Xias snorted. “You’d be surprised.”
“Your alpha was a real douche, wasn’t he?”
“He’s evil,” Xias replied. “He enjoys inflicting pain, and he’s very good at it. He’s the king of his clan, and anyone who dares to defy him pays for it very painfully.” Xias had seen more than one person crushed under the alpha’s heel. It had become almost commonplace. “What does it say for us as a species when we see so much pain that we become numb to it?”
“It says the world is fucked up.”
Xias was pretty sure Tao was right.
“Do you think the council will do anything about it?” Assuming anything could be done. Xias was doubtful. “There are others back in the clan not brave enough to try to escape. It would be nice if they could get away, too.”
Xias didn’t exactly have any friends back in the clan, but he still wanted to help the people there who hated what was being done under the harsh hand of their alpha. Some of them needed rescuing more than he did, and that was astounding.
“Tell me about Osamu.”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“How are you connected to him? I mean, is he just trying to get you back because you’re an omega, or—”
“He’s the cubs’ sire.”
Tao’s eyes rounded before he glanced back out the front window. “Holy shit.”
Tears filled Xias’s eyes again as fear flooded his heart. “He wants Bai, but he ordered the others be put down because he doesn’t need them.”
“Why wouldn’t he need them?”
“Bai is male. Liang and Ying are girls. Osamu doesn’t need girl children. He can’t breed them, so they have no value in his eyes.”
“But they all have blue eyes,” Tao insisted. “Girls or not, they are alphas.”
“Not in Osamu’s clan. Only males can be alphas.”
“That’s ridiculous. Male or female, an alpha is still an alpha.”
Xias thought that was true, too, but what did he know? He was an omega. “I won’t let him have my cubs, any of them.”
“You don’t have to,” Tao said. “You’re an omega. Your cubs belong to you.”
“Not in Osamu’s clan. All the cubs belong to him.”
“Just because he might have sired them does not mean—”
“No, you don’t understand. All the cubs belong to him. He claims any cub born into the clan. It doesn’t matter if he is the sire or not.”
Tao’s jaw dropped, and for just a moment the snow CAT slowed. “Are you serious?”
Xias nodded.
“You do understand how wrong that is, right?”
Xias nodded again. “When I shifted for the first time and he discovered I was an omega, Osamu took me from my parents. I haven’t been able to speak to them since.”
He’d seen them in passing at mandatory clan functions, but that was it. He wasn’t even sure his parents knew he’d given birth to his cubs. He wasn’t sure if they would care. He’d known their love and affection before he’d been taken away, but Xias had no way to know if they agreed with what Osamu was doing or not.
“Xias.”
Xias reached over and grabbed Tao’s arm when his name whispered softly through his mind. “Zhuang?”
