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I slap a hand over my mouth and step back, my once wounded arm gathering the chain to my chest. He grins and his eyes twinkle with a devilish gleam. “It is a pleasure to meet you. My Fates have told me such wonderful things.”
I don’t give a shit who this man thinks he is, or what he thinks my status is as an Omega. I’m from Paradise Hole and I won’t be intimidated. “I know who you are and I will defend myself, Berserker.”
“What makes you think I would come all this way to quarrel with a little Omega like you?” He laughs and takes another step forward and I notice that his voice is strange and melodic, belonging to someone much less gruff than he appears. “I come for bigger fish.” He takes a step forward, but I hold my fucking ground, even as his scent fills my nose and confuses me. He smells like something rotten.
Like something dead.
I repress a violent shudder and firm my shoulders by my ears. “I may hate the bastard, but make no mistake in thinking I won’t defend him, too. He’smyBerserker to hate and neither of us will have anything to do with you.” I step back. My chain rattles as I lift my hand and point my fist at his nose. “We don’t concern ourselves with thedead. Only the living.”
I lift a brow in challenge, but his expression is doing something…else, something that makes me wonder if he’s listening to me at all. He’d been watching me with wide eyes and a soft, condescending smile, but as soon as my last word was uttered, that smile dipped.
His whole glowing aura slips, like a record skipping, or a slide on a petri dish shifting momentarily out of place before the magnifying glass refocuses. What is this disease I’m left looking at? Sallow, jaundiced skin barely clinging to its skeletal frame. Black and brown teeth rotten in their skull. Bone-thin, liver-spotted hands. Eyes…the eyes are still bright though.
The monster that is the feared Mirage City Berserker lunges abruptly towards me and I freeze, going cold to the bone as his hand returns to its previous form — glowing golden and perfect — and strokes just the outer edge of my arm so lightly I’m not even sure we’re touching. I can feel only the raising of hairs on the back of my forearm.
I open my mouth to tell him he’s not allowed to touch me and that I’ll fight, but I find that I can’t move at all. My tongue goes stiff in my mouth and acute terror and paralysis take over every inch of my body. I can’t call for help. I can’t draw on my gifts.
The Berserker’s full, flushed lips twitch — I can feel the movement a breath away from my cheek. He leans in even closer and as he speaks directly into my ear, darkness begins to eat away at the edges of my vision. I feel myself plunged back into that icy river. I feel my skin scraped off of the bone by the Trash City docs. Every pain and every horror I’ve ever lived comes cascading back in bright, violent slashes. The attack is so violent, I know I won’t survive it. I clutch at my throat.Adam.I want to call for him. Because in my final moments, Adam is the one I want most. The only one.
I’m falling and the Berserker before me is whispering in a voice that is not the one he used before, “You search for the man in the cave. Don’t. Because if you find him, Adam will die. It’s a trap.”
And then I pass out.
24 | Adam
Omega Ball
“I’m hearing reports that my outer villages are being attacked and that the bodies are being stolen for…nefarious purposes.”His voice is flat. Skeptical. “I don’t believe in these…purposes, but what I do know is that several Alphas within my territory have disappeared. I want to know why and who is taking them.”
I meet his gaze in the dark. Look him over. Assess quickly. Decide that I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, which isn’t very far considerin’ he stacks up pretty decent against me, but I know he’s not workin’ with Mirage City on this. So I feed him a truth, just a partial truth, but enough to test the waters. “To make zombies.”
He releases a gruff snort, nostrils flarin’. “Do you deign to mock me, young Alphalord?”
“No.” And I know the last male Alpha who did had his cock sliced off and fed to the crows. The last female Alpha? Her tits. At least, that’s how the stories go. The torturechamber beneath his castle is infamous. And antiquated.Wouldn’t want to fall into it for any reason. Here, in Dark City, our punishment mechanisms are far more modern and efficient.
“Then tell me what you know. Who is taking the Alpha bodies and for what purpose? Who is raiding my outer lands?”
I open my mouth, fully intendin’ to tell him about Trash City and the Alphas that attacked Echo and I, Mirage City’s likely involvement, the venom… But before I do, another question shines louder than the rest. “You’re askin’ me. Why?”
His stilted, ancient Shadowlands brogue clashes with the growl that rips out of his throat. “I heard another report, this one equally alarming. That only days agoyoukilledAlphasin Paradise Hole.”
“So that’s what the kids are callin’ it these days…” I laugh darkly, richly, humorlessly, and rub my fingers through my beard. “I’d go ahead and call it unkilling, and before you ask me again, Berserker, I’m not mocking you. I’m going to tell you the truth of it, and you can choose whether or not to believe me.”
And because I’m feelin’ a little fucked that the Fates are here and that my Omega’s pissed at me and that I’ve still got the taste of her cunt in the back of my throat and there’s nowhere I’d rather be but between her legs and instead gotta waste my damn time figurin’ out why Paradise Hole fucks are tryna kill Alphas, why Trash City’s bein’ supplied with guns and where the goddamn Fates and the Berserker of Mirage City fit into this convoluted fuckin’ puzzle, I tell him.
I tell him everyfuckinthing.
When I finish, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t so much as flinch. He waits, as if expecting more — a joke, per chance? Me to tell him that I’ve just spent the past ten minutes lyin’ to him? When I just stare back, he finally balks. “So, your current theory, young Berserker, is that the Mirage City Berserker is not only contracting villagers and peasants from my territories and vagrants from Paradise Hole to kill Alphas, but that he’s then forcing the four Omegas in his territory known as the Fates to reanimate them?”
I nod.
The older Berserker hisses out of one corner of his mouth. He turns to face the stream winding beneath us and grips the rail of the bridge in both of his hands. He bears no scars. He grew up a very different Beta than I did. I try not to be resentful or cynical and remember that Shadowlands is a different territory than Dark City — than any other city on Gatamora — one in which Betas have more rights.
They can keep and raise their children, regardless of how they ascend, or don’t. They can work any job they want. They can hold positions of power. They don’t have to flee to compounds, or Paradise Hole… That’s why, on the south island, there are no Beta compounds…
I think of Echo’s words and frown. Why can’t Dark City make itself a home to Betas as Shadowlands does? Why can’t Dark City do better? Why can’t I do better? He’s not that much older than I am. But…he was raised to rule. He has all the experience. I don’t know shit.
His cloak snaps in a non-existent wind. His hand flexes, Berserker claws momentarily flashing on his fingertips. “To what end?”
