Omega

by S. M. Reine

  “Guess that’s life as Alpha,” Gage said. “Lots of demands on your time.”

  “If she can’t make us a priority, maybe she shouldn’t be Alpha anymore,” said one of the other guys. “Everton Stark—”

  “Shut up,” Franklin said. “I told you, we’re not getting into this debate again.”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up!”

  The men turned from Deirdre and Gage to argue. She was grateful for the distraction. She didn’t want to hear people discussing the merits of Rylie versus Stark like it was the stupid Superbowl.

  She pulled the lapels of her jacket up to conceal her face, hoping that nobody would recognize her as the woman Stark had carried away from the firefight at the benefits office.

  “Well, you heard the guys. Best pie in the northeast,” Gage said. He speared a piece on his fork and offered it to Deirdre.

  She pushed his hands away. “I told you, I don’t want any of that.”

  “Yeah, but when’s the last time you ate? Don’t tell me that it was last night because I know you only had two bites of that baked potato.”

  “Were you watching me eat? And since when do berserkers like pie anyway?”

  “For the record, unlike wolves, bears are omnivores. In the wild, a bear’s diet is primarily fish and berries. Given the opportunity, though, they’ll get into all kinds of human trash. Including pie.”

  “Drawing parallels between Poppy’s pie and trash isn’t whetting my appetite,” Deirdre said.

  “Did you know that half of the deaths from lethe are because addicts starve themselves?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not an addict.” But she took a bite anyway, just to prove to him that she could.

  It wasn’t easy to eat a pie while standing in line, especially one that moved as briskly as the one in Northgate. Whoever Rylie had at the entrance to the sanctuary kept things moving pretty well. They couldn’t have been doing much by way of security checks.

  Before they’d even finished the slice, Deirdre and Gage were out of Northgate and into the trees. The entrance for the sanctuary was less than a mile ahead.

  Deirdre dropped the paper plate and forks into a trashcan on the side of the road. “So what did you see?” she asked, licking the taste of cherries off of her fingertips. “When Gutterman attacked us at the grocery store. What did you see?”

  “Oh.” He hooked his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. What did you see?”

  She glared out at the forest. It was so warm, so bright—so distant from the chilly horrors that Gutterman evoked in her. “I get cold. Everything starts oozing water and molding, and it’s so damn cold.”

  “That’s weird. Why’s that? Some childhood trauma? Survived some kind of hurricane or flooding or…what?”

  “No, I just don’t like getting wet. Someday, when I’ve got money and don’t need to rely on public benefits, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to move to Africa.” Deirdre tipped her face toward the sun, closing her eyes. “I’m going to roam the savannah with the lions and elephants or whatever, and I’m going to soak up the sun, all the time.” When she opened her eyes, she realized that Gage was giving her a funny look. “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. I just think that sounds like a good idea. I can see you doing that. It’s nice.” Gage raked a hand over his scalp. “I haven’t fantasized about what I’d do in the future for a long time. I don’t think I have a future.”

  “It’d be cool to see a bear taking on lions,” Deirdre said.

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “I bet I could take a lion.”

  She reached out to touch his chest, tracing her hands along the lines of his muscles. His body was firm under her fingertips. “Tell you what. You can share my fantasy for the future. Picture it—you, me, the savannah, and nothing but sunshine and heat.”

  Gage looped an arm around her waist. He was watching her lips. “That sounds pretty good.”

  “Yeah, I think so.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Deirdre leaned into him, letting the weight of her hips press against his. “Of course, even if you could take down lions, you’ll have to get a lot tougher to take me down.”

  “You had to cheat to win a fight against me,” Gage said.

  “But I did win.” She kissed him. He was almost the same height she was, so she didn’t have to reach up at all, and she kind of liked that.

  She had only intended to tease him with that kiss, but when Deirdre tried to withdraw, he tightened his hands on her waist and held her in place. He kissed back much harder, nearly bowing her over with the force of it.

