry out, my slippers sliding on the cold tile floors as I’m dragged backwards.

“There are much worse places than here, Mirabelle, and you’ve earned yourself a place in one,” Mr. Sebastian says with a terrifying, sadistic glint in his eye.

Gasps and a couple of sobs from some girls carry through the room.

Once a girl has been brought to the facility, she never leaves. Ever.

Mr. Sebastian follows the handler as I’m dragged out of the cafeteria. The last thing I see before the thick metal doors close behind us are Gwen’s wide, terrified eyes.