AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Christ. Everybody out!” I round the desk and approach Echo, but she backpedals until her body is wedged in the doorway, blockin’ anybody from leavin’ through it unless they touch her.
Even if they wanna take the piss all day with me, these Six know better than to breathe on my girl. This leaves ‘em standin’ there awkwardly in the middle of the study, books stacked sky high starin’ down at ‘em like they’re curious what the fuck is gonna happen next. Vi, who’s closest to the door, moves one inch forward and I snap my fangs at him.
He looks back at me and his skin is dark so I can’t see the red in his face like I can in Echo’s, but I can feel his heat. “Errr…”
“Back the fuck up,” I bark at the same time Echo stammers and shakes her injured arm around atmySix, atmyBeta healer, like they’re hers. They are. She just doesn’t know it yet. “You all owe me some answers.”
“Owe you?” Whiskey stands up from where she’d been leanin’. She takes in a deep breath and a low growl picks up in my chest.
“Whiskey, you think ‘cuz you gotta mate I won’t tear your throat out?”
Sierra frowns at me. “Get a grip, Berserker. No one wants a piece of your Omega, even if she does smell so good.”
I growl at the same time Whiskey does, roundin’ on her woman. She plants both hands on the bookcase on either side of Sierra’s head and drops her lips to the mouth of the slightly shorter female. “You’remywoman. Don’t go sniffin’ out an Omega, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Tell me you don’t smell her,” Sierra says flatly.
Whiskey hesitates and that hesitation is enough to make me feral, even as she whispers, “I smellyou.”
The two women make out against the wall. My Omega is entirely unfazed by it and keeps her glare pinned to me. Her blush rolls up and then back down. “You promised me we’d look together.” Her voice shakes. The scent of her heat — and her fear — rolls off of her and infects the room.
Makes me feel like shit and also like hurtin’ somethin’ for her.
“Echo.” I move directly in front of her. Her scent. Fuck. Her scent…
I shake my head to clear it and take three steps back, balling my fists against my sides and then crossing them over my chest and shoving them under my armpits. I touch her and we’re gonna rut right here and she hasn’t invited me to bond her and, even if she had, she hasn’t had time to nest yet.
“Been three days and you been sleepin’ most of ‘em. Ward’s still tryna synthesize my blood and figure out what was in the dead Alphas’ venom to make it so I couldn’t heal. We’re still waitin’ for your heat. Your arm’s still a fuckin’ wreck…”
“I can use it more now,” she says weakly, showing her arm to me as if that somehow erases the glaze that covered her eyes the moment I mentioned her heat.
I want to touch the blue brace that wraps up her wrist almost to the elbow, but the scars above it…they give me pause. The stitches were taken out of her shoulder and neck, but my gaze can’t help but snag on the pink scars that disrupt her brown, freckled skin.Fuckin’ failure. I don’t deserve to breed her, even if it’s just to service her in her heat. I take another step back and flex my hand, look away from her scars and her bandages.
“Know it. But you can’t go back into Paradise Hole like this to look for some guy you met in a dream.” Can’t go period. But that doesn’t need sayin’.
She frowns, blinks, then chews on the inside of her cheek. Her gaze flicks past me to Peate. “Did you find the bodies?”
“Barbero led the team.”
We all turn to look at Barbero. He glares at Peate — he’s a quiet one and tends to avoid the spotlight at all costs. Right now, can see a fierce heat flamin’ his cheeks.
“Barbero,” I grunt. “My Omega asked you a question — theDark City Omegaasked you a question.”
He clicks his tongue against the backs of his teeth — tooth at the front is chipped and he rubs his tongue over it often, a nervous tick — and nods. “Found the bodies. Dug up two so far, but they’re down there deep. The team’s still lookin’ for more, but it’s slow goin’ since it started rainin’ out there yesterday.”
Ward adds, “The two that were recovered were brought to my lab this morning. Loveless is still preparing the first for autopsy, but we did go ahead and remove the incisors from both corpses and started extracting venom for analysis.”
“Incisors?” Sierra says. “Like…Berserker incisors? In Alpha bodies?”
“Precisely. And that isn’t the only unusual thing about them. Thevenom, as Dragnovic called it, issimilarto a Berserker’s but…not entirely the same. It has fascinating properties. Much less viscous than that of a Berserker’s, once it hits the bloodstream, it doesn’t coagulate or even allow the existing blood to do so. The venom is poisonous, for certain, and over time would weaken its prey to the point that dehydration would kill it, if another predator didn’t get to it first — think more like a black mamba bite to the foot, rather than to the face. That makes this…thisvenomless poisonous than a Berserker’s — and be lucky for that. If it had been one of these…these…” Her hands flail wildly as her lips stutter and stumble over the word, refusing to say it, but left with no other choice. “…undeadBerserkers who bit you, you’d be dead.”
“So, you believe us now?”
“About what?”
“The zombie army.”
“I…” Ward’s expression shifts. She looks away from me quickly and tucks her hair behind her ears. “I most certainly don’t believe in zombies, but until I can come up with a more scientifically accurate descriptor, undead will have to do.”
