Chapter 2
DIANA
A well-used trail is what we follow, the dirt a dark brown from where the frost relented in the morning sun.
The scent of smoking meats precedes the caravan of vans and trailers, all parked with a permanence as if this is their housing.
Mismatched lawn chairs fill the space, coverings of all textures giving shade.
Everything is repaired with scraps, and smoke curls around in a promise of warmth—
There it is.
The scent of an alpha drifts through like I’m being followed by a ghost. There’s one…
then another… It’s a lot of walking with our gazes straight ahead before I scent a possible third.
I do everything within my power to pretend like their musk doesn’t find me in a different manner than the rest. The omega side of me is turning her head over her shoulders, wondering what it would be like to smell one up close.
I mentally swat at her.
I’ve been fighting that hoe for the last ten years of my life, ever since I got my first heat at fifteen.
It’s like having another person living inside of me, being an omega who stifles every bit of her instincts. Which makes me stare a little too blankly ahead.
You’re fine. You don’t smell like an omega. The little pills in your stomach and also your pocket ensure that.
Omega…
You know, it’s odd that I don’t scent a single one of my kind.
There’s no intense musk that’s more inviting than overbearing.
Do they have pills, too? Or are they all mated and kept far away from society?
More often than not, alphas don’t let their omegas wander unless they’re in a gang or under some kind of control.
Otherwise, they’d be taken advantage of in a heartbeat if their scent were bare.
My eyes widen when I take in a large concrete wall covered in graffiti of a terrifying-looking spider made of metal with the words The Black Mirage underneath it, surrounded by handprints and random markings that don’t match the original artwork.
The cold doesn’t seem to bother me anymore as I stare at it like meeting someone for the first time.
Is that what it looks like?
The Black Mirage is a giant machine that somehow was made in these wastes after the bloom decimated infrastructure and logistics.
I’ve heard that the military hid many secret experiments like this, and when law and order died, some leaders saw their opportunity to become rulers in their own right.
One of them engineered that massive moving contraption that’s said to house a small city.
There are some fucked up things said to live on The Black Mirage, along with technology that I’ve heard is actually magic. It’s always felt so far away, like a fable that might exist.
I’m reminded once more why I hate leaving my perfect little bubble, because there’s too many unwritten laws guiding the wastes. I’d so much rather stay safe at the Enclave, treating the victims of this world.
A surge of purpose helps wipe away the stains of adrenaline when I see the ground rise to our right, broken up by clear patches of thick plexiglass that give way to sunlight below. We are walking on top of a massive bunker that became overrun and repurposed into this.
A sign that civilization is trying to blossom once more, even if the petals are unrecognizable now.
Where Selene and I are from, we maintain power to our facility with a large water-powered generator, good enough to sustain us and only us. Something else clearly fuels this place, but if it’s old military tech, then it could literally be anything.
They were responsible for the bloom, which created pockmarks of blight that poisoned us all. If they can make that, then they could probably make anything.
Like the Black Mirage.
Get in and out, then back to my bubble.
“It’s good we came,” Selene says right next to me, making me damn near jump. My teeth dig into my lip as I keep an eye out for the entrance to the bunker—I want to get this over with. “I already recognize a few faces,” Selene adds.
Selene and I are both somewhat new to the Enclave, with both of us working there for just over a year.
Ever since I fled home, I’ve been in search of a perfect bubble to hide within.
For a while, that was at a smaller healing sanctuary until Dominion got too close.
The Enclave was supposed to be south enough…
“Yeah, I don’t see one familiar face.”
“Well, take it in. Once they know our faces, we can’t really walk through here without being bombarded to look at this cut, or look at this wart, or listen to this cough, or examine an eye that’s abscessed.
And then they’ll let even their third cousin know that women from the Enclave are visiting, so they can get looked at. ”
That is way too many watchful eyes. “I hope to never visit again.”
“Probably won’t after this, not with Dominion. It was already a rough week last week here. Heard a little spat happened over their freaking territories again. I swear they’re toddlers who don’t know how to share.”
My smile stretches a little wider. I really appreciate that Selene can lighten my day even when I’m balls deep in a pit of questionable people—the entrance!
