Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
ABO Facility
Seventy-one is awake.
He’s alive.
My brother loved to garden alongside Nico. They would spend long, summer afternoons underneath the warm sun amongst the roses.
Is that why Gianna pushed Mars into the rose bushes? Why she took delight in secretly scratching him with the roses’ thorns whenever she could?
I always wondered if she was jealous of her dad’s relationship with Mars. Yet Nico despised her cruelty and he didn’t hide it.
Nico took beatings for scolding his Alpha daughter for her attacks on both her brother and me.
One of the worst, was the time Nico caught Gianna laughing at me, after I discovered a flower seed. I didn’t even know what it was. I lovingly planted the seed, however, trying to copy Mars.
I wanted to prove that I could grow something beautiful as well.
Perhaps then, I would feel like part of the family.
Yet Gianna caught sight of me.
Barking a mocking laugh, she trampled over my lovingly watered soil. She kicked at it with her shoe, grinding down.
“Stupid,” Gianna tormented. “You’re not allowed to grow things here, Rogue.
You’re not family. Anything you grew would be freakish, mutant, wrong.
But then, I wouldn’t need to pull it out at the roots because you’d kill it anyway.
You should thank me for crushing this seed; I’ve stopped you from being disappointed.
Someone like you can’t keep anything alive. ”
Now, I clench my jaw.
Gianna is wrong. Because I have brought Seventy-one out of his coma.
Me.
My pheromones wrap around my Omega even more strongly in my delight and desperation not to allow him to fall back asleep.
I need to keep Seventy-one with me with a desperation that makes me uncomfortable. I’ve never allowed myself to need anyone like this before, even Mars.
It’s a vulnerability, and those are dangerous. They can be exploited by my enemies.
Yet I can’t help myself. I’d make myself weak for this Omega, and that terrifies me.
The beautiful Omega snuggles closer to me like he hasn’t just woken up in a cell with a strange Alpha washing him.
An Alpha who could tear out his throat in a fraction of a second.
Seventy-one blinks, drowsily. “You smell like an angel too: toffee and coffee. My favorites. Plus, it rhymes.” I puff out my chest. My Omega loves my scent. “I knew that heaven would be incredible.”
“You’re not dead.” My tone sharpens. “I just spent a week saving you. You’re not allowed to die.”
Seventy-one’s nose wrinkles. “Bossy angel.” He still sounds half-asleep. Then he takes a deep sniff of my neck, licking down it. I shiver. Shit, that feels amazing. I clench my hand around the cloth. “If I’m not dead, then this is a nice dream. My delicious scent match. I wish this was real.”
“Where were you before?”
Is it kind to interrogate someone who is rising out of a coma? A patient who thinks that they’re dreaming?
Nope.
But efficiency saves your life more than kindness.
“The Omega Hotel.” Seventy-one’s mouth twists with sadness.
My stomach sinks. “The Alphas from the model agency were using me in their rut. They weren’t brutal.
They were gentle, feeding me Gatorade and my favorite chocolate.
But I was just so tired. I’m always tired.
I hate being a Hotel Omega. I’m owned there.
I think I…I was in their nest. But I…I passed out and… This dream is nicer than dying.”
The hairs rise on the back of my neck.
This sweet Omega was a Hotel Omega, who are ordered like room service to be used by the Traditional elite when they visit certain corrupt hotels…?
With his pheromone imbalance being used repeatedly like that truly was a death sentence. He must have known it.
The coldness that is numbing me, however, is because I have used Hotel Omegas. Most Mob Alphas have. It’s tradition when we travel either without our bonded Omega or haven’t bonded yet.
When I have been on missions, and my ruts have hit, the only way to stop going feral was to check into a hotel and use their service.
I was forbidden from forming relationships with Omegas. I had no choice.
My ruts were impersonal. Functional. A necessity.
I have never dated. I don’t know how to be romantic.
I’m not sure that I can or want to be.
I am as bad as any of the mob packs.
As bad as Fiorella.
How much will my scent match hate me, if he discovers that I am one of the faceless assholes who have made the lives of Omegas just like him hell?
I could have been the Alpha who killed him.
Seventy-one said that the last pack who rutted him were gentle. I was never cruel either. But what difference does it make? He was used just the same.
I stiffen, trying to pull away from him.
What right do I have to touch him now?
Seventy-one wraps his arms around me, however, with surprising strength and holds onto me like a koala. “Don’t go. Not yet. Like me keep dreaming…”
“Time to wake up.” I snatch up the metal bowl of water and dump it over his head.
Seventy-one’s eyes shoot wide open.