  It wasn’t the imagined savannah sunlight making her body heat against his.

  Deirdre was breathing hard when he finally let her step back. Gage’s shirt was rumpled where she’d grabbed him, and she hadn’t even remembered clutching at his clothes so hard.

  “Still think you could beat me?” he asked.

  She liked that he hadn’t taken his arm away from her waist.

  “I’d find a way,” Deirdre said.

  The line moved again, forcing them to close the gap with the people ahead of them or lose their spot. But Gage didn’t let go of her. He hung on to her waist for the whole mile into the pass, walking together quietly.

  Deirdre had no idea what was going on between them. A few kisses, sharing a bed, infiltrating a rebellion together. It was a weird relationship, if they even had any kind of relationship at all. But she kind of liked it, whatever it was.

  She thought that Gage liked it, too. His earlier drama was nowhere in sight. There was no way to tell he was the kind of guy whose moods could turn him into a bear one moment and make him attempt suicide the next. He was so chill, so easy to be around.

  Maybe Deirdre fixed those parts of him. Maybe she made him better.

  Or maybe he was just a really good actor.

  Deirdre finally stepped away from Gage and leaned around the line to look ahead. They weren’t far from the entrance now. Her feeling of dread about the whole situation hadn’t stopped growing, despite her companionable walk with Gage.

  Something was wrong—something more than the obvious.

  Deirdre lowered her voice to a whisper. “Doesn’t it seem weird to you that Stark would attack a public forum?”

  Gage shrugged. “I don’t put anything past him.”

  “But he’s kinda populist,” Deirdre said. “If anything, you’d think he’d be in favor of the government listening to what shifters have to say.”

  “I doubt he has much faith in the establishment. To him, Rylie’s town hall must seem like elaborate theater to quell the masses.”

  “Guess you’re right.” But Deirdre felt like she was on the brink of some kind of realization. “It’s just that there are no mundanes here. It’s all shifters.”

  “So what?”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. “When we were at the benefits office, he spared the shifters. He might be a sadist but I really think he wants our kind to do better.”

  Gage finally seemed to understand what she was getting at. “You think he wouldn’t do anything that could put such a big group of shifters at risk. So what is this, then? Why’d he send all of us here? It can’t just be some class field trip.”

  “No, you’re right,” Deirdre said.

  That would have been a huge waste of time and resources. It made no sense for Stark to send everyone to the sanctuary like that.

  Especially since he’d left.

  An ugly idea unfurled in the darkest corner of Deirdre’s skull. “Wait. Rylie’s hiding, right? Her daughter’s going to do all the talking, and he won’t bother attacking someone who isn’t the Alpha.”

  “Yeah,” Gage said. “We thwarted Stark by tipping off Rylie.”

  “But what if he knew that sending hundreds of his followers to the sanctuary would make Rylie go into hiding?”

  “It wouldn’t matter because he doesn’t know whe
re she hides. That’s the whole point of hiding. Being hard to find. Plus, Rylie’s got a veritable bunker to protect her.”

  A bunker. Like a memorial enchanted to protect her from anything.

  Deirdre swallowed hard. Her mouth was so dry.

  When she’d taken her first hit of lethe, she’d been talking about Rylie with Stark. She’d told him about that memorial and its enchantments. If Deirdre had taken the mental leap to think that Rylie would hide there, someone as smart as Stark would, too.

  “What if Stark knows exactly where Rylie is hidden?” Deirdre asked.

  Gage’s brow lowered over his eyes. “Does he?”

  She couldn’t bring herself to explain what had happened.

  “We need to get to her first,” she said.

  Gage knew the terrain surrounding the sanctuary well, so they skipped the security line and hit the mountain directly. He avoided the trails and cut a path straight through dense underbrush, carving a path for Deirdre behind him. She was in great shape, but even she struggled to keep up.

  He was a man with a purpose now and nothing could slow him down.

  When they reached a sheer cliff face, he didn’t even pause. He just started climbing.

