Page 112 of Generation Omega: Claimed
“You did well, my mate.” His sonorous voice falters, emotion overpowering the most powerful man I’ll ever know. “You’re the one… it was you all along. I didn’t know. I couldn’t, but I…”
“Shh, Ory, it’s okay. Everything is okay.”
As I ease my fingertips along his corded arms that surround me, I recognize the softness of the mattress below us. We’re not in the basement anymore, but in a room with a bed large enough for us both. I sigh, the aching so real and so worth it. I’ve never been a gym rat like Ethan, but if this bliss is what a tough workout inspires, then I’m getting a lifetime membership that better come with one-on-one switch sessions with Ory. New gym members wouldn’t just show up to meet short-lived New Year’s resolutions, if they got a little sexy caning between sets, orassets.
As Ory and I breathe our closeness, my memories prove Ory’s honesty. Every part of what happened during my trials iscrystal clear and appropriately added to mylust locker, on the unlikely chance I ever need to self-pleasure again. The future has never been so bright as imagining Ory forcing me to choose my own switch before our next reunion with the old ways. Those pauses between the strikes built so much desire. If I think about it too much, I’m going to be mounting up again when I truly don’t have the energy. My to-do list is done, and I can rest in the peace of justbeingafter a day that will forever change our lives.
More striking than anything else is the knowledge that I’ve punched my ticket to enter this war, paying for admission with my blood. I’m not the omega I was before this experience—she’s gone forever. I’m the origin omega now, a warrior queen, building my legacy that will cover this world in seeds that will sprout and flourish in newly called omegas and alphas.Ownership… that’s what is burning in me now. The omegaverse belongs to me by right, even when I’m nothing but a reference in a dusty scroll or an outdated laptop someone digs up to discover the source of what transformed the world.
“Are you okay?” I whisper to the silent man behind me.
Ory moves me and then himself, carefully straddling me while I rest on my sensitive back and neck. His hands cradle my face. “Mytruemate—myonlytrue mate.” Lit by the small lamp beside the bed, Ory’s eyes reveal his amazement. “The claiming bites you now wearshenever wore. I would have claimed her back then, but she stopped me every time with words I’ll never forget, words I never thought I would understand. But I do now… because of you.”
I rest my hands over his wildly pounding heart, steadying it with mine. “What words did she say?”
“I can’t hear it… the song of life… this isn’t for me.” His gaze is defined by anguish. “She knew then. It’s why she did what she did, pleading with me to surrender to a destiny I didn’t comprehend—one she denied even to herself. I think shethought it was our timing that wasn’t right, but that we would come together later. But that wasn’t it at all. She wasn’t ever my true mate—you are.”
Tears glide from my eyes on their way down my cheeks, reaching his hands that still hold me. “I’m so lucky to be your mate, Ory. Thank you for surviving all this time so that we could find each other. I didn’t realize just how much I need you, but I see it now. I can do it all—everything that’s required of me—because of you and your commitment to me, our pack, and the omegaverse.”
A small, mysterious smile forms that’s almost completely concealed by his beard. “There’s something else, my beautiful mate.”
“What,mybeautiful mate?”
His joy is radiant, and I know his expressionless days are a thing of the past. “You are with child, my love. Awee bairn, as Mackenzie would say.”
“Our child?” I breathe, all my complicated feelings about motherhood crash-landing on me, along with a bewildering excitement for something that terrifies me as much as it thrills me.
In my mind, children raised by neglectful mothers become adults who either abstain from the potential heartache of parenthood or enter it with the fury of a lioness to give their children the life they never had. Until this moment, I wasn’t aware just how much I yearned to believe I was capable of being that lioness with a heart fierce enough to love and nurture my child, especially in this uncertain world. Before the old ways, I didn’t have the answer I needed, but after those trials, I have no doubts about the mother I will be.
Mischief shines at me, a lightness that defies all sense in a man who’s been morestoic mountainthan future parent chasing a child riding a bike for the first time, shoutingencouraging words so boisterously the neighbors will flee. “Do you truly want to know who the father is?”
