Page 14 of Run Omega Run
It was sharp and desperate enough to make my blood run cold. The sound came from somewhere close, behind the remaining rubble that littered the street. Without thinking, I abandoned the door and stepped toward the sound, but what I saw made me freeze for precisely one heartbeat before my body took over.
A young woman, no scratch that... a young Omega, held a bloodied older woman. The older woman wore what looked like a nightgown beneath a thin coat, the pale fabric stained dark with something that made my stomach clench when I realizedwhat it was. Blood. Fresh blood that caught the light like spilled red wine.
But it was the younger woman who held my attention, even in the middle of what was clearly a medical emergency. She was tall and lean with light brown hair that had escaped whatever arrangement she'd tried to tame it into.
I was already moving toward them when she looked up and saw me approaching. Her eyes were wide with panic and something else... fear.
“Please help,” she begged. Her heart laid out in front of me. “Please, she can’t breathe.”
I looked down, and that was when it happened. When the wind shifted. It carried her scent toward me like a gift from whatever gods looked after lonely Alphas who'd given up hope of finding their match.
Fresh strawberries and cream.
The scent hit me with a force of recognition so complete it nearly drove me to my knees. This was the runner. The woman who passed my restaurant every morning at dawn, her footsteps a steady rhythm that had become part of my daily soundtrack. For months I'd caught glimpses of her through my kitchen window, always moving too fast for me to get a good look, always gone before I could work up the courage to step outside and introduce myself. But her scent had lingered on the morning air each time she passed, sweet and intoxicating, unlike anything I'd ever encountered.
Now she was here, struggling with a crisis that needed my help, and her scent was wrapping around me like recognition itself.
Our eyes met across the ten feet of broken pavement between us, and I saw the exact moment when she registered my scent in return. Melted marshmallows, warm and comforting, the scent that always drove me crazy because it never seemed to attractthe attention I’d hoped it would. But now I watched her pupils dilate, watched her nostrils flare as she processed what her instincts were telling her about compatibility and connection, the kind of pairing that happened once in a lifetime if you were lucky.
"Here," I said, closing the distance between us in four quick strides. "I'll help."
The relief coating her face buried itself deep inside of me. Her need in that moment cut me open. Right there and then, I’d do anything for her, lay down on a sword for her if she asked me to. I’d never felt the epitome of purity before I met her, and I knew, without a doubt, what and who she was to me... to my pack.
But for now, she needed my help, and considering the agony she was going through, now wasn’t the best time to bring up our future together. I bent down and slipped my arms around the older woman's frail frame, lifting her as gently as I could manage. She weighed almost nothing, barely more than the sacks of flour I hauled around my kitchen every day, but there was a burning heat radiating from her skin that spoke of serious fever. Her breathing was barely there, punctuated by coughing fits which brought up blood that stained my shirt sleeve dark red.
The moment I took her weight, the young Omega tried to stand and almost collapsed. All the adrenaline that had kept her going seemed to drain away at once, leaving her swaying on her feet like a tree in high wind. I caught her elbow with my free hand, steadying her against my side.
"Are you okay?" I asked, studying her face in the growing morning light. She was malnourished, with dark circles under her red, tearful eyes that spoke of too many sleepless nights and too much responsibility carried alone. But even exhausted andterrified, she was beautiful in a way that made my chest tight with possibilities I'd stopped believing in.
She nodded, straightening herself with visible effort. "We were heading to the hospital," she said, her voice rough with exhaustion. "She can't breathe properly, and there's so much blood..."
Her voice broke on the last word, and something fundamental shifted inside my chest. This wasn't just an attraction or the recognition of a scent match. This was the desperate need to protect, to provide, to take whatever burdens she was carrying and make them lighter through sheer determination.
"The hospital's just a few more blocks," I said, adjusting my grip on her mother to distribute her minimal weight more evenly. "I can carry her that far." She nodded. “But we need to run, she’s not breathing too well.”
Tears slid down her face, and her lower lip wobbled as she nodded again.
"Thank you," she said.
"Thank me when she’s safe," I said simply. "My name's Dante," I said, and began running. She kept in step beside me.
She studied my face for a long moment, as if trying to read some hidden agenda. But whatever she saw there must have reassured her, because she finally replied.
"Heather," she said. "And this is my mom."
"Nice to meet you, Heather," I said.
The run to the hospital stretched through the broken landscape of our recovering city, each step requiring careful navigation whilst I continued to steal glances at my Omega beside me. It warmed me inside to be able to say ‘my Omega’. Not that I could say that aloud yet; it wasn’t the time, nor the place. But just being near her, soaking in her sweet, decadent scent, was a drug all in itself.
Heather's mother felt impossibly fragile in my arms. Her skin shone with a layer of sweat that coated it, and her coughing had calmed as she lay unconscious in my arms, but her breathing was labored against my chest.
Heather jogged beside me, her long legs matching my stride despite the obvious exhaustion that made her movements unsteady. As I stole another glance at her, the morning light revealed details I hadn't caught in our first frantic moments: the determined set of her jaw, the way she unconsciously reached out to steady me whenever her mother shifted in my arms, the careful way she scanned ahead for obstacles that might trip us up.
"Watch the broken concrete there," she said delicately, pointing to a section of sidewalk that had cracked and heaved upward at a dangerous angle. "I nearly twisted my ankle once during a run."
So she had been running. My instincts had been right about her athletic grace, about the discipline it took to maintain that kind of conditioning. But more than that, she'd been running through the same damaged streets I walked every day, breathing the same air, seeing the same landmarks of recovery and ruin. We'd been sharing this space for months without ever meeting.
We passed the makeshift market that had sprung up in what used to be Riverside Park, vendors setting up early to catch construction workers grabbing breakfast before their shifts. The half-rebuilt apartment complex on Fifth Street showed signsof new progress since I'd last walked this route. There were windows where there had been empty frames just last week, scaffolding that suggested the top floors might actually be habitable soon.
