10. Lazarus
Lazarus
“She’s going into heat.”
“She’s too delirious to give us any information.”
Revenant and Mayhem speak at the same time.
Fox lets out an exaggerated sigh. He sits in the chair where Phoenix was and pulls the omega’s hand into his.
When she tries to pull it away, I step forward, but I’m uncertain as to why I feel the need to protect her.
My shadow springs back from where it had been behaving near my feet to the serpent, ready to strike.
Its defensiveness, perhaps, is so unusual.
Mayhem steps forward, putting himself in my path toward Fox. I straighten my spine against Mayhem’s calculating gaze.
“Well, that was unexpected.” Revenant hums. “Laz, let him do his job.”
“Forgive me, I do not know where I’ve lost my resolve.” I force myself back, my shadow reluctantly coming back to me but refusing to be tamed into compliance.
Fox gives me a glance, a wry smile threatening his cold demeanor, before he writes out on the whiteboard, “She’s past the point of no return. There is no stopping this estrus.”
“Put her down in the bunker to ride it out.” Mayhem’s statement doesn’t sit well with me.
Inexplicable dread threatens me at the thought of her locked away alone.
“No,” Phoenix says from the doorway where he and Zephyr have pushed the door open just enough to put their heads in. “She’ll come up with us. We’ll care for her.”
“The two of you can hardly care for yourselves. You cannot care for an omega during her imp — estrus.” I correct myself for the first time in a long time.
The omega speaking about one God brought back the way life was, the things I vehemently abandoned entirely, before coming to Night Wraiths. Not everything of my life before has survived in this new version of myself. It’s for the best.
“Why not?” Phoenix argues. “Food, sex, cleaning, nesting. We’re good at all those things.”
“Her religion may not allow for that.” I try to caution them.
“My impure time is not long. I am defective. I am trying to not be a bother.” The omega squirms in the chair, probably suffocating under the weight of six alphas around her.
Fox’s interest is piqued, and he drums his fingers on the whiteboard. But he lets whatever he had planned to communicate go.
“Omega, do you want to spend your heat with alphas tending to you, or would you like to be secluded somewhere safe?” Revenant places heavy emphasis on the suggestion that she be secluded somewhere safe. He even smiles, as unsettling as it may be for the rest of us, when he suggests it.
“No.” She shakes her head, her voice turning to a fear-heavy plea. “I escaped. I don’t want to be locked away. Please don’t lock me away. I don’t need to be sequestered. I’ll be good. Don’t make me go.”
That word: sequestered.
My heart stops beating. I beg it to beat, but when it does, it’s at a full sprint. My throat is dry, and I swallow before I manage to force the words out. “You believe in one true God. But are you from the House of Apostles?”
“Don’t send me back. Please. Don’t send me back.” The omega whines loudly and curls up into the chair. She wraps her arms around her legs protectively.
Zephyr and Phoenix slam through the door, charging past Mayhem, putting themselves between her and me.
“Alright, anyone want to explain this to me?” Mayhem fixes his cutting blue eyes on me.
“Don’t send me back.” The omega whispers the plea again from her ball in the chair.
“The House of Apostles would possibly fall on the list of people our club fights against.” I bite a growl back into my throat. The uncertainties of opening the locked door of my past have me containing my answer to bare minimum facts.
“We’re not letting you put her somewhere she doesn’t want to go.” Phoenix is adamant. He strokes the omega’s hair and purrs lowly.
She’s fighting herself. At first, she leans into his touch and then, as if remembering what she is doing is ungodly, leans away. A small whine emits from her throat when Phoenix pulls his hand away from her. He immediately returns to petting her.
“We can’t very well let an omega in heat wander around the clubhouse.
It’s asking for trouble. Rut suppressants will only go so far to keep her safe.
” Revenant explains his line of thinking.
“Just being in a room with another omega in estrus will make Evangeline territorial. She can’t stay with us. ”
“She wants us. Isn’t that right, honey? You said you liked the idea of two.” Phoenix keeps purring, trailing his fingers from the crown of her head down around her face to gently stroke her cheek. “You want Zephyr and me.”
Zephyr and I lock eyes. He still looks exhausted and hardly in any shape to care for an omega in estrus. Dark circles frame his eyes, but I can tell, in the lift of his brow and the slight pout in his lip, it’s what he wants.
“They’re a better choice than most of the alphas in the club.
” Mayhem sides with Phoenix. “They’re the closest thing to a stable pack who aren’t .
. .” He pauses and searches for a word, and his eyes settle on the omega.
Mayhem is softer spoken as he watches her.
“Who aren’t likely to claim what isn’t theirs. ”
It hadn’t even occurred to me the possibility of the twins laying fangs into her neck. The way an alpha marks an omega to procure ownership is sacred and meant for those who have agreed to spend a lifetime together.
My neck aches, and I resist the urge to bring my hand to where, at one time, I had a sacred bond. Would I deny the two of them the opportunity to feel that happiness out of some perversion that I may never experience that type of joining again?
“We promise not to claim her.” Zephyr agrees quickly. He looks at Phoenix and the omega before kicking Phoenix in the ass with his boot. “Right, Phoenix?”
The omega is drawing short breaths again. Beads of sweat have broken out at her hairline, and her face is bright pink. Her eyes are distant, not seeing us, but seeing something locked in her mind’s eye.
Her lips move, and I barely make out the three words she says. “I’ll be good.”
Phoenix’s mouth drops open for a minute, but he murmurs, “Not even if she asks nicely.”
“Omega.” Revenant draws her attention. It takes a moment for the omega to settle her eyes on him. “Do you want to be serviced by the twins and Lazarus for your estrus?”
“Me?” I question, putting my hand over my heart. “I am not a part of their pack.”
Revenant ignores me and focuses on the lone omega before us.
She’s silent, her fingers fumbling with the hem of her dress. “I’ve never.” Looking between Phoenix and Zephyr, she worries her bottom lip between her teeth, and her shoulders shake with the smallest shudder as she breathes. “I wouldn’t know how to be a good vessel, but I could try. I want to try.”
A rogue thought tarnishes my mind of an omega laid out to be a vessel.
The way she presents and submits herself.
My sides ache with how hard I clench my muscles, forcing my body to forget the notion of an omega in my care.
It would be against God for me to lie with an omega with no intention of keeping her as my own.
Claiming her would go against my own consideration to not take an omega after what I’ve already lost.
The omega whines. She leans forward, her whole body balling up, and the purring from Zephyr and Phoenix intensifies. They close in around her, trying to comfort her.
“Fox, get her blood work and get the four of them on birth control. The last thing we need is an accidentally pregnant omega.” Revenant sits back in his chair, jaw clenched and shoulders tight.
He grits his teeth, relinquishing his control of the situation, at least for now.
“Then, once she’s through her heat, we’ll figure out more of what she’s gone through, where she’s come from, and where we’re sending her. ”
The president’s word is law. And despite my deep desire to protest, I follow Mayhem out into the hallway and lead the way through the maze of corridors to the secret elevator.