Page 59 of Ruined Omega

“But not an omega either. Not quite.”

“Some good you are, witch,” Abaddon scoffs, his burnt face twisting into an annoyed frown. Then something catches his good eye. “What is that?”

He’s looking toward the muddy ground between my feet.

His hand on my neck keeps me from tilting my head down, but I already know what he’s looking at. My stomach somehow manages to sink even lower than it already is. It seems to drop all the way into my feet. All the way into the mud.

Abaddon has found my pills.

The bottle fell from my hoody pocket when Sickorax slashed it in half.

Sickorax stoops, retrieves the pill bottle, and hands it to Abaddon. The disfigured Alpha rattles the bottle. Sniffs it. He releases my throat and spends a good minute struggling with the child-proof lid before finally giving up.

“What are these?” He asks.

I press my lips together, refusing to speak. I’m terrified of defying this hideous Alpha, but I don’t want him to know about my medicine. There’s no telling what he will do with that information. My knees feel weak with fear. My body trembles.

“What. Are. These?” The mock politeness has drained from his voice. He is deadly serious now. “Tell me now or I’ll rip your heart out through your cunt.”

“Medicine,” I blurt.

“I see,” he whispers. “What sort of medicine?”

My body shakes with fear. My mind races to come up with a lie, but my thoughts just seem to trip over one another in my brain.

“I’m not a man to make idle threats,” he snarls.

“It’s a cure,” I say. “For the contamination of the Zone. It stops the mutation.”

Abaddon’s eyes widen.

“So,” he sighs, drawing the word out. “That is why you are not an omega yet. Are the effects permanent?”

I shake my head.

“Ah. So if you are deprived of the medicine you will eventually change.”

Abaddon pauses, thinking. Over his shoulder, I see Tal and Baen, their faces taut with concern and barely restrained rage.

Abaddon tucks the pill bottle into a pouch inside his fur cloak.

“It’s time for some fun,” he bellows. “Throw them in the cage with the gray.”

A loud cheer goes up from the Farlanders around us. The blood seems to freeze in my veins.

CHAPTER 18: HINES

In the dead center of the primitive Farlander camp there is a circular enclosure, about thirty feet in diameter, covered with a rusty, domed cage. Our Farlander captors open a gate on one side and shove me roughly through. On the inside, the ground is covered in several inches of thick, sucking mud. My bare feet catch, I stumble, and I land face first in the nasty stuff with a loud plop.

Tal and Baen are both shoved inside after me. Their massive bodies send up showers of mud as they crash to the ground. The gate swings shut behind.

Baen, his arms still bound behind his back, leaps to his feet and slams his body against the gate just as the bolt of the lock snaps shut.

“Let me out of here,” he roars. “I’ll kill every last one of you Farlander fuckers!”

He throws his body against the cage again and again. His impacts are hard enough to knock away the crust of brown rust from the bars. But the metal doesn’t budge. Not even under Baen’s ferocious onslaught.

“Cut it out, boy,” Tal growls.