Page 41 of Captive Omega
“You can’t win this. You’re undeserving and you will die here.”
We were being lured out into the open. A voice at the back of my mind—one that sounded a lot like Luna—was screaming, warning me to be careful. But at that moment, I couldn’t have cared less, because I needed to rip this man apart.
I needed to destroy everything and everyone, to destroy the world itself, like it had done to Luna.
When we left the hut, Nate and I were immediately surrounded. There were so many of them, but that didn’t scare me. Bloodlust exploded through me, both my own and not.
I could feel Rowan’s desire to kill, and my brother’s grief echoed into me too. Nate and I had always had a close connection, but it had become more potent since we’d bonded with Luna. The beautiful link we’d shared was now a vicious circle of pain, because Luna had been ripped out of it so brutally.
There were no more words left to say, no threats to make, no arguments to bring forth. Maybe if things had been different, I’d have confronted Alpha Clayton about his hypocrisy. I’d have told him that Nate and I had only done our duty to our mate and to our pack, and that his son had been a liability. He wouldn’t have cared, and I didn’t anymore.
This had stopped being about us, about the freedom we’d pursued. The moment Luna had died, everything else had vanished in the haze of our need for revenge.
The crimson moon of the chaos shone brightly above us as we attacked our pack. I tried to reach Alpha Clayton, but Ellery got in the way. He was a Beta, stronger than the other wolves of the pack, but I didn’t let that thwart me. I buried my fangs in his shoulder, brutally ripping his flesh.
I’d have torn his throat out on the spot, but three other werewolves piled on top of my brother. Two more surrounded me. I was forced to retreat and went to my brother’s aid.
Together, the two of us fought off the group that had clustered around us. Ellery took advantage of the time his underlings had bought him to recover. Within seconds, he was back on his feet and facing us again.
“You’ll pay for what you did to Ivy.”
His words snapped me out of my trance. I almost wanted to laugh, because Alpha Clayton had been the one to send Ivy to her death. What the hell had they expected? A warm hug after she’d attacked our mate?
But it was much easier for Ellery to blame us—the exiles, the rogues—than to blame his Alpha, and I no longer cared about his reasoning.
“Your daughter died like the treacherous bitch she was,” I told him. “We ripped her to pieces and left her corpse to be eaten by the beasts of the desert.”
Ellery howled in fury, but I wasn’t impressed. If he’d felt genuine pain and love for his daughter, he would have never allowed her to come after us. When he attacked me again, I was more than happy to show him the error of his ways.
I couldn’t waste my time on Ellery for too long, though, because the Alpha was our real target. Maybe we wouldn’t survive this, but that was all right, as long as we killed Alpha Clayton, the man who was ultimately responsible for Luna’s death.
In the end, it was Rowan who provided me with the opening I needed, although it wasn’t in a way I liked all that much. His body was thrown out of the hut, landing on top of several Wolfsbanes who were in our way.
“Are you all right?” I asked him. I hadn’t noticed what had happened to Rowan, and that unsettled me.
“Fine,” Rowan replied. He leaped back onto the ground, his eyes glinting almost as red as his blood-stained fangs. “They can’t take me down so easily.”
Confirming his words, Rufus came out of the hut. He was limping slightly, and this time, he was alone.
Trusting Rowan to handle his brother, I took advantage of the distraction to eliminate the obstacles in my path. Several Wolfsbanes went down under my claws and fangs before they even realized what was going on. And then, it was Ellery’s turn. The Beta tried to dodge my attack, but I was faster than him. My claws raked over his face, putting out one of his eyes. He howled in fury and pain, and I pursued my advantage to take him down.
When he fell under me, I buried my fangs in his throat and jerked. This time, there was no one there to save him. It only took a couple of extra seconds, but Ellery died, his life drained out of him so quickly it was almost anticlimactic.
I tasted his blood in my mouth, and it felt like vengeance. But it wasn’t enough. How could it be? It was meaningless. I needed more, more blood, more death, just… more, more, more.
Do you think you’ll earn her forgiveness then? Do you think this will make up for the fact that you failed her? It won’t. Nothing ever will.
The voice was louder and louder in my head, and I howled in anguish, trying to drown it out. It didn’t work, because how could it? Everything it was saying was right.
But that didn’t mean I could give up. Because Alpha Clayton was right in front of me now, and if there was anything I knew, it was that I needed to kill this man.
* * *
Nate
Ever since we’d first left the pack, Sam and I had lived our lives on the edge, always taunting death through our simple existence. In the Badlands, every day was a struggle to survive, but we’d done it, because we’d always wanted to be reunited with her, with Luna.
Today, we were finally back to what had been our home, and my wish hadn’t changed. I wanted her back, but since that wasn’t possible, I ached to join her.
