Page 14 of Fallen Omega

I bet I can find a cheap liquor store here.

I keep walking, going deeper into the Avenues.

I pass a grimy bar and then a tattoo parlor. I turn into another street.

The pink of low-lit neon draws me. The sign says Pandora’s Box. I go closer. It’s a bar, I think, but not one of those rough ones—upscale, maybe even with more of a club vibe.

That’s the other thing about the Avenues. Parts are getting classier, if that’s the right word. Sold, bought, and then reimagined.

Maybe this is one of those places.

The sign seems simple, quaint, just the words in fancy script. There’s not a naked lady in sight or any kind of advertisement for strippers, topless waitresses, or burlesque.

A nice enough place—nice, for this part of town—where I can find out where a good liquor store is and maybe have a few to take off the growing edge inside me.

I stand outside long enough that a mountain of a man appears in the doorway and eyes me. His hair’s long, pulled back, and he’s bearded.

Handsome. Virile. I can smell it.

I don’t want him, even with my coming heat. Whatever pheromones I pick up from him don’t engulf me in need and wild urges. Like what I smell is just a natural thing, something that comes from an attractive and wild man mountain.

I think he’s a beta but somewhere in my mind I remember Dad stating love can happen with anyone. That it’s only the council who sets rules against it.

But inside my bones, I know another truth.

One I don’t want to know.

A truth I want to run from.

I need an alpha.

I need an alpha to help with my heat, to ease the ache, assuage that itch, stop the pain.

Not now, not today. But one day. In the unseen future.

Dad knew this because he never mentioned thetypeof anyone he wanted me to love. Never once said beta or gamma.He meant, without stating it, an alpha. But one of my choosing.

“Are you coming in or staying out?” the bearded man asks. “Make up your mind.”

Someone comes out of the club, and carries with her a whiff of something intoxicating, something I crave. “I’m going in.”

“Well then, come on.”

He holds open the door and I walk past him.

Chapter

Four

Dante

Fuck.

What the actual fuck’s Julien thinking, letting her in here? The omega who slammed me hard in the guts with a feral need to rut and mark as mine even standing outside a fucking car?

I sip my drink calmly. Only the dip in Reaper’s gaze to the way my fingers tighten a fraction says he understands my inner state.

Reap always knows.

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