Page 12 of Marked Omega

Amazing. He can speak. His guttural voice is heavily accented, but I can still understand him.

Deakon wheels around, swinging his heavy pistol from me to the second Alpha. The pistol barks once, twice, three times, but the shots miss their mark as the Alpha deftly rolls out of the way, and Deakon is tackled hard from the side by a shadowy blur.

“Deakon! Chappel!” a voice breaks over the comm unit lying on the ground by Chappel. “What the fuck is going on out there?”

But Deakon cannot answer. He is pinned beneath a third alpha with smooth, dark skin, long, raven black hair, and a loincloth of sable fur. The trooper howls in pain as the feral beast claws at his body and slams him against the ground.

There is a nauseating pop as his spine breaks and his cries are silenced. The Alpha tosses the dead soldier’s body aside in disgust and rises to his feet.

“Kill,” the third Alpha mutters.

Although he is enormous compared to an ordinary man, his stature is smaller than the other two Alphas. His skin is smoother, less marked by scars of teeth and claws. His features, while hard and masculine, have a kind of elegant beauty. His eyes are midnight blue.

This younger Alpha has fewer piercings than his companions, but the one that catches my eye is a steel ring that curves around the middle of his sensuous lower lip. When I glance lower at his muscled chest, I notice that one of his nipples is pierced as well.

These Alphas may be primitive, but they are hardly the inhuman beasts I expected.

“Oh my God,” I gasp as I look around at the carnage.

These Alphas’ appearances may not fit the descriptions I’ve read, but the brutal way they just killed those men sure does. Even more incredible is the speed with which they dispatched them.

The two standing Alphas flick their eyes toward Sara’s lifeless body. Then they turn toward me, and I shiver. Am I next?

“Omega,” the young one growls, a faint smile curling at his pierced lips.

They really can speak, although their linguistic skills are apparently primitive. It seems they are only capable of single-word utterances.

The rough looking one with the bald head cocks his pierced eyebrow and says something incomprehensible in a gravelly voice. He gestures to his fallen comrade on the ground. The younger one stoops and drags the tranquilized Alpha onto his shoulders, carrying him like a fireman. He must be incredibly strong, considering that his unconscious companion is bigger than him.

He nods toward me.

“Omega…”

The burly, bald Alpha stalks toward me and clutches me with his huge, calloused hands. The same hands that just savagely killed Chappel. He tugs at me, trying to carry me away, but my chains instantly pull taut. The edges of my shackles bite into my tender wrists. I’m afraid he might just rip my arms out of their sockets.

“Stop!” I scream. “Stop it! You’re hurting me!”

To my surprise, the Alpha does stop. He turns and looks at me. His dark eyes move to the shackles and the taut chains binding me to the tree. The young one gestures to the iron spike holding the chain in place and grunts a few syllables in his crude dialect.

The bald one huffs and snorts like an angry grizzly bear, but he sets me down, his eyes blazing with fury as he looks at the metal spike holding the chain in place.

Bishop’s voice bursts over the dead trooper’s comm units again.

“Deakon, Chappel, come in! What is your situation? Do you copy?”

Part of me wishes that Bishop would come and save me from these monsters. Of course, I know that he would just kill me the way Deakon was about to do. But maybe a bullet to the head would be better than whatever these feral Alphas have in mind.

With a grunt, the bald Alpha reaches over my head to clasp the metal ring nailed into the tree. His body presses against mine, his hard chest squished against my face. With his arms raised, his thick, overwhelming scent fills my nose. It should be disgusting. It’s body odor after all.

So why does my body thrill at that heady smell? Why do my sore nipples tighten? Why does my swollen sex pulse with desire?

The nail end of the metal spike creaks as the Alpha wriggles it free from the wood. With a sharp yank, it pulls out. A normal man would have needed a sledgehammer and crowbar to get that nail freed, but this guy just did it with his bare hands. Amazing.

Not a guy, I remind myself. A beast. A wild animal.

I shriek as he tosses me over his muscular shoulder and lopes toward the woods at an incredible speed. My hands are still shackled, the chain jangling against his thick back. The other Alpha with long dark hair runs after us, his companion slung across his shoulders.

Behind us, I catch sight of Bishop and Dr. Lucian coming out of the treeline at the rim of the basin. Bishop raises his rifle and fires. The projectile whistles overhead, far too close for comfort. He obviously has no concern for saving my life. It’s the Alphas that he wants.