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I growled without realizing I was doing it. My Alpha instinct was to protect Omegas above others because the Omegas were the ones who could balance our scales. Even ones we couldn’t bond to managed to keep our instincts from over-riding our common sense, and losing them would create a fracture we couldn’t afford since both Alpha and Beta Wolves outnumbered the Omegas three to one.
“Was it local?” I asked as my hand found the door handle. Getting in the car on my own—steady on my feet the way I hadn’t been last time—was more of a relief than I was expecting. It took more attention to find my seat belt and buckle it, which was frustrating, but I appreciated that Orion didn’t reach over to help, nor did he slow down.
“It was about two hundred miles north of here.”
I had a feeling we were near the capital, but I hadn’t bothered asking. If we were though, it meant I had been held captive just miles from where they’d gotten the jump on me. Miles from my home, and no one had managed to infiltrate the lab until Bryn, whose fate we still didn’t know.
“I’ll meet with the Council after my next session with Cameron,” I told him.
He was quiet a long moment, and I gripped the door as he eased the car into a turn. “How is that, by the way? I, uh… I didn’t get the chance to meet him, but we talked over the phone.”
I bit the inside of my cheek for a second. “I wanted to hate him. I wanted to hate all this shit,” I confessed, rubbing the heel of my hand down my heart. “But I think he might be able to help.”
“Yeah. He told me he’s blind. I thought—” Orion stopped and let out a small sigh. “Fuck, I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d trust him more since he could understand what you’re going through.”
I said nothing because I wasn’t sure if that was the truth or not. Cameron was nothing like me. We’d both lost our sight thanks to the humans—their reckless violence and refusal to see us as anything but animals—but he’d adapted in ways I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.
“I don’t think I have much choice,” I finally told him. “This is all I’ve got.”
I hated the finality of my words, and the truth in them. I had never really done well with the concept of permanence. Death terrified me only because there was no coming back, and I thought nothing could be worse than that until the doctor told me that there was no help for my eyes. But acceptance was close, just outside of my grasp, and I was still reaching.
Orion said nothing as we got to the hospital, and he came around the door as I got out, offering me his arm.
“I need to figure this shit out too,” I told him as we approached the building. “I can’t keep waiting for your ass to guide me.” Cameron had a dog, but I didn’t think that was an option for me. Not yet. I knew about canes—but the thought of being so visible made my stomach churn.
If I wanted respect from the Alphas…
Except what other choice do you have, a small voice demanded. And it was right.
When we stepped through the doors, I took a breath and let myself wonder if Misha was there. Or had they taken him to another facility? Prison, maybe? Or worse. It was strange to miss him the way I did, but I had also never bonded to an Omega before. Hell, I’d barely taken lovers. I understood how our biology worked, but him being a damn lab experiment was throwing me for a loop.
“You okay?” Orion asked softly as we headed down a hallway.
I grunted, then squeezed the back of his arm. “Have you gotten an update on Misha?”
“No, and I haven’t asked,” he sneered, and I let my claws prick his skin, making him hiss.
“He fucking pulled my ass out of there, and he was just as much a victim as I was. You can hate them, but he wasn’t part of it.”
I expected Orion to balk, to say that I was probably wrong, but instead his pace slowed, and then he stopped. “I’m sorry.”
I blinked, for a second my eyes desperately trying to see him before they gave up. “You’re what?”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, sounding irritated that I’d made him say it twice. “You’re right. It’s not his fault.”
Something in my gut was telling me to push the issue, but I needed to get looked at first. “Make a call and find out,” I told him. “This is probably going to take a while, and we both know I’m gonna need to see him eventually.”
Orion let out a small breath, but he didn’t tell me no. He just picked up the pace again and eventually we stepped into a small waiting room. I honed my ears, searching for heartbeats, but I only detected staff. I breathed a little easier after that, and I took the nurse’s arm instead of Orion’s when she called me back.
I found the bed after just a little fumbling, listening to the rustle of the paper beneath me as I sat, and I was a little unnerved that she said absolutely nothing to me as she took my vitals. I wanted to grab her and shout—to tell her I needed more now that I couldn’t see what the fuck was going on around me, but it also wasn’t her fault.
There were blind Wolves, but they—we—were a rare breed. It was amazing Cameron was there at all. It almost felt like fate, but I didn’t want to think that the shit that happened to me at the lab was predestined in any way.
“Ah, General… I mean Kor,” the doctor said, and I heard a smile in his voice as he shut the door behind him.
“Dr. Bereket,” I grunted.
“You can call me Danyal, if you like,” he said. I heard the squeak of wheels, and I assumed he sat in his little rolling chair. “I see you’re here because the flashes and the headaches are persisting?”
