Chapter Nine
Sera
One second Espie is sitting in the wheelchair and the next she's pushing herself upright, and staggers across the common area toward the male omega hunched over himself.
She can barely keep upright. She's skeletal under her clothes, all sharp collarbones and wrists thin enough to circle with two fingers. She's stronger than she was, but stronger than nothing is still barely anything at all.
The male omega with ash-blond hair, is just as emaciated as Espie. Just as broken. When we entered the room his eyes were unfocused, rocking gently in his chair while three Alphas surrounded him with grief carved into their faces.
But he's not unfocused now. He's looking at her like she's the only thing in the room that matters. He staggers to his feet and takes faltering steps toward her, the alphas surrounding him leaping to their feet.
Espie’s knees give out and she drops hard, but he’s already reaching for her. They collide together, clutching tight, her face buried in his shoulder while his arms lock around her like holding on is the only thing keeping either of them in one piece.
Then I scent him.
Warmed cedar and chamomile slices past the fear and the chaos and the dozen other scents clogging the air, and hits me hard. My whole body lurches toward him. Skin goes hot. Teeth ache with the need to bite, to claim, to mark him as mine so no one else can touch him.
Mate. He’s my Omega. The broken male on the floor is mine.
Twenty-eight years of resignation that I'd never find a match. After all, what Omega would want a female Alpha? What biology would pair me with someone I could actually have? And now my body is screaming that I have two.
Two fucking scent-matched omegas.
But he's not looking at me.
He's holding Espie like she's the only real thing in the world. His face buried in her hair. He came back for her.
The three male Alphas move too close, and I'm between them and the omegas in two strides. The growl tears from my throat, a warning that vibrates through my chest and I bare my teeth. “Stay back!”
The dark-haired pulls up short. Pupils blown. Oakwood and whiskey pouring off him. The tall one with glasses has gone rigid, shaking with the effort of holding himself back. The blond one with the set jaw angles his body protectively toward the omegas like he'll die if he can't get to them.
“She's ours.” The dark-haired one's voice comes out guttural, barely human. His eyes are locked on Espie, on my omega. His whole body strains toward her. “The female omega. She's our mate. Our scent-match.”
No.
No, no, no.
Espie is mine. The snarl that rips out of me doesn't sound human.
“Do not touch her. Don’t lay a finger on her.” The words tear from my throat. “She’s my omega.”
I'm going to kill him. I'm going to rip his throat out with my teeth. He's trying to take my omega, trying to claim the female I've been protecting, and I will end him before I let—
“Kev!” The tall one with glasses grabs the dark-haired alpha's arm, hauling him back. His voice is ragged, desperate. “Kev, stop. Stop! You're making it worse.”
Kev. The dark-haired one's name is Kev. Some tiny rational part of my brain tries to surface.
Kev. Kev. Kev Dawson. Head of Legal Affairs for Canton City.
You've read his briefs. You've cited his precedents.
And his pack—Alexander Cheng, the literature professor.
Ezra Whitfield, the trauma nurse. They're the ones who've been working with Adrian Blackwood on omega rehabilitation.
It's not enough. My body doesn't care about their credentials. My body only knows they're trying to take my omegas.
“Aubrey is our scent-match. We have two.” The blond one speaks now.
Aubrey.
My hindbrain screams: Aubrey. Aubrey Turns. The omega they found collared at Commissioner Axel Turns' feet.
I know his name. Everyone in Omega Affairs knows that name.
The photographs went around every Omega Affairs office in the state once Axel was dead and the evidence got declassified.
Aubrey collared on a marble floor. Aubrey kneeling at Axel's feet.
Half the agents couldn't get through the file.
I got through it. Then I sat in my car for twenty minutes before I could drive.
That's my mate. That broken, brutalized omega on the floor is my scent-match as well as Espie. I'm going to be sick. Right here in the middle of the OHC, I'm going to vomit on the floor.
Gods.
Oh Gods, no.
The fury drains out of me so fast my legs go weak. My hands shake for a different reason now.
No. No, no, no.
While I was sitting in my office in Silverpine, filing reports and attending meetings and going home to my empty apartment, he was being collared and paraded and broken.
While I was fighting for omega rights through paperwork and policy, my mate was kneeling on concrete floors in a dog collar, starving, brutalized, destroyed.
I didn't know. I couldn't have known, but it doesn't matter. He was suffering, and I wasn't there. They both suffered and I wasn’t there.
The blond one—Ezra—is still talking, still claiming Aubrey as theirs, but I barely hear him. All I see is the scarred wrists. The too-thin frame. The scarring around his neck. The crooked fingers on his right hand, bent because they healed broken.
These alphas are also claiming Espie as their mate. Their scent-match. The sound that comes out of me is feral. Pure animal. I take a step toward them, vision narrowing to red, every muscle in my body coiled to attack.
Kill them. Kill them all. They're trying to take my omegas. Both my omegas.
Security guards flood into the room. Four of them.
Five. Six. They're grabbing Kev, hauling him back, and it takes two of them because he's fighting them, pupils blown wide, snarling at anyone who gets too close.
