Page 68 of Their Perfect Omega

Anya.

“Kara? Wake up.” A soft hand touched my cheek, the owner smelling like a jar of Nutella.

“Kayla?” I croaked, trying to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt like they were glued shut. Why did my body and mind feel so heavy? It felt like I hadn’t slept in days, and there was this bone-deep soreness like I’d never experienced before. “Where’s Anya?”

“She’s alive and had to have surgery. She’s probably out now, I’m not sure.” Kayla was on the bed with me, and I managed to open my eyes just as she raised the bed so we weren’t lying down. “How are you feeling?”

I lifted my left hand and it felt like a hunk of lead. There was an IV in my forearm and I was hooked up to a monitor that was on but was silent. “What happened? Surgery? Where am I?”

Kayla shimmied out of the bed and grabbed a pink cup and pitcher from a rolling table. “You’ve been asleep for at least twelve hours. Here, drink some water.”

I was still a little out of it, and I appreciated her being here. It was keeping me calm when I should have been freaking out. Why wasn’t I freaking out?

OPS, Pack Health, and law enforcement had shown up at the cabin.They knew.They knew and had tried to come and take me away from my pack.

My pack.

My stomach turned with nausea, and I took a sip of the water Kayla handed me. It tasted funny, but my throat and mouth were dry, so I drank the rest.

She went to the window and opened the curtain, revealing a morning sky.“I got here only a few hours ago and my pack is working on finding out more information. They aren’t allowed in here, though, so they’re in the waiting room on the bonded side of the floor.”

She’d come all the way from Los Angeles with her pack? I felt my head, looking for any bumps. “Did I hit my head? My brain is a little... fuzzy feeling and nothing makes sense. Where’s Anya? My pack?”

I was oddly calm and relaxed, and it almost felt like I was having some kind of out-of-body experience. It felt a little like having too much wine, but a notch past that. I’d never done drugs, so I wasn’t sure if it was what being high felt like.

Kayla came back to the bed and sat next to me. There was just enough room on it for both of us. “They have you on some medicine that stopped your heat and also something to keep you calm. You were freaking out when everything happened, and they sedated you.”

My eyes widened. “They tranquilized me, you mean.”

She rolled her eyes in true Kayla fashion, and it made me smile just a little. “They told our parents they used a syringe and didn’t shoot you with a tranq gun, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re safe.”

All agents and law enforcement carried tranquilizers with them because both alphas and omegas had extreme emotions thanks to our biology. I thought it was barbaric, especially when they used tranquilizer guns like we were animals. I’d never heard of an omega needing it since we were kept under lock and key, but alphas? That was really why they had them.

Kayla sighed and took my hand. “We’re on the secure side of the omega floor at the hospital. Anya was shot in the lower abdomen or stomach—it wasn’t very clear—and had surgery to remove the bullet. That’s all I was able to find out. They called our parents, but because Mom’s heats are crazy from omegapause, they wanted to wait and see if you needed them to come or not.”

Part of me wanted my mom and dads surrounding me for comfort, but another part of me didn’t want to see the disappointment on their faces when they found out I wasn’t following omega regulations.

“And Gizmo? My pack? What is going on? Just tell me, Kayla.” I knew she was telling me everything else first because there was only bad news where my pack was concerned.

“Gizmo is fine. You were trying to stop him from getting to the agent right as that fucking idiot sheriff tried to shoot him. Anya apparently has fast reflexes because she dived for you and the bullet hit her. I think she was in the process of falling to knock you out of the way.”

It sounded like something out of a movie, but it was starting to come back to me now. It had happened so fast, and I’d hit the ground right as the gun was finishing going off.It wasn’t a movie at all, it was my personal nightmare that I was going to have to live with for the rest of my life. They had been there because of me. Anya was shot because of me.

I squeezed Kayla’s hand for comfort because everything could have been a lot worse. “I need to find out if Anya is going to be okay. She’s my beta. They should tell me, right? Or Jonathan. He’s here, isn’t he?”

“I’m sure he is.” She sighed and scooted closer to me. “They took your pack into custody, Kayla. They came... and they tried to get to you.”

Whatever shit they had me on was strong because all I could do was let tears fall down my cheeks, even though I wanted to run out and find them. “It’s not their fault, Kayla. I went on their bus.”

She handed me a tissue just as there was a knock on the door. The lock tumbled and two women in suits walked in.

Omega Protective Services.

“Good morning.” The OPS agent who had tried talking me into coming with them smiled tightly at me and then looked at Kayla. “I guess you really are identical, aren’t you?”

I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t. There was a giant lump in my throat, and I just knew they were here to take me back to the compound; that’s why they had gone to the cabin.

Kayla put the bed up even more, so we were sitting all the way up instead of reclined. “Can we get my sister off of all this stuff messing with her emotions?”

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