Page 1 of Omega in Love
Prologue
Brookes
Iknow I'm dreaming.
I know it the second I feel the zip ties biting into my wrists, slick with old blood and sweat. The second I hear the buzz of overhead lights and the slow, mocking drag of boots across concrete. It's always the same dream. Same smells. Same ache in my ribs. Same taste in my mouth.
Rust. Copper. Fear.
The warehouse is cold and damp, the kind of chill that seeps straight into bone. The air stinks of stale piss, mildew, and the sharp, cloying rot of blood. I gag on it, even though I already know it's coming. My body remembers every second. Every bruise, every cut, every moment of terror etched into my cells like a grotesque tattoo. Even though I'm screaming inside to wake up, to pull myself out of it, I can't. I never can. I'm trapped in this loop of horror, forced to relive it all over again.
I shift, instinctive, and the chair groans beneath me. My ankles are tied to the legs, plastic cutting into my skin with every desperate twitch. My chest is bare, heaving, each breath a jagged knife sawing through the cracked cartilage of my ribs. My left eye won't open all the way; swollen and throbbing with its ownheartbeat. My lips already split, puffy and tender against my teeth. There's a trail of dried blood crusted down my chin, sticky and bitter, flaking off whenever I try to speak.
Voices circle me. Low and amused. Their words are always the same, like a script they've rehearsed just for my nightmares.
"Fucking pretty thing. Waste of good looks on something so broken."
"Bet he cried when they told him what he was. Bet his daddy couldn't even look at him."
"Freakin' waste of an Omega. Who the hell wants a male one, anyway? Nature's little mistake."
They circle like flies, buzzing around the edges of my consciousness. I hear them more than I see them, dark shapes just outside the pool of flickering light above me. Their silhouettes stretch and distort on the concrete walls, monstrous and looming. They don't matter. Not really. They're just the warm-up. The appetizer before the main course of my terror.
I know who's coming.
I always know.
The boots change first. Quieter. After years of modeling, I can identify the varied sounds different types of shoes make. The click, click, click of brogues. The sound feels wrong. They don't belong here. The man wearing them doesn't belong here. He's the one who owns this nightmare. Who built it for me. Who orchestrated every second of my suffering with the precision of a conductor.
Senator Blaine.
His voice slices the air before I ever see his face, cutting through the murmurs of his henchmen like a scalpel.
"I expected more. For all the noise you made on social media, you're a hell of a disappointment in person. Prettier in your photos, too." He smiles, that smarmy smile politicians do, one that gives a false sense of security.
I flinch before I can stop myself, hating how my body betrays me, how it remembers to fear him. His voice is smooth. Polished. The kind of tone made for press conferences and campaign trails, not underground torture chambers. He crouches in front of me all the same. His Armani suit without a wrinkle. Expensive cologne that turns my stomach. His expression full of disdain, like I'm something he found stuck to the bottom of his Italian leather shoes.
"You just had to run your mouth, didn't you?" he says, his breath hot against my face. "Begging for help. Stirring the pot. Acting like people give a shit about Omegas like you. Like you matter in the grand scheme of things."
His hand snaps forward, fingers clamping down hard around my jaw, forcing my face up. His nails dig crescents into my skin that I swear I can still feel when I wake up.
"If you'd kept quiet, maybe Charlotte would've stayed lost. Maybe this whole thing would've been nice and clean. But no, you had to turn her into a fucking hero. You furthered her agenda when you got others on board with her movement. You had to make people care about someone who was supposed to just disappear."
He releases my face with a shove, and my head jerks back with a crack against the chair. Stars burst behind my eyes, a constellation of pain blooming across my vision.
"You're not a savior," he spits, a fleck of his saliva landing on my cheek. "You're a pawn. A loud, soft-bellied pawn. And the second she walks through that door to save you, you'll both die screaming. I'll make sure of it."
The guards don't wait for the cue. They never do. They start hitting me again, their movements practiced and efficient. A backhand across the face, then a fist to the stomach that empties my lungs. My breath goes ragged, desperate wheezes that can't fill my chest. The crack of knuckles against my jaw. The taste ofiron floods my mouth. A knee drives into my ribs and something gives with a crack. My body folds, collapsing in on itself like wet paper.
I scream. Not because it helps, but because it's all I have left. Because the sound is the only thing I still own in this place.
"You should've died at designation," one of them mutters, wiping my blood off his knuckles onto my shoulder. "Could've spared everyone the embarrassment. Especially your family."
Laughter ripples through the room, cruel and cold. More blows rain down. The floor sways beneath me, though I'm still tied to the chair. My head lolls, vision swimming, the world tilting on its axis. I taste bile and blood, a potent cocktail of misery.
My name's gone. My purpose is gone. All that's left is the chant in my ears, a litany of words that burrow under my skin:
Useless.
