Page 122 of Wild Omega

His lips press tight together and he glances at me from under his lashes. It’s cute, but if I soften now, I’ll morph with the wild woman seething under my skin. “Well, first off, we need the sandwich press, which lives under the bench. Come ’round here and I’ll show you.”

We layer on tomatoes and cheese, and Rickon adds thinly sliced onion rings. A bit of salt and pepper, a spray of cooking oil on the hot plates, and ten minutes later we have steaming toasties. Rickon makes a few extra sandwiches, which he says are for Callisto. We barely ever see the workaholic, but food disappears from the fridge if we label it with his name. Kinda like some mysterious goblin lives in the house—an alpha goblin who leaves wisps of cherry wood scent scattered around.

“Should we be looking for our own place?” I ask after I blow steam from my bread triangle.

“Sure, if that’s what you want.”

Burning hot tomato juice drips to the bench. I stare at it for a moment. “May as well wait for now. We’re pretty close to the studio here and it’s going to be hectic once filming starts.”

Rickon brightens like I knew he would. “Okay, good thinking.”

I’ll probably need to find my own house after this heat. If I even survive this warmth spiraling through my belly. Fear closes my throat and I choke.

Rickon leaps to my side, pounding my back. “Red?”

Fuck, the worry lacing his tone stabs at me. My armor’s melting off in the face of my rising heat. I leap off the stool, abandoning the sandwich. “Gonna take a shower.”

A cold one, even though I know it’ll do no good. Nothing can stop the apocalypse. But I can delay it with one of those fancy pills from the pharmacist, for omegas in emergencies. Maybe if I take a few of them, it’ll go away altogether.

A cold shower does the trick, allowing me to settle enough to climb into bed with Rickon. I stir a few times in the night, to take more heat-delay pills, but somewhere near dawn, I wake burning with fever and gasping for breath.

It’s not fair. Did I ask to be an omega? Did I ask for my heats to get ruined?

Rickon’s scent fills the air, and my pussy weeps slick in response to my alpha’s presence. If I touch him, shake him awake, I know he’ll do everything I ask of him. But a radiating, quivering force stops me. Alphas have never been good to me during heats.

Instead, I throw myself out of bed and stalk down the hall.

I stop halfway to the stairs. That damned nest lurks between me and my freedom. The door’s closed, but I can feel its intention to devour me through the wooden barrier. Like a mouth, just waiting to snap open and close on me.

I’m losing control.

Someone who’s not me walks my body forward, step by shaky step, to the door. It slides silently open under my hand. Better to know my enemy before it can take me by surprise. Shadows on shadows weave a patchwork quilt of darkness inside the yawning mouth.

Fingers shaking, I switch on the light. Big trap of a bed, cushions to smother me and cut off my airway, strings of lights that could wrap around my throat or lock my wrists down.

A nest is supposed to be my sanctuary at times like this, but all I can see is that table where they tied me down and fucked me over. Everything bad that happened to me started in a nest.

A tiny shriek erupts from my mouth.

It needs to go.

The other Red races back to the bedroom, heedless of noise, to grab Rickon’s sewing scissors. My feet thunder like my heartbeat, and I slip in some of my slick on the floor as I race back to the den of horror. With a scream I drag the pretty pictures off the wall and drive the scissors down into the heart of the deadly cushions. They can’t smother me if they’re in pieces.

Stuffing swirls around me like snow, sticking to my tears as I drag the fairy lights down. The scissors catch as I cut through the cabling, grunting with effort to sever the wires. Just being inside this space gives me cold sweats. It feels like the wall close in with every second.

It all has to go.

I thunder down the stairs and throw open every drawer, scrabbling through the contents for a lighter. For good measure, I grab some of the cooking oil. That flares up in the pan during those cooking shows, right?

Voices register as I plow back up the stairs and splash the oil everywhere. That fucking bed leers at me like a maniacal grin, the carved posts looming tusks in the cruelly laughing mouth. The lighter wheel clicks, the beautiful flame glowing on the end of the long stick.

Thick vanilla fills the air. “Fucking hell, Red! What are you doing?” Arms circle my waist, and I drop the lighter.

I scream and kick as I watch it fall, flame extinguished the second it leaves my grip. “Get off me! Let me go!” I refuse to be pinned down this time. “Let it burn!” Let it all go to hell, and my heat with it.

Rickon shouts for Callisto. My body moves without my permission, biting down on his restraining arm. I moan as my teeth sink in deep and the taste of his skin and blood floods my mouth. My alpha’s so delicious. I want to climb him, bury myself on his knot so deep it comes out my throat. But alphas deny their knots.

I fling myself free, screaming again, only to slip on the oily floor. The room’s relentlessly trying to drag me down into its claws. The alpha in the room reaches for me again.

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