I hiss quietly as I start to move, slowly following the line as we crawl out under the watchful eye of the beta guards. My thigh burns, pain shooting down the strips Hale has left on my skin. A few grains of rice stick to my knees, making it even worse. I try to roll my knees on the ground against the gravel to work them out, but I haven’t managed it by the time we reach the dining hall.
“Up.”
The order is given briskly, instant obedience our only option. Our response isn’t quite as swift as the instructors would like, I’m sure. After several hours in the same position, it takes us all a few precious seconds to stagger to our feet. One girl trips as the cramp in her legs proves too much and the guards are quick to pull her away. Her bare feet scrabble for purchase against the rough ground as she wails. We all keep our eyes averted. I learned a long time ago not to get involved.
Thankfully, the alphas don’t attend the dining hall. It’s hard for us to collect our food and take it to our table if we’re not able to stand up.
Joining the queue of omegas, I stand quietly in line, twisting my torso from side to side to work out the kinks in my back. I’m starving, but my expectations are low. The slop they serve is never enough to feel full. Enough to keep us alive, maybe. Thriving and healthy? No. Thin and weak is how they prefer to keep us.
I grimace, wrinkling my nose as a plate is dropped in front of me by an expressionless beta. A small helping of plain rice and a banana. I wonder if Hale knew this was on the menu today. It wouldn’t surprise me. I debate leaving the rice, my stomach twisting at the thought after this morning’s punishment, but my hunger wins out.
Scanning the room and finding a table, I settle down, making sure my back is to the wall. I shovel the food down my throat, ignoring any sort of manners. There are no alphas here and the omegas are too focused on our meager meal to pay attention to me.Red velvet cake, I tell myself, closing my eyes and choking down the dry food, chasing it with my water.Red velvet cake and pepperoni pizza.God, I miss pizza.
Pushing the empty plate away, I casually scan the room with quick glances from under my lashes, searching for a familiar head of curly caramel hair. Ava has been in the interrogation unit today. That’s our name for the psychiatry team at the compound.
Every month, we’re forced into mandatory psych sessions. They don’t want to hear the truth, though. Instead, it’s an opportunity for the compound to poke and prod at us, looking for weaknesses.
We sit there quietly as they talk at us about our ‘dangerous omega behaviors’, testing how close we are to potential breakdown. Even better if they can get us to admit to anything, like nesting instincts.
Beta doctors sit there in white coats as you perch on an uncomfortable seat in a freezing sterile room, nodding with false sympathy if you tell them anything. Of course, their notes are handed straight to the instructors, who’ll spend the next month ‘training’ any non-compliant thoughts out of us.
A good omega is a silent omega.
A good omega does as she’s told.
A good omega follows the omega creed.
I’ve been living at the Omega Compound since I was fourteen. I perfumed early, a strong cinnamon scent bursting from my skin one summer morning as I had breakfast with my mom and dad. Mybetamom and dad.
They had me packed up and dumped at the compound doors before I even knew what was happening. They wouldn’t talk to me on the drive over, my mom pale-faced, my dad ignoring my frantic questions with grim determination, his only words telling me to get out when we pulled up.
I’d screamed and begged them to stop as they drove off, desperately throwing myself after their car as the guards pulled me through the gates. My parents didn’t look back. They didn’t even wait for me to get my bag out. I was dragged into the Omega Compound with nothing but the clothes on my back.
I wish I’d known then what I know now. I would have thrown myself from the moving car before the OC ever had a chance to get their hands on me.
The Omega Compound is the Government’s way of keeping control over the omega population. It hasn’t always been this way, though.
Around twenty-five years ago, the Omega War decimated omega numbers, taking us from uncommon to rare.
First, the beta birth population rates started dropping. Slowly, then faster. Betas used to be able to bear children, but nobody could work out what the problem was. Every year for four years, it became lower, and fewer babies were born.
Eventually, omegas were the only race that could carry a child. A beta hasn’t given birth for more than twenty years, and most children born now are beta. Alpha births are unusual, but an omega awakening is as rare as finding a diamond on the street.
Only an alpha-omega pairing can produce an omega child, and it’s not guaranteed by any means. Even then, omega genes are impossible to detect until an omega awakens, normally between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. Lucky me, awakening at fourteen.
There used to be more omegas than there are now. But the declining birth rates caused a war, with alphas and betas fighting over the limited numbers of omegas.
When public conversation turned to government control over omegas to stop the unrest, only the alphas stood up for us.
I read once that it’s not power that corrupts. It’s fear. History tells our story differently. But then, history is always written by the winners.
The winners say that omegas are dangerous. We controlled the alpha population, using them as shields to avoid our duty to society and forcing them to turn on the betas. We used our scents, our pheromones, to remove their free will and control them completely, turning them into mindless violent beasts.
Then the Government came up with a solution. Bag and tag the omegas and keep us in controlled environments away from alphas where we wouldn’t be a threat. Lock us away and make us provide children until a cure could be found for the beta birth issues.
The beta population overwhelmingly voted for the move, and the Government was quick to disband any alpha packs that wouldn’t comply. By lethal force, if needed.
It only took another few years for the last of the free omegas to be hunted down and the system to slide neatly into place. Sometimes I wonder if there are any omegas still out there, living under the radar.Free.
