2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Leah
T here’s no surviving this.
She’s going to run the experiment Wallace warned her against. The one she pushed for while he scowled and scribbled in his files. He held her back out of grim practicality, not mercy. Keeping me alive was just a matter of convenience for him.
Vulnerable, orphaned Omegas aren’t easy to find. We don’t just slip through cracks, least of all into hell. But I’ve been seen now. My protection is gone .
Hardwick spears me with sharp eyes. Somehow, she makes this my fault too. I see it in her look, hear the accusation in her voice, as if the world has spun wrong just to spite her because of me.
She’s not just evil.
She’s fucking insane.
That unstoppable kind of crazy that chews through anything softer than steel. The kind with power and connections.
The kind that wins.
Spittle sprays across my bare legs. My rag-dress is so short it leaves me exposed to every drop of her contempt. "Of all the damn Alphas in the country, it had to be your scent-matched pack storming in…"
That stops me. For a second, I can't think past her words— scent-matched pack .
Normally, I shut down when she’s mid-rant.
Questions get punished. Curiosity costs blood.
But something in me breaks. The small, acidic snap cuts through the last layer of obedience holding my tongue still.
Maybe it’s the certainty I won’t walk out of the lab alive.
There’s literally nothing left she can take from me.
"What the hell is a scent-match?" The question stutters in my chest but defiance tastes better than begging. "If I’m going to die, at least I deserve some damn answers."
Hardwick chokes on a laugh, then falls silent, regarding me. "Of course you wouldn’t know. No sense wasting breath on trash."
A dark light flickers in her eyes, but then they widen, like she’s just discovered a new way to torment me.
"But I suppose there’s no harm in telling you now, is there?
Not like hope will keep you alive." She draws out the words, savoring each one. "A scent-match is rare. Perfect. Like stranding magnets. The instincts, the very essence draws fated mates together to share souls and bond for life. It’s biology. Feral. Unbreakable. They’ll fuck you senseless, knot you for days and then they’ll ravage your neck with their bites to claim you.
Use their venom to flood your bloodstream and bond you.
You won’t even need to be in heat for them do to that to you.
Your souls will be cemented together forever then they’ll systematically destroy you.
You will always belong to them and they’ll do whatever they want to your body and you’ll beg them to do it.
Still knowing this, Alphas go mad for their scent-matches.
Omegas, too. And now, you’ll never know what being bonded would be like. It’s finished before it even begins."
For a second, wounded bitterness flickers in the depths of her eyes before they harden and narrow to cold slits. She knows what this feels like, and she hates that I see it in her.
Recklessness sparked by rage loosens my tongue. She wants to hurt me? Then I’ll hurt her back with the only weapon I have. "You sound like you know a lot about scent-matches. Someone reject you, Senator? Can’t say I blame them. I’d want to end things pretty damn quick if I had you as a mate."
Hardwick’s hand cracks across my cheek, the slap so sharp my ears ring. My head whips sideways, vision blurring with white stars. Pain bursts along my jaw as the world tilts, stomach swooping. For a heartbeat, everything goes dark.
Her voice filters in, cold and amused. "Even after all this time, you still haven’t learned to be quiet. Stupid Omega."
I keep my head tilted and my eyes shut as I wait for the throbbing in my skull to subside. Scent-matching . In the end, it’s another prison. Just more control, another leash stitched into my bones and a trap I’d never escape.
The idea of being powerless makes my skin crawl. The way those Alphas looked at me, the way their roars boomed down the hall. None of it promises safety.
Never comfort.
Not ever.
I don’t care who they are or what their essences do to me. They’re Alphas, and I want nothing to do with them. Every Alpha I’ve ever known has brought me nothing but misery and suffering. I’m done with the bullshit.
Puberty stole everything from me. Before that I was the cherished daughter of loving parents, who thought Haven was sanctuary for Omegas.
They followed the law because they trusted it, but they had no idea what being Omega really meant.
If I could carve this cursed biology out of myself, I would. Gladly .
They visited on every day the facility allowed, which was never enough, until the day they died in a car accident. I was barely twenty when the basement became my world. When Hugo and Lars began their twisted ‘lessons’ and my life turned to concrete walls and endless misery.
Mira and Emma helped stave off the darkness, or I would have gone insane long ago.
We planned to escape, but time was running out.
We knew what they were going to do to us.
It was only a matter of time before they sold us to the highest bidder for our first heats.
When the opportunity came to escape, we took it.
I wasn’t free for long.
We ran as fast as we could through the forest. We split up when they sent hunting dogs after us, but I didn’t make it far.
I didn’t see the ravine I fell into. The fall snapped my leg, the pain so sharp I puked over my dress.
The dogs found me first. Hugo and Lars weren’t kind when they picked me off those rocks.
They didn’t drag me back to the Basement; Hardwick had plans.
She had me thrown in the back of a car and delivered, like cargo, to the Facility. There's no watchdog down there.
That’s when I met Ethan Wallace for the first time.
The lead Alpha-turned-scientist who is fond of syringes and data sheets.
He forced me into heat after heat, pumping me full of chemicals that tore my body apart from the inside in the name of science.
No comfort. No nest. Just agony that gnawed at my insides, fevers so high I thought I’d die, skin crawling, soul set on fire until even screaming hurt too much.
So much pain it chewed through endless time.
Senator Evelyn Hardwick is obsessed, chasing her vaccine for the Mortalis Strain, and I’m her star guinea pig. The only guinea pig who lasted.
I don’t know why or how.
Other Omegas have come and gone. Some died in their first trial. Some just faded, their eyes empty, their scents gone thin and strange before their bodies gave out. I don’t thank the gods I’m still here. The end will be a kindness.
