Page 60 of Ruined Omega

He rises, his hands still bound too, and shakes the mud from his long, dark hair.

Baen doesn’t hear him. He continues ramming the bars like an enraged animal. Outside, the Farlanders are whooping and grinning at his vicious display. The more they taunt, the more furious Baen gets, which in turn merely encourages the Farlanders even more.

At last, Tal steps in, checking Baen with his heavy shoulder.

Caught up in his frenzy, Baen turns on him, eyes wild and bloodshot with animalistic rage. For a moment, I think he might actually attack Tal. But the older Alpha’s growl puts an end to that.

“Stop,” Tal says. “You’re not accomplishing anything besides entertaining our captors. Is that what you want?”

Baen opens his mouth to say something, but stops. He grunts, narrows his eyes at the Farlanders outside the cage, and kicks a spray of mud in their direction, making them jump back a few feet.

“Fuckers,” Baen mutters.

“Come on,” Tal says. “You need to calm down, boy. Throwing a fit isn’t going to get us out of this shithole. Only thinking will do that. We need to keep our wits about us. Now turn around.”

Baen turns, and Tal uses his sharp, canine fangs to gnaw through the rough ropes binding Baen’s wrists to the block of wood behind his back. After a bit of work, his arms are free. Baen then returns the favor.

Meanwhile, I stand up and attempt to swipe the sticky mud from my mostly naked body. It only serves to smudge it around even more, however. The only clothing I’ve got left is the hoodie from the shelter, and that is now ripped in half, sopping wet with rain, and coated with mud. I shrug the pointless garment from my shoulder and toss it aside.

The three of us stare at each other for a moment. We’re a mess. I’m completely naked and slathered in thick, brown mud. Baen is naked too. His loincloth was left behind when we were captured in the woods. Only Tal has any clothing, the tattered remnants of his jeans, which have been stained with mud as well.

“Okay, now what?” Baen asks.

Tal rubs his chin, thinking. Outside the bars of our domed cage, a small crowd of Farlanders is watching us. Some of them have even climbed up the bars to look down on us.

“Maybe we can dig our way out,” Baen says.

“With half the camp watching us?” Tal asks.

But Baen isn’t listening. He’s already rushing to the edge of the enclosure where he crouches and begins scooping up mud, flinging it backward between his legs like a dog trying to dig its way under a fence.

Our Farlander captors don’t seem too concerned about this. In fact, the small crowd has begun to drift away, leaving only a small posting of guards to watch over us.

After only a couple of seconds of digging, Baen stops.

“Fuck!” he barks.

“What?” Tal peers over his shoulder.

“Stone underneath,” Baen sighs dejectedly.

Out of nowhere, a low, throaty voice speaks from the far side of the cage.

“I could have told you that.”

All three of us spin around to face the new voice. My heart leaps at the unexpected sound, and I gasp. Tal and Baen both shift into fighting stances, placing their bodies protectively in front of mine.

Through the gap in their tensed bodies, I see a thick lump of mud rising from the ground. The voice speaks again. The thick, guttural timbre makes it sound as if the very mud itself is speaking to us.

“Yep, digging was the first thing I tried too when they tossed my ass in here. The Farlanders are dumb, but not quite that dumb.”

The muddy lump continues to rise, taking on the shape of a huge man. Twin growls roll in Baen’s and Tal’s throats, growing deeper and more aggressive.

A pair of bright white eyes appears, followed a second later by a matching white smile.

“No cause for alarm, friends.”

“We’ll be the judge of that.”