Page 99 of Shattered Omega: Part Three

Cuddles were Umbra’s.

A tear tracked my cheek before I could stop it, and I let him wipe it away. “What makes you sad about this?” he asked.

“I’m not sad,” I told him. “I just… I’ve been dreaming of you for so long. I thought after the party you would hate me forever. I thought I wouldn’t be worth saving.”

I understood it at last: the power of an omega, and not just from the lists I’d made watching movies with Roxy. I had learned it from the push and pull between me and my pack—only they cared for me and for who I was.

Flynn Lincoln might not care about me, but he did care that I made him feel powerful. And right now, I was the broken omega he could save.

“I’m here, now.” His touch caressed my waist as if he wanted to know my body more.

I clung to my conviction.

To my plan.

I clung to that as I drowned in the coconut and plum scent that haunted my nightmares. As his body pressed to mine. As he tried to claim an omega from the pack he’d almost destroyed.

My pack.

So I held tight to the knowledge that Flynn Lincoln was going to pay as his fingers dipped under the hem of my shirt.

I tensed, letting out a breath of shock.

“Is that…?” He trailed off, lingering, but not drawing back. “Triggering the command?”

“I don’t want that command to mean you’re…” I swallowed. “You’re disappointed in me. I can push through?—”

“No.” He withdrew his hand at last, but I didn’t miss that he didn’t do it until I’d spoken.

I was still putting all the pieces together, figuring out how he worked.

I knew, now, that the idea of me was more than the reality of claiming me. He was willing to wait if the trade was the power I made him feel—if he thought I was becoming desperate to please him.

His knuckles drew along my cheek. “It will be all the better after I’ve freed you.”

I wound my fingers around his wrist, holding his touch at my cheek as I stared up at him. “You truly want me?”

“Claiming you is all I can think about.”

I smiled, heart aching at this act, but he was the catalyst to everything, so I spoke the words that would sow his fate.

“I don’t care what the others say,” I breathed. “I want you to keep pack lead after the negotiations.”

THIRTY-FIVE

UMBRA

Hearing those words from Eric was a breath of cool relief, and years of wound-up fury seeped from me in an instant.

He knew who I was.

I shut my eyes, feeling it fall away. In its wake were hatred and madness. In its wake was the person who would do anything to protect her.

“You should be dead,” Eric stammered.

“If I were dead, wouldn’t sickness have consumed your precious pack lead by now?”

“We thought…” He trailed off, a spark of uncertainty in his eyes as if he didn’t think he should say what he had been about to.

---