Chapter 9
DIANA
I’m back in the Enclave, except this time Judge lounges in the corner like he owns the place—like he owns me. “You have a tendency to misbehave, Diana.”
I narrow my brows, still wondering how I’m here yet entirely moving forward with it. “You know my name?”
His chuckle is slow and low. “That’s what you ask me?”
Okay, admittedly a good point. I know being here is wrong, and yet I can’t figure out where else I’m supposed to be. “What’s happening?”
He rises, his leather bomber jacket crinkling with the movement, and the room darkens like the sun obeys him, too. He leans in, too close, inhaling the hollow beneath my ear, his scruff gently touching my cheek. “I’m taking what’s mine.”
His scent—thick, rutting—coils in the air before I even register the hard line of him beneath his pants, a veined hand stroking like he’s toying with hunger. Then his teeth flash—
I jolt awake, clawing at my neck as if something's burrowing under my skin. I stumble from the bed, cramps pulsing through my lower abdomen with cruel familiarity. “Oh, no.” I stumble to the jar given to me with suppressants. I traded in my official stash for the promise of shelter, keeping a few hidden as insurance, wrapped in my bag under my cot. I’ll happily use theirs for now to avoid exhausting my own.
At some point, I’ll need to leave for the Black Mirage. Probably after this next heat, so I’m not abusing my suppressants, stretching them out as long as I possibly can.
The suppressant slides down my throat as I sit back on the cot, the drugs stave off the inevitable. I lean over to an end table with a shaking hand, grabbing a mug that’s not familiar.
My chest wells with pain as I think I regret not bringing my old one.
I didn’t realize how much I relied on staring at the shell of a sea turtle every morning.
Their shell is something I always envied.
What I’d give to have that for myself. They’re slow creatures, and yet survive.
Endure. They don’t need things or claws to defend themselves.
I wipe the sticky hair from my face, eyeing the plain, gray foreign mug in my hands that’s filled with tea. I want to beg my dead family for help and guidance, but I know it won’t get me anywhere.
Alone.
I faintly cry, not out of fear but just pure exhaustion.
I grip the handle harder, trying to focus.
I can’t believe a stupid mug is making me feel this way, forcing in memories of my brother sneaking the old mug into my bag with a note inside when he realized I was going to run for it, one I’ve since lost—
My body freezes as emotions roll in like a storm, the skies of my mind darkening as I remind myself to remain on high alert, which means my heart has to be sealed.
I have to fight for my freedom since I’m still alive. I’m far from being done with this life, and as long as I’m unmarked…
My heart is just so damn heavy.
Remaining unmarked seems like a dream I know wouldn’t last forever. What do I do now? It’s been a week at Trinity, and I’m just waiting for this damn heat to get here so Selene and I can move on.
As much as I miss the mug, I do remember why I left it.
Time will make it easier to forget as long as I don’t have any mementos.
“Okay,” I say out loud to myself, the action helping me focus. “Okay.” I rise from the cot only to go onto my knees in front of the only window, to an area that some might see as an altar.
It’s just a few candles that I carved the omega sign into.
Sometimes, people spoke as if the ancient gods were what made humans this way.
That even the omegas have a deity. But the lore seems to have died along with modernity, the rest lying dormant in a book somewhere.
It’s a ritual my mom used to do, and as long as I’m an omega, it brings comfort.
“So,” I say, speaking to the candles like they contain the wisps of my mother’s ghosts.
“I don’t know if this helps with anything or not, but here it goes.
I have accepted that my life has given me very few options.
I have been lucky to escape more than one close encounter.
” My soul feels like I’m cleaning something out. “I cannot run forever. And if I do—”
I pause. I know that going to the Witch Doctor on the Black Mirage is my only option now, but as I get closer to making it a reality, it somehow makes me the saddest. It’s like I have to literally sell my soul for safety when I shouldn’t have to. When I don’t want to.
That disturbing dream just now may have been the hormones, but I know it’s about something much deeper.
I want to live the romance I know can exist. The omega in me craves safety and protection, when all I’ve known is fight or flight.
I glance down at my hands, knowing the real truth is that I’ll never be safe in this world.
