Page 12 of Dance Omega Dance

I bit my lower lip, as his careful muscular hands cupped my ankle, gently untying the ribbons and pulled off my shoes.

People emerged from the ruined buildings in ones and twos, clothes torn, faces blank with shock. They moved through the streets like ghosts, some with blood streaking down their faces, others cradling broken limbs. A woman clung to a crying child, both of them covered in chalky dust.

I watched an elderly man pick his way out of a shattered cafe, the menu board still proclaiming the day's specials. He leanedheavily on a younger woman, the two of them nearly crumpling to the debris-strewn pavement before they found their balance.

Aftershocks rumbled beneath my feet, sending fresh waves of fear through the milling crowd. A section of crumbling brickwork peeled away from the upper floor with a groan and a billowing cloud of dust. It crashed to the sidewalk only feet away, shattering into a pile of flaking red shards.

We couldn't stay here, exposed amidst the teetering buildings with more collapses imminent. But the street ahead was a treacherous gauntlet of downed power lines and car-sized chunks of concrete. I eyed a clearer path through what had been a narrow alleyway, now widened by the implosion of the surrounding walls.

My breath came in short bursts as I spoke. “We have to get away from these buildings!”

“We will,” he replied, scooping me up again. “We need to go to the hospital. I need supplies.”

“Wait!” I said, remembering. He stopped.

"My friend, Maddie. She was backstage. Red hair, about this tall—" I tried to gesture but winced as pain shot through me.

"The technical crews are being evacuated through the stage door," he said. “If she were backstage, then they'll find her.” His eyes met mine, steady and certain. “But right now, you're my priority.”

The words sent another unexpected wave of warmth through me, dangerous in its comfort. I'd spent years avoiding exactly this... the protective focus of an alpha, the primal certainty that came with their attention.

He lifted me into his arms again, protectiveness rolling off him in waves. His scent was overwhelming now, commanding, stabilizing. And despite the pain and the terror, I clung to it. Clung tohim.

Because somehow, this stranger... this alpha, felt like the only steady thing left in a world cracked wide open.

Blake took a wide path around a downed streetlight that sputtered and sparked. Sirens wailed in the distance, and the streets were chaos: civilians crying out, buildings cracked and leaning, debris scattered everywhere like confetti from a nightmare. We were close to breaking through to the next block, where the damage looked somewhat less severe.

And then I saw it.

Memorial Hospital.

Or what was left of it.

Half of the front facade had collapsed. The emergency department’s entrance was a mass of twisted steel and broken glass. People were being dragged out on stretchers, nurses barking orders, patients bleeding on sidewalks. The controlled order of a hospital had vanished, replaced with battlefield triage and desperation.

“Oh my god,” I whispered. “It’s... gone.”

Blake’s jaw tightened. “The ED's compromised. But we’ll find a way.”

“You work here.”

“Irunthis place,” he said, his voice full of barely leashed fury and raw pride. “And I’ll be damned if I let this city fall apart.”

Blake’s stride never faltered as he navigated through the disarray, carrying me as though I weighed nothing. My leg burned with every movement, but I gritted my teeth, desperate to keep my composure. When we reached a clear area, he lowered me onto a stretcher. His eyes were scanning me like a machine, clinically assessing the damage while his hands were warm and sure as they worked.

Blake crouched beside me, his intense blue eyes flicking down to the blood-slicked gash in my leg. His fingers brushedover the wound gently, almost absentmindedly, as he began assessing.

“The wound’s deep,” he murmured, his tone matter-of-fact, “but it hasn’t hit any major arteries. There’s no need to chop it off.” I frowned, and he remained straight-faced.

“Huh?”

He smirked. “You’ll be okay, sweetheart.”

His gaze softened. He leaned in, pressing his palm against my forehead, checking my temperature.

I tried to breathe evenly, forcing myself to focus on the sound of his voice instead of the throbbing, burning pain in my leg. He wasn’t wrong about one thing: I didn’t feel like I was going to die. But the agony was real, and it was drowning me.

Blake stood up abruptly, his hands brushing over his hair in frustration as his eyes scanned the wreckage of the hospital.

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