Omega

by Brenda Trim

  Omega

  Dark Warrior Alliance Book 24

  Brenda Trim

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  EXCERPT FROM MAGICAL NEW BEGINNINGS BOOK # 1 of MIDLIFE WITCHERY

  Authors’ Note

  OTHER WORKS BY Brenda TRIM

  Copyright © March 2021 by Brenda Trim

  Editor: Chris Cain

  Cover Art by Fiona Jayde

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction of this work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the authors.

  Created with Vellum

  When you can’t forgive someone, pray for them. It may or may not change them, but it will always change you.

  Chapter 1

  What the hell did I drink last night? Hayden groaned as he rolled to his back. Only he didn’t quite make it that far. His eyes flew open when his back hit a cold stone wall. What the hell? He didn’t have anything like that in his house. His walls were wood and always warm, regardless of the time of year. It was a side effect of his power as Omega being absorbed as it leaked from his pores.

  Bright florescent overhead lights had him blinking in even more confusion. No one he knew had lights like this in their homes. Had he ended up in the infirmary below Zeum? That was the only place he could think that had lights this obnoxious. It had been decades since he’d been in the dungeon there, but their walls were rock.

  Only that explanation didn’t quite make sense to him. If he’d been gravely injured his Lieutenants would have taken him to Zander to have Jace heal him rather than one of the realm’s medical clinics.

  His head was pounding. It seemed likely he’d been hurt but he couldn’t recall being in a battle. Shifting his gaze, he narrowed his eyes at the bars a few feet from him. He was surrounded by three stone walls with metal blocking the fourth. There was barely five or six inches between the slats. There was a door set in the middle with a one-foot-tall passage to the left of that at the bottom of the bars. In one smooth lunge he was on bare feet and gripping the bars. We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.

  The million questions hadn’t fully formed before his mind flashed to mischievous brown eyes and a sexy smile. Millie! The alluring Puerto Rican had lured Hayden into a trap at the bar. How a human had gotten the jump on him he didn’t know, but boy was he pissed. And embarrassed. He’d never been so humiliated. Such a weak species shouldn’t be capable of getting the jump on him.

  As much as he wanted to direct every ounce of his mountain-sized rage on Millie, he couldn’t. As the leader of the shifters, he couldn’t fault the execution of a flawless mission. As much as it pained him to admit, he applauded her skill.

  It wasn’t as difficult for him to admire her intellect. What stuck in his craw was what had motivated her to attack and imprison him. All of Zander’s warnings about how humans would slice open supernaturals, especially shifters, and poke at their insides. He prayed Zander had been wrong about that and he wasn’t about to have his liver become a party favor for Millie and her friends.

  Hayden’s hands clenched around the bars and his arms started shaking. The rattle of metal sounded like a thunderstorm. And it only made him madder. His anger, though, was entirely directed inward. In the over seven hundred years since his birth, he’d always clung to the Goddess’s edict that they keep their existence hidden and he had never found himself in a cell.

  As insistent as he’d been about revealing their existence, it was no surprise that the second he started telling humans he was kidnapped and imprisoned by them. Shame coated his mind like a wet blanket. He’d been so sure he was right to come out to them and try to enlist their help. Oh, how wrong he’d been!

  “Let me out of here before you regret the day you were born,” he threatened.

  He was the Omega. Strongest shifter alive. He commanded thousands of his kind and was a vital member of the alliance protecting all supernaturals. He hunted and killed demons for sport. Humans didn’t pose a major danger to him. He could snap them in half with his thumb and pinkie fingers. With his hands on the bars, he tugged them. To his surprise he wasn’t able to pull the bars apart. He poured more power behind the attempt. Sweat dotted his bare chest with the effort he dumped into breaking free.

  Tilting his head, he considered the obstacle in front of him. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t shred. He was overthinking it. There were soldiers somewhere in the vicinity and he had no weapons. Hell, they hadn’t even left him his clothes. All he had on was a tight pair of grey sweatpants. It was appalling. He was the Goddess damned Omega for fuck’s sake.

  None of that mattered. His situation was what it was, and he had to find a way out of it. Closing his eyes, he took several deep breaths and called on the mantle inside. It was the place his animals emerged from and he needed it’s help now. Keeping his bear, panther and wolf at the fore, he tried again. The damn bars should bend like tinfoil, but they didn’t budge.

  His heart was racing, and his mind was clouded with anger as he contemplated being held a prisoner. He hadn’t been this vulnerable since he was a stripling. Once it was evident that he was an Omega, he had developed rapidly and gained power and strength at an alarming speed. He wasn’t vulnerable even before he fully transitioned into an adult – which was typically when a supernatural became immortal and got their powers. Fate had put him with Zander, Evzen, Jace and Killian when they were young and growing. Together with Dante, whom they met decades later, they formed the Dark Warrior Alliance. The only place he had found his equals were among the other council members. Surely these humans were not the first to break that pattern in seven hundred years?!

