The Omega Chase, page 6
The older Alpha, Scott, watches from the tree, cradling his injured arm. His eyes flip to mine and he grins with satisfaction and something inside me snaps. I grab a heavy branch from the forest floor and rush at the men, brandishing the club in my hand. My first few swings meet with nothing but air, but then I grit my teeth, forcing myself to concentrate. I strike the young man on his thigh and then again on the arm. An elbow finds my ribs. I squeal against the pain and swing again. A hand grabs the end of the branch, but I yank it out of reach before they can wrench it from my hands.
My Alpha is hobbling, but he continues to fight and I rush at them again, crashing my club down hard on the fair Alpha’s skull just as he goes to strike. He crumples to the floor. And now it’s just the young Alpha and the one with the broken arm.
The dark-eyed Alpha limps to my side.
“They’ve done something to the system,” I tell him. “My button doesn’t work.”
He spits blood onto the ground and nods.
The younger Alpha pummels towards us and I hold my branch aloft. I won’t let him hurt us. He rushes at us with force and I dig my toes into the soft earth, ready for the impact. But the dark-eyed Alpha catches him by the throat and squeezes. The young man scrabbles at his neck, his eyes bulging, his skin flushing under the lightening sky.
“You’ve made your point,” the older man calls from the tree. “Let him go.”
“I should kill him,” the dark-eyed Alpha says.
“No,” I tell him, dropping my branch and gripping his arm. He looks at me with such thunder in his eyes, I almost hear the heavy clouds clap together. But as he gazes at me it passes and he releases his hand and the young Alpha falls away, gasping for breath, only for a fist to connect with his cheek and he falls backward onto the ground.
The dark-eyed Alpha takes my hand and pulls me away. Behind us we hear the older Alpha shouting profanities at us.
“We need to get out of here,” he says, “there could be other Alphas. Lots of others.”
“Could we go back to the bunker? Is it safe in there?”
He shakes his head. Despite his injured leg, his pace is quick and I struggle to keep up, panting by his side. “We need to get out of here and back to the town.”
“It’s miles,” I say.
He pulls my arm in closer, examining the map as we walk along. “My car is parked on the perimeter out here.” He points to the edge of the map towards the west.
“Why?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I never liked the idea of handing over my only means of escape.”
“Smart.” I wonder why I’ve been so stupid in comparison, how the hell I got myself into this. Trapped in the middle of nowhere, on the verge of a heat and surrounded by god knows how many feral Alphas. How could I have been such a fool?
“Are you hurt, Omega?” he asks me softly as we hurry onwards, sliding his thumb over the knuckles of my fingers. “Did they hurt you?”
“No. I’m okay. But you …” I reach my fingertips to the cut above his eyebrow and he winces.
“It’s ok,” he tells me, then seems to shake himself. “Here,” he says, removing the shirt he is now dressed in and passing it to me. “Put this on.”
It’s smeared in blood and damp from the rain and his sweat, but I tug it over my head and the hem drops halfway down my thighs. He reaches for my hand again when I’m done and grips it tightly in his own, dragging me along.
We walk onwards. Time passing. My perception of it warped.
At one point we catch the scent of Alphas and Omegas, plus the faint sound of screams. My frightened eyes flip to him.
“It’s okay,” he tells me, “We are downwind of them. They can’t smell us.”
“But the other Omegas — shouldn’t we help them?”
“The best way to do that is to get to my car and phone for help.”
I nod, clinging on to his arm as we continue onwards, my nose and my ears super alert for any scent and any noise. We’re silent as we pick our way through the undergrowth, the soles of my feet sore and torn to shreds, and every now and then, he takes my arm to look where we are on the map.
“We’re nearly there.” he tells me the next time he examines my forearm. The sky is lightening now, the faintest cream hue visible through the trees, spreading shades of green into the forest around us, and above our heads the birds greet the dawn. “He was right,” he says softly as I stare up through the trees at the chorus in the canopy.
