AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A suspended silence brings chills with it that make me clench my teeth. Fear. This is what fear feels like.
“Alright,” Sierra snaps, movin’ us away from more dangerous topics. “It’s settled. We’ll cancel Dark Tower. Get the event team out here to scope this place. Will the…uh…foliage die in the next three days?”
I grin. “Not if I keep fuckin’ her in it.”
Sierra laughs. Barbero chokes.
Vi looks up from where he’s still kneelin’. Face scrunched, eyes glowin’, he says, “Don’t wanna share this with the others. She’s our Omega.”
I feel heat brush my chest, right over my heart, and I grab at it. I’m deeply touched. “Nobody’s seen flowers before, except maybe in Mirage City.” Where the Berserker who controls the Fates can tap into powers as far-reaching as they are unknown.
“Can’t keep ‘em locked away.”
My Six are all starin’ at me with small smiles on their faces. Vi still looks like he’s about to cry and Sierra looks like she’s up to somethin’. “What?” I bark.
“Can I plan the wedding? Please, please, please!”
I laugh. “Not gettin’ married. Woman can’t stand me unless we’re fucking.”
“Have you tried bein’ nicer?” Whiskey says, unhelpfully.
“I bonded ‘er.”
“You did?” Three of ‘em — except Vi — say simultaneously.
“Did.”
“And did it…”
“Healed ‘er. Her bones mended themselves, the tissue and fat that was drained out of her leg filled itself. Only things it didn’t heal were her scars.” And I hate every one. Tried askin’ her if she wanted Ward to take a look at ‘em, but she wouldn’t have it. Said she liked ‘em. Said she made it look more like — I choke up at the damn thought — she said it made it look more like we belonged together.
My wife is a goddamn romantic.
Even if she’s a scavenger, a survivalist, a goddamn bitch who lets me get shot by trolls, and is just as likely to stab me in my sleep as she is to kiss all my scars and kiss away all my fears, so sweet and tender.
“What did it feel like, bondin’ an Omega?” Vi whispers.
I don’t answer right away. My face gets hot, though.Like drinking nirvana. Like finding an elixir to defy death. Like everything I ever was exists now outside of my body. Exposing and frightening. Empowering and enlightening. Like swallowing the sun.
I grunt, “Can we just get a fuckin’ move on with this goddamn Ball? Don’t want a big thing. Just want people to come, eat, drink, and leave. Don’t want anybody lingerin’. Now where’s the rest of you? Where’s Peate and Balcazar?”
“Peate’s with Ward, still in the lab, and I sent Balcazar back to Paradise Hole,” Barbero says, swiping a hand back through his messy curls. His eyes shift over my body, lingering on my hair. I can feel I got leaves and twigs and flowers stuck all in it, but I don’t move to free ‘em. I like ‘em. “They found somethin’ odd about the bodies.”
“What isn’t odd about ‘em?”
“More odd.”
My head cocks to the side, hatin’ that I’m bein’ distracted…but still curious. “What?”
He looks uncomfortable, somethin’ he rarely ever looks. “Two a’ the bodies. Well, they got…they got Dark City markers.”
“What?”
“One of ‘em had a brand. A Dark City brand. We traced it back to one of the founding Dark City houses and when we brought in Ellery — ” Ellery bein’ the matriarch of one of the oldest families livin’ in Dark City. A loyal supporter, and since I took over she and her family have always been good to me. That’s why killin’ their oldest son in Paradise Hole had been hard. “She identified the body as Benjamin’s.”
“That’s not possible.”
“What isn’t?”
