Page 2 of Unable Omega (One Wild Alpha #3)

Sage

I don’t even know if I’m in the same country anymore.

With my human half tucked into the back seat of my bear’s and my shared consciousness, he took the lead.

For most of my life, I’d handed it over to him, an even exchange.

But when I’d discovered an opportunity to escape the lab, he jerked the awareness away from me and hadn’t let up since.

My side tugged and pulled with every step I took, fur matted with dried blood, dirt, and debris from running through forests and down the river path.

At first, I thought my bear followed the bank of the river as a guide to get away from anyone who might follow us, but after a few days, maybe a week, it was clear he had a destination in mind.

He wasn’t sharing that information.

It felt like weeks since I’d left the lab.

The researchers kept a schedule, and the woman who came in to give me my breakfast and my morning injection of some concoction that made me sleepy had become lazy in her protocols.

I pretended for over a month not to notice the way she forgot to close the door fully behind her after she dropped off the tray of food and went to get the injection.

My bear evolved his metabolism to burn off the injection faster and faster until the poison did little to nothing.

I lay down and closed my eyes, of course, pretending it put me to sleep, but it never did.

That also meant I felt everything they did to me. Every blood draw. Every X-ray. The forced shifting. Back and forth, back and forth. From bear to human and back again.

My bear took a swipe at one of them once.

We paid for that mistake.

The things they’d done to me were mild compared to the others. I’d heard whispers and murmurs about mating experiments. Giving shifters more than one animal. Even breeding experiments.

All of it was nothing less than disgusting, evil behavior.

And they called us animals.

My muscles were tight as I slowed to a march. I hadn’t slept very much. I woke up in terror, either from an errant noise in the area or by my own dreams.

I was so alone. In the lab, some of the researchers would call me by name. Greet me. Say good morning but here, there was nothing but the trickle of a stream over rocks, and the leaves flipping and spinning with the power of the wind.

My bear stopped next to a huge oak tree and raised his snout into the air. He leaned against the trunk, trying to get some kind of a break but, in the process, scraped the gash at our side on the bark. He roared but quickly quieted his cry. This wasn’t the time to bring attention to ourselves.

A wave of guilt washed over me as I thought about the researcher called Mary. I’d shoved her out of the way in a rush to escape my cell. I heard her yell in my head. Had she hit her head? Suffered long-term damage?

They’d done evil and horrible things to my kind, but that didn’t mean I would stoop to their level.

I’d acted in self-defense. At the very least self-preservation.

Still, taking a life wasn’t ever on my life goals list, and I lamented in my human mind for what I’d done to get out of there.

Worse, my bear had killed at least two people. I thought he had, anyway. After I got out of the cell on two legs, my bear forced the shift and made sure we got out of there. I’d lit the match. He set the whole thing on fire. Not the actual building, just an expression.

What are you looking for? I asked him. Not that he would answer. He had shut down the thread of communication between us somewhere in the chaos of escape.

Let me out. Let me find us somewhere to hide, I begged.

No dice. My bear huffed his disagreement through his nose, sending a puff of warm air into the cool evening. The nights were the worst. Summer phased into autumn. The days were blistering, followed by a steep temperature drop after sunset. My fur offered protection against it.

Starving and thirsty, on the verge of collapse both physically and mentally, I’d lost a lot of blood and had zero downtime to process everything.

I couldn’t run forever.

We have to stop sometime. I pushed the words at my beast with more force. He had the upper hand in our physical form, but I wasn’t going to huddle in the dark and sulk. I’d done that for years.

At this point, I didn’t even know what year it was—how old I was.

My bear scratched at the ground. He lowered his muzzle to the dirt and sniffed again. Maybe he’d found something. Someone? Since he was sending me zero signals about his intentions, I had no clue what he’d discovered. Enemy? Friend?

Did I have any friends in this world anymore? Probably not. My parents were shitty caregivers. I basically raised myself.

They’d never have looked for me, and the people I called friends probably thought I’d ghosted them.

I had to find somewhere safe. Get myself together. Recreate a life.

My bear kept walking. I could see an open expanse through the tree line. In the distance was a huge house. A big storage building with tin roofs. Several of them. The scents of bear and some wolves wafted toward me, filling my senses. There were shifters in this place.

Along with the big buildings were smaller cabins. Some were around the bigger house and others among the trees. My bear took a bigger gulp of air, picking up the less bold essences. Chickens. Cooking food. Males. Alphas. Omegas.

Was this some kind of wolf pack? Bear sleuth?

I didn’t know, but my bear was dead set on finding out. He padded toward the place with slow steps. We hadn’t been able to hunt much and so he was as starved as I was. We glanced to the left and saw droplets of blood leaking out from where the bark of the tree had reopened my wound.

By the time I got to the gate, I had little left. No energy. No will to do anything but get through that gate.

The pull to this place was indescribable. My bear insisted something beyond the gate was meant for him.

At least, it would be a nice place to die. Anything was better than meeting my end in that sterile, hollow, evil lab.

My bear reared up on his hind legs, ignoring the pain in my side as best he could, and shoved at the giant iron gate, forcing it open. As soon as it did and I landed back on my feet with a great growl, the blaring began.

High pitched and ear-piercing, the rhythmic alarm blasted through my ears. My bear roared. It was not only annoying and totally blew our chance at being stealth to hell, but it hurt. My bear turned a bit, hearing footsteps and males pouring out of the big house.

Our fur raised down our spine, and we stomped and huffed at the people heading toward us.

Goddess, let us get out of here without killing anyone else.