Page 7 of Ondine, Vol. 2 (Cash City Omegaverse)

Beta Meier

Arnold

I can’t believe that fucking alpha bit me on the back of my head. In my hairline. I reach back and try to ease the pain of it by pressing the edges with my fingers, but touching it makes it worse.

Sebastian and Yin are the other two members. But I’ve been told to not call him Yin. And Jacoby looked like he wanted to sick his lap dog at my other fingers for calling him by his full name, too.

When you register, you change your name. Traditionally just your surname, but a lot of alphas legally change their first names, too. I had access to their entire file for a few minutes and tried to learn as much as I could.

I’m Arnold Meier now.

Fuck me.

And here I stand in a cold, dark turret in their riverfront, peninsula house looking at some shopping bags and a round platform bed.

Apparently Ondine’s nest.

I’m about to be sick to my stomach. I turn to the alpha on my right. Shadow. The odd smelling, shallow faced, dark moons under his eyes, and annoying alpha. He upsets me even more to look at than this sorry excuse for a nest.

“What the fuck is this?” I ask him. I don’t fuck around with it comes to alphas. They are all dumbasses. Every. Last. One. Of. Them.

“Watch your mouth, beta. This is what I’ve done so far.”

It may look like I’m choosing my words carefully, but I’m really just choosing which insults I want to serve him first. “This is fucking sad. Are you slow or something? Developmentally delayed? Did they take half your brain for science?”

“Shut the fuck up! What’s so wrong with this? I got a bed!”

He gives me his back and bends down to rummage in the shopping bags.

“A bed. A bed! This is exactly the kind of stupid ass bed a half-brained alpha would purchase. It’s made of two parts.

By the end of the first day, the thing would be split in two and you’d have a sad, crying omega on your hands.

Have you ever made an omega cry? Of course you probably have.

I bet they wouldn’t let you around an omega under any normal circumstance. ”

“Fuck off!” Shadow shouts and the subtext I can easily pick up is I’m absolutely right.

“Show me what’s in the bags. I need to know what I’m working with.”

I think he’s going to break a tooth. He’s grinding his jaws so tight. He unbags the items and drops them on the stupid thin mattress.

Synthetic fur. Thick fluffy blankets were too small to cover even Ondine. Upholstery pillows. T-shirt material bed sheets.

I think I may be standing in front of the biggest loser I’ve ever met.

He can see this thought in my eyes when he meets them. Pathetic.

“You know I can feel some of your emotions. Even though you’re an ordinary beta.”

Oooo an “ordinary” beta. Burn.

I roll my eyes at him. Only alphas think packs and bonds are so valuable. Most betas don’t even think about entering into one.

“Ok look, all of this you’ve bought so far is shit. Did you even go into a nest store? They’d be able to blindly point at things and do better than this.”

He tosses his hands in the air. “I was on a tight schedule! I had to get back into the city, so I just went to the department store.”

I sigh, because he exhausts me. And I have no inhibitions whatsoever since I was kidnapped and forced to bond. I’ve decided I’m going to make it their problem.

“You know what’s wrong with people like you?

Alphas. I’ve met so many alphas in my line of work, and there’s this epidemic that no one speaks about.

You want to impress the other alphas in your pack more than you give a shit about an omega.

Maybe it’s because there are so few omegas.

So your priorities shift. Who knows? But you will literally rot from the inside out trying to garner favor with the other alphas rather than an omega.

Don’t think I can’t smell you. Your stench.

It comes from mistreating an omega. At the Clinic, they pump the alphas full of hormone supplements to combat that scent.

But being an alpha has nothing to do with fulfilling the brotherhood of the pack. ”

Shadow does something weird. He listens. I actually hate it as much as when he’s trying to give me excuses.

“Tell me I’m wrong, Alpha Meier. Please, I’m begging you. Tell me what you’ve done for Ondine. How did she find you? Have you been good to her?”

Obviously not. I can’t even imagine her in this house.

One thing I loved about her is how little she cared for the approval of alphas.

So many omegas are desperate for alpha approval, and it broke my heart to hear them ask me about the alphas that helped them through their heats.

It broke my heart because I was subjected to the other side of it.

Where the alphas patted each other on the back and gloated about their performances.

Disparaging the girls. (I hadn’t seen a male omega in the Heat Clinic.)

But Ondine didn’t give a shit. It wasn’t that she didn’t want their approvals. She wasn’t a fucking robot. But she knew the sum of things. She’d watch them with her intelligent eyes. She’d see the signs and come to the conclusions quickly. They were trash.

Shadow looks everywhere but at me.

“Jake found her running away from something. Someone. From you. We’d been trying to get a placement with the Institute. We already had a contract drafted. He brought her here and offered her the same thing we were going to offer an Institute omega. Two heats.”

“Where did she have that first heat?” I don’t hide my feelings. I’m scared. She didn’t have it in this fucking dank tower. Shadow turns and waves me to follow him. He takes me down the stairs and past some bedrooms to the last one on the right. He opens the door.

Half the room looks like storage. There’s a small bed that smells of Ondine.

Near the window she had piled some blankets and pillows.

It looked like she tried. This is egregious.

Three wealthy alphas with their own private home, and this is what they gave her.

I grab Shadow by his shoulders and slam him into the wall.

“What the fuck am I looking at! Omegas can’t nest in their own rooms!

This is not even a room! My one legged grandma in hospice could have figured something better out.

And for an omega! She’s young. And pretty.

And interesting. And available. Do you have any goddamned idea what a treasure she is? ” And then I spit into his face.

I don’t know why. I’ve never done it before. But he deserves it.

I expect he’ll punch me out or something. But he doesn’t. His shoulders relax a little and he stares me down, absolute rage in his eyes.

I push off of him and walk away. I want to see what she all has here. It doesn’t look like much. There are clothes but they don’t look like hers.

“Whose clothes are these?”

“We got her some clothes and things.”

“Did she pick them out?”

“I think Jake just bought them.”

“Wow, I should applaud you for always having the worst answer to my questions. Normally I wouldn’t even tell you to put together her nest for her, but I know exactly what she wants.”

Shadow clears his throat. “Did she tell you everything she wants?”

I pause to look at him. “Yes.”

He cocks an eyebrow at me.

“Even that,” I answer the unasked question.

Ondine has been through too goddamn much. She’s surrounded by fools.

I wish I could have protected her from them.

I’ve let my own fear keep me from going to greater lengths to get her back.

It’s so fucking common for betas to get jumped, killed, arrested, or disappear who try to get too close to an unbonded omega.

My roommate took an omega on a date, and her already bonded alphas beat the shit out of him.

He had to move in with his mom so he could recover.

The police don’t help. If anything, they find any excuse to get rid of the beta.

Even being friends with an omega will get you ostracized and open to all sorts of harassment.

It’s not that I’m afraid of that. I’m not afraid of fucking cops or alphas. I just couldn’t protect her if I was getting hassled.

“Ok.” I stand up. Determination seeping from me. “Tell me everything. Absolutely everything. And when you’re done, we are going to a real nesting store and you’re spending at least 10 grand on all the shit we need. Is that going to be a problem?”

Shadow shuffles his feet and says, no, it won’t be a problem.

Ok.

Let’s do this.