The scent hit me like a harpoon to the chest. One moment I was examining the ribbon she'd given me—pink, soft, utterly frivolous and therefore utterly precious—and the next moment my entire world narrowed to a single, devastating point.
Omega.
The word exploded through my mind, ancient and primal, dragging up instincts I'd buried so deep I'd forgotten they existed. My claws extended without my permission. My vision went red at the edges. Every muscle in my body coiled tight, ready to surge, to take, to claim?—
Kaelan's hand closed around my arm like a vice. "Control yourself."
His voice was ice, cutting through the haze like a blade. His pale fingers dug into my bicep hard enough to bruise, and his dark eyes were fixed on mine with the absolute authority of a pack leader giving a command. I snarled at him. Actually snarled, baring my teeth, every instinct screaming at me to throw off his grip and go to her. She was right there. Right thereon that ship, small and soft and smelling like everything I'd ever wanted, and he was holding me back?—
"Riven." Kaelan's grip tightened further, his claws pricking my skin now, drawing pinpricks of blood that dispersed in the water like smoke. His dark eyes bored into mine, and beneath the ice I could see it, the same hunger, the same desperate want, locked down behind walls of iron control. "Look at her. Really look."
I didn't want to look. I wanted to act. Wanted to surge up out of the water and onto that ship and find her and wrap myself around her and never let go. Kaelan was my pack leader and beneath the red haze of instinct, some small rational part of me recognized that he was right.
I looked.
She was gripping the railing so hard her knuckles had gone white. Her eyes were wide, fixed on us with an expression I couldn't quite read. Not fear, or not entirely fear. There was something else there. Something that looked almost like hope. There was tension in her shoulders, too. A wariness in how she held herself. She looked like a creature ready to flee at any moment, though from what, I couldn't say.
Suddenly, with a clarity that cut through the haze like a blade, I understood one thing at least.
She was hiding. A human omega, alone on a ship, hiding what she was. Masking her scent. Living a life that made no sense for what she was.
Why?
"She's in danger." My voice came out rough, barely recognizable, scraping past the growl still lodged in my throat. I could feel my tail lashing behind me, stirring the water into small currents. "On that ship. If they find out what she is?—"
"Is she though?" Vale drifted closer, the green ribbon wound so tightly around his hand that his knuckles had gone white.His beautiful features were tight with confusion, his blue-green eyes narrowed as he tried to make sense of what we were seeing. "We don't know anything about how humans treat their omegas. Maybe she's..." He trailed off, shaking his head, clearly unable to finish the thought.
"Why is she there at all?" Thane's voice was soft with bewilderment. The cream ribbon was pressed against his chest, held there by both hands like something sacred. His amber eyes were wide as he stared up at the ship's hull. "Why is an omega working on a fishing boat? Hiding her scent? Living like... like a laborer?"
Working.
The word hit me like a physical blow. I'd been so focused on the omega scent, on the primal need to claim, that I hadn't fully processed what I was seeing. An omega. Working. Hauling ropes and scrubbing decks and doing manual labor like some common…A snarl ripped from my throat, raw and savage.
"She has calluses." My voice came out strangled, horrified. I'd seen her hands gripping the railing. Small hands, delicate hands, hands that should have been soft and pampered and never touched by anything rougher than silk. But they'd been rough. Worn. The hands of someone who worked. "Her hands are calloused. She's been doing hard labor."
"Her clothes are worn through." Vale's voice had gone sharp, his beautiful features twisting with something like revulsion. "Did you see them? Patched and frayed and salt-stained. She's dressed like a deckhand. Like a worker."
"She looks exhausted." Thane's gentle voice cracked on the word. "Thin. Like she doesn't eat enough. Like she doesn't rest enough. Like she's been?—"
"Working herself to death," I finished, and the words tasted like poison on my tongue. Among our kind, omegas were the most precious creatures in existence. Treasured. Protected.Worshipped. An omega would never have to work—the very idea was obscene. They were kept safe in nests lined with the softest things we could find, provided for in every way, treated like the rare and valuable gifts they were. We hunted for them. Built for them. Killed for them. An omega's only purpose was to be cherished, to be pleasured, to be loved.
The thought of our girl hauling fishing nets made me want to tear the ship apart plank by plank.
"This is wrong." My voice was barely recognizable—a guttural snarl that vibrated through the water. "This is wrong. Omegas don't work. Omegas are treasured. Why is she—how could anyone let her?—"
"Maybe humans do things differently." Vale said it slowly, like he was trying to convince himself. But his hands were shaking, the green ribbon trembling between his fingers. "Maybe in their world, omegas..."
He couldn't finish. None of us could imagine a world where omegas worked. Where they were allowed to exhaust themselves, to wear their hands raw, to go hungry and tired and alone. It was unthinkable. It was monstrous.
What kind of creatures were these humans? So why was this one alone? Why was she hiding what she was? Why did she smell like exhaustion and chemicals designed to mask her true nature?
"Maybe she's lost," Thane suggested hopefully, his gentle nature reaching for the kindest explanation. "Separated from her pack somehow. Trying to find her way back to them."
"If she had a pack, they would never let her out of their sight." Kaelan's voice was quiet, thoughtful, his dark eyes fixed on the ship above. His hand drifted to the pouch at his hip where he kept her pearl. "No alpha worth anything would let their omega wander onto a fishing vessel alone."
"Then she doesn't have a pack," I said slowly, the implications settling over me. "She's unclaimed. Alone." Theword hung in the water between us. Alone. An omega, alone in the world, with no pack to protect her, no alphas to provide for her. It was almost unthinkable.
"But why hide?" Vale pressed, frustration creeping into his voice. "If she's unclaimed, why mask her scent? Any alpha would want her. She could have her pick of?—"
