Page 114 of Generation Omega: Claimed
What’s going to happen?
Why now?
What did we do wrong?
The questions slam against the vile ringing in my head, but there’s one question I don’t need to ask.
Does my pack still live? They live—I know they live. My heart knows they live, just as it now accepts that they can’t respond because they were drugged, like I was. Like Ory was. But I’m still here, conscious in an unmoving body. My heart transmitter is alive and well, but my bonded alphas’ receivers are down. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. They are unconscious, while I’m aware.
Why?
Another waterfall of questions attempts to drown me, the same ones and more.
How did it come to this so quickly?
How did we get so long to bond?
Where did they pick up our trail?
How?
How?
How?
Like a shell with an ocean soundtrack always playing, my dark curiosity lines up questions regardless of the fact that there are no answers here. To break the panicked pitch of so much unknown, I roughly spin the wheel of my experience, sending it rushing toward memories of the life I’m about to lose.
I’m sitting on the curb with Ethan outside the house that was never my home. He can’t talk, his words stolen by grief, his hand cold in mine, but mine was warm enough to fight the chill. I can’t remember what I promised him that day, but I know it was true. Because he lived. I lived. We made it here.
Before I can consider Ethan’s fate—whether the toxin fatal to betas was used on him again—I grab that wheel and send it spinning, praying wherever it lands provides a clue of what I’m supposed to do. If my mind is the only resource we still have, then all responsibility for my pack is mine. But that’s too much to face, so I go where the memory wheel takes me.
Ethan and I are at the campsite where he listened to my silence, not demanding anything from me other than acceptance of how much I was loved. His love is his superpower—I can’t believe I never told him that. Or did I?
A dozen more spins, a dozen more memory reunions, all involving the moments in my omegaverse journey so far. Every one of them tells a story I want to believe, that we are just at thebeginning, not ready to be cut down. Not ready to be caged and abused for all we were powerless to control.
We didn’t cause this—it was a call we had no choice but to answer.
Everything in me, all the noise and chaos, screeches to a halt as the one thought I’d blocked returns with a fury.
Awee bairn… a baby… a child… our future.
Suddenly, a force—primal and bloodthirsty—surges to life in me, and I’m now the most terrifying creature that’s ever lived. Killer Kazimir and my mighty mountain of a man can’t hold a candle to the rage I’m about to unleash on the omegaverse that brought us here to sacrifice.
Did you really think I’d let you kill my family? That’s what I send toward this virus that infected us just to watch us die—like it’s been doing to packs since Ory and his omega walked the virgin land. But we’ve already established that I’m not like other omegas—I wasn’t before meeting the old ways, and I’m certainly as fuck not now. The omegas of the past lacked the awareness and defiance to tear themselves free, which is what I’m already preparing to do. The only difference is my exit strategy now includes passengers—my alphas, my beta, and our baby on board.
Is that why you concealed the full prophecy? To protect your secret weakness?
A true pack shares one beating heart…mine. And my omega heart is going to fuck you up. Any last words, you sadistic plague?
There is nothing so delicious to a predator as tasting the fear of your prey. That’s a reality I never imagined I would know. But the omega legacy’s terror is so potent, I’m almost drunk on it.
No, Tillie, it’s not what you think.Instead of speaking in harmony, the legacy is stammering and marred by discordance.
Oh, really? It’s not? Fine, tell me this. Did you help Beta Dominion hunt us, find us?
I don’t allow it to answer before delivering my evidence. See, things just aren’t adding up for me. If they caught us leaving the yacht, they would have descended immediately to prevent us from making that announcement video. If they knew we were at the beige mansion with its stupidly gargantuan doors, why wouldn’t they have come then? They just happened to be hanging out at the Italian takeout place, waiting to catch us? I don’t think so. I think you led them here to play more of your cruel games with us.
But I guess that makes sense, doesn’t it? You’ve always worked against your chosen ones, haven’t you?