  “There’s a road up top,” Gage panted, gripping the rocks and heaving himself off of the ground. “It’s for accessing some of the warded fencing around the northern edge of the property. We can reach the airstrip and the memorial from there.”

  Deirdre watched him scale the rocks until he was a solid twenty feet above her, noting how he positioned his hands and feet.

  Then she took a completely different route.

  “Follow me,” she said, scrambling up the cliff.

  She didn’t look down to see if he was keeping up. She kept her eyes on the cliff above, focusing all her energy on searching for the next handhold.

  But she couldn’t resist the urge to look down into the valley.

  The mountain sloped sharply down into the sanctuary proper, with all of the houses and grassy fields spread out just as they had been on Deirdre’s last visit. The only difference was that she couldn’t see any of the fields anymore. They were packed with shifters, like some kind of preternatural Woodstock.

  There was a huge stage at the far end of the field where all the shifter children had been playing. Just as Deirdre had expected, it was flanked by large video screens that projected an unfamiliar face for the people in the back to see.

  It must have been Rylie’s daughter giving her speech. They’d taken too long to get around the back of the sanctuary, so the town hall had already started.

  Deirdre could almost make out Summer Gresham’s words. Her deep, feminine voice echoed through the valley, though with the approaching roar of the waterfall, it sounded like little more than random mumbling.

  Rocks crumbled. She looked down to see Gage just a foot underneath her. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” he grunted. His face was red. He was drenched in sweat. “But don’t stop.”

  She reached the top almost a minute before he did, and then reached down to pull him up.

  He rolled onto his back on the cliff. Deirdre stood over him with a half-smirk. He might have almost beaten her in a fight at the asylum, but when it came to climbing, she dominated him.

  “You need more exercise,” she said.

  “Bears don’t climb,” Gage said. “On the bright side, I think I’ve identified you as the first spider-monkey shapeshifter I’ve ever met.”

  Deirdre rolled her eyes. “I hope not.”

  “Who knows? You could be anything. Maybe you’re a gecko.”

  “Quiver with fear before the were-gecko,” she said dryly. “I’ll still be slightly more useful than I am as an Omega.”

  She lifted him to his feet. Gage shook off the fatigue. “Okay. The fence is up this way. It’ll take me a minute to figure out how to circumvent the wards, but I don’t think we should get blasted.”

  “You don’t think we’ll get blasted?” Deirdre asked. “Blasted how?”

  “The sanctuary wards were designed by powerful witches. We have balefire protections.” He laughed breathlessly at her expression, pushing through the trees. “It’d kill even an asshole like Stark, but don’t worry, we won’t…”

  He stopped talking.

  A moment later, Deirdre realized why.

  They had found the fence. Or at least, what used to be the fence.

  The earth around it was a crater filled with claw marks. Someone had dug down to find the crystals anchoring the wards, shattered them, and then ripped through the split rail fence to leave an open path into the sanctuary.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine who had done it.

  Deirdre spread her fingers out over the claw marks. They were easily three or four times bigger than her hands. Stark’s animal, whatever it was, must have rivaled Gage’s bear in size.

  “What was that you were saying about the balefire wards killing Stark?” Deirdre asked.

  Gage’s jaw clenched, the veins in his neck bulging.

  He’d switched from laughing to the brink of going berserk in that heartbeat he’d seen the fence.

  “Rylie,” he muttered.

  He stepped through the broken fence. There was no jolt of magic, and definitely no balefire.

  The wards were completely shattered.

  They reached the road on the other side in moments. It was just through the trees. Gage broke into a run, rounding the rocks at the bend in the trail with Deirdre at his side.

  And she almost ran right into Everton Stark’s back.

  She skidded to a stop, unable to withhold her shout of surprise.

  Stark turned to look at them slowly, so slowly, as though even he was in disbelief that he could have run into someone else on that remote access road.

