The Captured Omega's Savior

Chapter Eight

KAILAN

Magnus's boot connects with my ribs. The sound fills the hall—wet cracking like green wood breaking. Three ribs. Maybe four. The impact lifts me off the floor, sends me sliding through blood that's still warm. I try to roll but my body refuses. Muscles fire wrong signals. Bones grind in sockets that keep changing shape.

Tiger stripes bleed through skin along my left arm. Silver-gray fur pushes through on the right. Neither pattern complete. Neither form dominant. Just meat and bone caught between two predators that want the same territory.

"The prodigal son returns." Magnus circles me. His boots leave prints in the blood pooling on hardwood. Each step deliberate. Measured. A predator who knows his prey can't run. "Russell's mongrel. I should have known Susan would reach out to her freak brother."

I spit blood. Thick. Dark. Mine tastes different now—copper mixed with something wild. My throat works but produces only wet sounds. Vocal cords can't decide if they're human or beast. The reconnection rips through me in waves, each one reshaping tissue that hasn't finished healing from the last transformation.

Magnus draws back for another kick. I see it coming. See the shift of his weight, the flex of muscle under his blood-spattered shirt. Can't move fast enough to avoid it.

Wood explodes across his shoulders.

The chair comes apart in a shower of splinters. Magnus staggers forward, catches himself on one knee. I see her through the spinning fragments—the omega in the ruined white dress. Blood decorates her face in patterns that look deliberate. Beautiful. Terrible. The scent that's been pulling me forward made flesh.

Winter. Has to be Winter.

She swings what's left of the chair. Two legs held together by determination. Magnus deflects with his forearm but it costs him. His balance shifts.

My hand shoots out. Fingers that can't decide their shape wrap around his ankle. Bones in my grip crack—his or mine, I can't tell. I pull. Use his momentum against him. He goes down hard, face meeting floor with a sound like ripe fruit dropping.

We roll across broken glass and viscera. Magnus is stronger. Faster. Fully in control of his wolf while mine fights a tiger for real estate in my nervous system. But I've got ten years of training. Ten years of learning to fight when outnumbered, outmatched, out of options.

My elbow finds his temple. The angle's wrong—my arm bends in too many places—but the impact rocks his head back. His knee drives into my kidney. White-hot agony shoots up my spine. We're both slowing down. Both burning through reserves we don't have.

I get position through luck more than skill. My malformed arm locks around his throat. The choke isn't clean—my bicep keeps shifting size—but it cuts off air. Magnus thrashes. His hands claw at my arm, leaving furrows that bleed wrong. He tries to shift, and I feel his wolf pushing against his skin.

"Kailan!"

Susan's voice cuts through everything. My sister limps toward us, one hand pressed against her side where blood seeps between her fingers. Winter supports her weight, and even through the chaos I notice how they move together. Pack. Family. Everything I've been missing for ten years.

Magnus's thrashing slows. His pulse hammers against my forearm—rapid, desperate, but weakening. His fingers stop clawing. Go limp. Not dead. I can feel life in him still. But down. Unconscious.

For now.

"Can't... hold..."

The words tear from a throat that's trying to be three things at once. My body convulses. The reconnection hits like lightning made of molten metal, racing through every nerve path. Inside me, tiger and wolf stop circling each other and attack. Neither willing to submit. Both trying to claim the same spine, the same hands, the same heart.

I lose the choke. Magnus slumps to the floor, blood bubbling from his nose.

Susan drops beside me. Her hands frame my face, fingers trembling but gentle. For a moment I'm twenty again. Standing in her kitchen with split knuckles after another fight with Russell. Her touch the only soft thing in a world gone sharp.

"You came." Tears track through the blood on her cheeks. Mix with it. Turn pink. "My stubborn, impossible brother."

"Promised." The word tears my throat. Tastes like copper and old oaths. "When you needed me."

