Page 52 of Omega Shattered
"Orion?" Archer said desperately, turning to the one person in our pack who knew how packs worked from previous experience.
"I think we should keep her. The director said we could claim her, right?" Orion looked at River steadily, his accent thickening with emotion.
"We're not fucking biting her!" River snapped. "That's ridiculous. We just met her and now you all want to bond her?"
"I think she's our scentmatch," Orion told him quietly.
"What the actual fuck?" River jumped up and started to stomp around the room. "This is getting ridiculous. First you want to keep her, now it's all scentmatch?"
"Maybe we're not all scentmatches," Orion suggested. "But I'm pretty damn sure she's mine. Her scent hits me right here, and you all know how much I loved Alejandra, but her scent never touched me like this." He tapped his heart.
Quinn's eyes widened. "Scentmatches?"
I contemplated what Orion was saying. The other omegas I'd met either smelled nice or their scents irritated me. Quinn's honey and apple aroma was something I could happily breathe in for the rest of my life. Maybe Orion was right, because therewas something about this omega that had me gripped and while it certainly wasn't comfortable, I couldn't imagine never seeing her again, even while mad at her.
"I think he's right," I said slowly. "She's our scentmatch."
"Okay, you're all insane." River turned and left the room, shutting the door hard behind him.
We all stood there, staring after our leader. Then Quinn took a shuddering breath and said, "I'm not going to break up your pack."
Chapter 28
Pack Breaker
Everyone was angry at each other. Once it was obvious River wasn't coming back, Orion and Kade started fighting over who was pushing River too far. Archer snapped at them to shut up and tugged me onto his lap on the bed, out of the way of the two men facing off in the middle of the room. And of course, River was furious with all of us, but especially me.
I'd never considered that I might want to go back to the ORC, but watching them all fight because of me had me wishing River had just taken me back that first day. We'd all been better off thinking that the other designation was awful. Then my heat had come along and suddenly a pack that seemed to be completely stable had dissolved into chaos.
The nurse came in at one point to remove my IV and told me I could leave with my pack. I nearly burst into tears as I explained that they weren't my pack.
"Then you will need to be signed out by someone who is in charge of you," she told me.
I just nodded. That would be River, but he hadn't come back for two hours and no one knew where he was. Archer tried calling, but the call went to voicemail.
The next knock on the door, my heart dropped. I knew who it was.
"I'm Jackson, here to take the runaway omega off your hands," a tall, slender alpha stepped into the room. His eyes landed on me and he immediately strode across the rooms, clamping a pair of handcuffs onto my wrists. "Let's go. Thank you, gentlemen, for protecting ORC property until I was able to get here."
"Wait!" Kade stepped forward. "You can't just take her."
"Well, unless you've claimed her and have the paperwork, I think I can."
Kade's hands balled into fists and I held up a hand to calm him.
"It's okay, Kade. Just go fix things with River. I never meant to destroy your pack."
"That's what omegas do," Jackson snorted. "Let's go, omega." He jerked on the connecting chain to my handcuffs and pulled me out of the room.
The men stood there, obviously not certain about their next steps. Then Archer leaped forward.
"What if we do claim her?"
"You can't," I told him. "Your whole pack has to be in agreement and you know River isn't up for that."
"She's right. No random biting or you'll find that your whole pack falls apart." The agent practically dragged me down the hall, his long legs moving much faster than my shorter ones.
We burst out into the bright parking lot, my feet scraping on the rough salt spread over the concrete outside the doors. Then he was dragging me across ice and snow toward a huge black SUV.
