Page 1 of Omega Alliance

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SIN

They chose me because I had nobody to stop them. Nobody to love me. Nobody to care.

But now everyone knows my name, my face, my life. And whatever reaction I elicit in them, it’s sure to be strong.

My name is Sin, and my life hasn't belonged to me in a very long time. Instead it's become a commodity for public consumption.

I am the so-called people’s omega, a pretty little plaything put up on a stage so the audience won’t notice the many liberties our directors are taking behind the scenes.

By controlling me, they control us all.

At least that’s what I’ve managed to gather from bits and pieces of overheard conversations and whispered concerns, words that were never meant for my ears. That was mostly in the early days. My captors have since become much better at keeping their secrets from me.

They plan my days down to the very second. Where I’ll be, what I’ll wear, who is allowed to watch, and for what price.

I don’t blame the watchers. They aren’t the ones who put me here, and in a way, they suffer far more than I ever have. That is, if my memories of the outside world have remained true rather than becoming warped by the passage of time. Still, I would rather be part of that broken world than kept whole in isolation.

I am a delicate bird trapped inside a gilded cage. Every single need is met, and yet I never get to fly.

I am also among the last of my kind. An omega.

Nobody knows why our numbers dwindled, seemingly overnight. Birth rates plummeted while infant mortality rates skyrocketed. So even when a coveted omega baby is born, it remains unlikely that she’ll ever live to see adulthood.

For whatever reason, alphas and betas are unaffected. Whatever virus or curse took hold, it is ours to bear and ours alone.

Some alpha packs happily shifted their affections onto beta females, and as a result, their lineages became tainted. Only an omega can bear an alpha child. Betas always birth betas, which means the alpha population is now rapidly declining as well.

Sometimes I think maybe that’s the way it should be. That people should just be people, defined by their experiences and personalities rather than some outdated notion of biologic predetermination.

The future is bright, I say. The future is beta.

Yet here I remain, stuck on the razor edge of our perilous present with precious few to share my outlook.

I am well cared for, pampered even, but I have no agency in my own life. I’ve been caged for seven long years. So long that I can’t remember the sky, what the wind once felt like rushing beneath my wings.

I’ve only been the people’s omega for four years. My first three under the watch of the director and his team were to get me ready, get “the experiment” ready.

To my knowledge, I am the only one in this exact situation. Perhaps I’m just the first of many, or perhaps this cross is only meant for me to carry.

The packs who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—claim a beta mate had become unruly, lawless. That’s what they say. Those packs needed females to take as their own, to desire, protect, and cherish. And so my captors found me. In a way, my virtual presence has completed each of these unmatched packs. Provided they follow the rules that govern them, all omega-less alphas are invited to become watchers. Yes, even those with betas.

They can turn on their devices to see me at any time. There is nowhere in my house that isn’t captured by cameras and broadcast to my society of admirers. They can even put in for lotteries to dictate decisions about my life—what I’ll wear on a given day for starters.

The truly favored are granted private sessions with me. For two hours every week, I go offline. I am then brought into a secure room that is split in two, each half separated by thick bulletproof glass. I touch myself while they look on, instruct my movements, join in from the other side.

It’s the only time I ever come in any contact with men. The few others in my life are female, though I suspect the captors are male themselves.

I only know what they tell me and what I’ve been able to piece together from their few slips over the years. Like I said, they’re getting better, which in turn means my bonds are growing even tighter.

My life hasn’t belonged to me in seven long years, and I say it’s time for that to change.

They’re adding another tattoo. A purple-ink snowdrop flower on my inner left thigh. The blossom looks sad, defeated as it droops toward the ground. Doesn’t it know that if it just looked up, it would see the sun?

“This will hurt,” Dani warns, her lips pressed into a firm line as she readies her ink gun filled with a blackberry hue selected by the pack who won the latest lottery, giving them the power to paint my body with whatever image or symbol they chose.

“It always hurts,” I mutter beneath my breath.

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