  Dominating everyone else was one reason Hayden rarely dated. Having a female that acted and felt powerless compared to him was a major turn off. The reason he was sporting even more wood for Millie was precisely because she got one over on him. It was sexy as hell.

  Think about other females. Not that deceptive bitch. Hayden wasn’t able to refocus entirely. He considered what Millie would think about him not having had even one serious relationship before. That made it sound as if he was a fucking virgin. Not hardly.

  He fucked females often. In fact, he’d been with more than any human male could in their lifetime. You sound like a real catch now. Rolling his eyes, he reminded himself that he’d lived nearly seven hundred years longer than the average human male.

  And in his defense, it was difficult to contemplate something more serious than sex when everyone else was on such a different power level than he was. Not to mention he was holding out anything more serious for his Fated Mate.

  His entire body jerked in response to his wayward thoughts. Fated Mate? He had come to terms with not finding his other half five hundred years into the mating curse. Apparently, his
subconscious never gave up hoping to find the one being that carried the other half of his soul. He had no idea how that had escaped his awareness.

  An oaf of a human male waltzed around the corner with a smirk on his face and fatigues covering his pasty skin. “I see the tranq has worn off. I was certain you’d be out longer. We used four times the dose we would on an elephant.”

  He’d been taken down by an animal tranquilizer! He wanted to throttle the smug male and wipe that look off his face. None of this should have been possible. He wasn’t susceptible to human medications, no supernatural was. Something wasn’t adding up here. And he doubted this fool had all the knowledge about what was truly going on.

  Hayden leaned forward and bared his teeth. “This is your last chance to let me out of here and live.” When he tried to call up any of his animals to partially shift his teeth to canines nothing happened. He felt the animals in his core, but he couldn’t embrace them like he usually did. It was as if there was a barrier surrounding his mantle of power. That was why he couldn’t break out of the fucking cell.

  The guard chuckled and swung a black baton in one hand while he continued forward undeterred. “You won’t be going anywhere. Those bars are made from tungsten and graphene. In other words, unbreakable, even for your kind.”

  Hayden ignored the snide comment and thought about what he knew of the two materials. Tungsten was the strongest natural metal, but it was known to be brittle and shatter on impact.

  Graphene on the other hand was two hundred times stronger than steel and a composite used in space travel. Undoubtedly the combination proved impossible for even the strongest being in existence to bend to his will. He’d have to find another way out of this mess. He had no choice. He refused to die in this miserable hole.

  What Hayden had assumed a normal black baton turned out to be anything but when the guard shoved it through the bars and shocked him in the side. Grunting, he snatched the pole from the human and yanked.

  Initially the male held on and came with it. Seeing his opening, Hayden yanked it out of his hand then flipped the weapon around and shoved the sparking end into the human. Far slower than Hayden, the guard barely managed to shout before he crumpled like a house of cards.

  He dropped the weapon at his feet right as two more males raced around the same corner. They could have been clones of the first. Their heads and neck were one solid square. Total block heads. Hayden didn’t care for the uniforms. It didn’t give them an intimidating appearance. And it didn’t help them blend into the environment. They’d kinda hide them in a desert, but not many other locations.

  Hayden allowed his rage to fuel his strength and pulled at the bars again. If he tilted his head to the right at a thirty-degree angle he could see a slight bend in one of the bars. Abandoning that attempt, he stooped and grabbed the stick he’d dropped and took a step back.

  A third followed at a slower pace and was holding a tray with a silver dome on it. Hayden thought he smelled broth. His stomach rumbled when he thought of what kind of food they were bringing him. He wasn’t a chef, but if his nose was right, he wasn’t getting much of a meal.

  “Sit on the cot and drop the prod,” one of the guards demanded.

  Hayden crossed his arms over his bare chest and winced as he hit a tender spot. With one of his fingers, he poked the flesh. Didn’t seem like anything was broken, but they’d injured him, and he wasn’t healed fully.

  With his preternatural healing abilities, there shouldn’t have been any injuries. He was even more confused than ever. Aside from injuries caused by skirm or demon venom all injuries should have healed within minutes. He had no idea how long he had been out, but it was long enough to transport him from the club to the Goddess only knew where.

  When he considered that in addition to the suppression of his animals, he knew he was dealing with a group that had far more knowledge than they should. He should have been able to hear his shifters coming after him from outside as well.

  The pressure surrounding them told him he was underground, but his sensitive hearing should have picked up the howls of an approaching army. Shifters were able to locate their Omega within several hundred miles regardless if they were on airplanes or deep in the side of a mountain. When he tried to link his mind to any of the closest alphas he was met with static.

