Chapter 6
KARMA
Female omegas, it seemed, were really, really odd.
Cute.
But odd.
Right in front of my eyes, her whole expression cracked, lip wobbling before she burst into all out sobs.
I’d never seen a female… anything since I’d woken in this place. Well. Possibly a rat or two. Like many alphas here, there was very little before Anarchy when it came to memories.
Phantom was lucky; the only one of us that remembered where he came from. Or… he was unlucky, if you looked at it from a different angle.
So, basically, all of this was new for me.
I lifted her up, pressing her against the shower wall, happy when her legs tangled around my waist instinctively. I nudged her chin up, and it was very hard to ignore how much my instincts wailed at me to fuck her right this instant. It happened every time my skin met hers.
Goddamn, she was touch starved.
How had that happened with an omega this alluring???
Anyway, what was it she’d said—corrupt me?
I snorted.
With fresh blood circling the drain at our feet?
“Moonlight,” I told her. “I’d let you corrupt me any day of the week.”
Truest thing I’d ever said. Especially with those pretty eyes of liquid gold trying to reach into my soul.
Unfortunately, that didn’t help. Instead, her lip wobbled harder, and she let out a wail, arms winding around my neck as she buried her face in the crook of my shoulder.
Oh dear.
I frowned. I needed Sin or Phantom to untangle this.
Fucking her, I was pretty sure, wasn’t the fix, though my hindbrain disagreed entirely. Thus, I was out of solutions.
So instead, I pried her free and set her back down. Then I removed the hair tie so her gorgeous hair fell loosely down her back, lathered shampoo in my hands, and gave her a head massage.
She was so small and adorable.
She didn’t fight me, instead just sniffling softly, a very confounded look in her eyes whenever she shot me glances. After a while (when we’d moved onto the conditioner, and her hair was silky smooth), her distress died down a little.
Seems I’d done something right.
I swelled with pride at that.
Ha.
Maybe I didn’t need them.
I think she was into me, too, from the way her gaze kept tracing my abs. I swear her hand lifted for a moment, as if she were reaching out to me.
“You can touch,” I told her.
She could do whatever she wanted to me.
She was… perfect. I’d never seen beauty like hers down here.
An old fear shuddered to life, one that stirred every time I felt the feral part of me grow.
One weekend last year, I’d gone feral—a frequent occurrence for me—but when I woke up from it, I hadn’t remembered my pack.
Not Phantom. Not Sin. Not Vandle.
I remember their shock. I remember how, at the time, it hadn’t meant anything to me, because their faces were new.
Everything before that point, I’d had to be told.
The fear I carried now was from the relationship I’d built with them since.
A deep, visceral unease that everything I saw, or felt, or said—it would one day be gone. It would mean nothing, and I’d leave them again.
They hadn’t known, when we packed up, that I was broken like this, and I always wondered—if they had, would they have found another alpha?
It was a constant fear I carried, but now, staring at this goddess, I understood it was nothing compared to what it could be.
Her palm pressed against my chest, ripping me from my spiral, and I felt that shock of lust from how touch starved she was.
All those fears dissolved as her breathing hitched, her pupils dilating as she drank in every ridge with her eyes.
Then, completely instinctively, she shifted forward and next thing I knew, she was dragging her soft tongue right up my abs.
As if snapping into consciousness halfway through, she drew away in an instant, back straight, eyes wide.
She looked shocked. “I don’t know why I did that.”
I groaned, fighting every instinct right down to the marrow of my bones, to stop myself from pinning her up against the wall and claiming her.
What kind of cruel test was this?
Maybe this was how they found out if we were fit to leave in ten days.
I cupped her cheek, sinking into a want—a need—the likes of which I’d never felt before. Maybe… maybe I didn’t have to be afraid.
She wasn’t going to let me go anywhere.
I knew it—don’t know how I knew it, but I did.
She wasn’t a burden like Phantom was worried about.
She was the answer.
So very slowly, I helped her from the shower and handed her a towel to dry herself off. I even tried not to look when she shimmied off her soaking top and undergarments from beneath it. I failed. But I did try.
Unfortunately, she expertly held the towel in place with her teeth while she worked, and I didn’t get a single chance to glimpse anything naughty.
It didn’t take me long to finish my own shower, and when I had, I grabbed my towel, heading into the next room, rooting about in the drawer to grab another pair of sweats and a fresh, dry shirt for her. That was when I caught the faintest trace of something in the air that was… different.
I frowned, clumsily tugging the sweats on around the towel (so as not to offend her), and looking back at the doorway where she was standing, clutching her towel to her chest.
As fresh as the shower she’d just stepped from, was the trace of velvet rose and cocoa.
I blinked, taking another breath and letting it saturate my lungs.
Holy. Shit.
I stared at her. That scent.
A rumble of need rolled up my chest.
She was… mine. Like actually mine.
Ours.
A scent match.
Fuck. Me.
I felt the dregs of sanity that tenuously tethered my mind to this reality instantly drain away.