Page 2 of Unruly Omega

Today hadn’t been the best, so far. My hip was giving me the most trouble and, though it was only physical discomfort, it triggered my memories. How I got the scarring. How it happened. When it happened.

My screams.

That plus Benson leaving equaled a day where my mental health might be shaky. Not the way I lived my life anymore.

Everyone in the sanctuary needed me to be my best.

They counted on me and the team for healing and stability. I couldn’t help them stabilize if I wasn’t rock solid myself.

While I made my way to the group session, I thought about Benson. He’d not only come out on the other side of violent trauma, but he’d thrived in his recovery.

And found a mate.

I was a bit jealous of that part.

There was a good chance that I’d missed out on that aspect of life, but my bear would never understand why Fate had overlooked us. We’d been to hell and back. I’d been stupid thinking that the flip side of pain held rainbows and sunshine. Some days weren’t, and even though our trauma was not one ounce our fault, we still endured life afterward which sometimes was an extension of the pain.

Perhaps my omega was out there and he deserved better than a broken, battered alpha.

That was the most probable scenario in my head.

“Locke, good to see you. Should we get started, everyone?” I took my seat as Markus called us to attention. He was the one person in this place who hadn’t been experimented on, but he didn’t feel sorry for us.

He taught us to fight in the war inside us instead of being a bystander to the battle. A warrior for ourselves instead of a slave to the past. A survivor instead of a victim.

Some days those were just words.

The hard part was living them out.

Chapter Two

Kellan

I shivered, unable to get warm in the cold night. It had been a long time since I was outside the warren of buildings where we were held by the humans in the white coats with their instruments of torture and devices of bondage.

“A long time” was the closest I could come to expressing the length of my imprisonment. Years for sure. Just not a clue how many. And every day of that time, I’d sought a way out. Watched for any opportunity to free myself from torment.

I didn’t know why I was here, what the white coats were trying to do or if they thought I had done something wrong that led me to this place.

As I scooted under a section of steel fencing that didn’t quite meet the ground, I wondered if I’d been set up. Why would I suddenly have been left unattended, unbound, and with the door to the hallway ajar?

But no matter why, I had to get out of there as soon as possible. If they came after me, I’d deal with that when the time came. My back burned where the wires had dug in, but that would heal with a shift. As I belly crawled over the parking lot and onto the highway verge, there was still no one on my trail. At least, I saw no signs of it. In the past, when an omega made a break for it, there were sirens that I could even hear in my small cell as well as sweeping lights that made my tiny, high window glow. They did not take an omega’s escape lightly. I didn’t know for sure, but I overheard the security team talking about catching one and the punishment he would endure as a result.

They probably caught them all.

Until tonight, I’d never been able to figure out how anyone was able to get outside the labs or their cell, much less thebuilding. But, as I hid in brush beside the highway, I wondered if they had all done it the same way I did—and if there had been more to it than a simple mistake.

Sitting in my cell, boredom was almost worse than the alternative here. Or so I told myself when several days passed without any activity at all. Food trays were shoved through the slot in the door, my water needs met by the sink, and the auto shower that turned on once a day for—if my one-Mississippi-style counting was correct, exactly two minutes. I’d learned to strip and rush over to stand under it the moment it began because if I didn’t, I’d miss the part of the tepid flow that had liquid soap or something like it sending lather over my body. That took thirty seconds. Then one-and-a-half minutes of rinse. Any mistake in this process, or glitch on the part of the system would leave me dirty or, worse, sticky with unrinsed soap in my hair and on my skin. It also burned as it dried, especially in the wounds that littered my body and never seemed to heal.

It wasn’t a great system, but it did make it possible for me to be reasonably clean most of the time.

On the day I escaped, there had been a shower glitch, as in it never came on, and one of my two meals didn’t show up. Not the first time either of these things happened, but I wondered if they were connected to the other elements that contributed to my current position. The parking lot was not empty, but there weren’t many cars there. I didn’t have any way to know if that was normal or not, just more data to absorb in case I did make it away from here. Or even if I didn’t. I was hungry for information, and since the “scientists” didn’t talk to me beyond instructions they might have given a dog and spoke to one another only rarely in my presence, I didn’t get much.

As I sat on the floor, wearing only the boxer shorts they provided me with, hungry and dirty, the door clanged open andthe intercom in the wall barked at me to get to the lab in the next hallway over immediately.

It never ceased to anger me that those orders came as if they’d been waiting for me to do something and I was late. Once, I’d ignored them, but the scar still ridging my buttocks taught me not to do that again.

I pushed off the floor and trudged down the cold tiles of the hallway to my destination. They hadn’t had anyone escort me after the first couple of days. It wasn’t as if I could just continue on out and leave or anything. Every door was sealed, barring the ones they intended me to use. I’d been shown that by my guards and confirmed in those first few weeks that it never changed. In fact, they were electrified. Painfully so.

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