Page 12 of Shadowlands Omega

His eyes flash, and so does his hand. He strikes my cheek and I land hard against stone, rattling that fallen, forgotten shackle, unable to decide what, of my many ailments, hurts worst of all.All of them. Everything hurts worst of all.

I blink, look up and see him flexing his hand over and over. He’s staring down, tone icy and startling as he says, “Omega.” His nostrils flare, nose morphing seamlessly into that of an enormous beast before quickly shifting back. The whole thing lasts less than a second and momentarily makes me think I’m losing my mind. He reaches for me, probably to hurt me again.

“No,” I say.

He hesitates, hands flexing into claws, before he closes the distance and grabs me by the shin. He yanks me beneath his body and with his free hand cups the back of my head and lifts my torso off of the ground. His nose drags down my cheek, sometimes hard and angled, other times soft and wet. It’s still wet and cold and massive as it presses directly beneath my ear, stimulating senses I didn’t know I had. My toes curl. Desire and pain split me in two, but I have another thought that eclipses both.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” he growls. “You will pay for this. You will suffer. But first, you will track down the murderers you have freed.”

I don’t care what he's talking about. All I care is that he’s this close to me. “You really are a good boy, aren’t you, Yaron?”

He rears up and back and meets my gaze before letting it rake down my naked chest. His mouth opens, his fangs flash, he dips his head. “You call me Yaron again, I’ll tear out your tongue…” His palm slides up over my stomach to rest right between my breasts. I tense. “And rip your heart out of your chest.”

I mayknowthat he’s a good boy, but I still don’t dare speak again.

4 | Yaron

Paradise Hole

This Omega isn’t well.Not only is she struggling along, in clear agony, but somehow still upright — but she’s addressed me by my given name now. And she’s done ittwice. She called me a good boy. I feel my trousers tighten, hardly able to believe that I heard what I did. I must have hallucinated it. I’ve met Omegas many times before in my life and none have dared speak to me as she did. Even the Fallen Earth Omega, for as feral as she was, seemed to know her place. The Fallen Beast Omega avoided speaking to me altogether, disgusted by Alphas in general.

I watch the Omega in my care now, lagging as she attempts to keep up with the Alphas and Betasin crimson.She has dark brown skin covered in scrapes and scratches, unwashed since I pulled her from the rubble. She wears a plain shift. I’m not certain where Radmilla procured it, because it looks like a potato sack with holes for a head and arms. She looks impossibly tiny inside of it, even though for a female, she is tall. Above it, her face shines with brutality, especially now that she has no hair to cover it. Without hair, she looks smaller. Okayo must have shaved away the burned sections when he administered to her. He cut it all the way down to her scalp. And now, the mark left behind from when I hit her shines in violent clarity. She’s a murderer, at the very least complicit in murder…but it still didn’t feel good to hit her, to strike her face…

Her face…the resemblance…

The Fated Omegas and their Fallen counterparts appear as doppelgangers with some small, subtle differences. The Fated and Fallen Earth Omegas share the same hair and skin color. The Fated and Fallen Beast Omegas share the exact same face. This Omega looks eerily like Odette, the Fated Fire Omega, but without hair, it’s not entirely effortless to connect them.She can’t be.It would be too coincidental and I do not believe in coincidence. Besides, this Omega is nothing like the other two I met in the woods. The sturdy and robust Earth Omega or the Beast Omega fully in control of her gifts. This…this Fire Omega is…notweak,no, certainly not that…but she feels nearly waifish…threadbare, just as thin as the smoke that she creates.

And my every sense is keenly attuned to her.

I am not the only one, either. The Alphas among my Crimson Riders have strayed from formation. The Omega trips, again, this time over a thick mangrove root. Malik lunges out of his way to catch her arm.

“Thank you,” she whispers to the Alpha. The Alpha bites his lower lip, nods and does not release her even as she regains her footing. My hand forms claws.

“Malik,” I grit. The Omega and Malik both turn to me, their hands locked like lovers. “If she can kill on her own, she can walk on her own.” I bare my teeth and allow my beast to reveal his fangs. They extend past my lower lip.

“Yes, Lord Yaron.” Malik nods and steps back into formation. I stand at the front of one cluster, which fans out behind me in a V while Sipho leads the other. Malik and Dorsten flank the Omega, who walks in the center of the formation I lead.

I turn my attention away from the group, allowing my beast’s senses to prowl and pull me forward — though it takes effort, much more than it should. “West,” I announce some time later. My Crimson Riders take their next steps in that direction in near perfect unison.

The Omega is a distraction that I abhor. She falls twice more, and the sounds her body makes crashing through the foliage resonate like explosions. It’s grating. I catch the scent of something on the wind, but my beast’s ears seem finely tuned to her shallow breaths and the fact that her parched throat needs water.What is that scent?I turn towards it.The Omega needs water. I turn back.

“My Lord, do you smell that? Sickly sweet,” Sipho says, stopping abruptly. “North.” His face twists away from me, his gaze cast in the direction of the ports. He’s right. I should have identified the scent long before.

It’s distinct, too memorable to ever be forgotten. My hackles rise instantly. Fur sprouts down my spine and stiffens. My toes curl and the claws tipping them threaten to tear through my boots. I lift my nose to the wind and my face forms a snout. With my beast’s senses, I can taste something foul and rotten on the wind, but I can also smell Trash City so precisely, I know the moment that their clan changed direction, veering from north to west, and I can pinpoint the exact place that the murderous Betas lost Trash City’s trail and chose a different path. The wrong one if their intention was to escape me, though I don’t suppose they ever really had that chance.

“Trash City continued west, but the killer’s family changed direction. They’ve gone east, towardsUndoline.” The fools.

I have my guard patrolling the village border. It is the nearest village to Orias and I expected them to seek out their familiars there. From the information I gathered of the killer’s family, they are well liked among the traders in Undoline and may very well have extended family in that area or in the next villages even further east.

“Trash City, meanwhile, ventured deeper into Paradise Hole. They’re headed west.”

“There is nowhere for them to go west,” Sipho says. “Unless they intend to spare us a great effort and throw themselves off of the cliffs.”

I nod. “It is only a matter of time before we root them out, wherever they’re hiding. We will continue west for now through the woods of Paradise Hole, leaving the killer’s family to our guard positioned outside of Undoline.”

Paradise Hole is the name given to the rotten woods that spread and spread and spread. No one knows their provenance, but the rot that once only plagued the North Island has come here and, while Trash City was able to successfully hide itself in the woods of Paradise Hole on the North Island. On the South Island, they will not be so lucky. I guarantee it. I take a step west to lead the charge, but am arrested by Sipho’s voice.

“And the northern scent, my Lord?”

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