Page 22 of Mercy & Her Devils

I’m lying on something hard. I scrunch up my nose at the musty, mildew stench. I don’t recognize it.

My throat is dry with thirst, and my stomach cramps with hunger.

I struggle to open my eyes, but in fear, I realize that I can’t.

“She not sleeping, Daddy. Look!” An excited young girl’s voice exclaims.

I startle.

“Well noticed, honey. I knew that there was a reason I promoted you to Head Nurse,” a rich male voice drawls.

Then I startle, as someone touches my forehead like I remember Thomas doing for me, when we were kids and I had the flu.

But why is someone caring for me so tenderly?

As the man leans closer, even through my pain, I catch his scent.

And it floors me because it’s like paradise.

He’s a male Omega…and he’s my scent match.

He smells of delicious plum cake with a citrus tang underneath.

I’ve never been hit this powerfully by any scent before.

I fell in love with Gabriel because he was my friend first and over a thousand shared experiences and precious moments.

I remember the time that Gabriel played Fortnight with me for ten hours straight (but let me win). How he taught me to sing X Ambassador’s “Renegades”, while he accompanied me on acoustic guitar and how strong it always made me feel afterward to sing the words to myself at night and drive away my nightmares. The times that it was me doctoring to his busted lip, and he whispered his own fears that his absent dad, a general in the army, would force him to join up as well.

I fell in love with him because he was my perfect Alpha.

But this…?

This is what the old-fashioned romances talk about.

And I’m so scent starved that it hits me like a wall of water, putting out the flames or at least, dampening them for the moment.

Delirious still, my eyes snap open.

I find myself staring into a pair of piercing jade eyes.

A male Omega stares at me in surprise.

He’s kneeling next to me and leaning over to study my face, as he holds my wrist and checks my pulse.

I can’t focus on anything else.

He’s tall and in his late twenties.

He has straight inky black hair like a waterfall. He’s dressed in a stylish jade suit.

The Omega’s suit, however, is ripped and dirty, even though he’s still wearing it as neatly as he can. There are suspicious patches that must be blood.

There’s an equally suspicious purple bruise along his jaw.

Pretty bird decorations swoop on his waistcoat.

Bird decorations….?

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