Hated By My Alphas(An Omegaverse)

Chapter 3

Knox

With a moan, she closed her eyes, and her head fell to the side. Guilt was a part of Canon’s personality now. It lurked in our bonds and had become a fixture, but it seared through me stronger than ever as I stared down at the omega.

“What the f**k is happening?” Nico shouted at me. Even through the bond, he sounded out of breath.

My reply—that I had no idea what was happening—was terse as I stared at the omega. Canon wasn’t moving fast enough. Every fiber of my being needed to help, so I put Daisy down gently.

“Sit here, Daisy.” When I was sure that she wouldn’t toddle off, I stripped my shirt to pieces and began trying to pack them into the omega’s wounds.

Blood stained my fingers as it continued to leak from her, and I started to shake. Six f*****g stabs. Had they hit any vital organs? Was I only buying her a few seconds before she died in my arms?

She wouldn’t be the first.

I’d caught Sarah before she even hit the ground. The gun fell to the grass, so Goddamn harmless once it wasn’t in someone’s hands—but the damage had been done. Dead wolves littered the ground around us, and Sarah...

She was our omega. She was supposed to heal us. How the f**k had she become so twisted? How the hell had we not seen it?

“Knox, you’re growling through the bond,” Nico said. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

I ignored him. I wasn’t all right. None of us were, even though we’d done our damndest to pretend. Canon locked himself in his room and stared at his security monitors as if he could somehow use them to look back at the past and see where it all went wrong.

Nico barely spent any time in the hotel. He patrolled and patrolled and went off on his fact-finding missions. I could scarcely f*****g relax whenever I wasn’t near Daisy. Hell, I could barely relax when she was near—our only beta. And now there was an innocent dying, and I wasn’t sure I could save her.

Silently, I worked on the next stab wound as her scent wrapped around me. My wolf howled inside of me. Save the omega. Find the threat. Eliminate it. Protect the omega.

She was a slip of a thing. All skin and bones, the white dress she wore turning more and more red by the minute. How much more blood could she lose?

I hated the voice lurking in the background. Was she innocent? Was there a reason someone had tried to kill her?

Had she betrayed someone, too?

What if I couldn’t save her? How many more dead omegas would it take before my wolf went insane?

“Last wound,” I said tersely to Canon as I tried to stave off the desperation and focus. “Get the car. If you want Nico back, you better call him now.”

My alpha was torn. I knew he wanted Nico to catch who had done this. We all did, but he also didn’t want to leave us alone. In his eyes, we were just as vulnerable as his dead pack members had been.

“Returning,” Nico broadcasted, and I heard the growl of frustration. He hadn’t caught the would-be killer.

The omega stirred again, and her eyes fluttered open. She held my gaze for just a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Her scent wrapped around me and clung for dear life. Defenseless. Innocent. No one had been here to protect her. My wolf howled in fury.

But I didn’t dare let it out. Instead, I watched Canon as he jogged back. Wordlessly, he bent down to lift her, and I heard the smallest of whimpers come from him. It wasn’t her weight—I’d seen Canon bench press four hundred pounds without breaking a sweat. This was something else entirely, but he was actively stemming the tide through our bonds and not letting us in.

Darkness always lurked inside him, and I had a bad feeling that today, this omega had ripped it wide open.

*

Nico's pov

*

She was so small.

Eyes glued to the omega in the hospital bed, I watched the machines beep and light up. My uncertainty grew. Did the doctors even know what the hell they were doing? What if these machines weren’t working? What if she was dying right now, and everyone thought she was on the mend because some hundred-thousand-dollar machine wasn’t working, and nobody knew?

How could someone hurt an omega like this? In most cases, wolves were wired to protect an omega. Who the hell in their right mind would try to kill one?

Other than us.

We’d never told anyone the truth about Sarah. Not even King Cyrus, although he’d probably guessed. Everyone else assumed our old omega had died with the rest of the betas.

Omegas were precious and rare. It took someone perverse and twisted to hurt an omega like this.

Unfortunately, wolves with darker tastes weren’t hard to come by. I feared what would happen to Canon if we didn’t find some way to get him some help. What would happen to all of us—no matter what Canon turned into, Knox and I would never leave him.

We had to protect her. What if the would-be killer comes back? He could come back, because I couldn’t catch him. In fact, he was damn likely to come back—trying to kill an omega was punishable by death.

I was fast. In the two years since we’d lost our pack, all I’d done was train. Push myself to be better. Harder. But the fucker had too much of a head start. I knew I was close, but when Canon called me back, all I could do was obey.

“When was the last time the Goddamn doctor checked on her?” I growled and started back to the hall, but a gasp brought me up short.

She was awake.

I didn’t need to communicate through the bond. Knox and Canon would have felt it. Both of them were staying as far away as they could. They assumed I’d be the most immune to her because I hadn’t been all that enamored with Sarah.

My reaction to this omega was nothing like my reaction to Sarah.

The woman blinked and moaned a little as she started to shift. Her gaze didn’t seem to focus anywhere, but she tried to roll to her side before she whimpered in pain.

My wolf pulled desperately and howled at the sound.

“This is Candy!” Daisy said, toddling toward the omega on the bed.

Immediately, I put my hand on Daisy’s shoulder and started to pull her back. Wolves in pain often didn’t react well, and I had no idea what they’d pumped into the omega. Although they rarely shifted, I knew nothing about this one. I wasn’t about to let her hurt Daisy, even if that wasn’t in their nature.

It sure as f**k shouldn’t have been in Sarah’s, and look where that thinking had gotten us.

The omega’s hand shot out, and she grabbed Daisy. “Don’t...hurt...her,” she said as she struggled to sit up. “Please.”

It wasn’t hard to pull Daisy out of the omega’s grasp in her weakened state, and I narrowed my eyes as I fought the tide of emotions rising in me. Please. The word nearly sent me into overdrive.

“Candy,” Daisy repeated, holding her bear out. “Daisy!”

The omega’s eyes landed on me, and sheer panic swept over her face. She bolted upright. I could smell the adrenaline pulsing through her as she started to pull at the needle and tubes attached to her.

“Stop,” I ordered as I swept Daisy into my arms and carried her to the door. “We need a doctor in here!”

Another scent hit me, and I snapped my head around and stared at the omega as she continued to fight with the machines. We hadn’t smelled it before, maybe because she was so close to death, but it was there, plain as day.

Her alpha bond.

This omega belonged to another.

“Nico, no,” Canon ordered. He could feel my wolf about to rip out of me. “Pull it together.”

Pull it together.

I felt him getting closer, and it calmed me a little. I couldn’t explain my reaction. Of course she belonged to another, it wasn’t like omegas ran around rogue.

But I did know that whoever had claimed her didn’t deserve her and had taken something that wasn’t his.

But Goddess, she couldn’t be ours. She could never be ours. Canon had already made his decree after both he and Knox had been covered in Sarah’s blood.

We would never welcome another omega into our pack.