Page 74 of Stray Omega

Ark tried to grab the youth to hold him back, but Leros was too quick. The youngster had already stepped into the clearing, and he was sprinting toward Embla’s motionless body.

“Source damn it, kid! It’s a trap!”

Too late.

A dart whizzed out of the shadows at the edge of the clearing and embedded itself in the young alpha’s muscular thigh. With a roar, Leros whirled in the direction of the attack, but another dart flew from the other side of the clearing and stuck in the meat of his shoulder.

Source. The bastards had them surrounded.

Ark had no choice. It was no longer just a matter of saving his omega; his pack brother was in danger too. Despite Leros’s incredible strength and stamina, the poison from the darts was already starting to buckle his legs.

With a fearsome roar, Ark barged ahead into the clearing.

His senses were on full alert now. His nerve endings practically reached out and touched the forest around him.

There was a motion to his left. He ducked and rolled. A metallic dart skewered the empty space where he had been standing a moment before.

Metal darts.

Outsider weapons.

Ark regained his feet and rushed toward his companions. A third dart had nailed Leros in the chest, and now the young alpha was starting to go down. Ark caught him before he collapsed and lowered him to the ground.

More darts whistled by. They were coming from every direction.

This was no good. They were surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned.

In a fraction of a second, Ark weighed his options. His instinct was to take up a defensive position, to shield his loved ones from more attacks. But if those poison darts caught him, he would be useless to his friends.

So instead he chose to go on the offensive.

With a violent bellow, Ark attacked. He charged back into the woods, relying less on sight and more on sound, smell, and pure animal instinct. Despite his size, he was deceptively agile. His body twisted and spun, dodging flying darts that came within a hair’s breadth of his skin.

A movement in the shadows to his right.

The snap of a twig beneath a foot.

Ark threw his full weight into the assailant, feeling the satisfying crunch of his enemy’s rib bones being pulverized by the impact. The person on the receiving end was dead before they even hit the ground.

In a fraction of a second, Ark scanned the naked body sprawled on the ground before him.

Scrawny, ropey limbs. Sickly gray skin webbed with black, diseased looking veins. Dead, milky eyes. A mouth full of rotten teeth.

It was a beta, all right, but not like any beta Ark had ever seen before.

This one had some kind of machinery sprouting from its skull. metal boxes and tangles of cables and electrodes. Its dead hand gripped tightly around a dart rifle.

What the hell was going on here? Betas weren’t capable of using tools, and they never showed any signs of aggression. And what was all of that mechanical shit poking out of the ugly bastard’s head?

Before Ark had a chance to consider these questions further, he sensed more movement behind him.

Ark ducked just in time, and another dart twanged as it missed him and struck a nearby tree.

More of the weird mechanized betas were closing in on him. A half dozen or more. Ark leapt at the nearest one, and with a swipe of his powerful alpha hand he tore the creature’s head from its shoulders.

“Bastards!” he roared.

Ark tore into the remaining betas with pummeling fists and gnashing teeth. He felt the familiar thrill of battle as his foes fell under his violent onslaught.

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