Page 12 of Into the Fire: After
“When you have one omega for every hundred alphas, the unlucky ones don’t just go home to die alone. They flouted the laws. Took their male lovers, mated their betas, invited female alphas into their packs. They rallied for the laws banning all those things to change, and they won. Only after all that did they turn to omega rights.
“Omegas havealwaysbeen commoditized. They were a limited resource.” Nova’s stare bore into my soul. “But what happens if the ultra-rich, the ultra-powerful canproduceomegas?” Unease ran down my spice like dripping ice. “What happens when the fuckers who’ve always viewed omegas as trophies and fuck dolls can literally create as many omegas as they want? Give them away or sell them as they please?”
My breath was barely a wisp in my lungs. “They take the money.”
Nova nodded. “We are only free because they thought we were disappearing. Few enough of us that even the richest aren’t guaranteed one of their own. At least, not without sullying their hands to get it. The moment that changes…”
Nausea burned through my gut. I had to get back to Taryn, but I had to know more. Her life—her freedom—depended on it. “How do you know all this?”
Nova hesitated, the first flicker of uncertainty behind her eyes. She rubbed her temples, squeezing her eyes shut and sighing.
Why it hit me that moment, I didn’t know. Maybe the way a strand of gold hair fell across her face as she looked up at me, or the suddenly youthful vulnerability that shone there.
I’d seen this face before.
“Wait, Nova…” A photo, printed and placed on my coffee table. One ghost among many. It had been a little fuzzy, a few years younger. “Nova Morgan, from Farendale?”
She said nothing, which was confirmation enough. One of the other omegas—like Taryn—born to mothers in the drug trials. One of the eight missing omegas.
I’d found her.
She’dfoundme.
“Everyone thinks you’re dead,” I said, voice dull.
“Better they think that,” she said. “Then I can stay here and they can stay there and things can go on being all right.”
“All right?” I charged from the chair so quickly it nearly toppled as I stormed to the window and leaned my palms against the sill. Furious tears stung my eyes, and I didn’t want her to see. “Nothing is all right! Some one-percenter eugenicist asshat is disappearing omegas left, right, and center with no one the wiser. The latest one beingmy fucking omega. Half of our pack are missing, probably dead, we’re stuck here in the middle of a goddamn B-movie horror set, and you think this isall right?”
“Deal with this long enough and your benchmark for ‘all right’ will shift.”
Shaking fingers threaded through my hair. “You might be content to sit back and let the rest of the world deal with the problem, but I sure as hell am not.” I turned to glare at her.“Now, you’re going to tell me everything you know, and then you’re going to help me get back to my omega and help us get the fuck out of these mountains.”
She didn’t answer. I turned back to the window.
Inhale. Exhale.
Had to keep calm. Keep a clear head. That was hard enough with the still-persistent ache and throb. So, back to Point A: Keep calm and scheme on.
I focused on the landscape outside the window. Nova’s hideaway sat on a rocky outcropping, trees sheltering us from view, but an expansive mountainside stretched out below us. The gray sky melted into a fog that shrouded the treetops. Slick brown leaves covered the muddy ground, uneven divots making the land look rough and untouched.
I blinked, looking closer.
Those weren’t divots. They weretire wells.
Far from untouched, then.
My heart sped.
I listened then, the eery silence pressing against my ears like a vise around my head.
Silence.
That river had been so loud I could still hear it at the cave. It had never really been out of earshot from the moment we first found it.
But I couldn’t hear it now.
Nova couldn’t have dragged me this far from the river, let alone however far we actually were from Falcon’s Edge.
