Page 99 of Shattered Omega: Part Two

“Like… your auras are poisoning you?”

“Tell me about the other week?” Decebal asked. “I didn’t fully understand from your message.”

“It was like your auras were untethered,” I whispered.

“What?” Ransom looked at me sharply. “But that’s…” He swallowed. “That’s deadly.”

“I’ve never considered that,” Decebal said, gaze fixed on me. “But I’ve also never seen it as bad as you have.”

“It felt like… it wasn’t his aura anymore, or… or something.”

When an alpha lost their pack suddenly or violently, their aura broke.

The missing pack bond left a wound that would never close without help, leaving them unstable—as if they were walking around with a wound that never stopped bleeding.

To seal the wound they had to do one of three things: take another pack, sever their ability to join a pack completely, or do the last option of the three. The worst option—make the choice to release their aura entirely: to untether it.

Once they’d done that, their aura would then draw energy from the alpha’s own body when used. For a short time, they could gain as much strength as they wished—could become frighteningly strong and dangerous, but once that energy was gone, the aura died, and the alpha died with it.

“That’s what it felt like. Like… it was burningyouup.” I frowned. Umbra hadn’t chosen to untether his aura—he couldn’t have since his pack was intact, even if he had lost a pack mate. “It’s the closest thing I can think of, but it still doesn’t quite fit.”

I’d read lots about untethered auras; any time I managed to sneak from Uncle’s study I’d read an obscene amount on anything alpha-related.

“Even when untethered, the aura should only exact cost when used,” I said. “Umbra’s was out of control, consuming him no matter what he did.”

It was similar, but it wasn’t the same.

I was staring down at the black and white documents, something sick in my stomach. Ransom was right. Untethering was deadly almost every time. If the sickness wasn’t cured, would it… would it kill them? The truth was creeping in slowly.

I could feel numbness swallowing me whole.

I had a family at last. A family I loved. And now I might lose them?

Lose Dusk or Umbra? The thought was so charred and horrifying I had to shove it back. Something thick stuck in my throat.

“But I balanced it…” I whispered, looking up into Umbra’s sandstorm eyes. “I anchored you. It couldn’t consume us both. Maybe it won’t come back now?”

He drew me closer, but wolfsbane wilted, the traces of its sweetness fading. “Maybe.”

He didn’t sound hopeful, which wasn’t like him at all. “What… What was the goal of the experiments?” I asked, my voice weak. If I could just get a better understanding of this I could try to help fix it.

“No idea. They locked it down tight,” Decebal said. “If we knew that, we might not still be here.”

“What abouthowyou ended up there?” I asked. “Do you know?” Maybe that would help.

But my question was followed by an odd silence that I couldn’t read.

“I just thought, if you came from somewhere…?” I swallowed. “What?”

Decebal cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably, but Dusk shrugged. I noticed his jaw was clenched and his gaze fixed on me. “The organisation that ran experiments before it was shut down, got their alphas from the Cimmerian Vaults.”

My blood ran cold, lips parting as I stared between him and Umbra.

“What?”

I understood his words, but they didn’t make sense. The Cimmerian Vaults was a fortified prison that held the most insane and aggressive alphas. Alphas that cracked and lost their sanity entirely. Not alphas like Dusk and Umbra. They were…different, I’d always known that, but they weren’t insane. Not like you had to be to end up in a place like that.

“I don’t like it, but the experiments did one thing right,” Dusk said quietly. “Brought us back from… wherever we were.”

---