Page 78 of The Runaway

“Then you need your arms free to fight anyone who tries to get in our faces. If you’re still inclined to keep helping us, that is.”

“Ready and willing,” Gabriel said, though he felt a thread of trepidation as he said it. This was one more of those instances where there was no single right answer. Niles and Adalene might be in urgent need of help… but abandoning these omegas after he’d already gone to the trouble of saving them would be unconscionable. “All right, then, let’s get going before we attract any more unwanted attention. Lead the way.”

???

Niles latched onto Adalene’s arm as the pair of them were dragged down the street in the surge of bodies. Adalene stumbled and screamed, but Niles hauled her to her feet, likely jarring her shoulder in the process. But far better to have a sore shoulder than to be trampled to death by the panicked hoards.

For a moment or two, Niles tried in vain to head back towards where he’d last seen Gabriel. But he was quick to realise it was a losing battle. Instead, he allowed the pair of them to be caught up in the moving crowd, swept along until he managed to drag them over to the side of the street and into a shop doorway. The shop itself was closed and boarded up, but the entrance provided a little shelter.

“Are you okay?” he asked Adalene.

“You fucking cowards!” she yelled into the street, ignoring his question, and he glanced back to see more soldiers advancing down the street, firing into the crowd. He saw three people go down and more screaming in terror as they clutched at bloody wounds.

“We need to get out of here,” he told Adalene. “Or we’re both going to end up dead.”

“Let’s go,” she said, a snarl on her face, but thankfully, she could still see the wisdom of a strategic retreat. They headed south, then took a slight right turn as the street split into two. Niles was fairly sure the hotel was down the other fork in the road, but to get over there, they’d have to cross a wide stream of jostling bodies, and he decided it would be better to just get away from the mayhem first and worry about directions later.

They passed a shop where looters were smashing the windows, and as they hurried along, Adalene reached down and picked up a long object – a metal pipe, Niles realised, once he could get a good look at it. Someone had likely dropped it in their haste to flee. There was plenty of debris on the road, with people turning any old rubbish into weapons – strips of metal guttering, broom handles, broken bottles.

“This way,” Niles said, leading them towards a side alley that looked like it headed in the right direction. So far, he hadn’t had time to dwell on his fear, either for himself or for Adalene, too focused on getting them away from the chaos. And they were making decent progress, he thought now, with the streets a little less crowded, enough so that they could move without having to shove people out of the way. The alley ran beside a shop – one that the owner had failed to board up, either because they hadn’t thought the rioting would spill out this far or because they’d been too scared to come into the city to get the job done. Niles could see someone inside, who had busted through the door, though the windows were still intact – for the time being, at least.

Still, looters weren’t his problem. He tugged Adalene along to the alley… but then a flash of light caught his attention, a split second before the boom reached his ears, and then the front of the shop exploded. Niles instinctively shielded his eyes as glass went flying, but he felt shards of it stab into his arms, at the same time as something hard hit his chest. He fell to his knees, winded, a stabbing pain in his chest. God, he hoped that wasn’t glass that had hit him. He took a gasping breath, the air hot as it poured out of the shop window, but after another attempt or two, it seemed he could still breathe.

“Adalene?” He turned around, still on his knees, flinching as he felt the blood start to trickle down his arms. Definitely glass there.

“Oh God, Niles!” Adalene scurried over to him, looking miraculously unharmed. No, not unharmed, he realised, as he saw the cut on her forehead, and another on her wrist. But mostly so. “God, you’re bleeding.” She grabbed his hands and looked around, then cursed under her breath. “We need to move,” she said urgently. “Can you stand?”

“Yeah, I think so.” He had no idea if he could or not. He glanced down at his chest and breathed a sigh of relief when there was no blood there. A sturdy plank was lying across his leg – likely part of the window frame – and he assumed that that was what had hit him. “Yeah, give me a hand,” he said to Adalene, but as he tried to stand up, he realised that his injury was far worse than it looked. A stabbing pain shot through him, robbing him of breath. “God, no, I… I think I’ve broken some ribs. Fuck…”

“Lean on me,” Adalene said, trying to get her shoulder under his arm. “We need to move.” Her voice was starting to sound panicked, and Niles wondered what other details he’d missed in his daze.

“Hold it right there,” a gruff voice said, and Niles looked up in trepidation.

???

Adalene abandoned her attempts to get Niles to stand up. The group of soldiers advancing down the street had reached them, and one in particular had taken an interest in her and Niles. He’d likely made the assumption that they’d had something to do with the shop explosion, and from the cold sneer on the man’s face, Adalene dismissed any ideas about trying to explain to him that they were just passing by. They had been protesting, after all, and it wasn’t likely a soldier would care about the opinion of a lowly omega, anyway.

Instead, she picked up her pilfered pipe and held it up like a sword. Across the street, she saw another of the soldiers beating a man with a baton, and further up the road, one stabbed a woman with his bayonet. They weren’t messing around, then.

“Come on, sweetheart,” the soldier in front of her said. “Put the pipe down. You don’t want to start a fight with me.”

“Let us go and I won’t need to fight you,” she said. A strange clarity filled her mind, her body feeling perfectly balanced, though she’d never held any sort of weapon before. Behind her, Niles was struggling to stand up. She wasn’t sure what his injuries were, but they were significant.

The soldier raised his gun. “Put the fucking pipe down, you bitch,” he snarled, all pretence of gentleness forgotten. “You and that cunt behind you are both coming with me.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, “given that he’s an alpha” – that registered as a moment of surprise on the guard’s face – “and I’m sick of people underestimating me.”

With that, she swung the pipe, taking the soldier by surprise so that she succeeded in knocking the gun right out of his hands. She hesitated for a split second after that, but in that instant, her mind was made up. These men had come out here to kill them. They’d decided on killing the omegas being held in the military barracks, the ones they should have beenprotecting. And Adalene herself had come here to make her fury felt, to shake the world in whatever way she was able.

Adalene swung the pipe, taking direct aim at the soldier’s head… and she was just a little surprised when she felt the heavy metal connect with his skull. She felt, rather than heard the crack, then the soldier hit the ground with a meaty thud.

Fucking hell. She’d just killed someone.

And not a moment too soon. The soldier who’d stabbed the woman with his bayonet was striding over, and he quickened his pace as he saw his comrade go down. “Hey! You there!”

Adalene didn’t wait. She swung her pipe again, but this time, the soldier saw it coming and blocked her blow with his bayonet. They struggled against each other for a moment, then Adalene picked up one booted foot and rammed it with as much force as she could manage into the soldier’s groin. All the air left him in a rush and he fell to his knees… and then one of the other omegas sprinted up behind him and jammed a knife into his back.

“Take that, you arrogant scum!” The young man raced off again, while the soldier keeled over right where he was kneeling. A spurt of blood leaked out of his mouth.