Rage

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Emma

“ I t’s my unfortunate duty to inform you, Ms. Bernstein, that you are not eligible for release for good behavior. In fact, it seems there’s no good behavior to even take into consideration,” the beta in charge of the parole board informed me with a sneer. He sat behind the plastic and metal folding table, reclining as if he were a judge and not just a member of the committee who’d been given the role because no one else wanted it.

He looked at me like he was so much better than me. As if he had any idea what it was like to be an omega in our society, where any attempt to find autonomy or agency was vilified.

“You’re lucky, Ms. Bernstein,” he added.

I couldn’t stop myself from responding with a sneer of my own. “Lucky? How am I lucky? You’re forcing me to remain in Hell, without any hope of freedom, or any reprieve from being humiliated and tortured and raped, all for some greater good? Where is the ‘luck’ in that?”

He glared, looking down his nose at me. “You have no respect. None for the law, and none for the man or community you harmed. You’re lucky that we don’t put omegas on death row, because if we did, that’s where you’d be headed.”

I laughed, the bitter sound echoing around the courtroom. “Death would be better than this.”

There was a gasp from the other end of the table. The female beta psychiatrist who’d declared me a sociopath and deviant that also sat on the board. I’d bet my grandmother’s cottage that if she went through what I’d gone through, she’d fight back—and not lose a night’s sleep over it. But if you were an omega and fought back, you were fucked in the head and stuck in this shithole.

“She should be put down like the feral animal she is,” a guard muttered behind me, absentmindedly playing with his damaged left ear. One of the few betas on staff, Bob, had attempted to stick his dick in me, but only once. He’d made the mistake of doing it toward the end of the induced heat cycle, when consciousness had returned to me, and I’d bitten off part of his ear as a thank you.

The parole board leader smirked, reaching under the table and adjusting himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been invited to one of the observation rooms during the many heat and rape fests myself and the other omegas were subjected to. Omegas were great entertainment, especially when we were barely sentient.

Feral animals, indeed. I stood, done with this bullshit circus.

“Well, thank you for paying for my care for the rest of my life, and I hope I never see you again,” I said. My tone, at least, was diplomatic, even if my words weren’t.

I ruined it a moment later when I passed their table and spat directly in his face.

He turned red as he wiped the spit off.

“How dare you?” he seethed, but I was done. I was probably going to pay for that, but I was beyond caring anymore.

Because I was getting the hell out of here. I didn’t know how, but it was going to happen. If they really thought I’d spend my lifetime rotting behind these walls, they had another fucking think coming.

As Bob walked me back down the hall, mumbling to himself, I thought through and discarded option after option. Getting injured so that I could be taken to the infirmary sounded like a good plan. But they’d just strap me down to the cot and inject me with some sort of paralyzing agent to stop me from escaping like I’d tried several times before.

I was weaponless, and aside from a young, sweet omega named Belle, I was alone. The other omegas didn’t like me enough to help me. Didn’t trust me. After all, I was the only murderer here.

So where did that leave me?

As I pondered this, a combination of scents stopped me in my tracks. I froze, sniffing the air, and my entire fucking world—or what was left of it—turned upside down.

Peat and sugar; the ocean in winter; cinnamon and spice. Three different scents, all mingling together, and with them, sex. Sex, and a sense of completeness I’d never felt before.

Home , a small voice whispered in my head.

Shocked, I looked up, staring directly into cold grey eyes.

He was tall and broad, that cold saltwater smell a perfect encapsulation of his cruelly beautiful gaze. All alphas are tall and broad, but this one… this one. He looked like he could crush an eighteen-wheeler with one hand. And from the look in his eyes, he planned to do much, much worse to me.

The hallway spun around me. My breath caught in my chest.

I heard a chuckle next to him—deep and smooth—and turned my head. A slightly shorter man—so 6’3” instead of 6’5”—stood at his side. With russet-colored hair and laughing golden eyes, he was the owner of the peat and sugar scent that had teased my nostrils and beckoned me closer. It was hard to catch my breath; these men filled the entire hallway with their electric presence.

I leaned forward, then jerked upright, out of my trance, when Bob squeezed my wrist until it hurt.

I jerked away from him. “Don’t touch me.”

Low growls surrounded me, and the giant’s cold grey eyes turned colder. The russet-haired alpha’s eyes were no longer laughing, but hard and angry. I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d talked back to a guard, or because they didn’t like how Bob had touched me. The possibility of the latter warmed my insides. I immediately rejected the feeling. You couldn’t rely on alphas—or anyone—to protect you. Besides, who were these alphas, and why were they here?

Bob scowled, looking from me to them. “You new guys shouldn’t be here yet. Why aren’t you at orientation?”

They were new? It explained why their uniforms looked so freshly pressed, why they lacked the dead-eyed gazes of the other guards. And why I’d never seen, or smelled, them before. I’d have known. I would have remembered these alphas.

Home, that inner voice said again, dreamily this time.

“We’re just getting the lay of the land,” a third man said. Leaner than the others, he was built like a swimmer and the owner of the cinnamon and spice scent. He turned his deep brown eyes on me. “And who are you, kitten?

“No one you want to know,” I snapped.

I wasn’t sure what had come over me, but I knew what alphas were. Home was not it. All alphas ever brought was pain, devastation, suffering, suffocation.

They weren’t home. A small cottage at the end of a winding road, with winding vines and a chuffing chimney—that was home. The home my grandmother had left me, and the home I planned to return to soon.

“Feral bitch,” Bob muttered. “You’ll want to stay away from this one.”

Peat and Sugar’s golden eyes flashed, and when he smiled, it had a bite to it. “Be careful, beta. We may be new here, but we are your superiors.”

“Whatever,” Bob said. “Come on, 0071618, you’ve been out here socializing long enough.”

And then I was being pushed down the hallway, back toward my cell and away from the disturbingly potent alphas. But I could feel them watching me as I went.