Page 52 of Shattered Omega: Part One

I almost laughed. I didn’t think that was how it worked.

But then she summoned up a determined purr thatmightpossibly be classified as aggressive, and clung to me tighter. My mind was wiped blank as my body relaxed around her, little vibrations shooting right down to my spine.

How long would she keep this up for? Forever, I hoped, but it took me ages to get to sleep. Always had, always…

I yawned, holding her closer, breathing slowing.

Always…

Would…

DUSK

I’d heard the loud thump, and it wasn’t from Umbra’s room.

I’d visited his room earlier, heart in my throat when I’d felt his aura in the air. But I’d found something I’d never expected to see.

Shatter had followed Umbra into his void.

Now I stepped up the stairs toward the other door on the balcony hallway. This part was my job, never Umbra’s.

I unlocked the door and entered the room to find pitch blackness and the scent of another world. Shutting the door behind me, I waited in silence, letting my own scent saturate the space and give warning of my presence. Closing my eyes, I leaned against the wall, breathing in the smell that had soothed me since the first time I’d ever caught it.

Here, I was in a forest, not a room. It was damp with morning dew and white petals. Among the leaves, a tide of shadows shifted; dark lilies and black leather.

My heart rate slowed, my breathing steady until I heard it.

I didn’t turn the lights on, following instead, the soft clinking of a heavy metal chain. The bottle of pills rattled in my pocket, the only sound I brought with me.

I was here for a job: the best of all the horrible options I had.

Maybe not forever, though.

Shatter was the first person I’d ever seen reach Umbra while he was like that. I couldn’t even do that. Coming to this academy was a last, desperate chanceto salvage something of what had been stolen from us. But maybe…justmaybe, she was the answer we’d been searching for.

I would never let her go.

Shatter damned herself to us tonight. In doing so, she’d unknowingly secured her own safety.

Tomorrow she would accept the nest whether she wanted to or not. Tomorrow, I would have her scent.

It was more than a want.

I’d claim it before her mates did, like I would claim her.

Shatter, so pure and innocent, was tangled in this vile web, with or without us. She was fighting me for a fate she wasn’t ready to see the truth of.

But we’d been fighting in darkness for so long, there was nothing else I could see.

Finally,there was the faintest light at the end of the tunnel.

And she was pure poetry.

The little thief that I’d stolen away from far more vicious thieves, might truly be the answer to what they’d taken.

ELEVEN

There was an attack. The subject was injured by an alpha in my employ. She was off suppressants, and the alpha was near a rut. We have decided to put her back on scent and hormone blockers for her own safety.

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