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If not for the security cameras, I would’ve dropped out of the morning run the second my boots filled with blood.
But I’m always being watched, always being judged, so I jog twenty feet behind the other field agents, pretending I’m just like them—shiny toy soldiers who want to be made into walking weapons.
“Speed up!” Our squad captain’s voice whips back with the sour, sweaty pheromones of the “teammates” I despise as much as I hate doing cardio before dawn.
I’d kill for a blanket and a breakfast sandwich.
While the gamma squad picks up their pace in perfect sync, I drag my ass behind, not because I can’t match the speed, but because even with the gap, their pheromones leave my scent glands prickling, ready to lash the hell out and shatter my good girl mask.
Puffing, sweating, ignoring the squish of sock blood and the metal monitors scraping my ankles with each step, I force my head down and my pheromones down harder.
I’m in control.
I have to be in control.
We’re miles into our loop and I’m wondering about ankle replacement surgery when the sun finally finds the base, peeking over the forest cliffs that hide the military bunkers and secret research labs where the Special Abilities Section makes its very classified home.
Five years after my forced enlistment, I still don’t know what branch of the government claims the SAS.
Don’t want to know.
They can keep their secrets.
I just want out.
But between fences tipped in razor wire, my electric ankle bangles, and four counts of semi-accidental murder that leadership can hold over me forever, my life options are prison-with-bars or prison-with-salutes. I have to play by their rules and prove I can pass as a civilian if I’m ever going to be discharged.
When I try to imagine where I’ll go when I’m finally free, the first answer is anywhere.
The second is the broke-down baseball field that I’m not allowed to visit, even in my dreams.
I’ll never belong running laps in camo and combat boots, but it’s not like I’ve ever belonged.
The orphanage, foster care, the Omega Cultivation Center.
People sense when you don’t fit in, even if they don’t know why, and no matter where you are, leftovers get chucked.
I was four when my blood test results came back strange. The doctors thought I was a beta, but with an asterisk—maybe genetic defects.
Nope. Wish I were a beta.
Or even a normal omega.
Try getting adopted when no one knows what you are.
The families shopping for daughters sneered and treated me like shit. I spent a few years crying in corners before I realized the girls who smiled widest were the ones who found forever homes.
Never had much reason to smile, but I learned to fake it with the best.
Soon as I mastered swallowing the hurt, playing submissive and stupid, bam.
A family finally wanted me.
Yeah, my new home turned out worse than being orphaned, but you have to believe in pushing forward when your past is a yawning suckhole.
That’s why I keep faking.
That’s why I keep running.
