Page 8 of Dance Omega Dance

Then it started creeping back in. Broken pieces of awareness slotting into place. A scream, thin and far away. The deep groan of the building settling overhead. Warmth trailing down my leg. Blood? God, that was blood.

I tried to move. My body twitched, useless and weak, and the pain came rushing in like a wave. Something heavy,tooheavy, pressed across my hips, pinning me down. It wasn’t crushing me, not yet, but it felt like a promise. A warning. I gritted my teeth, and tried to twist out from under it, but the wood didn’t budge.

This can’t be real. Shit! I’m stuck!

All around me, splintered set pieces jutted out like jagged bones, boxing me in, trapping me under their weight. A crude little cave. Safe from falling debris, maybe, but not from being forgotten.

I sucked in a breath, and choked. Dust coated my tongue, my throat. My chest seized, and the coughs came fast and raw, tearing through me like glass.

My fingers clawed at the dirt, the broken wood, anything. But nothing gave me even an inch of movement. There was no escape. No help. Just me, sealed away under the wreckage, lungs burning, head spinning, and heart pounding like a freight train.

No. No, no, no—this couldn’t be happening. A hot, invisible current shot through me, sharp and instinctual, my body reacting before my mind could catch up.

I felt the flush under my skin, the sudden rush low in my gut. Damn it. The suppressants weren’t holding. I could smell it already, faint but growing stronger, my fear bleeding out into the air. My scent.

Adrenaline had torn right through the chemical wall I’d built that morning. Now it was spilling out of me, a silent scream, a signal I couldn’t hide. Anyone nearby would smell it, would know. I was exposed. Vulnerable. And I couldn’t stop it.

I tried to push the beam again, my breathing faltering, the air getting heavier. It was no use. I’d have to take my chances. I needed help, so I shouted for it.

“Help!” I yelled, but the word dissolved into another coughing fit. The air was thick with pulverized plaster and splinters of wood, each breath like swallowing sandpaper.

I pushed against the beam trapping me, succeeding only in sending fresh waves of pain up my injured leg. Something warm and wet was spreading beneath my hip, blood pooling perhaps. My blood. I shook my head, trying to keep myself in a state of consciousness. I tried to look down and check where I wasbleeding from, but I couldn't tell in the dim emergency lights that had flickered on when the main power failed.

My hands scrabbled against the debris, finding purchase only to lose it again on dust-slick surfaces. The confined space grew smaller with each panicked breath, the weight on my chest more about fear than actual debris. Claustrophobia, never a problem before, wrapped around my throat like hands intent on silencing me. I was buried alive, screaming inside, clawing to fight my way out.

The building groaned again; an aftershock or just the wounded structure settling, I couldn't tell. Fresh dust sifted down from somewhere above, coating my sweat-damp skin. I squeezed my eyes shut against the grit, and that's when the world shifted in a different way.

The darkness behind my eyelids wasn't the darkness of the damaged theater. It was another darkness, older and more terrifying. The underside of our family sedan, metal against my back, the smell of oil and fear and my mother's blood-soaked clothes.

Now, I was back there. Pinned. Trapped. Helpless. The rubble wasn’t wood... it was the wreckage of my childhood. My body curled in instinctive defense as another aftershock rumbled through the city. Dust rained down, choking.

"Stay here, Summer. Don't make a sound. Don't come out until I come for you."

My mother's words were spoken with the desperate intensity of someone who knew they were lying. I was sixteen, small for my age, an omega whose first faint scent had drawn unwanted attention from a pack of alphas determined to claim fresh breeding stock.

My parents had fought to protect me, to give me time to run or hide. I'd scrambled beneath the car in our driveway, pressing myself against the cold ground as the sounds of struggle filledthe night air. The smell of terror mixed with the metallic tang of spilled blood. The sound of my father's bones breaking, my mother's screams cut short.

"Don't make a sound," I whispered to myself, the words automatic, a desperate adherence to final instructions.

But I wasn't a child anymore, and this wasn't the night my parents were murdered. This was now, and I was trapped once again, as my omega scent spiraled outward with each terrified heartbeat. I forced my eyes open, fighting against the undertow of memory.

The emergency lights cast everything in a sickly red glow. Dust particles danced in the ray of light that penetrated my makeshift tomb, swirling with each labored breath I took. Outside my little pocket of space, I could hear shouting. Rescue efforts were beginning. People were calling out for survivors.

I should answer them. I knew this, but my body remained locked in the paralysis of two overlapping traumas. The taste in my mouth was the same; fear, dust and something metallic.

Because that was the other part of the memory, the part I tried hardest to forget. How the alphas had searched for me after killing my parents. How they'd called my name in honey-sweet voices, promising safety if I'd just come out. When they'd eventually caught my scent and dismantled my hiding place piece by piece.

I'd escaped that night by pure luck, a passing patrol car, a moment of opportunity, a desperate sprint through unfamiliar streets. But the lesson had branded itself into my DNA: vulnerability attracted predators. Trapped and bleeding, I would draw them like sharks to chum-filled waters.

This was not then. I was not sixteen. I was nineteen, a professional dancer, trapped after an earthquake, not hiding from murderous alphas.

Not yet, anyway.

Another aftershock rattled through the building, smaller than the first. The surrounding wreckage creaked and groaned, shifting just enough to press deeper into my leg.

A bolt of pain shot up through me, sharp and blinding. I couldn't stop the sound that ripped from my throat—half scream, half sob—too loud in the cramped, airless dark.

God, that hurt.

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