"Listen." Her grip tightens. Desperate now. "You have to go. Both of you. The network has more coming. Magnus was just the local supplier. Small fish in an ocean of predators."

Winter kneels beside her. This close, her scent hits me full force. Vanilla and snow and ozone. Power that makes both my natures stop fighting each other and pay attention. Want the same thing for once. Want her.

"We're not leaving you."

"I'm Luna of this pack." Susan's voice carries steel wrapped in silk. The authority of her position. The weight of responsibility. "These people need me. But you—" Her eyes find mine. Hold them. "Go to Heaven Falls. Take back what's yours. Russell can't deny you anymore. You're grown now. Finish that bastard off."

My vision blurs. Doubles. The reconnection builds toward something catastrophic. Bones in my spine separate. Fuse. Separate again. "Russell—"

"Will accept you or lose the pack. Eight generations of Storm alphas. You're his only son." She strokes my hair. Such a simple gesture. Such devastating tenderness. "Take Winter. Keep her safe. The Storm pack has resources Magnus could never touch."

Magnus groans. Air rattles in his damaged throat. His fingers twitch against bloodstained hardwood.

"Susan, please—" Winter's voice breaks.

"I can't abandon them." Susan looks past us to the pack members emerging from hiding. Bloodied but alive. Frightened but free. Her people. Her responsibility. Her choice. "Go. Now."

Magnus's eyes flutter open. Unfocused but aware.

That's when the pack moves.

They swarm him like water breaking through a dam. Forty-three wolves who've spent three weeks learning the taste of their own fear. Learning what it means to be prey in their own home. An old Asian woman appears with silver chains that burned her flesh—where she found them, I don't know. Don't care. A pair of identical boys help wrap them around Magnus's throat. Tight enough to burn. Tight enough to bind. His wrists next. His ankles. More chains than necessary. More than practical. But every loop is a small revenge.

He thrashes but there are too many hands. Too many bodies fueled by three weeks of rape and murder and degradation. They pile on him. Hold him down while silver burns into his skin. While he realizes what it means to be helpless.

"See?" Susan almost smiles. Blood stains her teeth. "My pack. My responsibility."

The reconnection chooses that moment to split me in half.

I scream. Or roar. The sound tears from two throats occupying the same space. My spine breaks. Audible snapping like kindling in a fire. Reforms at angles that belong in different bodies. Every prayer tattoo burns as the ink tries to contain transformations happening too fast. Too violent. Sacred text splits along with skin. Tibetan prayers bleed actual blood.

"Help me." Winter's arms slide under mine.

She's stronger than her frame suggests. Stronger than omega genetics should allow. She hauls me up, takes my weight when my left leg decides to be tiger-shaped while the right goes wolf. I catch glimpses through vision that keeps shifting spectrum—Susan organizing the pack with Luna authority, Magnus wrapped in enough silver to outfit a jewelry store, bodies cooling in blood that's starting to congeal.

"Wait."

A man blocks our path. Tall. Dark hair. Clean shaven, glasses, expensive clothes. He holds out keys. They catch the emergency lighting. Gleam like promises.

"My truck. Blue F-150 in the back lot." His eyes track the blood on Winter's dress. Linger on the arterial spray across her throat. "Safe house in Anderson. Address is already in the GPS."

"James." Winter's voice carries edges sharp enough to cut. "David's brother."

"Older brother." He meets her gaze without flinching. Without defending. "I know what you did. Saw his body. The knife work."

"And?"

"Good." No hesitation. No grief. Just flat acknowledgment. "Should have done it myself years ago. Before he helped kill your father. Before he hurt you and the Luna. Before—" He stops. Swallows whatever list of crimes died with David Fletcher.

Another convulsion rips through me. My body folds. Ribs on the left side expand—tiger lungs need more room. Ribs on the right compress—wolf anatomy runs tighter. The opposition tears cartilage. I taste copper and bile. Feel bones trying to occupy the same space.

"Help me get him up."

