Page 1 of Forbidden Bonds
Chapter One
There were rumors of a Singular who had defected to our enemy, seeking to bring about peace. That was several years ago. Some said she was dead. Some said it was our own government that held her in isolation, deeming her views too heretical to be allowed a voice.
And some said she’d never wanted peace and now lived among the Uncorrupted, where she plotted to bring about our downfall.
After my time in the hands of the Uncorrupted, I couldn’t believe they would ever accept peace. Nor did I believe an omega could plot anyone’s demise.
~ Doctor Lillian Brach
Larissa
A hulking alpha is strapped down to a gurney, roaring like a beast and thrashing so hard the bars holding the restraintsthreaten to buckle. A tangle of cables and electrodes are delivering his stats to a nearby console. There is a drip inserted into his arm, hooked up to a drug dispenser.
They haven’t sedated him yet.
I really wish someone would.
His name is Jord, and he’s diverging, which is the Uncorrupted official term for when their alphas lose their minds.
Among the troops, they call it glitching. Different words, same thing. Just another side effect of the modified version of the Copper Virus that the Uncorrupted began experimenting with ten years ago.
His skin glistens with sweat as his body pumps out pheromones that saturate the small room, making my stomach churn.
Alpha pheromones should be appealing to an omega. Only, the Uncorrupted’s virus doesn’t work in the usual way. Diverging aside, their alphas smell and act wrong.
Two guards stand by the head of the gurney, ready in case the straps snap—which is a possibility, given how the gurney rattles under Jord’s rage.
This is not Jord’s first divergence.
A bleak sense of inevitability tells me it won’t be the last. I’m convinced he only lives because it provides a learning opportunity for Jenda, the alpha doctor in charge of the Uncorrupted’s experimental program, and one of the first of their own to be turned.
She stands to my left, eyes on the data display, everything about her totally clinical, detached, and military, from her cropped hair to her stark gray uniform. Her fellow alpha’s suffering doesn’t move her in the slightest.
They call this rehabilitation. It’s more like scraping out a mind. And I would know more about minds than most, being the only known mind-reading omega.
“Monitor his thoughts as I administer the dose,” Jenda instructs me, fingers already tapping the console’s controls.
I open myself. His mind is still locked on the incident that brought him here: the omega he broke, lying on the floor of a nesting chamber, a jumble of bloody limbs, twitching in the throes of a seizure. Medical personnel are working on her as a dozen soldiers swarm Jord with immobilizer rods.
The omega is currently in a regen tank with enough broken bones and soft tissue damage that she’s likely to be there for another week.
He did that to her… I feel polluted having to touch his mind.
The chaos of violence suddenly fades as orange and purple colors wash the scene away.
“He’s stabilizing,” I say.
“Good. Good,” Jenda says coolly, still busy at her console.
The two guards at the gurney both relax their rigid posture as Jord’s thrashing slows and stops.
He looks at peace. Different images fill his mind now, of his younger years before a twisted version of the virus turned him into this unhinged beast.
I want to hate him, but when I look at him, I feel only sadness for what might have been but for circumstances beyond his control. If he’d gotten the original version of the virus—the one used in the Empire—I believe he would be just an ordinary alpha. One whose scent wouldn’t make my skin crawl. One who wouldn’t leave an omega bloody and broken.
The quiet is profound.
It won’t last.