  How was Millie pulling all of this off?

  Deciding to take the cautious approach and gather more information, Hayden stepped back and sat on the concrete bed he’d been on when he woke up. He set the prod down and watched the humans with narrowed eyes.

  The male with the tray knelt by the bars and slid a solid piece of metal aside. He wondered what the passage was for. The other guard lifted a radio to his mouth. “Subject two-twenty-one tased Don. Get medics down here stat.”

  “You’re lucky we’re feeding you,” guard one told me. “Help me, Stan. We need to get Don out of the line of fire.”

  Hayden growled and bared his teeth at the males. The sound resonated through the area making guard two yelp. Guard one and Stan narrowed their eyes at him then lifted Don by the arms and dragged him away from the cell.

  Hayden stood and lifted the dome. The soup underneath was watery, but he ate it. One thing he learned in his eons of battle experience was to eat when you could. In a war you never knew when you might get the chance again and it was best to keep your strength up.

  The bland liquid was lukewarm, and the mush inside might have been vegetables at one point.

  “I expected him to lap it up like a dog. Isn’t he supposed to turn into one?” Stan’s words grated on his nerves, making it nearly impossible to keep his cool.

  Hayden set the bowl down and picked up the prod then jumped and shoved the thing through the bars. He hoped to catch the male before he could run away. Unfortunately, they were out of reach.

  And to add insult to injury, guard two had lunged into action before Hayden could retreat with the weapon. Guard one dropped Don and assisted guard two in pulling the stick from Hayden’s hand. It was the second time he had underestimated their cunning and now he’d lost the one weapon he had managed to get his hands on.

  If this was foreshadowing of what was to come, he was in deep shit.

  Shaking off the loss, Hayden forced himself to return to eating the soup. The males were laughing as they picked up Don and moved out of sight. Hayden heard more arrive followed by a brief discussion about Don’s weak pulse.

  The smile that spread across Hayden’s lips were genuine. In the least, he managed to remove one of their guards. It wasn’t much, but it was a point in his favor. He glanced around his cell and the area outside it. Once he was finished with the food, he bent and pushed the tray through the opening and tested the metal there.

  Wrapping both hands around the top, he tried to force it up and away, but it didn’t move. Next, he tried the door and managed to bend it to the point it wouldn’t open or close any more. Unfortunately, it did nothing to help him get out of his predicament.

  Sweat dotted his forehead and his heart was racing by the time he stopped. Standing up, he swayed in place when it felt like he was falling off a cliff. His side slammed into the concrete bed and he collapsed onto his back.

  His mind was clouded, and he couldn’t recall what he’d been trying to do a second ago. All he could think about was how his stomach roiled and he tasted bile in the back of his throat.

  When it felt like someone was punching the back of his throat to get the soup back, he knew they’d drugged him again. I bet they fed you what the last prisoner had for dinner. The thought made matters worse and his mouth started watering like a broken sprinkler.

  He swallowed repeatedly, holding onto the meal he had consumed. He needed the strength, even if they were drugging him. Human medications didn’t affect him. This would no doubt pass soon enough.

  Hayden was lying on the bed with one hand thrown over his eyes when he heard the clicking of shoes heading his way. His body went on alert. That wasn’
t a guard. Their boots sounded like horses clomping along.

  He didn’t need to open his eyes to know it was Millie heading his way. Everything about the female was embedded in his memory. Hayden growled and silently cursed himself when his cock thought it was play time and hardened.

  She is not here to pleasure you, idiot!

  That didn’t seem to matter to him one bit. There was no stopping his reaction to her. “I’m surprised to see you up.” Her voice was like a caress over his senses and only made matters worse.

  Hayden cracked one eye open and wished he hadn’t. The sexy temptress was standing outside his cell with her hands folded in front of her and one eyebrow cocked. She had on a white lab coat over a tight blue skirt and even tighter white top. Her heels were three inches and wrapped around her foot and ankle like he wanted to do to her body.

  “I was having a nice dream. Then you arrived.” Hayden knew she was referring to his erection. He didn’t understand it and refused to let it affect how he treated her.

  What was it about this female? Initially, he thought she might be his Fated Mate, but there is no way in hell the Goddess would saddle him with a female that would imprison and torture him. Still the instant attraction and urgent need for her screamed that she was his other half. He’d watched his closest friends lose their minds when they met their mates.

  Zander had kept his mate a secret because he was afraid of losing her before he could claim her. Santiago pursued Tori despite the fact that she was a Valkyrie Assassin hired to kill him. Rhys carted his angel throughout the Underworld and gave up his life to save her in the end. He couldn’t do anything less to ensure she lived.