Do I? Hell yes, I do. I nod in his hands.
“Your child’s father is…” Ory freezes, sniffing the air before rolling to shield me from someone entering the room.
I can’t see anything behind him, but then something strikes him, and he stumbles and crashes to the floor. Without his body between the opening and me, I see the slender form of the enemy whose weapon is trained on me.
I raise my hands, affecting a surrender that’s a complete lie, when a shot is fired directly at me. There is no sound, but the agonizing outcome is real. I glance down at my bare chest, observing the dart that punctured me over my heart. Just like the dart that struck Ethan in that alley. Beta Dominion is here—that’s all I can think as my body collapses onto the bed.
CHAPTER 52
KAZIMIR
The air here is too damn clean. All these trees scrubbing the oxygen and sending it right into my lungs—yeah, that’s a perfectly believable reason for this affliction I’m suffering.Affliction… that’s it. That’s what got hold of me. It’s an illness. It must be. The only trouble is illnesses need curing, and I’m struggling to imagine wanting this condition to be healed.
Fine. I’ll come up with something else to justify my current experience with an entirely new concept calledlonging. It teases me, this idea of pining with tender thoughts and hopes for things that haven’t come to pass. This is a first for me. At least, I think it is. Did Ilongto capture, kill, or distribute abducted omegas and alphas? Was that a deep yearning? I don’t think so. It was a game, with the ending always a bit of a letdown if I’m being honest with myself.
Sure, there would always be someone else to capture, torture, or assassinate, but it was just a job. Some people prepare delightfully sweet orange juice concoctions at the mall, and others hunt unsuspecting omegaverse victims. No one feels an intense longing to fill a beverage for a stranger to consume, any more than sending projectiles through yet another person’schest cavity would make me giddy. Work is all ho-hum in the end.
I’m even more convinced that this is indeed my first encounter with yearning—in this case, for something I can absolutely have. Ethan’s ready and waiting, and Gideon will be here soon to take my post. He may even arrive early, since he’s such a softy and knows Ethan and I have big plans. If my ego could have withstood it, I would have begged off and asked Gideon to cover for me, but that was a bridge too far.
Besides, I’m not quite ready to move from longing into satisfaction, even though that seems reckless. Why risk it? Best to grab hold of the moments we can before it all fades away, either by a sudden explosion of violence or the cruel passage of time. But longing itself is so welcome, this chance to imagine the pleasant moments awaiting me. Actual pleasant moments… it’s like discovering that happiness really exists—it wasn’t just a nefarious fabrication created by liars and villains.
My desire is potent as I visualize Ethan and me discovering each other. I can almost picture it, letting down my guard and laughing with him over some silly human moment we share. I can see walking through the world with the knowledge that I know Ethan in a way no one else ever will, that part of his heart belongs to me. I already know I would trade everything I have—decades of my life—just to know him better than I do now and to be accepted by him as I am.
One aspect of this delicate foray into human emotions is undeniable. It’s Tillie who gave me something I never would have asked for, a thing so precious that it caused this exquisite yearning to bloom in me. Her willingness to accept me, to keep my secrets from Ethan… that’s what built the joy that’s dancing around inside this killer’s rambunctious heart. It won’t be easy to conceal the truth from Ethan, but I can do it, because I know I don’t have to protect Tillie from who I am. That littlepowerhouse is deceptively fierce, and I pity anyone who ever underestimates her.
An image returns to my mind, a completely ridiculous and infinitely embarrassing daydream, that refuses to be suppressed no matter what I do. It involves me comfortably resting somewhere, with my beta and my omega cuddled around me. The two of them hold each other’s hands, as they did when I first spotted them in that alley, while I read them the latest shifter romance release, MM if possible. I would do all the voices and provide all the sound effects—as an attentive alpha does. It shouldn’t be possible, but I can visualize a time when I’m not standing a post, watching for killers to arrive. A time beyond the wars.
