Page 9 of Desperate Omega

A surprisingly white smile spreads across the creature’s mottled face.

“You haven’t changed one bit,” it says. The growl is gone from his voice, but it is still deep, and decidedly masculine.

Already, one entire side of the barn is engulfed in orange flames, shedding even more light on the figure standing before me. Now I can see that what I took to be rough, scaly skin is not really skin at all, but merely some sort of mud-like substance that has been daubed all over his body, probably to mask his scent. This is no monster. This is an alpha.

“Who are you?” I ask, struggling to hide the tremor in my voice.

“You don’t recognize me, Syra?”

I start to say no. Then the fire glows brighter, showing me his beautiful, forest-green eyes.

My heart skips.

“Markus?”

CHAPTER 4: MARKUS

Just a moment ago, I said that Syra hasn’t changed a bit. That’s not strictly true. Her personality may be as tough and stubborn as ever, but her body has changed a great deal, and right now, all those changes are on full display for me to see. Her crouching body almost seems to glow in the golden light of the rising flames consuming the wall of the barn. Her bared breasts are round and full, and her erect nipples look as ripe and tempting as two berries. Her hips are wide, her thighs thick. It is a body built for breeding.

I know I shouldn’t stare at her like this. She doesn’t want anyone to see her in this naked and needful state. That’s the whole reason she came out here to this barn in the first place. I know that, and yet…

I can’t stop looking at her.

I try, I really do, but my eyes refuse to look away.

It’s her scent that’s making me act this way. Her heat-scent, hot and dirty and delicious.

“Markus, what are you doing here?”

I lift my eyes from her body to her face, and my arousal doubles. Her eyes are the color of pale jade, just how I remember them, and they call to me with an almost hypnotic power.

I take a step in her direction.

“What are you doing here?” she asks again. This time, there’s a growl in her voice. Her spear remains leveled at my chest.

“We can talk about that later,” I tell her. “It’s not safe here.”

That’s an understatement. One entire wall of the barn is engulfed in flames now, and it won’t be long before the rest of the barn catches too. We should both be running for our lives, but instead I just keep walking toward her like some mindless beta, and she just keeps staring at me with her spear aimed straight at my heart.

A couple more steps, and I’m going to impale myself on that thing, but I can’t stop advancing. The scent of her heat is pulling me in. The desire to be near her is overriding everything else, even my instinct for self-preservation.

I need to touch her. I need to hold her.

I need to breed her.

At the last moment, just as the tip of her spear is about to pierce me, she moves the weapon aside and stands to face me.

The last time we looked each other in the eyes like this, she was a good bit taller than me. Now that height difference is reversed. Her face only comes to the level of my chest, and she has to tilt her head all the way back to look up at me.

“Markus?” she whispers.

But Markus isn’t in control anymore. There’s something else inside me, something that’s wearing me like a skin. It’s my inner alpha, my primal instinct to mate and breed. Until now, it’s lain dormant, content to let me do my own thing, but now that it has caught Syra’s heat-scent, there’s nothing I can do to hold it back.

My hands come up and grab Syra around her ribs. With a hungry growl, I shove her back against the wall of the barn—the side that’s not on fire yet—and I press into her hard. She gasps lightly as her soft breasts flatten against my harder muscles. Now the only thing separating her skin from mine is the thin film of dried plant-paste I spread over my body earlier to mask my scent.

That paste is one of the reasons Syra didn’t recognize me right away.

The other reason is that she hasn’t seen me for nine years.