Page 44 of Ruined Omega

Their quarry, trapped in the center of the circling Farlanders, is the omega Baen mentioned.

She is young. Barely past her first estrus, if that. Her naked body is on full display—skin fair, breasts small and immature. She is filthy too, and feral-looking. Her long blonde hair is matted and wild. But she doesn’t seem to be a Farlander. Her features are delicate, even pretty, and when I finally sort her scent from the others, it doesn’t have that same ugly, goatish smell.

Who the hell is this omega?

And what in the name of the Source is she doing out here?

One thing is for certain. Whatever happens, we can’t let Hines see this. She will insist on intervening, and I can’t allow that. As much as my Alpha instincts are roaring inside me, urging me to help this unknown omega, my protective feelings for Hines keep me pinned in place.

The risk is too great.

As soon as that thought flashes through my mind, however, I hear the patter of tiny feet rushing up from behind. A second later, Hines appears at my side, dropping to her belly beside me.

She peers through the screen of weeds, eyes wide with concern.

Fuck…

CHAPTER 14: HINES

Baen positions his body in front of mine, blocking my path as Taliesin strides forward, moving silently up the little incline, then lying on his belly to look through a patch of scraggly grass sprouting through the cracked pavement.

The wind rises, carrying strange and frightening sounds from the other side of the rise. Sounds like a pack of wild dogs would make. Deep, guttural snarls and barks and popping jaws. And interspersed through this awful chorus comes the occasional frightened yelp of a young female.

Those sounds grip my stomach with icy fingers and send awful shivers wriggling up my spine.

“Baen, what is it?” I plead. “What’s happening?”

The Alpha doesn’t move. He frowns down at me.

“You don’t need to see,” he whispers.

I don’t need to see? Screw that. I understand that Baen and Tal are concerned about protecting me. But something bad is about to happen over there, and I want to know what it is.

I drop my shoulders, as if relenting, and casually sweep my gaze to one side, out across the empty plains, dark beneath the clouds and spotted here and there by sunlight poking through. Then, summoning the best acting skills I can muster, I pry my eyelids open wide, draw an exaggerated gasp and point at nothing.

“Baen, what is that?”

“What?”

He falls for it, turning his gaze toward the place where I’m pointing. As soon as he does, I spring into motion, dodging around him before he has a chance to catch me.

“Source damn it,” he hisses behind me.

I pump my legs, sprinting as fast as I can without making too much noise. As I reach the place where Tal is lying, I drop to my belly beside him, scraping my hands and knees on the pavement in the process. I hardly even feel the fiery sting, however, as I push aside a tuft of grassy weeds and see what Tal has been looking at.

My heart drums against the wet ground.

The scene in front of me is worse than I could have expected.

There are six monsters down there. Baen and Tal called them Farlanders. But in all my studies of the Zone and its mutations, I’ve never seen Alphas like these. They are hideous creatures, and just looking at them makes my flesh crawl.

They’ve got a young omega trapped in their midst. They are circling her like man-shaped wolves circling a trapped fawn. They lick their chops, looking like they intend to eat her alive.

But the bent and grotesque erections protruding from their pelvises make their real intentions perfectly clear.

A welter of emotions swirls inside my chest—repulsion, rage, fear, and more than anything else a desire to intervene.

We cannot stand by and let this happen.