Ah.
Guess they weren’t tossed down here the same way the rest of us were—no omegas were imprisoned in the Cimmerian Vaults above us. This place was built for alphas.
It left the question: were we going to get out at all?
But, it was still something I was working through. I had… a pack withtwoomegas…
How had I ended up with two omegas?
A low voice whispered in my mind, dragging up the few memories I did have.When you should have none…
My heart rate leaped as I absently lifted my hand, cupping the back of her neck. I drew my fingers across the open wound I'd just left, the bone-deep need to keep her near curdling with an age-old shame—something vile enough that there had been a time where I’d welcomed the silence and madness.
She glanced up, a piece of toast frozen between her lips as she caught my eye. She shuffled closer, swallowing the toast fast enough that it looked almost painful.
“You’re mad at me…” She whispered through watering eyes.
I…
Well, I wasn't anymore. The dark bond was locked in, as impossible as that was.
“No,” I told her.
What was even more strange was the bond on her neck, especially now I was looking at it closer. It wasn’t just a bite to me, I could see a second layer to it. Dark bonds, unlike other bond types, could be forced upon an omega without consent. But I was a seer, and to me they looked different if they were forced as opposed to if the omega wanted the bond.
Forced bonds… They were poison.
I frowned, wondering where those images came from… Shadowy bites that leached darkness into the flesh around like an infected wound…
I had seen bites like that before, but Crescent’s was nothing like them. Itwasa dark bond, one that anyone could see from the shadowy tint to the bite mark, but it wasn’t poisoned.
And that meant… I thought back to the moment I’d done it. I’d tried to bond her normally first, but she’d rejected it.
“You wanted me to dark bond you?”
She nodded. “I had to explain to the others, too. But gold packs are dangerous. I might send you all into madness if you let me into a normal bond.” She trailed off, voice waning a little at the look that had crossed my face.
I tried to shake it free, opening my mouth, then closing it again.
“I want to know, how did the dark bond go through with a second omega in the pack?” Karma asked.
I frowned, that incongruity slamming into me like a sack of bricks.
It had been so driven by instinct the thought had never crossed my mind. But…
“Dark bonds can't be established in a pack with another omega…”the words came fromhim. A slice of cruelty and evil from a life that only visited me in fragments.
Sin was lifting his sleeve up, though, showing me the bite across his arm. Another mark from me, I realized, though I didn’t remember giving it.
I frowned and I stared at it.
If I’d thought poisoned dark bonds looked odd before, it was nothing to the crimson bite across Sin’s arm.
“What is that?” Crescent asked.
“No idea,” Sin replied.
I was just as confused. None of the three usual bond types went crimson like that.
