Page 90 of Unhinged Omega

A low, exhausted growl rumbles in his chest at my touch, but he doesn't stir as the questions pile up in my mind. Each scar tells a story of unimaginable pain. Surgical scars, burn marks, places where it looks like flesh was simply carved away and replaced with metal. These aren't all battle injuries.

Someone did this to him on purpose.

"What did they do to you?" I whisper, more to myself than to him.

His visible eye flutters beneath its lid, and I snatch my hand back. But he remains unconscious, his breathing labored and shallow. The blue-black blood continues to seep from his wounds, darkening the already murky water around his submerged legs.

I should leave him here. Let the river take him, or wait for exposure and blood loss to finish what Nikolai's men started.

It would be the smart thing to do.

Thesafething.

But I can't.

Maybe it's because I'm tired of running. Maybe it's because I'm curious about the connection between us. Why he's haunted my dreams all these years, why he came looking for me.

Or maybe I'm just losing my fucking mind.

It wouldn't be the first time.

Either way, I need to do something. Fast.

Looking around the desolate forest, I spot patches of scraggly weeds and herbs growing between the charred trees. My mother's voice echoes in my memory, teaching me which plantscan heal and which can harm. It wasn't proper for an omega of my station to learn such things, but she insisted. Said someday I might need to know.

I never thought that day would come while trying to save the monster from my nightmares.

My bare feet are numb as I pick my way through the underbrush, gathering what I can find. Most of the plants are twisted and mutated from radiation, but I can still make out what they once were. Yarrow for bleeding. Feverfew for his burning skin. Even some wild garlic, though it looks more like tentacles than bulbs now.

The sun sinks lower as I work, and my fingers tremble from the cold as I tear strips from my robe to make bandages. I use the cleanest scraps I can find from his tattered gray pants too, though there isn't much salvageable material. It'll have to do. I mash up the herbs with river stones and squash the pulp mixture into the makeshift bandages before packing them into the Knight's wounds.

Cleaning his wounds isn't possible here. Not with the only water source being the color of piss. Some of the Knight's gashes are deep, especially where the metal rods were blown from his back. The herb-treated fabric soaks through almost immediately wherever I stuff it into the wounds, but it's better than nothing.

He lets out a low growling moan. This has to hurt, but he doesn't wake up, even as his metal hand twitches and those wicked claws dig furrows in the mud.

"I'm sorry," I mumble to him as I work, meaning it for some reason.

I must be insane.

Absolutely,certifiablyinsane.

In sleep, his face loses some of its ferocity. The permanent snarl of exposed teeth seems less threatening somehow. More tragic than terrifying. Like everything else about him, it speaksof violation. Of someone or something trying to turn him into a weapon, a monster, by literally tearing away his humanity.

But I've seen real monsters.

My father.

Monty.

Alphas who wear pleasant faces.

This creature... for all his terrifying appearance, there's something almost innocent about him. The way he followed me through the forest, not attacking, just watching me. Like he couldn't quite believe I was real.

Like he's been looking for me as long as I've been running from him.

"Why me?" I murmur, knowing I won't get an answer. "Why have you been hunting me all these years?"

His back rises and falls with each ragged breath, but otherwise, he remains still. The glow from the eye hidden by his mask—it must still be open somehow, maybe because it's damaged like the rest of him—has dimmed further, barely visible now.

---