My relief spins quickly into worry because down there is where the danger truly is.
But the shop we need is supposed to be close to the stairs.
And, personally, I need what we’re getting today.
Selene was completely right earlier.
If I don’t keep living my life as if I’m not an omega—which the suppressants help me with—people will get suspicious of my caution. I’ve seen it countless times.
Then I’ll be offered to a gang. Which is basically a collection of alphas, sometimes little packs within, where instincts rule the land. Dominion is one of the largest.
They always pay the most for my kind.
With a lot of blood, usually.
If that happens, I’ll be mated and bound to a fucking stranger for the rest of my life… if I’m lucky. If fate wants to take a shit on me again, then I’ll be raped by many, never mated. Just fucked, bred, and used as a tool to make more omegas and alphas.
My head starts to feel light, a sign I’m letting the fear creep too far in again.
We descend solid steps, ones that are a reminder of the military base it once was, from a different era for a different purpose, the designers undoubtedly not foreseeing its use as a free market in a fucked up world where body parts are traded.
At the bottom, we pass beneath a rusted archway, and the world opens up.
It’s as if the ceiling had been ripped off, the gray sky expansive overhead, lined with balconies made of scavenged scaffolding, ramshackle markets below it.
A man squats down in a corner, shaking like a kicked dog as he stares off with vacant eyes while kids poke him with sticks, probably on some kind of stimulant.
The crowd thickens as we move deeper, until a man seems annoyingly difficult to navigate around.
We both peer up at him, his skin cratered with pock marks.
My heart races when it’s clear he wants something from us. “Smile for me,” he demands.
“What?” The word comes flat, but my heart rate spikes.
“Show me your teeth,” he repeats, grinning wide to show yellowed, chipped ones.
Selene leans her shoulder into mine, sticking her head out with a cocky, dead grin. “Happy?”
“Those are clean,” he remarks, as if that’s proof of murder. “Where the fuck you both from?”
Shit.
I knew something like this would happen. I just thought it might come from the fact that if someone looked for too long, it would be obvious these weren’t worn with time but rather rolled frequently in the mud. Never thought to dirty my teeth.
“Just because the world is shit,” I say, panic speaking for me as I refuse to be outed here, “doesn’t mean we can’t figure out how to clean our teeth. Now move.”
Selene quirks a brow. “Yeah, you’re wasting our time.”
He snorts while tilting his head, a predatory gleam in his eyes.
He steps closer, and we step back. “What, you getting in line to see if you’ll be lucky enough to get near Judge?
You’ll be sad to know that pretty pussies don’t count.
He’s already got enough of those.” He raises a very thick brow.
“If you’re that desperate to suck some cock, I’d be happy to oblige. ”
Blankly staring at him like I can’t believe I’m having this conversation, I carefully reply, “We’re not here to suck anyone’s cock!”
The last thing we’re here for is Judge, especially not to give him a fucking blowjob.
“Don’t take a genius to put two and two together, road doll. You’re definitely here to suck his cock.”
Selene scoffs. “You crash your skull on concrete or something? Leave us the fuck alone, weird asshole.”
He bites the air in our direction, my lips moving in all different manners of disgust, but he continues to creep on by. Selene turns to face me. “I hope that’s as weird as it gets here.”
We both share a laugh, although that leaves my face rather quickly. It’s not good that he’s mentioning Judge, because that can only mean that the leader of Dominion is near. Which means we have to be quick. Being near Judge entangles you in a web of chaos you can’t escape. No one ever does.
That’s not how these gangs work.
Graffiti and scorch marks scar the walls as we desperately try to spot the shop that’s supposed to have—there it is.
A wooden sign with a crude painting of a mortar and pestle.
Selene and I hurry through, my gaze hooked onto the wooden front door that moves on old, squawking hinges as we enter.
It smells like fresh herbs that are fighting over who is more pungent.
It’s warmer in here, too, clearly from the fire burning in the corner.
The woman in front barely glances up, and the way her gaze drags over us tells me we don’t pass the inspection. “What’re softskins doing in my shop?”