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“Not sure yet.”
“We should confront him.” He reaches behind his back, beneath his cloak, and withdraws an axe the size of a fuckin’ tire.
“Christ. You know there’s no weapons allowed in my fuckin’ Ball.” MyOmega’sBall. That’s what I should have said. That I didn’t irks me and I don’t know why.
I shake off the discomfort and come around to the sight of his front teeth mashed together. His fangs peek out over the top of his bottom lip. They’re longer than mine and I feel my hackles rise, my Berserker yearnin’ to challenge the Berserker in its presence. It’s not used to bein’ made to feel inferior. I’mnot. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I take a step forward and a surge of aggression rolls off of the male that makes venom flood my mouth — not the bondin’ kind, the killin’ kind, though they’re one and the same. The muscles across my chest ripple and the buttons on my collared shirt strain. Three buttons down, the strings tryin’ valiantly to keep my shirt together pop. I start to stretch. He lifts his axe.
“Do not test me, boy.”
“Not the enemy, friend,” I sneer, “but you’re in my house. Put the weapon down.”
I start to transition, but the bastard insults me by remainin’ in his Alpha form. “I have no need of my fangs and claws to slaughter a baby Berserker and I have no desire to, either. But I will.”
He opens his mouth and his wicked fangs flash. I open mine and issue a deadly rattle. And then just when things move from dangerous to deadly, a soft voice calls out, “The scent of an Alpha’s aggression is a lovely thing, is it not, sisters?”
I turn and shiver back into my Alpha skin. My aggression doesn’t abate at the sight of the female faces in front of me, but ratchets up to ten.
“The only thing better is a Berserker’s.” The second female that speaks devolves to giggles.
Berserker Yaron and I exchange a glance and, as if choreographed, we move at the same time to form a line at the base of the bridge, like we’re about to go into battle. My mind skips. I feel a momentary spike of fog roll over me. This feels eerily like a premonition of somethin’ to come…somethin’ horrible.
“Omegas, what are you doing away from your Berserkers, uncollared and unchained?” Yaron’s voice comes out deadly. He doesn’t put his axe away.
I feel my claws stretch and bend, elongating with the desire to tear into the females coming towards me. Eerie and ethereal, they barely seem to touch the ground as they walk. “Fates,” I hiss.
The Fate standing at the front of the group of four looks at me and offers me a small smile, behind which I can read nothing. She’s known as Omora. “Berserker Dragnovic. Berserker Yaron.”
She tips her head, her eyes unhurried as they look me over. Such an assessment would make my Omega rabid. The thought makes me smirk, until it occurs to me that Echo’s been gone for some time. Where is she? I worry until I remember that I’ve got one of my most trusted Alphas with her.
“Fate,” I say at the same time Yaron growls, “Omega.”
Her gaze flits to him before returning to me. She has long, silver-white hair, streaked through with hard black, and these clashing colors present an unsettling contrast to the starch-white of her skin. Her eyebrows are just as white as her skin. Her irises are black.
Her Fated sisters look nothing like her, each distinct in their own way. The one to her left, Sy, has jet black hair, white skin and a hostile expression fixed to her obsidian glare. The one to her right, known as Odette, has dark brown hair that falls in braids to the tops of her breasts and medium brown skin.
And the last one…the one just behind the rest, who I know to be namedAdoqhina,wears hair as red as Echo’s with skin that’s an eerily similar hue.She lacks Echo’s freckles and has green eyes, but in so many other ways she reminds me of her. The look she gives me doesn’t help. It’s a scornful look that Echo’s mastered and that gaze on me right now does nothing good to my bones. It makes me feel something treacherous — an unwillingness to kill her, because this Omega reminds me so much of my own.
“You two seem so tense.” Odette wears a mischievous smirk that, by contrast, makes me want to cause her immeasurable pain. “Are you Berserkers afraid of the dark?” She flourishes her right hand and a sentient flame appears in the center of her palm. I tense.
“Is that athreat?” I hiss.
Yaron’s voice chimes after mine, “Of course not, Berserker Dragnovic. If it were, it would be punishable by death.”
He holds his axe to the side, but the Fate just cocks her head, the cocky little fucker that she is. “It’s a fate far worse than death to kill an Omega, especially one that belongs to a Berserker of a different city.”
“Especially when she’s a Fate,” Adoqhina continues, and the sound comes as a shock, a defibrillator straight to the chest.She sounds like Echo, too. My heart pounds and I start to sweat as the Fate who looks like Echo looks at me even as she speaks to everyone else. Her green gaze holds mine and she smiles, and I suddenly hallucinate holding her heart in my hands. I hallucinate Echo’s death.
“Not when that Omega walks uncollared in a Ball. Dragnovic, have her arrested.”
“I-I have questions, first.” My lips come unstuck and my tongue, a thick block of wood in my mouth, manages to finally form words.
The Echo doppelgänger smiles at me in a way Echo never would. I force myself not to recoil. There’s somethin’ sticky and ugly in her expression whereas in Echo’s, there’s only truth — for better or for worse.I treat her badly. Fear grips my heart. Fear that I’ve done her too much wrong to ever repair in this lifetime, fear that she isn’t standin’ pressed against my back, her heart beatin’ flush with mine, fear that she isn’t close enough to protect, fear that something’s just…fuckin’wrong.
“Of course, Dark City Berserker,”Adoqhinasays with a slight bow that feels mocking, rather than deferential. “We expected you would.” She giggles —giggles— making her sound like Echo less and less.
Odette closes her palm and the light goes out, but only for a moment. She closes her palms, pressin’ ‘em flat together, and as she peels them apart fire crackles between her hands like the strings of a bow, suspended there by nothin’.
