Page 55 of Omega Shattered
"No, your director gave you permission to claim her."
"She wanted me to use her like a tool to get off," he snarled. "There was nothing remotely okay about that offer."
"Are you mad about that?"
"You can't treat people, even omegas, like toys or possessions."
I smiled. He was getting there.
"So, you don't want to treat her like a possession. But that's exactly what could happen with another pack," I pointed out.
River looked miserably at me. "She's not going to a pack, Orion. Laura told me that omegas with heatshock in their medical history are undesireable to packs."
His announcement hit me like a boulder to the chest. "She's going to the heat dens?"
"That's what Laura said."
"And you let them take her." I couldn't keep the cold fury from my voice. "Knowing where she was headed."
"I didn't know what to do."
There was a hollow place inside me, knowing that not only was Quinn not getting a pack that deserved her, but she was going to the heat dens she'd been so afraid of. And it was our fault. If we'd tended to her when her heat first started, she never would have entered heatshock.
"Fuck."
"She's in a cell in the basement," Kade called out, thundering down the stairs, laptop in hand.
"I thought you were showering," River said, as surprised as I was to see him still in the same clothes. Kade never wore his travel clothes in the house.
"I was about to, but then I remembered I installed the security system in the center and I left myself a backdoor."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it's what I always do." He tilted his head, not understanding why I would question his methods. "Anyway. I started going through the feeds and I found her. They took her downstairs to the basement. It's supposed to be for feral omegas, but obviously she's not feral. They're punishing her for running."
He set the laptop on the coffee table and showed us the screen. There was nightvision turned on, because the cell must be dark. It was a tiny space, with just enough room to walk past the bed ledge to the corner the camera was in, supposedly where a toilet was located.
Quinn sat on the bed, with something dark under her, knees pulled up to her chest, resting her head on her knees. She was completely naked and I knew for a fact that room was concrete.
"She must be freezing. They didn't even give her a blanket or clothes?" I stood up, ready to march into the center right now and tear everyone apart until they turned my omega over to me.
"Fuck." River was staring horrified at the screen. "She told me it was bad, but I didn't believe her. I've worked with them for years. How many omegas have I sent to that fate?"
"This is just a holding cell," Kade told him. "She'll eventually be released to a pack."
"No, she won't." I told him what River had said earlier.
Kade went silent and still, his ice blue eyes focused on nothing above River's head. We waited, knowing that this was his method of processing things.
Archer came into the room, his mouth open to say something, but he shut it when he saw Kade. Instead, he moved to sit on the opposite end of the sofa from River.
Finally, Kade moved again. He dropped to the floor to sit in front of the laptop and started tapping madly. Rooms flashed by on the screen until he reached a classroom. Then he sped the footage backwards to a class in session.
"You didn't believe the marks on her body," he said too calmly. "That's where they came from." We watched in horror as a beta guard lashed out with his electric shock stick and zapped an omega who had raised her hand. She jerked and fell off her chair and the guard shocked her again, laughing. Then someone else must have made a noise, because he spun and shocked that woman too.
"She was telling the truth." River looked devastated.
"We all trusted her, but you couldn't." Archer leaned back, letting his head fall against the cushions. "This is so much worse than I imagined."
