Page 6 of Feral Omega

"Is that what I was doing?" he asks in a deadpan tone that always makes it impossible to tell if he's being sarcastic or if he's just a weirdo who sees the rest of us as science experiments.

I sigh, raking a hand through my shaggy brown hair. I'm due for a cut if not a shave, but who the fuck has time for that? It's not like any of us have to worry about keeping military regulations out here.

"He does have a point, though," Plague remarks, keeping his back turned. "Wraith's behavior has been more… erratic lately."

I clench my jaw, not welcoming the subject matter coming from him any more than I did coming from Whiskey, but I can't exactly dismiss it as easily.

"You think he's dangerous."

"I wasn't quite telling the truth earlier," he answers after a moment's pause, zipping up his bag and turning to face me. "When I said there was nothing in his record. He hasn't submitted to a physical the entire time he's been enlisted in the Armed Forces, but I do have access to his personal history. At least as much of it as the Council has. If I recall correctly, he was found living alone in the Wastes at approximately the age of twelve, having killed thirteen heavily armed alphas from the infantry. In fact, he was going to be put down until your father intervened, wasn't he?"

I clench my jaw, irritation welling up within me. Nothing he's saying is untrue, but Wraith is one of the few topics I'm just not capable of being rational on.

"That's what I thought," Plague says. "In which case, him being dangerous is a foregone conclusion."

"Then what do you suggest?" I demand. "Dangerous or not, he's saved your ass out there more times than I can count. Mine, too."

Plague nods thoughtfully. "He is a powerful weapon," he muses. "But a weapon is only as useful as your capacity to keep it from being used against you."

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror across the room and realize the expression on my face isn't quite as calm as I'd hoped. My eyes look blacker than usual, my lips half-formed into a snarl. A few strands of my hair have clumped together with blood from the mission we just left, which really isn't helping. I look like some feral caveman.

And that isn't too far off from the truth.

"It's not just Wraith," Plague says, raising his hands in defense. "It's all of us. We're five male alphas cooped up in the middle of the mountains, and none of us has seen an omega in months. Tensions are to be expected."

"Yeah, I'll get right on scheduling a field trip to the nearest brothel," I say in a flat tone.

Plague snorts. "Might not be the worst idea."

With that, he turns and leaves the room, but I can't help thinking about his smart-assed remark after he's gone.

He's not wrong. About Wraith, or the rest of us.

We're like a box packed with dynamite, if each individual stick also had a habit of smoking that could set off anyone else's fuse at any time.

Sooner or later, something's gotta give.

And I'm not sure any of us—let alone any poor fuck who happens to be in range—is gonna survive when it does.

Chapter

Three

THANE

Istorm into my father's office, still in my field gear and not giving a shit about the mud I'm tracking in on his pristine floors. He looks up from his paperwork, his pale eyes flashing with irritation behind his reading glasses.

Looking at my father is always something like looking into a mirror of a possible future, and that experience is usually sobering enough to keep me on the straight and narrow. Or, from his perspective, the crooked path I've carved out for myself instead of the one he wishes I'd take.

It's not his physical state I scorn to inherit. General Maxwell Hargrove may not be a young alpha at the peak of his prime anymore, but even though he's pushing sixty, he's still got plenty of youth left in him.

His hair, once the same dark brown shade as mine, is now peppered with gray and shaved close to his scalp in a regulation style, even though he's well past having to bow to such regulations himself. He's an inch shy of my six-seven and nearly as broad and muscular. I inherited his sharp jawline, Roman nose and hard features, but I have my mother's dark eyes, not his frigid blue ones.

He wears the solemn mask of a man at the top of his field who answers to no one but the Council.

And yet, he's fallen far from the passionate young soldier he used to be. From the alpha who once gave a shit about things like honor and freedom rather than preserving the status quo.

In other words, he's a bootlicker.

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