The Captured Omega's Savior

Chapter Four

KAILAN

Twenty-seven thousand dollars bought me fourteen hours in first class, wrapped in leather and recycled air while my body consumed itself from the inside. The champagne flute trembled in the attendant's manicured fingers when she offered it. Fourth time in two hours. Her smile stretched tight across bleached teeth.

"Perhaps some water instead, Mr. Lee?"

The words scraped out through a throat full of sand. Twenty hours since Uncle Chang's pills slid down like cold oil and rotten flowers. Twenty hours since everything supernatural in my blood went silent.

She backed away. They always did. The businessman beside me shifted his bulk toward the window, laptop balanced on the fold-down tray. His cologne—Tom Ford something—couldn't mask the sour tang of nervous sweat. Even chemically castrated, even hollowed out and human, something in me made their lizard brains whisper warnings.

Judson dead. Pack taken. Magnus Blackthorne. Come home. Susan.

Uncle Chang's weathered hands had shaken as he handed me the satellite phone. First time I'd seen them tremble in ten years. The message glowed on the cracked screen while dawn crept across Tibet's peaks.

Eight words that tasted like copper pennies and childhood promises broken. Eight words that had me swallowing poison to board a plane full of heartbeats and nowhere to run.

The blonde across the aisle crossed her legs again. Third time since takeoff. Her dress—something designer that probably had a name—rode up her thigh. She wanted me to look. Needed me to look. First class bred a particular kind of loneliness that mistook danger for excitement.

I kept my eyes on the seat back. On the beveled plastic and corporate logos. On anything but the pulse jumping in her throat like a rabbit's heartbeat.

Twenty hours, fifteen minutes since the suppressants. My fingers left grooves in the armrest's leather. The flight attendant noticed, made a note on her tablet. Probably charging me for damage. Money meant nothing when your sister waited in a pack house with her husband's killer.

Sacramento sprawled below like a infected wound. Brown hills scarred by drought, rivers reduced to suggestions of water. Cities bleeding into suburbs bleeding into nowhere. California ate itself every summer, called it natural, then acted surprised when the fires came back harder.

Landing jarred bones that felt too heavy, too human. The blonde gathered her things, cast one more glance over her shoulder. Invitation and warning mixed in equal parts. Her heels clicked against the jet bridge like a countdown.

---

Redding Municipal Airport barely qualified as more than a landing strip with delusions. Two gates, one coffee shop that sold burnt beans and quikstop chicken wraps, rental counters staffed by kids who'd rather be anywhere else. Fluorescent lights hummed with the particular frequency of small-town desperation.

"Kailan Lee?"

The man appeared between one blink and the next. Average height, forgettable face, flannel shirt that could belong to any hardware store owner from here to Seattle. But the way he moved—or didn't move—sent ice down my spine. My dead senses registered nothing. No scent, no energy signature, no hint of what hid under that pleasant mask.

"Pete Morrison. Susan sent word."

His handshake carried weight that had nothing to do with muscle. Something ancient moved under his skin, patient as stone. Without supernatural senses, I was blind to what he really was. Might as well try reading smoke.

"Truck's outside. We should move."

The automatic doors opened onto heat that wrapped around me like wet wool. Ninety degrees and climbing, the air thick with wildfire smoke that turned the sun orange. California's eternal summer, all drought and denial.

Pete's F-150 idled in the loading zone. No ticket despite signs promising immediate towing. The meter maid walked past like the truck didn't exist, her eyes sliding away from something her brain couldn't process.

"Interesting trick."

"What trick?" Pete pulled into traffic with the casual confidence of someone who'd never been pulled over. "Just good timing."

The lie tasted smooth as aged whiskey. He knew I knew, but we both played the game. Some truths waited for better moments than airport pickup lanes.

"Susan's message was... economical."

"Had to be. Magnus monitors everything. Phone calls, emails, pack bonds. She risked everything getting word out." Pete's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. "Used channels that haven't been active since your grandfather ran the Storm pack. Old debts. Old promises."

"But effective."

"Effective enough to reach a monastery in Tibet that doesn't officially exist." His eyes found mine in the rearview. "Your Uncle Chang must have interesting friends."

Uncle Chang's friends included things that pre-dated Buddhism, but that conversation could wait. The suppressants had burned through my system for twenty hours and thirty-three minutes. Less than four until—

"Eyes on the road."

Pete swerved back into his lane, missing a minivan full of soccer kids by inches. "Sorry. Your... situation is distracting."

"My situation?"

"The forced suppression. The countdown to reconnection. The fact that you're holding together at all after twenty hours of chemical death." He turned onto a street lined with businesses that peaked in the eighties. "Most wolves go insane after six hours. Tigers claw their own eyes out after twelve. But you—"

"I'm not most anything."

"No. You're not."

The hardware store squatted between relics of better times. Sun-faded donut shop with hand-painted signs. Tax office with wood paneling visible through dirty windows. The kind of strip mall where dreams went to die quiet deaths.

Pete locked us in, flipped signs that might have been warnings or invitations. His office occupied the back corner—too large for the building's footprint, walls covered in maps that showed things satellites would deny existed.

"Coffee? Something stronger?"

"Information. And I need supplies."

"Already handled." He tossed me keys that landed heavy in my palm. "Ducati in the alley. Gear in the saddlebags. GPS programmed with routes that avoid patrol."

"You work fast."

"I work prepared. Susan said you'd come. Said you'd need speed over stealth." Pete spread papers across his desk—photographs, patrol schedules, hand-drawn territories. "Judson died three weeks ago. Magnus called it a challenge fight."

