AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It shouldn’t be. She fixed us?—”
“Thatiswhy it’s making you sicker,” Vandle said, a slight frown on his face. “She is balancing you—healing you. But the bond you have is parasitical. It cannot tolerate you being whole.In healing you, she’s trying to severe the parasite. It cannot tolerate that.”
Despite his words, a wild relief flooded my system. It had nothing to do with Shatter. There was nothing wrong with her at all. She was right…tooright for us.
“What if she did manage to heal the bond?”
“Impossible,” Vandle said. “Immovable object. Unstoppable force. There is no good outcome.”
“So what is going to happen?”
“Your omega will continue balancing you, and, out of self-preservation the parasite will devour you whole.”
I grit my teeth, trying to shove down more fury. If that happened, Dusk would die, too. He was a part of this. “How do you know?”
“You were a rarity, 66. How many failures did Dr. Wren see—didIsee—before successes began? You think he didn’t introduce a bonded omega to stabilise the connection? They always angered it. And the deaths always came sooner when it was a scent match.”
I frowned. “She’s… their scent match. Not ours.”
“The survivor?” Vandle asked, peering at me curiously. “You think she scent-matched a parasite?” He held up the handkerchief. “Thisomega?”
“She did.”
His eyes darted between mine for a moment as if searching for a lie, then his face split in a grin. “I don’t believe it.”
“Why?”
“I can’t imagine what that would be like. Alphas like you and I, we can appreciate this.” He lifted his fist. “But they aren’t like us. I think… well, it might drive them insane, being bound to an omega with a scent like that…?”
“I don’t understand.”
He cocked his head, looking at me curiously. “It’s called ascent match,” he laughed. “You smell like blood and hers is laced with poison.”
A harrowing silence passed between us, filled by the mad howls all around.
“You’re saying… she’s…?” I swallowed, my mouth dry.
I saw the faintest flicker of sorrow on Vandle’s face as he read my expression. “It would make sense she defaulted to match the dominant pack if she met them first…”
The world around me, the constant mad howls, the scent of damp metal and stone, it all faded at those words.
We knew the Lincoln pack had walked out of that facility with something. We’d known they’d stolen from us.
“They stole… our scent match?”
Shatter.
Shatter was… she was so perfect. I’d known from the moment I met her. Dusk had known. She’d brought Ransom back.
I felt something crack deep within me, opening up a void, and this time, as it split, I knew it would never close.
It wasn’t just me, or Dusk.
Myomega.
Who’d fought her way to this academy for a dream that was never real. For mates that weren’t supposed to be hers because they’d stolen from her just like they’d stolen from us.
Allof this—all the suffering she’d gone through with the Lincoln pack, believing she was broken because she wasn’t enough for them… For mates who had never been capable of seeing her for what she was.
