Page 9 of The First Omega Made (Scales and Tails of Fate #2)

Shafa

The only interesting things on the entire ship that I’d been permitted to see thus far had been an incomplete omega with a delicious scent and an emotionally stunted gene bomb.

All stiff limbs and vacant expression. How his mate stood the male was beyond me.

He was for making more Naleucian soldiers, infecting others with our blood—not breeding.

Though, I’d been interested in seeing their progeny. Who knew? If it were beta or omega, I might wait for them to mature to see their potential. The more Naleucians, the better, after all.

I lay in wait on a mildly comfortable bed for what felt like many sleep rotations.

The hybreed known as Vil—the chimera of alpha and beta—spoke with me often.

The gene bomb tried to, but I couldn’t get over the fact that he was basically a petri dish.

Allowing him to live was cruel and a reminder that no matter what they’d said in Paradise, they were living, thinking, feeling omegas.

They’d used and harvested from him with his brain still intact—barbarians.

Vil assured me they no longer did, though.

Not without appropriate medical steps and pain management.

If I’d cared about the male, that might have assuaged some of my vitriol, but it didn’t.

I cared about the potential eggs he could have had harvested from him if he wasn’t claimed so selfishly.

“Who named your mate?” I barked the question out of my window, brow furrowed.

“He named himself.” Vil sat somewhere else in the ship in a great chair, eyes focused elsewhere. I’d been granted visibility of him via a screen in my room that the ship’s intelligence system linked us with.

“What did his patrons call him?” Calling them his patrons tasted foul on my tongue. They were his keepers. They held no patronal role toward the hatchling.

“Hatchling.” Vil’s expression remained terse, concentration still elsewhere. “Don’t you name yourselves?”

“Mm. No. Naleucians are named upon being taken by their alpha and beta paters. I am Shafa, named for a type of shrubbery common in Paradise.”

“Paradise…this is your planet, yes?” Not even a flicker of a glance in my direction, not that I could well tell. Alpha eyes being black and all.

“Paradise… There is translation error. Merriel, please do not translate the name of the planet.” I’d learned to parse through the common tongue they spoke.

The language-learning software they had showed me a fairly easy to understand language.

I’d tried my hand at parsing words and sentences in their language often.

Merriel corrected me sometimes, making it that much easier. “Lissotritonaleu.”

Vil paused his work, brow creasing only slightly. “Yeah, just calling it Paradise.”

His mate, sitting on the floor beside him, muttered something. “Space paradise.”

Perhaps sentient was too kind a word for the creature.

“Yes, it is in space…” I did not understand the male’s fixation with tacking space on to everything—but it was not my burden.

And if I had my way, he’d be no one else’s burden.

It was imperative to my nature to have the bomb neutralized and entered into stasis.

It was clear that he’d been mentally chipped away at and had suffered. It was a kindness, really.

Besides, genetic material from him could undo me.

And then there was the matter of the other omega—the incomplete one.

The potent genes that the bomb had imparted onto him made my glands swell and my teeth ache with want to bite into his flesh.

Since he was a secondary omega, created from another species, I was free to breed him as I saw fit—ablated or not.

Though I’d see to it he was ablated after I harvested a few dozen ovum.

I’d incubate many children with him once I found a suitable beta.

Unless I returned to Paradise, at least. There, they’d likely scold me for laying hands on a precious omega but praise me for ensuring his safety.

Vil might even be put to death for making the gene bomb birth an egg.

To claim him. To cause an omega pain was unforgiveable.

Would be better they never neared Paradise.

“Noel,” I said, curiosity piqued. Once I’d started my mission, I needed to get back to Paradise or at least wanted to.

I’d been gone for millennia. “Ar—” I started to ask if he was happy, truly, but my attention drew to a scratching noise in the air vents.

Not one connected to my chamber but alongside it.

Some mild scrambling and metal-shredding noises caught my attention before scents of the entire ship flooded my cell, amid them the scent of young beta . Very young.

And beneath that… Colthraxian. Extinct? I think not.

I had a mission.