I glance back at him and he is watching me. “What?”
“He was right. I shouldn’t have let you go off like that alone. I should have been protecting you.” He swallows. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” I say. “You let me go. It was the right thing. You couldn’t have known what these men had done.”
I’ve never seen him in the daytime before and I marvel out how the shadows on his face are chased away by the light, and he appears younger, softer, kinder. It’s like watching a beast transform into a man. His skin is an array of colours, and his lips full and pink, and the hue of his eyes lighten too to a brown that is almost the colour of amber. I bite my lip to stop my mouth from falling open as I gape at him and he cocks his head.
I wonder what I must look like, my legs covered in mud and scrapes, my nails broken, my hair a tangle on my head, my mascara surely smeared all over my cheeks.
“I’m sorry too,” I touch my fingers to my face. “I’m sorry I left like that.”
He stops and spins towards me, covering the hand on my cheek with his own and stares down at me with those eyes, dazzling as the sun streams through the trees. He says nothing, but I feel as if I know his thoughts, anyway. How deeply this connection between us must run. I wonder if it can survive the cold light of day or will prove to be an illusion of the night.
“This is no illusion,” he says, and we walk the last few meters to the perimeter of the forest. There is a large fence, at least ten feet tall. He finds a log and smashes at it again and again until it groans and creaks and topples. Finally, it is broken enough for us to squeeze our way through and we fall out onto the country lane. Ahead of us I see a Mercedes, parked on the verge. He clasps my hand and we sprint towards it.
“Do you have a key?” I ask.
“It’s fingerprint activated,” he tells me, pressing his palm to the handle. The lock pops and the door hisses open. He walks me around to the passenger side and helps me in, retrieving a blanket from the boot and laying it over my bare legs.
Then he starts the car and pulls away, and I let out a long sigh of relief as we put distance between us and the grounds. He makes a call and we’re nearing the town when we hear sirens and a procession of police cars shoot past us in the opposite direction. I turn in my seat and watch them go.
“We’re safe now,” he says and finds my hand, squeezing it as a sob escapes my throat and hot tears roll down my cheeks, more and more. Tears I can’t stop.
Chapter five
The Alpha
The Omega dozes in the seat beside me, her legs curled up beneath her, the blanket drawn around her shoulders, and her head tilted towards one side. Her hand is still in mine, although her fingers loosened as the sleep overtook her. We’ve been driving for two hours and my eyes stray frequently from the road to look at her, to pinch myself that she is still here.
Under the light of day she is more beautiful than ever, although smaller, more fragile, and the emotion in my chest bubbles up to my throat all over again. I’d nearly lost her. Several times during the scramble to my car and the drive away, this awful thought has struck me, freezing my blood in my veins and gripping my heart. This was a woman I do not know and yet I know losing her would break my heart in two.
I can’t let that happen.
She murmurs, rolling her head to the side to face me and her eyes flutter open, focusing, and then she smiles as her gaze meets mine.
“Ford,” I tell her. “My name is Ford Island.”
Her smile widens, revealing her pretty white teeth. “Nice to meet you, Ford. I’m Cassie.”
“Cassie,” I say slowly, allowing the letters and syllables to trip over my tongue, testing the name in my mouth. Strangely, it does not feel unfamiliar, as if it has been residing right there on the tip of my tongue all this time. “That’s a beautiful name. We’re nearing London, Cassie, do you want to tell me where you live so I can drop you home?”
Her nose crinkles. “You don’t know?”
My eyes flip back to her face and I frown in puzzlement. “No.”
“Oh, I thought …” She stares through the window, her mind somewhere else. Then she shakes her head. “Nevermind. I live in Finchley.”
She gives me the postcode and I punch it into the car’s sat nav.
“How about you?” she asks.
“Notting Hill,” I tell her.
“Oh,” she says again, the little crease lines appearing over the bridge of her nose. “It’s really lovely there.”