He clips one guard across the jaw with his elbow. The guard staggers but doesn't go down.
Another guard has Lex by the arm. His whole body vibrates with the effort of not breaking free. His glasses have fallen off. He doesn't notice. His dark eyes are locked on Espie, on the omega wrapped around my mate, and his bergamot scent is raging.
Ezra hasn't moved but two guards are standing in front of him, hands up, talking in low steady voices. He's the most controlled of the three, but the tendons standing out in his neck, and his hands shake at his sides. He's holding himself back by sheer force of will.
Nurses are shouting. Other omegas in the common area are keening with distress, their fear scents layering over everything until the air is so thick with pheromones I can barely think.
Someone is crying. Someone is calling for a sedation kit.
The whole room has devolved into chaos. I lunge for my omegas.
Two security guards hit me from behind. One grabs my left arm, wrenches it back. The other hooks his arm around my right bicep and yanks. My shoulders scream. My feet skid on the floor as they haul me backward, away from my omegas.
I spin, teeth bared, and both guards flinch but don't let go. They're betas, scents muted and non-threatening, but it doesn't matter. Someone is touching me. Someone is restraining me. Someone is keeping me from my omegas.
“Ma'am.” One of them shouts. “Ma'am, you need to calm down. No one is going to hurt them.”
A snarl builds in my chest. My muscles coil. My rational mind drowns under the weight of pure instinct.
If you go feral, they'll lock you up.
The thought cuts through the red haze. Cold. Clinical. Survival instinct overriding everything else. It can happen. Threaten an omega mate and the alpha snaps.
If you go feral, they'll sedate you. Restrain you. Put you in a room somewhere while they decide what to do with the crazy female alpha who attacked three males in the middle of the OHC. And you won't have access to your omegas. Either of them.
I force myself to stop fighting. Force my hands to unclench. Force my lips down over my teeth. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. Every cell in my body screams at me to break free, to get to my mates, to tear apart anyone who stands in my way.
“I'm calm.” I barely recognize my own voice. “I'm calm. Let go of me.”
I try to shrug them off but the guards don't let go. They're not stupid. I breathe. In through my mouth so I don't smell the omegas. Out slowly, counting the seconds. In again. Out again. The red recedes, fraction by fraction.
Across the room, Kev has stopped fighting too.
He's standing rigid between his two guards, chest heaving, sweat dampening his hairline.
His pupils are still blown but no longer wild.
One of the guards has a split lip from where Kev caught him.
Kev doesn't seem to notice. His eyes are fixed on the huddled omegas.
Lex has retrieved his glasses. His hands shake as he puts them back on. He's murmuring something to the guard beside him, an apology maybe, voice too low for me to hear. The guard nods cautiously but doesn't step back.
Ezra is wiping his face with shaking hands. He's the first one to look at me. Really look. Not the feral assessment of a rival alpha but something more measured. More aware.
“Well, this is a mess,” he says.
I almost laugh. It comes out as a rough exhale. “That's one word for it.”
Something shifts in his expression. Recognition, maybe.
The understanding that we're all drowning in the same storm.
The guards exchange glances. The tension in the room is still thick enough to choke on, but it's different now.
Less volatile. We're all still one wrong move from shattering, but at least we're not actively trying to kill each other.
Don't think about it. Just don't lose control. Stay in control. Stay with your Omegas.
“Sera.”
I know that voice. Calm. Commanding. I don't turn. Can't turn. Turning means taking my eyes off the threat.
Adrian Blackwood steps into my peripheral vision. Tall, athletic, jet-black hair kept neat, strong jawline, tailored suit. The kind of alpha who walks into a room and everyone shuts up.
I know Adrian. Hell, everyone in Omega Affairs knows Adrian Blackwood.
The man who tore Haven and its criminal director apart with his bare hands.
His company pumps out Mortalis vaccines like his life depends on it, cutting through red tape that's been strangling us for decades.
His company doesn't make money off Omega suffering.
It bleeds money fighting it. He's one of the good ones.
Actually good. Not performatively good, not good-for-the-cameras good. The real thing.
“Everyone take a breath. No one here is a threat to the omegas.” Adrian's voice stays steady.
I want to believe him. Gods, I want to stand down, be the professional I am and stop acting like a feral animal in the middle of a medical facility I'm supposed to respect.
My rational brain knows Kev Dawson's pack saved Aubrey from Axel Turns. My rational brain thanked the Gods that someone had finally gotten that poor omega away from the monster who owned him. My hindbrain doesn't care.
“He's been catatonic,” Kev says. His eyes keep sliding past me to the omegas on the floor, and his throat works as he swallows.
“For months. He hasn't looked at anyone.
Hasn't responded to anything.” His hazel eyes finally meet mine, and I see the same desperate hunger in them that I'm feeling. “Until… her.”
Her. His mate. My mate. My mate brought his mate back from the dead. And his mates are my mates.
Their scent-matched omegas are my scent-matched omegas.
And now they're wrapped around each other, clinging together beneath the hands of alphas who don't belong to each other.