Page 111 of Shattered Omega

Dusk’s terror was the last thing I felt.

The gun vanished and Flynn grabbed my arm, turning me and slamming me back against the table as he dragged my neck into an arch and sank his teeth into my flesh. A whine escaped my chest as I felt the pain of his vicious mark precisely over Dusk’s bond.

One bond replaced another, as he took my mates from me.

I shuddered, throat closing up as Dusk’s presence in my mind turned to smoke.

Tears flooded my face as I was ripped from one pack to another. It was a strange and uncomfortable sensation. The place I left was home, and this new one… it was cold and empty.

I squeezed my eyes shut, fingers digging into the table.

“That’s it, then?” Gareth’s voice was low. “It’s healed?”

“Is it instant?” Flynn asked. “Should be, right?”

Flynn’s grip fell away, but I didn’t dare open my eyes, not yet. “I’ll consider freeing them when we’re far out of range. They’re fucking insane, and I don’t trust them to not do something stupid.”

“I want my bite now,” Gareth growled. I jumped violently at his touch as he lifted me roughly so I was sitting on the table, closer to his height. Sesame seed and sunflower made me want to gag.

My breathing was ragged, and my eyes were still closed as my memories flashed back to the day I’d visited Uncle.

“Shatter,” Uncle said, catching me before I left.

I turned to him, clutching my bag to my chest, trying so hard not to feel defeated.

“There’s something else,” he said.

I waited, and he looked uncomfortable. “Your death wasn’t the only thing I lied about.” His lips were drawn in a flat line.

“What?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t have survived that injection. The consequences were far more… unpredictable than we ever imagined. There was… one other thing. I never told the Institute because I knew, if I did, they would never let you remain here. They would have taken you and locked you up forever.”

My blood chilled. “What do you mean?”

It was a truth I should have known since the moment I’d woken.

From the blinking ERROR sign, when I’d seen the kaleidoscope of colours in clinical, white lights above.

In the hours it had taken before they’d freed me from the bindings that strapped me to the table, agony tore through my body over and over.

When my breathing had dissolved to wails and I’d realised the truth I couldn’t see—not with my head bound in place. Not when all that was in my vision was the blinking sign, and the broken glass upon one of the monitors that had been dragged on its side, tilted against the wall.

And I’d wondered, endlessly, why it was like that?

Why was it broken—as if someone had grabbed it violently?

Why had it taken them so long to get me out?

Something had gone wrong.

I’d been given something I shouldn’t have. I may have no past, but that I knew. When I was finally rescued, it was by figures in white suits with their faces masked.

And I’d known by then, why it had taken so long.

That I’d already begun to beg to be freed over and over, as I realised that around me were bodies, still and lifeless.

I was left there long enough that their smell of decomposition began to rise in the air. The Institute had wanted to keep me for more than just the fact that I was broken.

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