“I think I’m scared to find the Black Mirage, because what if I get two days south and an alpha finds and bites my neck?
Then I’m stuck, and once stuck, I don’t know where I’m going to get more suppressants if it’s not from somewhere like here.
Or, what if I mate with a wonderful man and Dominion kills him just to take me?
” My hands wipe at my face multiple times as if to remove a stain.
“I want help,” I continue. “I don’t know if I believe in anything, but I need help. ”
Nothing.
Silence.
I stand with a heavy exhale. Even if I get no answer, it helps a little to say that all out loud.
It’s all true. I have absolutely nowhere to turn.
I just know as soon as an alpha bites my scent gland and that bond solidifies…
I’m a goner. Living without him will be like a forest trying to breathe without the sun.
This is all necessary.
I have to amputate this part of me.
I cannot love another just for them to die. It will absolutely break me to experience that again.
With all of that weighing on my heart, I allow myself to genuinely cry for the first time in a very long time, missing my true home. Missing a family long gone from this world.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“Great. Bet there’s mold.” I look up at the water dripping down from the ceiling, the wet droplets falling dramatically below. Selene glances up, the two of us in a small common space at Trinity that’s more like a break room. “Yeah, that’s definitely going to be moldy.”
I sigh, looking for something in one of the cabinets, finding a bow,l and bringing it to where it drips so the moldy water doesn’t keep splashing all over the table.
Another thing I’m exhausted from? Doing everything myself, including tending to this.
The toilet paper holder loosens, and now a hole needs to be patched?
That’s right—I had to do it. No man to help.
The chores that piled up, the dishes in the sink, the clothes that need washing, the broken window that needs replacing, the job I do to keep me safe—all me.
Even escaping Judge is a part of that list.
I protected myself.
After all those emotions from this morning, I’m now just feeling pissed that I seriously never got to live the life of an omega.
I slide back into my seat with a shiver, staring at my tea that’s losing its heat.
Heat…
My insides feel hollow, like an empty barrel.
My omega loneliness is heavy right now with the impending estrus, and maybe that’s why I’m in such a funk.
This morning, after my emotional outburst, the rain began to fall so heavily that, for a brief moment, I annoyingly found myself wishing I could give the small, faint purring of an omega so an alpha would lie in bed with me.
Ensure my dwelling is in perfect shape for me to cook, or do my leather embroidery hobbies, to nest, and be happy.
I mean, not here. But the sentiment is all the same. I don’t even have any of my embroidery things, which are sitting in my old living space like flowers on a grave. They didn’t even cross my mind when I was trying to leave.
No, these mood swings aren’t typical for me. At least, if they are, it means my cyclical change is around the corner.
“I think, um,” I begin, glancing up at Selene. “I think my heat is approaching.”
“Oh, okay.” She looks surprised, like my words broke her train of thought.
“Well, hey, get it done and over with so we can bail,” she says, lowering her voice at the end of her sentence.
“You can try one of those blood panels, you know. Know exactly when to take more suppressants and to hunker down.”
Trinity has a working lab system, something the Enclave never had. “No. Then there’s a record. I don’t want to be tracked at all.”
There’s also the caveat that when my mind gets too quiet, I worry about Judge.
I didn’t consider what he would do if I succeeded, because…
I didn’t freaking expect to get away with it.
And won’t it be obvious that I went to Trinity?
Where else am I going to go? There’s no way he’s going to let me go without punishment.
I bet he’ll make me bind to someone terrible.
Mate…
Okay, Selene is right. Get this fucking heat over with so we can get out of here.
Selene glances around before leaning in. I do the same. “Should we tell Mistress Evans?”
It’s so weird to call her that. Maggie just wanted to be called head surgeon or healer, whereas the female alpha running things here has a title complex. “I don’t like her,” I confess. “Probably just me being what I am, though. She doesn’t make me safe at all.”
“Yeah, she’s probably got a tight asshole.”
I nearly choke on my tea, laughing. “Wow.”
She grins. “Okay, but seriously… getting our ducks in a row. We’re still considering the Black Mirage after, right?”