James takes my other side without being asked twice. Between them, they half-carry, half-drag me through the slaughterhouse. My feet can't find rhythm. One digitigrade. One plantigrade. Like trying to walk on a broken stilt and a bent spring.

The night air hits like cold water. Clean. Sharp. Free of blood-stink and terror-sweat. Free of the cloying sweetness of death settling into meat. I gulp it. Let it burn lungs that keep changing size.

The truck sits where promised. Older model but well-maintained. They pour me into the passenger seat. The upholstery groans under weight that keeps redistributing. My skeleton can't decide if it wants to be heavy or hollow. Predator or pursuer.

"Anderson. Forty miles north." James slams the door. The sound rings in ears that are neither human nor fully shifted. "Back roads are programmed. Stay off the highways. State patrol's already getting calls."

"Why help us?"

James looks at Winter through the driver's window. Really looks at her. Sees the blood. The knife work. This slip of a girl who killed an alpha enforcer three times her size.

"Because my brother was a monster who liked to hurt things smaller than him. Because Magnus is worse—he built a system to monetize suffering. Because the real evil hasn't shown up yet, and you need to be gone when it does."

Sirens wail in the distance. Multiple vehicles. Getting closer. Red and blue will paint these woods soon.

"Go." James steps back. Already pulling out his phone. "I'll handle the cleanup. Say Magnus's people turned on each other. Territory dispute gone wrong. Half of it's even true."

Winter cranks the engine. The truck rumbles to life. Steady. Reliable. I curl against the door, trying to hold pieces of myself together while my skeleton argues about basic architecture. Tiger says one thing. Wolf says another. The human meat caught between just screams.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me." James's face hardens into something that looks like resolve. "Just stay alive. Both of you. Someone needs to survive this with clean hands."

Winter throws the truck in gear. We lurch forward. Tires spin on gravel made slick with substances better left unnamed. The compound shrinks in the mirrors. Bodies and wreckage becoming abstract shapes. The last thing I see is James walking back toward the charnel house. Phone to his ear. Already spinning stories from c*****e.

"Hold on." Winter's knuckles go white on the steering wheel.

She takes the first turn too fast. The truck fishtails. Corrects. Her hands steady despite the blood making everything slick. Despite the omega tremors I can feel starting—adrenaline crash mixing with suppressant withdrawal.

The reconnection tears through me again. Fresh wave of agony as my body tries to be two things at once. Three things if you count the human trying to moderate. My throat produces sounds that make Winter flinch. But she doesn't slow down.

"We're going to make it." She says it fierce. Like she can make reality bend to her will. Like words have power if you mean them hard enough. "You came for us. You came when she called. We're going to make it."

I want to tell her about Russell. About how the Storm pack might not be the sanctuary Susan thinks. Want to warn her that my father's love comes with conditions. That being his son never stopped him from calling me aberration. Mistake. Thing that shouldn't exist.

But my jaw dislocates. Pops back into place at an angle that accommodates too many teeth. Dislocates again when the tiger decides it needs different architecture.

All I can do is bleed on the upholstery while she drives north.

The tiger and wolf keep fighting over bones that belong to neither. The tattoos keep burning, trying to contain power that wants to tear free. Sacred text holds—barely. Each symbol Uncle Chang carved acts like a dam. But dams break. Everything breaks if you put enough pressure on it.

And Winter keeps driving. Blood drying to rust on her skin. Someone else's life painted across her throat. She carries us through darkness toward Anderson. Toward whatever waits in a safe house that might be sanctuary or might be another trap.

The GPS speaks directions in a calm female voice. Turn left in half a mile. Continue straight. Recalculating.

Like it's that simple. Like you can program your way out of being hunted. Like salvation comes with turn-by-turn navigation.

But Winter follows each instruction. Hands steady now. Eyes fixed on the road.

And I fold into myself, bones breaking and reshaping, while she drives us toward morning.