“Yes, it is.”
We talk more as the traffic becomes denser and denser until we’re crawling with all the other vehicles heading towards London. I tell her about my work and my friends, my likes and dislikes and I discover the sound of her laugh, something I would like to bottle and keep forever.
The car is thick with aromas, the fumes from the traffic, the mud of the forest, the stench of other Alphas, the smell of my seed deep inside her, but, above all, her scent, mellowing and relaxing as we talk. It has been a long, long time since I’ve talked with a woman like this. And I have a funny thought that it is better than the sex. Well, almost.
My life has been lonely for such a long time, filled with my work and the cheap thrill of rutting a random Omega in heat. I’ve missed basking in the attention of another person, a person with bright eyes and a laugh like sunshine, wallowing in their stories, losing myself to the sound of their voice.
Our hands are still linked. We have sat in my car for hours now and not once have we let go. I never want to let go. But I try not to think about it as we pull off the motorway, down the dual carriageway and weave in and out of residential streets, the dot on the screen making its way ever closer to our destination.
When we stop outside her building, I still clasp her hand as I switch off the engine.
“Here you are, Cassie.” I search for something else to say not wanting this time between us to end, the Alpha inside me already howling at the pain I will feel to separate from her. “Are you sure, you don’t need me to take you to a doctor to get checked out?”
“No, I’m fine.” She smiles. “But come inside and let me see to that cut,” she says, stroking her thumb beneath the wound, over my eyebrow. I close my eyes against the softness of her touch, my body drifting towards hers. “And then maybe … you could stay?”
My eyes flip open. “Stay?”
“Would you stay for my heat, Alpha?” she whispers, and the word Alpha is so seductive on her pink lips, I groan inside.
“Omega,” I reach over and pinch her chin between my finger and thumb, forcing her to meet my eye. “If I take care of you during your heat, I can’t promise I won’t bite you. I will try, I know you’re not ready for it, so I’ll try. But I might not be able to control myself. Your hold over me is too strong.”
She blinks and swallows, the tendons in her throat stretching and tightening and her scent sweetening. I kiss her then, unable to resist the plumpness of her lips, and I know full well I would claim her in her heat. Nothing in the world would stop me.
When I withdraw, I expect to find her pupils swollen with desire, but they are alert as ever.
“There was someone else before this, when I was young,” she says. “I thought he was the one, thought I was his. I was ready to give him everything. But he lied to me. There were others,” she grimaces, “many others.”
“It’s why you’re afraid.”
She hesitates, then nods.
I hold her gaze. “I promise, this is different.” It’s all the reassurance I can give. Following our hearts, believing in this pull between us, is a gamble. One I’m willing to take. I can only hope she will trust me enough to take it too.
She inhales and exhales slowly, as if steadying herself. “Come inside,” she says.
I follow her up the steps of her building and then up two flights of stairs and into her flat. It’s empty, her flatmate nowhere to be seen. Taking my hands, she leads me to the kitchenette and tells me to sit on one of the wooden chairs circling the dining table. She fills the kettle and sets it to boil, then balances on her tiptoes to riffle through an overhead cupboard, and the hem of my t-shirt lifts, revealing the tops of her thighs.
She brings down a plastic container with an assortment of boxes inside, scooping out some cotton wool and dousing it in alcoholic smelling liquid from a bottle.
“Lift your chin,” she tells me as she comes to stand in front of me and I open my legs and pull her close. She rolls her eyes and grips my jaw, carefully dabbing my eyebrow with the damp cotton wool. I wince and she pauses. “Ok?” I nod and she continues, her brow slightly furrowed in concentration.
My hands drift to her thighs and slowly I trace them upwards under my t-shirt to her arse, swimming my hands over both globes.
