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Spinning back around to face me, her eyes blaze with hurt and anger. “I was out in Paradise Hole for six weeks on my own. You have no idea what I’ve done to survive. You’re just Berserker royalty, dumber than a box of hair and so used to your little luxuries you wouldn’t last a day in my shoes…”
Even though I’m fucking alarmed to hear she’s been out here six weeks on her own, I’m so startled by her first impression of me that laughter cuts out of my chest. Hard and hacking, it grates, nearly hurts, but I can’t help it. Shit’s fuckin’ hilarious.
“Think you know me, Omega?” For all her talk and all her bravery, she flinches when I call her that. I roll onto one knee and sweep my hand at her and at the miserable suck hole of a world surrounding us. “You think I somehow wasn’t born a Beta, too? You think I’m special? You think you’ve got a fuckin’ clue what I’ve been through? What I’ve had to do to survive? To fuckin’ claw and climb the tower to the Dark City throne and take it?”
I laugh again. “Think you’re better than me because you’ve slept on the streets, but baby, that’s only because you’ve never slept indungeons. You’re mad about bein’ wet but that’s only because you’ve never lived in a swamp, hidden out in it usin’ a fuckin’ straw to breathe through while the mud presses down on you and you hope to fuckin’ god that they don’t find you because when they do, they won’t take just you, they’ll take…” Fuck. I choke, realizing what I was about to say and cursing myself for it.
I shake my head once, neck snapping to the left as I peg her with my gaze, refocusing on her and her mirrored rage. “You ever been strung up by your heels, had your nails pulled out with pliers? They don’t regrow until your transformation. Fangs don’t grow back either…”
Her face is getting redder and redder and when she shouts, her voice breaks. “You can’t intimidate me, Berserker, or try to freak me out with tales of violence.” She doesn’t even believe me, and that’s fine. That shit happened to another Beta in another life. “You have no idea what it’s like to be an Omega and lose your free will. To know that if you get caught you’ll be used like a fucking doll by whatever Alpha takes you…”
“Well, you better get used to it, because if you don’t change your fuckin’ tune, that’s exactly how you’ll be used and it won’t be by me. You’re too much of a coward to bother keeping.”
“Oughph,” she releases a garbled yell and grabs her chest. The ground beneath her feet starts to rumble and I don’t even bother to morph into my Beast. I need a fight. I’m ready.
“You thinkyoucan intimidate me? I’myourBerserker.”
“You don’t command me!” The ground shivers, roots flying up to spray mud into the air like fireworks before slamming back down, aiming for me. But I learned from the last time when she leveled me with entire fucking trees. This time, I react in time to grab the roots as they fly and sever them with the downward strike of my boot. Another root I rip out of the ground with so much force it topples the tree that belongs to it.
“You think you can fucking destroy me? They call me the Destroyer for a reason, Omega, and I will break you by any means necessary. Compared to the enemies I’ve fought, you are nothing.”
She shrieks, thunder rumbles above, the ground shakes below. A violent jolt sends me to my knees, but I surge up, grab two more roots, rip one mangrove tree from the ground and use it to shatter the trunks of two others.
I surge across the space between us as the wind picks up, carrying fat droplets of rain. They splatter her cheeks when I grab her by the hair and tilt her head back so that her face shines up at me. Her lips are pressed so hard against her teeth they’re white. She smells like mud and like something died.
I know she’s got some dead thing in her pack that she refuses to get rid of, but I didn’t come all this way to be deterred by that because the musk of her cunt is too strong beneath it. It’s a fuckin’ beacon and, if I can’t figure out how to bond her, it’s gonna attract a lot more than a few scavengers and Alpha boys from Dark City.
Another fuckin’ problem. I recognized one of those kids and he was Alpha royalty.What the fuck were they doin’ out here? So far from home?When I approached in my beast form, I heard one of ‘em talkin’ about a letter. Somebody wrote ‘em a letter? About Echo? Doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense and is just another headache to sort out when I get back home with my Omega.
“Omega,” I whisper against her taut, cracked lips, “I command you to still your gifts.”
She screams and it’s a tortured, horrible sound that sends branches and debris and half our fuckin’ shit scattering in the small tornado that crescendos in its wake. Everything comes crashing down a moment later, settling to stillness that isn’tstillso much as it’swaiting. Her breaths are ragged and raw and she’s clutching her chest in a way that makes my hands wanna do somethin’, but I know she doesn’t want that just like I know she doesn’t fuckin’ want me.Unworthy.
I shove her back, releasin’ her and flexing my hands, tryna ignore the way her heat scars and scalds my fingertips. “That’s right. Just a fuckin’ doll. Coulda been more, but I’ll treat you like one if that’s what you wanna be.”
She grunts and is so slow to move, I anticipate her before she’s even got one boot securely planted on the ground beneath her. Still, I let her come at me. I let her throw her full weight against my chest and am unmoved by the blow. I just grab her by the unbandaged wrist and let her twist and kick and stomp and yell.
“Let go of me!”
I do and she flies back, landing on her good shoulder — thank fuck. Still, she isn’t able to get up right away, or she chooses not to. She just lies there in the mud for a beat longer than a breath — a beat that drags an unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation across my shoulders like a string of shattered Christmas lights — before eventually rolling onto her stomach, and then propping her arm underneath her body and lurching up.
She manages to stumble onto her feet and stagger away from me, but I know she won’t go far. She doesn’t have any supplies and there are things here she’ll need if she wants to live more than a couple hours — things she’d need if she wanted to end it and live less than that, too. So I don’t follow.
I just sneer at her retreating form, unable to get my own breath and heartbeat under control, wondering who the fuck I am and how she made me this…this fucking wretched thing. I didn’t used to be like this. Three weeks ago, I was a calm, confident Berserker with a closed box of memories of my life as a Beta and the darkness that brought me to Dark City.
Now, I’m just a wound that she’s ripping leeches off of, letting it fester and rot, filling us both with poison. My Berserker energy has never been more tangible, nor more distant. I don’t feel like retreating to it. And it doesn’t feel like surfacing. I feel like going to her and touching her in soothing ways with my Alpha hands. I feel like cradling her and sheltering her from all the bad shit that goes down out here in Paradise Hole. I feel like telling her kind things and doing her kindnesses…
“Don’t think those gifts even belong to you — do they, Omega? Nah, from where I’m standin’, they belong to me. And without ‘em, y’aren’t worth the boots on your fuckin’ feet.”
A tree she stomps past breaks for no reason, literally exploding through its core. I’m startled by it — by her defiance to my commands — even though she doesn’t seem to register the significance.An Omega shouldn’t be able to defy a Berserker like this.She doesn’t look back at it or at me. She just hunches her shoulders around her wet, mud-soaked body and keeps walking.
And that flaming moat?
Turns into a goddamn ocean.
7 | Echo
Troll Bridge