With little warning, the air vent in my cell burst open and a rounded face full of youth, potential, and power peeped out, eyes a solid blue. He was everything that could be promised in a young beta. He was blue—an ideal color, really. A step above my own orange.

“I believe my cell has been compromised.” I stared at the young one as Merriel swore over the speakers, his translations echoing about my ears.

I’d not known their young was a hatchling. He couldn’t have been more than three lunar cycles, and cold fear flooded my veins.

I backed away from the vent, plastering my hands behind my back, tail curling around my leg. Throat exposed, I tilted my head upward just in time for the little one to unceremoniously jump from the vent.

I carefully cut my gaze toward the screen, noting an absence of the gene bomb. I counted down the seconds I had to breathe before the omega would descend on me in a craze. All my hard work for nothing.

We’d all be told an omega’s capabilities when bred—when not ablated. I’d not witnessed it, but I prepared. The healing would be agonizing.

The door to the cell crumpled in on itself, ripping from its hinges as Noel dashed into the quarantine chamber and went straight for—the child. Not me.

The little one jumped and struggled in the gene bomb’s arms before settling.

“I do not want to hurt your bay-bee!” I sounded out the words as Merriel seemed to be stuttering.

Noel hissed at me and grasped the small beta child in his arms tighter before backing away, tail flicking hard.

I swallowed, the lump in my throat, nearly cutting off airflow to two of my three lungs.

Vil, senseless to what an omega could be like with young, bolted in after and glanced from me to their little one, and to Noel, assessing things as calmly as a beta should.

Omegas were destructive, senseless things when with young. Noel somehow missed the genes for it. Instead, he fawned over the little one, retreating with his wings folding out through his shirt, bunching around himself and the little one.

The ship complained about how long it’d take to repair the vents, but I counted myself lucky that it was only the door and vents destroyed—not me. I would take equally long to repair, if I could be at all. A mated omega’s venom was not to be taken lightly.

“I see you met Nexus.” Vil stared at me and I dared not move. If my scales had a single chromatophore dilated, I’d be surprised. I was likely pale as a lyphinium.

“He is a very beautiful beta child.” I swallowed hard, still daring not to move. A sniff to the air told me the beta had incompatible genes with myself—waiting wasn’t an option.

“Only child we’ve ever seen.” Vil stared at the remnants of the door and sneered. “Merriel?”

“Three to five days if we have Gorm and Sannak on it.” Merriel said the latter name with a jealous sneer in his digital tones. “I’d rather not have Sannak up in my guts.”

“Fuck.” Vil pawed a hand down his face, muttering something about their ship gaining altitude, getting high . “You’ve passed quarantine and don’t look like you’re a risk. We’ll limit you to the crew side and everyone will have an eye on you. Got it?”

Perfect… Better than expected.

Vil escorted me from my cell and across the ship, leading me to a storage room. From amid rigid metal canisters, tangled wires, and old tech, he pulled an ancient collar out, proffering it to me like I was a mere omega needing my neck guarded from crazed alphas. “Put it on.”

Grudgingly, I did so, knowing it likely had more meaning than that.

I snapped it into place and he had the ship’s system program it to do something.

I was limited to a part of the ship—the translations came sparsely and stuttered, but I muddled through.

After all, I was one of the most intelligent species in the universe.

“No going outside of bounds. When I give orders, you act. Touch my mate or child and there will be nothing left of you but a smear against a wall. Are we clear?” He waited for the translation to finish.

“I understand.” I nodded once and winced as the collar whined and wound down, going silent.

“Good. Help us raid the base and we’ll take you home or wherever you want. I know a group of humans that would die to have you.” The way he grinned made me tense.

“I wish to go to Paradise.” I stared him down and waited for his response.

“We don’t know where it is. And we’ve not seen another Naleucian that wasn’t a hybreed or Noel in hundreds of solar rotations. It’s like they disappeared.”

“I know how to get there. It is hidden.” I swallowed hard, a nervous reflex. My mission counted on getting there.

“Then we hawk this load and go.” He sneered at me and turned, gesturing for me to follow.

No pure-born Naleucian would accept them—but that wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t accept me, either.

I merely needed numbers on my side.