Page 33 of Knot the Alphas' Feral Omega

I nodded, the old hurt blending with my new pain. “Thank you. Oliver got really fucked up over it, and he hasn’t gotten over it. Especially since the Slicer has been missing ever since, and the police never found him.” Katrina nodded, and I continued, myvoice a little more hesitant, “We got a letter...a few days ago. The day that we were set to bond with Lilah.”

She raised her eyebrows, and I continued, “It was from Hunter. He claimed that Lilah was his daughter and that he couldn’t wait to get to know her.” I paused at the panic that was written all over Katrina’s face and hurried to finish, “Lilah told us that she’d never known who her father was, but Oliver...Oliver went a little crazy. He didn’t believe her when he confronted her over the letter, and he rejected her before I could come home and smooth things over between the four of us.” I swallowed. “I would have. I need you to know that. I...I care about your daughter so much. Not just as our scent-match, but as a person. And when I came home to hear what Oliver had done...”

Katrina let out a little humorless snort. “I’m sure you weren’t happy.”

“I ran away,” I confirmed. “I shifted and tracked Lilah to the van where she was being carried away. And now it’s been a few days, and you’re telling me she’s at Melvin...”

Katrina suddenly grasped my hand with her other hand, holding me with both weak palms and determination blazing in her eyes. “Now you listen to me,” she suddenly said, her voice strong and curt. “You’re going to go to Melvin, and you’re going to do whatever you have to in order to get my daughter out. I see how much you care for her and how much you want to help. I don’t care if your pack decides against bonding with her in the end. Lilah is wonderful, and any pack would be lucky to have her.”

The thought of any other pack having her made a pang ring through my chest, but I nodded. “I’m not family, though.”

“Get me a piece of paper and a pen,” Katrina ordered. I hurried to obey, digging through drawers until I found the supplies in question, and with a shaking hand, Katrina penned a quick letter. After signing it at the bottom, she handed it to me, fixing me with an intense look. “Go get my daughter. Help her out. If you even care a little about her, you’ll do this for me...before I’m gone.”

Panic swirled inside me at the thought of Lilah not getting to see her mother one more time, and I tucked the letter into the pocket of my jeans before standing up. “I will. I promise. I’m going now.”

I turned on my heel and hurried away before Katrina could say another word. I nodded at the nurse, who was sitting in the chair outside the bedroom door, knitting. She eyed me suspiciously but nodded her farewell in return, and then I practically bounced out of the house, already putting the directions for Melvin Rehabilitation in my phone.

I had an omega to retrieve.

16

Lilah

Time blended together, and I was barely conscious enough to know when I was awake and surrounded by people who were allegedly trying to help me and when I was unconscious and blissfully unaware.

When I was awake, every sensation that I had was dulled. I knew that was on purpose, and I couldn’t find it in myself to care. They ran tests on me, drawing my blood and locking steel cuffs around my paws to make sure I didn’t move as they poked and prodded me. I lifted my head a tiny bit one day, near the beginning, and they hit me with a dose of sedative so strong that my nose went numb, and I couldn’t smell them anymore.

It took a long time before my sense of smell came back, and after that, I didn’t try to fight them. I didn’t twitch or give any hint that I was awake and conscious when there was someone in the room with me. All I could do was lay there and allow them to dowhatever they were going to do to me—the pokes, the needles, the irrational testing.

I knew that I should care. I knew that whatever they were doing was probably unethical. I didn’t even know where I was, but if it was an institution run by the state, there was no way that what they were doing was in any way ethical towards shifters. Humans didn’t like us, and if someone had reported me shifting to land me here in the first place...

Well, to say that I was fucked was putting it lightly.

It was funny, really. I could smell that at least one of them was a beta wolf, and based on his familiar scent, he was one of the original group that had captured me. His voice was crooning and condescending, and he had a tendency to sit by me and run his fingers through my fur near my ears as if I were an enormous dog. He was simply petting me, trying to make sure that I stayed calm while the doctors did their work.

It was dehumanizing, and as the hours and days passed, I started to forget exactly what I was doing here in the first place and what they were waiting for. I vaguely remembered that the doctor had told me what needed to happen in order for me to leave, but as more time passed, I couldn’t remember the exact requirements. The human part of myself, which was normally so easy to reach, retreated further into the back of my animal hindbrain until the idea of humanity itself was almost foreign.

I wasn’t a human anymore. I wasn’t a shifter. I was a wolf, an omega, and...god, I was hurting. All the while, I was hurting. My heart ached, broken from something I couldn’t even recall.

I couldn’t even remember what had sent me here in the first place anymore. I knew there were things that I needed to do outside of these four walls, but I just...couldn’t.

At least here, I was safe—relatively, anyway. I wasn’t under the impression that the doctors who were looking after me were doing so altruistically, and the number of pinpricks and bruises that appeared under my fur as my days of treatment went on only helped to support the possible sinister motives of my internment.

At one point, I was able to come back to myself enough that I was aware when one of the doctors came near me, poking at my teeth with a gloved finger, a fascinated expression on his face.

I snapped at him. My teeth clamped down over his finger, and the yelp of pain that he let out, as well as the warm gush of blood that leaked through the hole in his glove, filled a primal satisfaction inside of me that made me want to stand up and domore.

I wanted to attack them. I wanted to howl with anger. I wanted to run. I wanted to look for the person on the other end of the connection inside me—the one that stung and tugged in equal measure.

Of course, they didn’t take kindly to me attacking one of their own. They sedated me immediately, and when I woke up again, there was a muzzle clamped over my snout. I couldn’t even open my mouth to eat, and they fed me through a tube for I don’t know how long.

It was hell—actual hell on earth, and the despair that filled me was in equal parts due to my “treatment” and...whatever reason had sent me here in the first place.

WhywasI here?

My fur itched, and the chains around my ankles made it so that I couldn’t even reach down to scratch myself with my claws. They’d been filed down after my first attempt at swiping at one of the attendants, anyway, so they wouldn’t be any good even if I could move.

There was a low hum of conversation around me, and for the first time in a while, I was lucid enough to hear some of the words being spoken.

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