Page 91 of Feral Omega

And yet, he saved me. Sheltered me from the punishing elements, shielded me when the others came hunting through the blizzard.

My hand drifts to the thick dressing swaddling my bicep, the ache deep and throbbing. A constant reminder of just how close I came to oblivion out there in those merciless peaks.

A rustle of movement draws my gaze, my pulse kicking up a notch as Plague emerges from the shadows.

"You're awake," he rumbles, that deep rasp sending an unexpected shiver racing down my spine. "How are you feeling?"

I blink at him, struggling to marshal my scattered thoughts into some semblance of coherency. "Like I got shot in the arm," I mutter, cringing at the raw edge to my voice.

Plague chuckles beneath his eerie mask. "Lucky for you, you still have an arm," he says dryly. "If that wound had gone untreated much longer, you might have lost the whole thing."

A tremor works its way down my limbs at the thought. He's not wrong—the agony radiating from that ugly furrow is like nothing I've ever felt before. Like someone took a hot poker and rammed it straight through flesh and bone.

Shoving aside the thin blanket, I move to swing my legs over the edge of the cot. "Where are we?" I rasp, fighting a sudden wave of vertigo as the room tilts sickeningly around me. "Back at the compound?"

"Not quite," Plague says, already crossing to my side with long, purposeful strides. "We're in the oligarch's mansion. I set up a temporary clinic here until I could get you stabilized enough to move."

He leans in, light eyes narrowing behind those burnished lenses as he studies me with a clinical intensity that has heat blooming in my cheeks. I tense instinctively, every muscle coiled like a wire as he takes off one leather glove and reaches out to press the backs of his fingers to my forehead.

"You do seem to be running a fever," he muses, his thumb tracing the sharp line of my cheekbone with a tenderness that does not at all match his bloodthirstiness. "Odd. It should have broken hours ago."

I swallow hard, mouth suddenly dry as cotton. My tongue darts out to wet my lips, the innocuous gesture seeming to ensnare his focus.

Those golden lenses track the movement, that rich scent thickening in the air between us. Arousal, heady and intoxicating. I breathe it in, the scent flooding my senses and stoking the embers kindling inside me.

Oh no.

Not now. Please, not this...

"I need to sit up," I grit out, fighting the wave of dizziness crashing over me.

Plague moves to assist, those long-fingered hands sliding beneath my shoulders to guide me upright. The contact is electric, every brush of his skin against mine igniting fresh sparks of blazing need.

My stomach clenches, a low moan escaping my lips before I can stop it. Heat blows through me in a scorching wave, liquid fire pooling between my thighs.

Plague freezes, that predatory stillness falling over him as realization dawns. "Ivy," he rumbles, voice pitched low with a gravelly edge I've never heard before. "Are you going into heat?"

I whimper, fingers twisting in the thin sheets as my body revolts against me. Every nerve is a live wire, every brush of fabric sheer torment against my oversensitive skin.

This can't be happening. Not here, not with them...

Memories of the Center assault me, twisted flashes of sneering guards and cold, clinical "procedures." I was just a thing to them, an object to be used and discarded, my heats nothing more than a fresh torment to be endured.

But here, surrounded by alphas—by Plague—the terror is laced with something darker, more primal. The promise of pleasure and pain, of sweet surrender and the loss of everything that makes me who I am.

"Ivy." Plague's voice cuts through the haze, his fingers curling around my chin to tilt my face up to meet the blank golden stare of his lenses. "Look at me."

I obey the gentle command, frozen. His alpha scent swirls thick and heady between us. I've only ever experienced an alpha's bark as a brutal, self-serving command, but as simple as this one is, it fills me with… relief. Some of the tension seeps from my muscles, the heat building beneath my veins becoming a little easier to bear.

There's no menace behind his command. No cruelty, no condescension, no dark promise of violence to come. Just a strange sort of reverence, a hushed awe that seems out of place on this hardened killer.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he murmurs, the words a rasping caress that sends goosebumps rippling across my skin. "Not like they did."

A shudder wracks me at the implication, the memories clawing at the edges of my consciousness. He knows. Somehow, this twisted, ruthless alpha has glimpsed the horrors of my past and promises to shield me from them.

"Please," I whisper, fingers curling in the coarse fabric of his shirt as I lean into his solid warmth. "Make it stop. I can't... I need..."

Plague's free hand comes up to cup my cheek, those calloused pads tracing the line of my jaw with infinite tenderness. "I can't stop it completely with a suppressant—not with the other medications already in your system." His voice is a low, smoky rasp that seems to vibrate in my very bones. "But I can ease the fire, if you'll let me."

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