Page 3 of Feral Alphas

I glance along the windowless hallway. Can’t blame the younger omega for feeling trapped in here when there’s no windows. Something about pathogens, I think Jackie said when I asked about it years ago. But the conversation with O-18 got me thinking.

I lick my tongue around my dry mouth. “Well, if we don’t see any improvement this month, can I go study to get a regular job or something like a beta would? I’m wasting my life in here doing nothing and it seems like I won’t ever improve.”

She swipes her card against the door to my room. “I wasn’t going to say anything because I didn’t want to excite you, but there’s someone coming to meet you tomorrow.”

I spin so fast I knock my hand against the doorframe. “A pack?”

“Careful!” Jackie twitches in alarm and dives into the cupboard full of medical things to hand me a single-use icepack, cracking it to combine the chemicals.

I smile. If this was some illegal place like O-18 hinted at, the staff wouldn’t care about a few bruises, and they wouldn’t have looked after me all these years.

“Who cares about that!” I snatch the gel pad and rest it on the back of my hand to please her. “Who’s coming?”

Jackie shakes her head. “I can’t say, but with the recent tests we’ve done and rising markers, we now believe you’re more likely to go into heat around alphas. But promise me you’ll eat and sleep well.” She checks my skin for bruising. “You don’t want black bags under your eyes with guests coming to meet you.”

Excitement pulses through me so hard I spasm, running on the spot to let some of the wild energy out. “Yes! Yes! I will. But can’t you tell me their name or a description? Anything, something?”

Jackie mimes zipping her mouth shut and points for me to put the ice pack back on. I grin as I wrap it around my arm, feeling the cold slowly seep into my skin as the chemical reaction works. Funny, they can make this thick liquid turn from room temperature to freezing cold in an instant, but in the ten years since my maturity, they haven’t been able to figure out why I can’t go into heat.

But something is finally happening!

“I’ll bring your dinner tray early, so please rest. And don’t collect any more bruises!” Jackie frowns at me and I salute her out the door, promising to be good.

It’s easier to promise than do because I can’t think about anything besides the possibility of getting a pack. I mean, to be fair, she didn’t exactly say an alpha is coming, or that he’s looking for a pack, but for my entire life that’s all I’ve dreamt of, so I can’t help fixating on the possibility, even if it’s slight. But she did say I’d be around alphas, right? That they might be able to bring on my heat.

But if that’s so, why didn’t we try that sooner?

The thought bugs me as I toss and turn, trying to sleep but hearing every voice in the corridor and catching every scent in my room.

Alphas; the unknown, magical Prince Charmings I see in the movies, sweeping in to aid distressed omegas and soothe their heats and souls with alpha control plus their legendary knots. The ones who will give me a lovely omega name once I’m part of their pack.

A giggle slips through my lips, and I press my fists to my mouth to block the sound. I’m too old to be acting like a giddy schoolgirl, yet that’s what I’m doing.

O-18 is wrong. We’re here to receive treatment, and, finally, after all these years I’m seeing results.

I roll over on my bed and flip my pillow to the cool side, then will myself to fall asleep so I don’t look any older when I meet my visitor in the morning. Tomorrow could be the day everything changes.

Chapter two

O-4

Footsteps march along the hallway outside my room, and I retreat from the doorway to make space in the small area, wriggling in excitement when my sensitive ears hear the sounds stop in front of my door.

“Designation O-4. Twenty-seven years old. Blond, five-foot six. First heat suppressed for ten years. Is that what you want?” Jackie’s voice filters under the door. Suppressed? What does that mean? She’s my main nurse but although her voice is recognizable, she sounds different today. Detached.

An unfamiliar, raspy voice with an accent replies, “Let’s take a look.”

I scramble onto the bed, chest aching as if my pounding heart is pushing against the skin. The solid white door slides open, and my blue-coated nurse walks in with papers under one arm and the med kit in her other hand, followed by a wiry man with tattoos up his arms who reeks of cigarette smoke. Judging from the underlying scent of him, he’s a beta, like most of the staff here.

My shoulders slump a little as I process the fact he’s not an alpha.

Jackie drops her case on the desk while the newcomer eyes me up and down appraisingly and nods. “She’s pretty enough. Canyou guarantee she’s been heat free?” Weakness steels up my legs. Of course I’ve never had a heat.

With an annoyed smack of the papers in her hand, Jackie shakes her head. “Would we still be in business if we didn’t live up to our word?”

She hasn’t looked at me yet and I draw back, a squirmy sensation tugging at my stomach. “Jackie? What’s going on?” She doesn’t sound at all like the gentle nurse who’s braided my hair and brought me art supplies.

The man smirks at me and that quirk of his cracked lips sends jitters down my spine. I hiss angrily to release the nerves knotting inside, which makes his cruel smile deepen. “And I see she’s feisty.”

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