The Cursed Omega's Revenge

Chapter Two

GRAY

Paris at midnight is something else. The city transforms when the sun goes down, all shadows and secrets, like a beautiful woman who only shows her true face in the dark. From my apartment window, I watch the Seine reflect the city lights, and I remember what most people forget—this city was built on ancient burial grounds. The dead never really leave Paris. They just learn to hide better.

My place sits on the top floor of a building older than America. The previous owners probably watched heads roll during the Revolution from these same windows. Now I watch for different kinds of monsters. The apartment's a weird mix of old and new—state-of-the-art security systems hidden behind centuries-old wood paneling, bulletproof glass fitted into window frames that have seen empires fall. The walls practically hum with old magic, the kind that makes even hardened killers walk softer.

I've kept the decorating simple. The desk came from an estate sale—apparently belonged to some countess who got burned for running with wolves back in the day. The leather chair still smells faintly of her fear if you know what you're sniffing for. My bookshelves are packed with first editions of books the human world thinks are fairy tales. The Silver Wolf Chronicles. Blood prophecies. Ancient texts about what we were before we learned to hide our fangs and play nice with humans.

My phone buzzes against the desk, the normal sound jarring against the weight of moonlight flooding through my windows. The screen lights up case files that would make most wolves lose their dinner. Photos of processing centers where terrified omegas are sorted like packages. Shipping lists that turn people into product codes. My map of Europe covers one wall, trafficking routes marked like veins of poison. Red pins for confirmed sites. Black for processing centers. White for the ones we've burned down—never enough of those.

"Carver." My voice sounds rough. Too many late nights chasing ghosts.

"We have a problem." Dimitri doesn't do small talk. Seven years working together, and I can count our casual conversations on one hand. I can hear the Otherkind Division behind him—claws clicking on keyboards, stressed wolves growling under their breath, the whisper of witch spells keeping our calls secure. "Atlanta hub intercepted a shipment. The manifest is... unusual."

I sit up straighter, my wolf suddenly awake under my skin. That feeling when your human suit gets too tight. "Unusual how?"

"Young omegas. All female. All with specific physical markers." He pauses, and I know that pause. It's the sound of oh-s**t-this-is-bad. "They're being sourced from a single supplier. Designation: Bloodthrone."

The whiskey glass in my hand cracks. Good scotch—eighteen-year-old Macallan—spills over my fingers, mixing with blood where the glass cut me. The wounds close almost instantly because Alpha genetics are good for something, but I still smell copper mixing with expensive alcohol.

Bloodthrone. My uncle's pack. The home he stole when he murdered my father.

Just hearing the name brings it all back. Cold marble under my bare feet as I ran through the throne room. The tapestries on fire. My mother's scream cutting off when Remus grabbed her. My father's blood spreading across white stone, looking black in the moonlight. Like someone writing a curse in liquid darkness.

"Send me the files." I keep my voice steady through twenty years of practice, though my reflection in the window tells a different story. Green eyes bleeding to gold. Fangs pushing through. The beast wanting out. "I need everything—transport routes, buyer lists, genetic profiles if they ran them."

"Gray." Dimitri's voice changes, and I hear the worry. He's seen too many agents let revenge get them killed. "Your connection to Bloodthrone is classified, but—"

"But nothing. I know that territory better than anyone." My reflection fractures in the cracked glass. Eyes fully gold now, my wolf pushing against human skin like it wants to tear free. "How many omegas?"

"Fifteen. Ages between sixteen and twenty-two."

Fifteen kids. Fifteen lives turned into inventory numbers, sorted by how well they breed and how easily they break. My claws pop out without me thinking about it, carving grooves in the expensive desk. The wood groans, and I swear I hear that dead countess laughing.

"There's more." I can practically hear Dimitri not wanting to tell me this next part. "The buyer specified preferences. Dark skin. Brown eyes. Genetic markers suggesting... anomalous potential."

