I don’t have to worry about the Beta’s Path killing me.
These alphas will do it and then rip each other apart.
I walk back to where they are sleeping and taste the drugs on my tongue. It’s a burning heat, similar to pepper.
If I can hide, maybe I can keep all of us safe. They will be all right together unless they come across an omega.
I rub my temple because my head is getting foggy, and I’m starting to sweat. My arms prickle and itch, and I distantly wonder where my cape and hood went. I’m sure I was wearing it.
The wind howls, and I catch the scent of something thick in the air. Something male and musky.
Run.
I react before I can think properly, darting down the stairs. It takes me forever, but when I reach the foggy world below, I see more shapes and shadows rearing up. The fear of something right behind me has me plunging blindly into the mist.
My heart beats too fast as the shapes lift up, appearing and vanishing before my eyes. The world is a nightmare of blurs and scents and this burning inside me. My mouth is dry and full of pepper. My eyes water, but I can’t think clearly. All I can do is dart into the dark, desperate to hide.
I feel my body clench and let out a half-sob as slick soaks through my pants.
It hurts. So bad.
I dive into the darkness, pushing through increasingly smaller gaps. Trying to find a space to hide where I will be able to evade the alphas that I can feel all around me.
I abandon the building I’m hiding in and go outside carefully, waiting, head cocked to the side, listening intently to the sounds of the night.
A growl makes the fog vibrate.
I startle and take a step back.
“Omega,” the voice calls.
I don’t know that voice.
The alphas appear like a pack of dogs, slinking into the space around me. My wild scent has summoned them, and they are now mindless beasts.
I step backwards until my back is pressed up against a concrete wall, with vines woven in the cracks. I dig my fingers in, trying to use the pain to focus.
Slick runs between my thighs, and I have to bite my cheek to stop a needy groan slipping from between my lips. My knees tremble. There are too many.
I wait, poised to take whatever advantage I can. A shape flies out of the dark, grabs my arm, whirls and pushes me through a glass door. I’m in a box of some kind, and I can see them all through a thick pane of glass.
Mordecai stares at me, but I almost don’t recognise him. His ice-blue eyes are almost white, his hair blows out around him, his muscles look massive. I step forward, lifting my hand to the glass.
His eyes never leave my face.
A shape moves, and I recoil back into the room, wrapping my arms around myself and crouching down on the ground to make myself smaller.
I pant through the waves of heat, but the drugs are impossible to deny. I want to crawl to the door and open it, but when I get there, it’s been wedged shut with a pole that’s bent in the shape of a U.
Blood sprays across the glass. I stare at it, shivering, before my gaze focuses on the movement beyond it. Mordecai slams into three alphas, lifting them off their feet and throwing them across the road. They slam into the bricks and collapse, dead.
He whirls, his teeth bared, and punches another alpha so hard the side of his head collapses.
There are so many of them, and they come at him, over and over. Stronger and more rested. Desperate to get to me, but I watch only him.
Ten of them rush him at once. He stands and, with a roar, disappears under them.
“ALPHA!” I scream.
