Page 21 of Unhinged Omega

I flip her off and tug open the door leading into the pitch black corridor below. Fucking fuse must have blown again. But when I flip the switch, the lights come on one by one, illuminating the row of storage rooms we've been using as a makeshift jail. Usually, the cells are only occupied when my men get a little too rowdy.

Or Lex. It's often Lex.

But for right now, they're all reserved for our VIP.

I flip the switch and watch as the lights flicker to life, illuminating the dank corridor before me. The smell of mildew and stale air hits me as I descend the stairs, my boots echoing off the concrete walls. It's a familiar scent, one that reminds me of countless other hideouts and safehouses I've inhabited over the years.

But as I reach the bottom of the stairs, another scent cuts through the musty air. Something... different.

Intoxicating.

Impossible.

My steps falter as it washes over me, unlike anything I've encountered before. It's sweet, but not cloying. Pure, but not innocent. It calls to something primal within me, something I thought I'd buried years ago beneath layers of ambition and dried blood and ruthlessness.

I shake my head, trying to clear it. I've smelled omegas before. Plenty of them. But never like this. Never so...

Fuck.

A part of me wants to turn back, to retreat to the safety of my office and send someone else to deal with our "guest." Because suddenly, I'm not so sure I can trust myself.

But I am a Vrissian alpha. I may be Vrissianscum, but I am Vrissian nonetheless. Not some spineless Reinmichian coward hiding behind the Council or a posh elitist Surhiiran who'drather hide in a university tower rather than get his hands dirty in the real world.

I face my problems.

Head fucking on.

I force myself to keep walking, even as that scent grows stronger with each step. It wraps around me like a silken cord, tugging me forward. By the time I reach her cell, my heart is pounding in my chest in a way it never has all the countless times I've faced death, my mouth dry as cotton.

I peer through the small window in the heavy metal door, and for a moment, all I can see is a spill of silvery-white hair across the pillow. She's facing away from me, curled up on the cot like a sleeping cat. But even from here, I can tell the curves of her body beneath the thin blanket are all woman, soft and inviting in a way that makes my fingers itch to stroke something other than a trigger for the first time in months.

For a moment, I wonder if she's in heat. That would explain the intensity of her scent, the way it's affecting me. But no—there's none of that musky undertone that comes with a heat cycle.

This is just... her.

Pure and undiluted.

Pure what…?

I rack my brain for any scent to compare it to, but despite the fact that I come up empty, there's an undeniable familiarity there.

No, that scent isn't like anything else on earth. But Idohave a frame of reference. An image—no, a full-sensory fucking experience—that pops into my mind as she stirs in her sleep and the threadbare sheet slips away from those gloriously thick, milky thighs.

Moonlight.

What the fuck does that even mean?

How can somethingsmelllike moonlight?

No one's even set foot on that useless rock since we decided killing each other and blowing up this one was a better use of funds. Even if I could ask the last trillionaire asshole who went up there, he'd probably say it smelled like fucking space dust and astronaut breath, not…

Whatever the fuck this is.

Before I realize what I'm doing, my hand is on the door handle. The rational part of my brain screams at me to stop, to think this through. But that voice is drowned out by the blood rushing in my ears, by the need to get closer to the source of that impossible scent.

The door swings open with a metallic groan, and she stirs at the sound. I hold my breath as she sits up slowly, that silvery hair cascading down her back like a waterfall.

And then she turns, and I'm lost.

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