They are staring at me, but I can’t look at them.
“Ignore me,” I whisper. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. Everything just seems impossible.”
Jarek stands up, but I wave him back.
“I’ll take first watch. I want to be alone, anyway. No one needs to put up with this foul mood of mine.”
Jarek growls and springs towards me, grabbing my hips and pulling me back into his arms for a fierce hug.
“It’s okay. We all have days and nights like this. It’s what makes us human. I’m not going to let you forget the good moments, though. Like Cadel walking into that hole today on the sidewalk.”
I smile like he planned, and he grins back, dropping a kiss on my forehead.
“Finding that river and seeing all those people get out of here,” I say.
“Meeting you,” Mordecai says.
“Finding you,” Cadel says at almost the same time.
“Everything about you, Omega Kaida Keres. Everything about you has been a miracle that I know I don’t deserve.”
He leans down and touches his lips to mine, and instead of a bolt of heat, there’s a pain in my chest and a flutter. A flash of colour, and Jarek is lying naked on a bed, smiling at me. He winks, and the vision fades.
I look away, unwilling to unpack what these visions are or if they are even real because it doesn’t matter if they are, we’re here in the Culling Grounds.
“Thank you,” I say to him, curling my fingers around his shoulders. “I’m still taking the first watch. You alphas have had hardly any sleep. Let me do this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. I’m perfectly capable of watching for danger.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jarek whines as I turn him by the shoulders and push him away.
“I know that you didn’t. Just get some sleep. Tomorrow, we need to find a way out of here or try to get back to the river.”
“Yes, Omega,” Jarek says with adorable insincerity.
I mock growl at them but move to the window, finding a spot to perch where I can watch for anyone who might be trying to come up into the building.
I keep glancing at them, even as they pass into sleep. They are beautiful and damaged but the most honourable alphas I’ve met. Even in this howling ruin, with dust and darkness and the feel of death in the air, they are still amazing. There is something about them that draws me in; it’s their scent, their aura, something about the way they look and speak. It’s like I know them, and I love them already, but how can that be?
I’ve given up trying to be suspicious of it.
I want to protect them because I want that future that they are painting. I’m scared to want it, but I hunger for it like I’m starving.
Time passes slowly, and the night gets quieter and colder.
I don’t know what alerts me first, but the rolling mist that is slowly filling the streets has obviously been there for a while.
My heart pounds.
I’ve seen it before.
I move to another window and find it already spreading in that street. The smoke mist is heavy; it doesn’t rise far at first, but you only need a little bit. The Beta’s Path will be walking around with torches that they continuously dip into a noxious compound that triggers an unnatural heat in omegas and rut in alphas.
I race to the other side of the building and look down.
Whorls of it spin in the air, spreading out and into every crack and crevice. It’s everywhere. We’re surrounded.