“I’m trying to concentrate,” she mutters, reaching for the box and pulling out some strips and fixing them across my brow. Then she finds a fresh piece of cotton wool and cleans the bite mark on my shoulder, pressing gently against the wound, and I grit my teeth against the fierce sting. “This is nasty,” she says, and I peer down at it. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” she asks me. “Your leg?”
“It was just a dead leg. How about you?” She puts down the dirty bud of wool and shrugs, rubbing at her gland and untwining the braid that’s come loose in her hair. My hands catch the hem of her t-shirt. “Let me see.” She stretches her arms above her head and I lift the shirt away. A dark bruise the size of my fist sprawls over the right side of her rib cage. I brush the pad of my thumb across it, blowing away the anger that spikes in my gut, and then I kiss it lightly followed by the flat of her belly. I imagine it rounded and extended and kiss it again.
“Let’s get cleaned up,” I say, and she leads me to a small bathroom with black and white checked tiles and a Victorian basin and toilet. She runs the shower until it’s hot as I strip off my clothes, and then we climb into the small space together. There isn’t much room and we’re pressed together as gently I glide soap and a sponge over her body, washing away the scents of the other Alphas and the mud and grime. Soon there’s a layer of white foam slipping over the rise of her breasts and the slope of her belly, and she looks like something mythical, the bubbles catching the light and sparkling. I tell her to lean back her head and I guide the water through her hair as I massage shampoo into the strands.
When I’m done, she turns her attention to me, washing every part of me with attention and care; her eyes soaking up each part as she moves the sponge in circles over my body. I’m so hard now that I’m fighting with every breath not to have her against the wall of the shower, but this moment feels tender and intimate as if we are allowing each other a little further into our lives, as if I am gaining a little more of her trust. I don’t want to break it.
Afterwards, I make us tea while she uses my phone to message her flatmate and I examine the contents of her cupboards as I search for tea bags, wondering which jars and tins and packets are hers. I imagine my own cupboards with these rye crackers, and jars of pesto. I imagine the feminine bottles lined up on the bathroom window in my own, and I imagine this sweet scent deep in the fabric of my home.
We take the tea into her bedroom. It’s small like the bathroom, the double bed taking up most of the wall; fairy lights strung around the rails of the bedstead and framed splashes of colour on the walls. A bookcase stands rammed with books of all sizes next to one small wardrobe, its door ajar and clothes spilling from its belly.
She scratches at her gland, and her scent is almost pungent, her skin glowing.
“It’s coming already,” I tell her.
She rolls her head and then her shoulders. “I don’t understand it,” she says with irritation. “Sit.” She points to a chair by a dressing table. “I need to make my nest.”
I sip my tea and watch her in amusement, a smile playing on my lips. I’ve never seen an Omega prepare her nest before and I’m sort of fascinated. There seems little logic to it as she pulls cushions and blankets from on top of the wardrobe and from under the bed and arranges them across the mattress and the small square of floor. Every now and again, she pauses, studying her work and seems to see something she dislikes, yanking it from the pile and placing it somewhere else. At one point, she disappears and returns with my discarded clothes, adding them to the heap, arranging them pride of place in the centre of her nest. Once or twice, she buries her face in the growing nest and sniffs, reordering things as she does.
Her skin is flushed a bright pink now, and droplets of sweat roll down her neck and along her collarbone. I follow their progress, wanting to lick them away with my tongue, but I know not to disturb her. The hair around her brow and her ears is damp and I open a window for her, trying to find cool air.
Finally, she spins around to me, a look of satisfaction on her face. “Done.” She holds out her arm and I know she wants me to inspect her nest, requiring my approval.
I walk towards it and take my time examining the arrangement, inhaling the mix of our scents in the fabrics. “It’s a beautiful nest, Omega,” I tell her and am rewarded with a wide smile. I look at her. Her eyes are gaining that dazed, drugged appearance that comes in a heat and the tops of her thighs glisten with the first of her slick. Her heat will be on her completely in a few hours, maybe minutes. “I can still go,” I say.