The room spins. Those aren't random preferences. Someone's looking for something specific. Something that shouldn't exist anymore. Someone knows about the old bloodlines, the genetic markers that whisper of moon-blessed heritage.

"I'm booking a flight to Atlanta."

"Gray—"

I hang up before he can try to talk sense into me. This is too personal. Too dangerous. Too much like fate knocking on my door with bloody knuckles.

The files arrive encrypted six ways to Sunday. I recognize Willa's handiwork in the security—witch magic translated into computer code. I pour another three fingers of scotch. Sam taught me to drink during those first brutal years in Scotland, when whiskey was the only thing that helped the nightmares. Then I start reading.

Each omega gets a number. No names—that would make them people instead of products. But I've learned to read between the lines, to find the human stories buried in the paperwork.

Omega 2847-B: Acquired age 17. Previous fertility confirmed. Docility rating: Moderate. Special notes: Unusual resilience to standard submission techniques.

My wolf snarls at the clinical language. "Submission techniques." What a nice way to say torture. I've seen those facilities, smelled the fear soaked into the walls.

Omega 2851-A: Acquired age 19. Virgin. Docility rating: Low. Special notes: Displays anomalous healing. Recommend increased security during transport.

Anomalous healing. The words hit like a punch to the gut. Most wolves heal faster than humans, sure. But real accelerated healing? That's legend territory. Silver wolves who could survive having their hearts ripped out, who could regenerate from wounds that would kill Alphas. The old books talk about flesh knitting together under moonlight, bones fixing themselves, blood that glowed like liquid stars.

The last confirmed silver wolf died one hundred years ago. Elena Silvermoon. The packs ganged up on her because they were terrified of her power. They didn't just kill her—they cut her into pieces, burned each piece in a different fire, scattered the ashes across six continents. Even then, people claimed silver flowers grew wherever her ashes landed. Said omega babies born in those areas had eyes like molten moon.

But Bloodthrone is hunting for something. And my uncle Remus might be a murderous bastard, but he's not stupid. He's got the cunning of a scavenger and the patience of a trapdoor spider. If he's hunting specific genetics, he thinks he can find what he's looking for.

I close my eyes and let myself remember. Twenty years disappear, and I'm ten again. Watching my father's blood paint abstract art on the throne room walls. Watching my mother's scream die as Remus claimed her like a prize. The smell of copper and fear, burning fabric and betrayal. Maddox's small hand crushing mine. Sam dragging us away while Paxton cried silent tears that froze on his cheeks in the winter air.

"Never forget," Sam told us that first night in Scotland. His big hands were gentle as he cleaned our wounds, the ones that would scar. The Macbride house smelled like peat fires and safety. "But don't let revenge eat you alive. A wolf who lives only for vengeance dies empty."

Good advice I've been ignoring for two decades.

My phone buzzes. Willa. My godmother, the wolf-witch who helped raise three broken boys into something resembling functional adults. Her contact photo shows her laughing, gray-streaked hair wild in the Highland wind. But I know there's steel under that smile.

"I felt your rage from here," she says without hello. Willa's got gifts that go deeper than most wolves understand. The pack jokes she's part psychic, part therapist, all terrifying. They're not wrong. "What happened?"

"Bloodthrone is trafficking omegas to Atlanta." No point asking how she knew to call. Willa's timing has always been spooky accurate. "They're hunting for something specific."

Silence stretches between Paris and Scotland. I can almost smell the herbs in her kitchen, the salt air through her windows.

"You're going back." Not a question. She knows me too well.

"I have to."

"Then you don't go alone." Her voice carries the weight of someone who's stared down actual demons and won. "Your brothers have been waiting twenty years for this. Don't rob them of their chance."

She's right. Maddox and Paxton deserve their shot at closure. But thinking about bringing them back there, risking them in Remus's territory...

"Gray." Her voice softens. "The moon is turning. Can you feel it? Old magic is waking up. Hidden things are about to be revealed. And sometimes, sweetheart, destiny uses trafficking manifests to call us home."

