Page 121 of Knot Your Average Beta

Which is… weird.

I would think she wouldn’t be able to stop that from happening just after she’s been shocked into wakefulness.

“Claudia,” I lace my voice with a hint of alpha dominance, and her watery blue eyes find me.

Now she whines. “Alpha.”

I ignore the way I want to soothe her, instead focusing on the split knuckles of her right hand, the scent of Sadie that clings to them. “Tell me where Sadie is.”

I give her a chance to answer me, to tell us without the influence of a bark.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know where she is. I ran. Remember? I ran from the man and got away, found my way back to you. I’m your omega! How could you do this to me? Strap me down and strip me to hurt me?”

Swift grins down at her, though his mouth is covered by his mask. “Oh, our omega adores being stripped and tied down. Loves a little pain. That is not what is happening here, fuckface. Tell us where Sadie is.”

She thrashes against the bonds holding her down, breast jiggling in the harsh light. “Why couldn’t you just want me? Love me? What is so wrong with me that you would pick some nothing little beta over me? She’s nothing.” Her eyes latch onto me. “You said it yourself. She’s nothing but trouble.”

I go still at her accusation. I did say that. Ages ago in the alley behind The Market to Lily, to keep anyone from realizing just how much the woman over my shoulder meant to me, to us, our pack.

It’s possible that Sadie told her about it. Possible but not probable. Neither of the omegas who have been staying in the penthouse have been buddy-buddy with each other. They haven’t had any heart to hearts. And so if Sadie didn’t tell her that… then who the hell did?

“Where did you hear that?” Claudia’s eyes widen in fear, like she just realized she gave something away, something she wasn’t supposed to. “Tell me.” The alpha command rolls off of my tongue easily, no hint of remorse in the least.

“We’ve had people following her,” she blurts out, looking horrified.

“Why?” Swift demands, his alpha bark just as strong as mine.

Claudia bites her lip so hard blood wells up between her teeth before she gasps and says, “Sadie is part of an experiment. To turn betas into omegas. They’ve been monitoring their investment, especially once she presented as an omega.”

We knew all this already. Danielle told us with a lot less coercion than Claudia’s needed. She pouts, blood smearing her chin. “They promised she wouldn’t do that. And they wanted to test… to see why that happened.”

I blink at the woman on the table. “They took her to run tests on her?” I think back over the last month. Every time someone tried to take her, to hurt her. They weren’t trying to kill her, they were trying to take her. The men on the street that I didn’t recognize. The lack of taunting from any of my enemies. The way they shot at us, but avoided Sadie.

This whole time, we’ve been operating under the assumption that any danger to our omega was because of us, but it’s been because of her, because of the experiments done on her as a child. No wonder we never found anything out about who was trying to take her from us. We were looking in the wrong fucking direction.

Fucking fuck.

I should have known.

“Where is she?” I grind out, not hesitating this time to use my alpha bark on her. Imagine my surprise when Claudia bites down on her lip again, struggling to keep the words inside. But I don’t have fucking time for this, so I snarl out. “Tell me where Sadie is now.”

“She’s gone.” Claudia sobs, and for one moment my heart stops in my chest because I think she means Sadie’s dead. But if that were the case, Swift would be fucking feral right now. He’d be tearing her apart with his teeth and bare hands. “Out of the city by now. They wanted to take her as far as they could before I came back to you.” Her eyes widen meaningfully. “I came back to you. I need you please, alpha.”

I grit my teeth against her. There’s something about the way she says alpha that seems so practiced, forced. I didn’t notice it before, but it’s painfully obvious now. “Us finding you wasn’t an accident, was it?” I ask, tilting my head as the pieces fall into place. “You made yourself an omega, stole Sadie’s hormones, her scent, took everything from her, and injected them into your body.”

Swift laughs delightedly. “Oh, shit. You’re the fake, aren’t you, Claudia? You’re the beta and Sadie’s always been an omega.”

I close my eyes and shake my head, thinking of all the times Sadie called herself a second-rate omega. How certain she was that she was always meant to be a beta. What her mother told us seemed to solidify that fact. That we were choosing the imitation of our scent match. But Sadie has always been it.

“You saw the articles,” I say, opening my eyes and meeting her gaze. “The ones that postulated that we’d finally found an omega. You recognized her because you used her and you thought if we saw you instead, the perfect replica of an omega, we’d fall all over ourselves to be with you.”

Claudia shakes her head, even as she laughs humorlessly. “I thought having the scent and the looks would be enough. I thought my father, being the man that he is, I would have found a pack by now. I thought it would have fucking happened as soon as an alpha caught a whiff of me. But no. No one wanted me.”

“Must be your winning personality,” Swift says, wandering over to the table covered in his tools. “Here’s a tip. Maybe don’t be a lint licker and more people will like you.”

I chuckle, and Claudia’s eyes flash. “You think this is fucking funny? You’re never gonna see her again. Do you understand that? She’s gone forever. They’re never gonna let her go. And they won’t let me go either. I’m the beta that turned into an omega. She‘s the one whose hormones helped that fucking happen. Do you have any idea how valuable she is? Once they can pinpoint what part of all the treatments they did before worked, they’ll use her to market a miracle drug.”

A shiver works down my spine at that while rage like I’ve never felt floods my body. An experiment, a means to an end. That is how these assholes see our omega. I’ve never had much of an imagination, I prefer to deal in real world situations in facts and logic, but now a flood of images batters me, Sadie locked in a room, strapped to a bed, wearing a hospital gown or scrubs, machines all around her as they drain her blood and monitor things like her hormones.

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