Page 129 of Sawyer

“I can tell you believe that.” He smiles at me through the glass, my body growing cold. “I’m still going to talk, and you, Sawyer, are going to listen, and I think you’ll understand my perspective.”

No, I won’t, so I keep my mouth shut instead of arguing. I don’t know if Doc can pump anything into the vents that will kill me, so I assume he will.

“You know about the wars, yes?”

I nod, a war which was waged over omegas. Hundreds of years ago, only alphas, betas, and omegas existed. Mages always kept to themselves, and their origins are unknown. For a long time, however, the designations found unity in packs—one omega to a pack.

Until alphas pushed betas out of packs.

“Good. Then you know many omegas died.” He waits for me to nod. “It was after that when gammas and deltas evolved. At first, we didn’t know what was happening. We only had stories from long ago when other designations existed. What many don’t know is that we killed them off.”

“So our ancestors purified the designations.”

“If that were true, betas wouldn’t exist,” he hedges. “Gammas and omegas are alike in so many ways that we wondered—” He pauses, shrugging a shoulder. “We wondered if they could step up as an omega if needed. If perhaps gammas were just evolution at play.”

My face falls. “The lack of omegas.”

“Precisely.” He snaps his fingers. “We needed to research, you see, and well, there is only one designation that advanced past mages.”

“Beta science,” I muse, licking my lips. I hate that I understand what he’s saying.

“How are we supposed to complete studies if we have no volunteers?”

“You stole women. You kidnapped them.”

“To advance our race!” he shouts at me. “We needed to know how.”

“Perhaps if you let go of your control and allowed people to evolve as they should, we wouldn’t be stuck here in this damn room.”

He shakes his head before I can even finish my sentence. “No, it would never work. An omega walking down the street in heat will send alphas into a frenzy. We can’t have that. We had to protect the omegas.”

“So you shipped them to a castle, telling them they are princesses when they are anything but.”

“We protected them.”

“And now?” I hate to bring it up. “Thea is your son’s mate and has a gunshot scar. That isn’t protecting your omegas.”

“Is it not? My son was going to mate her without a pack. She never would have been safe.”

“So you shot her?” I squeak out, not understanding how this is logical.

“If they don’t fear us, they will never stay in line.” He truly believes every single word he utters.

He makes me feel insane.

No amount of arguing will ever get him to see reason, so I don’t even try.

“With the right pack, a gamma can become an omega,” he says.

“Why keep the omegas?”

“Observation.” He holds his hands out.

“And what of the omegas who find packs? Many of them go missing.”

“Do they?” he questions with a cruel smile. “Or are they here?”

Just how many women are in this damn facility?

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