"Was it?"

"Eight of Magnus's wolves against Judson and his beta Carlos. Ambush at what was supposed to be a territorial negotiation." Pete's jaw worked like he was chewing glass. "They didn't just kill them. They made it last. Made the pack watch."

The images painted themselves without need for photographs. Judson would have trusted too much, believed in honor among predators. Magnus would have smiled while he opened throats, turned mercy into weakness, made examples that would echo for generations.

"Susan?"

"Alive. Prisoner in her own home. Magnus keeps her as—" Pete sorted through words like weapons. "Trophy. Leverage. Reminder. Probably all three."

"Judson's family?"

"Daughter survives. Winter. Twenty-one years old." Something shifted in Pete's expression. Reverence mixed with fear. "That's where things get complicated."

He pulled out a photograph. Stopped. Studied my face.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just... you should know she's more than anyone expected. More than Susan probably told you."

"Susan told me nothing about her stepdaughter."

"No. She wouldn't have." Pete set the photo aside. "Some things you need to see for yourself. When you're ready. When you can actually see."

Twenty hours, forty-seven minutes. The itch spread from skin to muscle, borrowed deeper with each breath.

"The basement." Pete moved to a door painted the same industrial beige as the walls. "Reinforced concrete. Sound dampening. Drains for fluids. Everything you'll need for the reconnection."

"You just happen to have a containment cell under your hardware store?"

"Judson helped build it. Special circumstances require special preparations."

The stairs descended into darkness that felt older than the building above. The room at the bottom sprawled impossibly wide—concrete walls thick enough to muffle screams, chains that gleamed silver in the overhead fluorescents, drains positioned to catch whatever leaked from a body in transformation.

"If you don't survive the reconnection—"

"Burn the body. Salt the ashes. Make sure nothing comes back wrong."

Pete smiled without warmth. "Done this before, have you?"

"Uncle Chang warned me it might kill me."

"And you took it anyway? Brave. Or stupid."

Twenty hours, fifty-two minutes. Three hours and eight minutes until hell came calling.

A bell chimed upstairs. Not the normal electronic chime of customers entering. Something older, urgent, coded in frequencies that made my gums ache.

"Wait here."

But I was already moving. Twenty hours of suppression hadn't killed the instinct that pulled me toward violence.

A boy crashed through the door. Sixteen at most, definitely wolf, painted in wounds that told stories. Claw marks designed to hurt, not kill. His legs folded before he made it three steps inside.

Pete caught him with inhuman grace. Gold light pulsed from his palms where they pressed against the worst wounds. The bleeding slowed. Stopped. The boy's breathing steadied from desperate gasps to something closer to sleep.

"Message," the kid forced out through split lips. "From Luna Susan. She said... she said tell you..."

"What message?"

"Hurry." The word came out red and bubbling. "Tonight. Everything moved to tonight. Winter's being... prepared."

The shop's temperature plummeted. Frost gathered on the windows despite the heat outside. Pete's mask slipped for half a heartbeat, showing something ancient and terrible underneath.

"When?"

"Now. Hours maybe. Magnus wants to... wants to display her." The boy's eyes rolled back. "My sister. They hurt my sister when I tried to refuse..."

Pete's hands moved over wounds with practice that spoke of centuries, not years. Flesh knitted. Bones aligned. The boy sank into healing sleep that would last until his body remembered how to be whole.

"You can't make it." Pete's voice carried the weight of calculated odds. "Three hours to pack lands. Two hours until reconnection begins. Twelve hours of screaming after that. The timeline doesn't—"

"Then I reconnect while moving."

"Suicide."

"Necessary."

"Your sister know you're this stupid?"

"My sister needs me to be exactly this stupid."

Twenty-one hours, two minutes.

The Ducati waited in the alley like violence given form. Matte black frame, engine built for speed and poor decisions. The saddlebags held tactical gear that fit like Pete had taken my measurements while I slept.

I stripped in the alley. Let the California sun paint tattoos across skin that would soon remember what it meant to be more than human. Sacred text wrapped my ribs in Tibetan. Geometric patterns flowed down both arms, channels for power that currently held nothing but promise. The tiger sprawled across my back, waiting.

Always waiting.

"Take this." Pete pressed a silver flask into my hand. "For the reconnection. Won't make it easier. Nothing makes it easier. But it might keep you conscious enough to remember why you're screaming."

"What is it?"

"Something old. Something that remembers when your kind walked openly." His fingers brushed the flask, and frost gathered where skin met metal. "One sip when the pain gets too much. Only one."

The bike roared to life. Pete stepped back, his form already wavering at the edges like heat mirages.

"Your sister's daughter. Winter. When you see her—"

"I'll handle whatever needs handling."

"No. You won't. But you'll try." His smile held too many teeth. "Try not to die before you get there. I'd hate to explain that to Susan."

Twenty-one hours, six minutes.

I rocketed north through streets that blurred into suggestions. The Ducati screamed between cars, through lights that might have been red, past laws written for things that didn't have deadlines measured in heartbeats.

Two hours and fifty-four minutes until resurrection.

Three hours to pack lands if I pushed hard enough.

I don't like the odds, which tasted like rust and childhood daydreams. Somewhere in those mountains, Susan waited with her husband's killer. Somewhere, a girl named Winter prepared for horrors I couldn't imagine.

And I rode toward a reconnection that would shred me from the inside out, hoping speed and stupidity would be enough to matter.

The tiger stirred in his chemical grave.

Soon.