He lets go of me and scoots back, shaking his wild curls like a dog.
For the first time, he stares at me, clear-eyed.
Breathing hard, he shivers.
I throw the blanket at him. “Dry yourself.”
Slowly, never looking away from me, Seventy-one rubs off the water that is dripping from his hair down his sculpted chest.
Then he freezes. “Oh, fuck. This is real.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You just threw water over me.”
I arch my brow.
Then he glances down at himself. “I’m half-undressed.”
I redden. “I was washing you.”
I hurl the cloth at him.
It hits him in the face.
Shit, I’m no good at this romance thing. Or Omega care, it appears.
He’ll have to take me as I am.
I expect Seventy-one to flinch or cry.
To my shock, he gives a sunny laugh. “Figures that I’d find my scent match Alpha in a cell and that she’d dump water over my head. My sister has been tempted to enough times to wake me up in the mornings. You may have to get used to doing that.”
My Alpha.
He says it like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
It sounds like it fits, however, as if I have been waiting all my life for an Omega to say it.
I didn’t need a complex courting ritual, arrangement between packs, or even a bunch of flowers to make him say it, only a damp cloth to the face.
I bet that Mars has never written that into one of his romance novels.
I find myself smiling.
Seventy-one smiles back. It’s the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. It lights up his face, banishing the shadows under his eyes.
“So, where are we?” Seventy-one dries his hair, which frizzes up cutely.
“This is the ABO Facility, Seventy-one.” I keep my expression as neutral as possible.
I don’t explain about why the walls are metal. No point in frightening him straightaway.
He’ll learn.
He already has more strength than I was expecting, both physical and mental.
I can work with that.
He furrows his brow. “Seventy-one?”
“It’s what you’re called here. They call me Seventy.”
“My name is Bird.”
Bird.
It suits him.
My expression softens.
Suddenly, I remember the doves that would swoop through the blue skies above the rose garden. I couldn’t see them from the basement. When I was trapped in the dark, however, I would imagine them above flying free.
I would flap my hands, creating my own toys out of them that I would then hug to myself at night.
I developed magic tricks with paper doves. I never used real ones. I would never cage anything in the same way that I was.
“What do you call yourself?” Bird asks, eagerly. “Just because some dickhead is calling us by numbers, doesn’t mean that we need to.”
I hesitate. “Ro.”
Bird smiles. “Hello, Ro.”
“This facility is where Rogues are sent,” I clarify. “Where they’re held as prisoners.”
Maybe I do need to make sure that he understands.
“Rogues?”
“It’s what we are. They told me that you had a rare pheromone imbalance. They put you with me because…” Will Bird hate me? Reject me if I tell him? I steel myself. “…I am a Rogue Switch. I can transform between an Alpha and Omega.”
Bird cocks his head.
He drapes the blanket around his shoulders, before he scoots closer to me.
I tense.
“That is so…awesome!” Bird’s eyes light with excitement. “Hey, does that mean I get an Alpha and an Omega rolled into one? How lucky am I?”
“Lucky?” I repeat, confused.
Doesn’t Bird understand?
“I’m dangerous, Little Bird.” I grab him by the scruff of the neck. I yank him closer, until our noses are touching. “People fear Rogues.”
“People are dickheads.” To my shock, Bird tentatively kisses me.
His lips are wet and delicious. “I’m all about Omega solidarity.
I was raised in a pack with five Omegas and no Betas.
As a Hotel Omega, I have spent the last few years around dozens of Omegas.
You having both dynamics within you is perfect. ”
Stunned, I barely dare move, as he purrs.
Bird rubs his cheek against mine, before he straddles me. I can feel his hard dick through his thin pants. Yet I can sense that the way he is alternating licking my neck, while rubbing his cookie scent over me, is his way of claiming me, both as Alpha and Omega.
For the first time in my life, both sides of my nature feel content.
I drag Bird up, before threading my fingers through his hair. I tip his head to the side, nipping up and down his neck.
My teeth are desperate to press down and bite.
I want to taste Bird’s blood.
But I can’t bond him.
Instead, I content myself by sucking on his scent gland, deepening the sweetness that is pervading the cell.
He whines, and I become wetter at the sound.
Did the warden truly mean that I could rut him? Lock his sweet cock inside me and milk it?
I growl, dragging the Omega into a deeper kiss.
He whines, and I can’t resist biting at his lower lip. To my shock, he bites mine back.
Then he pulls back, laughing. “Well, my matching with my bonded didn’t go how I imagined. How about you?”
Is this what Omegas are meant to be like?
I don’t have a fucking clue.