Page 28 of His Stolen Omega

She hadn’t even taken the cuff, mentioning it could operate remotely and for him to leave it on the metal table once he was done.

That’d been his only visitor.

He was hungry and thirsty by noon, then annoyed. Even if they insisted on treating him like a test subject, surely they understood he’d die without sustenance?

Elm wanted to go home.

And some, secret part of himself, regretted that he’d ever hated being beta.

His skin felt too tight, the air in the room constricting. He’d been given a pair of shorts, but those were already soaked through with sweat, and another sticky fluid he’d only just started to produce a few minutes ago. Based on his knowledge of omegas, it was way too soon for him to be going into heat again, but…

Clearly Levi and the others didn’t know much about how his new body worked. The whole reason they’d locked him up was to find out, and while that absolutely sucked, Elm’s current wishes and theirs happened to align.

If that video they’d shown him yesterday was to be believed, in his current state, Elm was a danger to society. Even if he did manage to find a way to magically slip through metal bars and run, there was no telling what his pheromones could accidentally do to someone out there in the world.

If he was trapped here, he may as well make the best of it and use them the same way they were using him. Allowing himself to think on much else, to let his mind wander to Kian, or Sky, or the project half-finished in their shared studio, only made him sad. He couldn’t do anything with that emotion at the moment except to wallow, and wallowing would do him no good.

His body seemed in agreement there, because it provided the perfect distraction in the form of pain.

It took effort for Elm to peel his eyes open when he heard the sound of the door on the other side of the room opening. The moment he did, he caught sight of a man who seemed vaguely familiar, though he struggled to place him.

Before he could, the smell carried, hitting him in the chest hard enough to have breath whooshing out of his lungs.

Elm was sitting up, hissing like a madman in a flash.

“Relax,” the alpha said, holding out his palms as he stepped up to the bars. “I’m here to make you feel better.”

“You smell awful,” Elm growled. And he meant it. Like someone had dumped a bottle of perfume over roadkill in a shitty attempt to mask the stench of decay and death.

“That’s odd, you smell pretty good. Now that you aren’t making my skin feel like it’s catching fire.” He took him in. “You remember me at all?”

“No.”

“We met at the fishery warehouse.”

Elm got a flash of that day, a brief image of this alpha stepping aside while his head lolled over Levi’s arm. “Ah.”

“Koah,” he introduced himself. “Some people call me—”

“The General.” Elm might not be a part of this world, but that didn’t mean Kian had left him in complete darkness. Between him and Sky, they’d made sure Elm was at least up to date with names and titles, that way he’d know who to avoid if danger ever came to Glyph. He caught onto an earlier comment and couldn’t help but ask, “What do I smell like?”

“Unique.”

“All omegas smell unique,” he stated. “Alphas too.”

“Yeah,” Koah chuckled. “That’s true. You smell like a lot of things. Citrus and honey,” he sniffed the air, “a warm floral, and hint of bitterness. But a pleasant bitter, like freshly ground coffee. It’s nice.”

Elm did not want to smell nice to this alpha.

Hell, he didn’t want to smell nice to any of them.

“Don’t,” he said the second Koah reached for the keypad.

“Gotta follow orders,” the alpha replied, typing in the code and then opening the door. He took a single step inside, but paused. “You aren’t attacking me with aggressive pheromones this time, so that’s a start. Getting the hang of things?”

“Not even slightly, which is why you need back off.” Elm got to his feet, standing on the mattress with his back pressed to the cold concrete wall. Logically, he understood he should be scared because this was a strange man who was a member of the mafia. And that was all well and good. But his reaction didn’t feel like logic.

It felt like something in his hindbrain screaming and clawing to be free, and it was making him dizzy.