Absolute darkness presses against the car windows, broken only when moonlight catches the razor wire crowning the tall fence.
We glide through empty streets into a deserted compound, gates clanging shut behind us like a steel trap.
Ahead squats a cinderblock building surrounded by an empty parking lot.
Leaves scatter in our headlights, and loose stones ping against the under carriage as we roll to the building’s deepest shadows.
I’ve never seen the outside before, but I recognize the cinder block. It’s the same on the outside as the walls I’ve stared at for years. It’s been my world of pain. Nothing can hide the stink of suffering that bleeds from the inside and out of those walls.
I spit out words that will hurt because why the fuck not.
"You keep playing God, but control is the only thing keeping your pack tied to you. Kylie and Sean are too afraid to run and without your bark, Skylar would chew her own arm off just to escape you. What’s it like, having a pack who only stay because you break them harder than anyone else ever could? "
She flashes her teeth and lunges at me, but before she can make contact the car eases to a stop.
She forces herself to calm, lip turning up in a sneer.
"Keep going like this, Omega and I’ll let my guards ‘ease your heat’ before they put you out of your misery.
" Dread coils in my gut as she exits the car. She doesn’t even turn around as she barks her next order. "Bring her."
Her heels strike against the tarmac as the juiced-up Alphas drag me from the car and into the frigid night. I gulp one last breath of clean air before they haul me toward a steel side door. Hardwick punches in a code on the security pad, and then I’m shoved after her.
The familiar tang of antiseptic and despair hits my nose, so thick I taste it. The guards frog-march me along the glossy white linoleum. Other Omegas pass in a ragged line. Some stagger. Others slump in wheelchairs, pushed by nurses who don’t meet my eyes.
Then I see an Omega I know and, oh Gods …Espie is here too?
Haven’s basement had hollowed her out the same as all of us, but now?
Grease mats her long, raven hair. Her pale skin is filthy with dirt, blood and bruises.
Her head hangs low, but not low enough to miss the way her eyes flare when she sees me.
I didn’t know her for long. She was a couple of years younger than me when she was thrown into the hellhole with us, but we’re swept apart before I can react.
It wouldn’t matter if I did. We both know we’re never going to see each other again.
The halls are clear by the time we reach Room One.
My stomach knots so hard it hurts.
Ethan Wallace is waiting inside, hands tucked into the pockets of his white coat.
His hair is slicked neat, face sharp, eyes cold and bottomless, mouth set in that calm, distracted line that never changes whether he’s taking notes or twisting pain out of me.
He’s handsome with that fresh boy-next-door look, but on the inside he’s all man-from-hell monster.
His gaze flicks over me and nothing can disguise the hunger in those blue depths.
Not because he desires me, not that my Omega designation has ever saved me from anything, but because Hardwick has given him the green flag to do his worst. Terror surges through me when his eyes flick to the tray of tools on the metal table he’s already prepared and the giant syringe on the top.
I have nothing left to lose; I throw everything I have at the guards pinning me between them.
Elbows and knees, teeth bared, I claw and kick and twist, trying to wrench free even though my muscles are jelly, my strength wrung out long ago.
They shove me down on the metal gurney without breaking a sweat and strap my wrists and ankles into the bindings even as I continue to thrash as hard as I can.
Hardwick rounds the gurney and stands at my side, arms crossed tight over her chest, breathing in the fear coming off me like it’s a luxury.
"You’re certain about this, Senator?" Wallace looks over my body like he's sizing up cuts of meat. "After all these years, the investment… her blood is valuable."
Hardwick flicks hard eyes at the doctor. "She’s compromised. I want this done as soon as possible. Her scent-matches recognized her."
Wallace’s brows flick up. "Really? You know, if we had them they could provide valuable information—"
"Just get it done, Doctor. That’s an order," Hardwick says.
"As you wish." Wallace nods, moving to the tray .
Tears burn down my face, raw and shocking. I’m not afraid of dying, but I can’t, I just can’t , go through another heat. "No, please. Not again. I can’t, please…my last one, you just…"
I’m not recovered from the last heat they forced on me, my body much too weak to handle another. An Omega should have a natural heat every three months, but I’ve endured a monthly heat since I was brought here, every one of them wearing me down to ash.
Wallace slides the needle into my vein and the burning rush hits.
Fire sings up my arm, crashes into my chest, then rolls through my abdomen in scalding waves.
I’m empty. So, so empty that it slices instant torment through me.
I thrash against the straps, heels slamming against the bed as pain shudders through my bones.
From behind the locked doors in my mind, my Omega stirs.
Good. She deserves this. She's the reason I’m here.
Wallace connects wires to my temples, my chest, between my legs.
Cold pads stick to my skin as slick gushes from me, pooling beneath my thighs.
His touch is nothing but clinical, yet I despise the instinct that begs for his skin-crawling touch simply because he’s an Alpha.
I bite down hard, the coppery taste of blood filling my mouth.
The induced heat evaporates moisture from my veins, leaving me gasping, convulsing. Every cell shrieks in protest. It’s too soon, too brutal. Cruelty by design.
My vision goes blurry, sound warping in and out.
I twist, lost to fever, heart hammering, breath coming up short, body wrung dry and set alight.
The last ounce of me claws for air. I turn, spit in Hardwick’s face, voice cracked and shaking.
"I’ll be waiting for you at the gates of hell, Senator," I snarl, barely more than a gasp.
"Making sure you have a place, front row. "
Then the agony claims everything I am, and I fall into flames that eat me alive.