She hangs up, leaving me with prophecy and the bitter taste of inevitability.

I head to my bedroom, to the safe hidden behind a reproduction of "The Raft of the Medusa." Yeah, it's a bit obvious—desperate people clinging to hope on a doomed raft. Story of the Carver brothers. Inside, wrapped in silk that still smells like Scottish heather and my mother's perfume—roses and sandalwood—is my father's ring. The Alpha ring of Bloodthrone, my birthright written in silver.

I've never worn it. Twenty years, and I've never put it on. But tonight, with Paris whispering secrets outside and Atlanta calling like a siren, I hold it up to the light.

The silver seems warm, almost alive, like it recognizes my blood. Most Alphas wear gold—sun metal for sun wolves. Silver was different. Silver was for the moon's chosen, wolves who carried her light in their bones. My father wore this not just because he was Alpha, but because our bloodline carries the old magic. The deep stuff that remembers when wolves were more than just animals who learned to walk upright.

My laptop pings. New files from Dimitri. Transport schedules that read like timetables to hell. Guard rotations with military precision. Building plans for the Atlanta facility that might as well be blueprints for a torture chamber. Everything I need to plan a rescue that won't immediately point back to Interpol.

But I keep staring at one detail. The pickup location for these omegas. A small Southern city, nothing special except for its location near three major pack territories.

Riverbend.

Home.

Where my father's blood is still soaked so deep into the throne room marble that no amount of scrubbing will get it out. Where my mother is either long dead or living as Remus's broken toy. Where fifteen kids are about to be loaded onto trucks like cattle, shipped to Atlanta to disappear forever.

I pour another scotch, this one for courage. My reflection shows what seven years of hunting monsters has made me. Six-five of trained muscle, every inch earned in Sam's brutal training camps. Scars that tell stories of raids gone sideways, omegas saved, monsters faced. Green eyes that Sam says hold too much of my father's rage and my mother's grief.

But tonight, I see something else in that reflection. Tonight, my wolf wears anticipation like armor.

The flight leaves in six hours. Enough time to call my brothers, to start the machinery that'll bring justice or death. Enough time to stop being Gray Carver, Interpol agent, and become something older and deadlier.

The true heir of Bloodthrone, coming home to claim what's mine in blood.

My phone rings. Maddox, because of course he feels the cosmic shift.

"I know that tone," he says. I can picture him in his studio, surrounded by paintings that sell for stupid money to humans who don't realize they're buying portraits of our nightmares. "You're going back."

"They're trafficking omegas. Hunting for something specific."

"Then we hunt them." Simple as that. Maddox has always been equal parts artist and warrior. "Paxton's already packing. We'll meet you in Atlanta."

"This isn't your fight—"

"Bullshit." The polished voice he uses for gallery openings disappears, leaving pure wolf. "Twenty years, Gray. Twenty years we've waited. Don't you dare leave us behind."

He's right. We ran as terrified pups. We'll return as wolves who've learned to turn trauma into weapons.

"Atlanta. Two days." I give him the details, already seeing how it'll play out. Three brothers against an empire built on suffering. "And Maddox? Bring the special equipment. If they're hunting anomalous omegas..."

"They might have found one." He finishes my thought like brothers do. "Gray. What if the silver wolf isn't just a story?"

I look at my father's ring, at how the moonlight makes it look like liquid fire.

"Then Remus has no idea what kind of hell he's about to unleash."

Paris sleeps as I pack, but my wolf is wide awake, tasting revenge on the wind. Somewhere across an ocean, fifteen kids wait for rescue. Somewhere in Riverbend, my uncle sits on a throne that belongs to me.

And somewhere, if the stories are true, a silver wolf hides among the forgotten, waiting for the moon to call her home.

The hunt starts tomorrow.

But tonight, in the City of Light, I let myself feel the truth: I'm done running.

The heir of Bloodthrone is coming home.