When the man swung again, I lost my patience. I leapt with a snarl. My claws sank into him like a knife through butter. He fell to the ground, pinned beneath my weight. I opened my jaws, ready for the kill.
Someone tugged on my tail.
“Wait! Cut it out!”
I glared over my shoulder. The omega wore a pleading expression as he grabbed my tail in his hands. His cheeks were flushed deep pink and he was breathing heavily.
“Don’t kill him.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I snarled. “Do you have any idea what he was going to do to you?”
“Huh?”
I chalked his cluelessness up to the fact that his mind was fogged from heat and said, “He was going to—”
The man threw a punch that landed against my jaw, catching me off guard. I growled and batted him in the head with my large paw, just hard enough to disorient him.
The omega lost his strength and fell to one knee, but he didn’t let go of my tail. “I don’t really know what’s happening, but…” He breathed heavily. Sweat trickled down his brow. “Killing’s not nice.”
I stared at him in utter, complete disbelief.
“Killing is not nice,” I repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Do you know this man?” I demanded, wondering if I’d misread the situation somehow. Maybe they were roleplaying was some kind of sex fantasy.
“Er. No. I only met him five minutes ago.”
I’d never been so baffled. Did he get hit in the head? Was heonsomething? That would be the only explanation for his behavior. I searched his eyes. Aside from the slight fogginess of his heat, they were clear and bright, totally sober with no sign of injury.
I slunk my body around to look at him. The human man lay unconscious on the floor, so I focused all my attention on the omega. There were no physical injuries on his naked body. Good.
My throat clenched as I raked my eyes over him. He was attractive, a gorgeous young adult with sun-blond hair and—
Gods, that fucking heat scent of his was back to driving me insane.
“What’s your name?” I demanded, forcing the hitch of desire out of my voice.
He smiled. “Sage.”
He was smiling. He could’ve been assaulted and he was smiling like the most carefree man in the world. I couldn’t believe this. This omega was not normal.
“What’s yours?” he asked.
I kept my tail still, otherwise it would be lashing with irritation. “Xander.”
“Wow, that’s such a cool name!”
Sage was upbeat but breathing heavily, and that pink hue was still splashed across his cheeks. He was obviously in heat but judging by the fact that he was standing here talking to me instead of curled up in a room alone, it might have been his first day. I knew the first day was easier on some omegas, a sort of ‘heat lite.’
There was one other option—that it was his first ever heat, which sometimes wasn’t as difficult as the ones that followed. But Sage looked to be in his early twenties. That was quite late for an omega to have his first heat, so I ruled that option out.
I growled. “You need to get out of here. Go home.”
“Huh?”
“It’s not safe here. You shouldn’t be naked, you shouldn’t be alone, and you obviously aren’t from around here. Shift and go home.”
