Page 15 of Shattered Omega

Shatter glanced up at Ransom appreciatively and she nodded. “They’ll come back. They have to. If they don’t, we’re in trouble. They just don’t know that we need them as much as they need us.”

“And I don’t intend for them to,” I said. The burden Umbra and I carried could not pass onto her.

I hadn’t had time to process the full truth—that Umbra and I weren’t just sick. We were on the receiving end of a bond that might leave us dead. My priority was containing it—to just me and Umbra if I had to, but as pack lead, if I could shoulder that burden myself, I would. Umbra especially, who had paid enough for my protection. I needed them all to walk away from this.

“So we wait here?” Umbra asked. “Leave all of this in their hands. They can return at any time—could open the safe and learn the truth at any time. We don’t know when they’re going to come or how they’re going to move forward.”

“We have to assume it’s protected,” Ransom said. “If they get inside, it changes everything, but we can’t make plans around that.”

“So, we just stay at the academy and wait for them to show up?” Umbra asked. “When we know they’re after?—”

“I’m not saying we let our guard down,” Ransom put in. “We won’t leave Shatter on her own. But honestly, we don’t have another option. And Decebal isn’t far away either. If something happens, he can be here with backup quickly.”

“It sounds risky.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Shatter said. “We need them to come back. Both of you—” She looked between me and Umbra—“Might die if we don’t fix this. We’re in a race against the clock. The only way we know to cure it right now, is for Flynn to decide to release the bond, which he can only do if he knows what’s going on.”

Umbra scowled. “But they could figure this all out without us, since the safe is a wildcard and they could get into it at any moment.”

“It all comes down to the same thing,” she pressed. “The only way for Dusk and Umbra to be free of their sickness is for Flynn to give it up?—”

“The only way we know of,” I cut her off.

“We have to talk about this,” she said.

My blood chilled at the determination in her eyes. “I won’t.”

“If we want Flynn to give up the bond, he has to learn who you are. There’s no other way to ask for him to do it. But giving it up means giving up the only thing keeping his aura sickness at bay. Outside of that, the only thing left that might cure him is a?—”

“Enough.” I didn’t mean to use the dark bond, but she cut off in an instant, eyes wide. Her fists balled in the sheets as she looked from me to Ransom, and then Umbra. Both were stiff, all coming to the same conclusion she’d just tried to spell out.

A princess bond—and she was the only omega in the world that could offer him that. It was the only thing Flynn would want without a doubt.

It was a truth I wouldn’t discuss.

Shatter’s lips drew back in a snarl like I’d never seen, and I felt a shot of pain from her through the bond. “Dusk.” Her voice shook as she fought my command fiercely, and I let it go in an instant.

“Never.”

If we went to the negotiation table and asked Flynn to give up this bond, we would be asking him to give up the cure that had worked for years.

And the bargaining chip?

It was her.

The only clear thing left to offer for such a thing. I couldn’t hear her argue for this. I couldn’t hear her suggest she offer herself in exchange.

The scent matched omega. The thing that would cure Flynn absolutely.

And I knew that was exactly what she’d been about to do by the storm of terror on her end of the bond. A terror that outmatched anything she’d felt yet. Fear at the idea of a bond with that pack. And it was something she would suggest anyway.

Never.

And yet, I couldn’t be sure we could keep her safe, regardless. The moment they understood who we were, they may realise that we held no power to stop them from biting her.

Of all the ways I’d imagined this coming to a head, this was an ending so… mundane.

Negotiations with monsters?

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