  He was wearing a flannel shirt and dirty jeans without a jacket—nowhere that he could hide a weapon. Not that he needed one. The man was a weapon even in his human form.

  “What are you doing here?” Stark asked, surveying both of them coolly.

  Deirdre couldn’t think of any words. Even words that would have damned them had fled her mind.

  For a moment, it was silent aside from the waterfall and the distant echo of Summer Gresham’s voice.

  And then Gage spoke.

  “We’re looking for Rylie.”

  Stark looked more surprised than angry. Deirdre was sure the latter would follow soon enough. “Why?”

  “Rylie’s not giving the speech,” Gage said. “It’s her daughter on stage. I thought that Deirdre and I might be able to find Rylie ourselves—since, you know, I came out of the sanctuary. And then we could do it on our own. Kill her, I mean.”

  It wasn’t actually a terrible excuse.

  Deirdre still flinched when Stark advanced on Gage.

  “Why didn’t you tell Jacek what you’re doing, then?” Stark asked. “He would have reported to me. Or he would have gone along with you.”

  “I don’t trust that guy at my back,” Deirdre said, trying to draw his attention to her, away from Gage. “If I’m facing down an Alpha werewolf, I’m doing it with my boyfriend and nobody else.”

  “I bet she’s hiding out at the memorial,” Gage said. “The one at the top of the trail.”

  “You’re right,” Stark said. “That’s what my intelligence told me.”

  “Speaking of intelligence, what’s going on here?” Deirdre asked. “Did you leave everyone down there for a reason?”

  “I have thousands of followers, Tombs. Rylie has millions. There’s bound to be at least one traitor among my people.” And judging by Stark’s expression, he thought he’d found two. “Should I confront Rylie Gresham while she’s prepared, in her home territory, surrounded by friends—or should I threaten her with force and catch her when she hides instead?”

  “That’s smart,” Deirdre said weakly.

  “Smarter than an Omega going after an Alpha.” She had Stark’s full attention now, and she didn’t like i
t at all. “How the hell did you plan to kill her?”

  Deirdre drew her Ruger. “Silver bullets.”

  He took the gun from her. Deirdre forced herself to release the gun without a struggle, and relaxing her hand took more willpower than she thought she’d possessed.

  Her nerves jangled like alarm bells as he ejected the magazine. He sniffed the bullets.

  Then he popped the magazine back in.

  Stark lifted the gun. Deirdre’s whole body tensed. “I see. In that case…” He turned the Ruger around and offered it to her butt-first.

  He wasn’t going to shoot her—he was giving it back.

  Deirdre reached out to take it.

  His hand shot out, clamping down on her wrist. She gasped. “Deirdre Tombs, I want you to find and kill Rylie Gresham,” Stark said. “Don’t do anything else until she’s dead.”

  Deirdre’s jaw dropped.

  He was trying to compel her to perform the assassination.

  Anyone taking on Rylie alone was facing death. As harmless as the woman seemed, she was still an Alpha werewolf, with all the powers that entailed. She controlled other shifters’ abilities to change forms. She could also shift faster than anyone else, and she’d be far more powerful in her wolf form, too.

  It was a good way to get rid of followers that Stark suspected of sedition.

  But Deirdre wasn’t worried—not really—until Stark rounded on Gage and did the same.

  “Kill Rylie Gresham,” he said. “Don’t do anything else until she’s dead.”

  Gage went glassy-eyed, pupils dilated.

  Oh gods above and below. No.

  When Gage broke into a run, Deirdre didn’t know what else to do—she followed him.

  They raced at top speed together up the trail. Gage wasn’t as fast in his human body as he was in his bear form. Deirdre, on the other hand, had been training at free running for months—her top speed was pretty damn good.

  She pulled ahead of him in moments.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that Stark was following at a stroll. He wasn’t in a hurry. He didn’t need to be, especially now that he’d sent two shifters ahead to do the job for him.

  Deirdre turned a curve around the trail and she could no longer see either man.