The Cursed Omega's Revenge

Chapter Nineteen

SAMIRA

The vomit hits my knees before I can dodge—chunky and acidic, Kyle's moonshine-soaked insides painting my already filthy dress in waves of bile and half-digested meat. The smell punches through my nostrils, makes my empty stomach clench. He laughs through his retching, bent double but still managing to aim the next stream at my hair while I scrub on hands and knees.

"Missed a spot, Mud." His boot connects with the bucket, sends gray water cascading across tiles I just cleaned, the harsh lye soap burning into cuts on my palms I didn't know I had.

Richard stumbles in behind him, adds his own contribution to the mess—a spray of yellow-green that splatters up the wall. The beta quarters reek of their homemade poison, that special brew they cook in the old barn using stolen grain and battery acid, or whatever makes it burn blue when they light it on fire for laughs.

I dip my rag back into what's left of the water, wring it out, start again. My hands shake with each motion. Still weak from what I gave Luna Margaret, those silver threads that usually pulse beneath my skin barely flickering now, like candles drowning in their own wax. Three days since I poured everything into her wounds, and the hollow feeling hasn't left—like someone scooped out my insides with a dull spoon.

"When you're done here, toilets need scrubbing," Sandra appears in the doorway, her perfect teeth bared in that special smile she saves for making omegas suffer. "Every one in the beta wing. All three floors. With your toothbrush."

The toothbrush Morrison gave me, still hidden in my dress pocket. I nod, keep my eyes on the floor that'll never be clean enough no matter how raw my hands get.

The beta toilets are worse than the vomit. They've been pissing on the seats on purpose, leaving s**t smeared on porcelain, tampons stuck to walls with dried blood. Each bathroom takes twenty minutes of scrubbing on my knees, the toothbrush bristles softening from the bleach until they're useless. By the tenth bathroom, I'm using my fingernails to scrape dried s**t from grout lines.

Kitchen duty waits after. Breakfast dishes stacked to the ceiling—every plate from the early service plus what the investigators and guests used. The water's been turned up too hot on purpose, scalding my already raw hands as I scrub burned eggs from cast iron. Grease coats everything in a film that makes my weakened grip slip. A plate shatters, cuts my palm deep enough that blood swirls pink in the dishwater.

"Clumsy b***h," Cook backhands me casual as breathing. "That's coming from your food ration."

Not that I get food rations anymore. Haven't eaten in two days, unless you count the moldy bread Rosie snuck me last night.

"Elder wing needs you," Cook announces as I wrap my bleeding hand in a dirty rag. "Full care today. Bedpans, baths, everything."

The dying rooms assault every sense. The sweet-sick smell of flesh breaking down, urine that's gone dark as tea from dehydration, s**t that's either water-thin from cheap gruel or hard as rocks from the binding agents they add. I move between beds with mechanical precision, rolling bodies that weigh nothing, bones visible through tissue-paper skin.

Mr. Jameson needs changing first. His diaper—we use old flour sacks—weighs heavy with a night's worth of waste. The sores on his backside have opened again, weeping clear fluid that sticks to fabric. I clean him gentle as I can while he moans, eyes rolled back to show just whites.

"Sorry," I whisper, though I don't know if he hears.

Miss Laura in the next bed hasn't moved in three days, but her chest still rises and falls in stuttering rhythm. Her diaper's worse—bloody stool that means her insides are giving up. The smell makes even my empty stomach heave.

The sponge baths come next. Lukewarm water in metal basins, rough washcloths that scratch more than clean. I start with Miss Elena, who still has enough awareness to be ashamed as I wash between her legs, around breasts that hang flat as empty pouches. Her tears fall silent while I work, pretending not to notice.

"You look tired, child."

Mrs. Jones grabs my wrist as I change her diaper, fingers brittle as bird bones but still strong enough to hold on. Her clouded eyes search my face like she's reading something written there.

"I'm fine."

"No. You look empty. Like something got torn out of you and hasn't grown back."

She's not wrong. Whatever I gave to save Luna Margaret left spaces inside me that feel like missing organs. I pat her hand gentle, move on to Mr. Thompson whose breathing sounds like water through broken pipes, death rattle building in his chest.

By the time I make it back to the kitchen for dinner prep, my legs shake with each step. The silver threads try to spark, try to help, but it's like striking wet matches. Nothing catches. I slice vegetables for tomorrow's soup, each cut requiring concentration I don't have. The knife slips, nearly opens my thumb to the bone.

"There she is."

Hector's voice turns my blood to ice water. He stands in the kitchen doorway, and the look in his eyes makes my bladder want to release. His wolf might be dead—I killed it with that needle full of wolfsbane and silver—but the cruelty remains, maybe stronger now without the beast to temper the man.

"Thought you were clever." He moves closer, each step measured and deliberate, like he's savoring this moment he's been planning. "Thought I wouldn't remember."

"I don't—"

His hand cracks across my face hard enough to split my lip, send me spinning into the counter. The edge catches my ribs, drives air from my lungs. "The needle. The silver burning through my veins like acid. Your worthless face was the last thing I saw before my wolf died screaming."

Kyle and Richard materialize behind him, drunk worn off enough to follow orders but still mean with hangover. My body tries to run but Hector's already got my hair, fingers twisted deep, dragging me through the kitchen while I claw at his hands. My nails break against his skin, leave bloody furrows that should heal instantly but don't—his wolf really is gone.

"Got something special planned for you."

They haul me through the service corridor, out into the courtyard where late afternoon sun turns everything gold and terrible. The old punishment posts stand in the center—three thick wooden pillars stained black with years of blood, worn smooth where bodies have rubbed against them. The wood smells of iron and terror soaked so deep it's become part of the grain.

Kyle yanks my arms up while Richard wraps rope around my wrists, the hemp cutting deep, already slick with blood from my torn palms. They string me up until my shoulders scream, rotator cuffs threatening to tear, toes barely touching packed earth.

"You stink like the garbage you are." Hector walks to the old fire hose coiled against the wall, brass nozzle green with corrosion. "Let's clean you up proper."

The first blast of water hits like a frozen sledgehammer to my stomach. The pressure doubles me over as much as the ropes allow, drives ice into every pore. He aims for my face next, the stream hitting with enough force to split my lip wider, fill my nose and throat until I'm drowning standing up.

I try to turn away but there's nowhere to go. He circles me slow, spraying my back until the dress tears, exposing skin that immediately turns purple from the pressure. The water finds every bruise, every cut, drives cold so deep my bones ache.

"Both you and that brat Tam are on the auction block." His voice carries over the water's roar as he aims between my legs, the pressure making me scream. "Already got buyers lined up. There's a pack in Alabama that specializes in breaking difficult omegas. They got creative methods. Surgical modifications. They'll cut your vocal cords first, so you can't scream. Then they start on the tendons, make sure you can never run."

The water stops. I hang limp, shivering so violent my teeth crack against each other, body temperature dropping toward dangerous. Hypothermia makes everything slow and strange, like moving through thick syrup. Water runs pink from my torn wrists down my arms.

"The little one, Tam—she'll bring good money. Pretty thing like that." He cuts the ropes with a knife that catches sunlight. "But first, I think you owe me something for my wolf."

I collapse into mud that's formed beneath the posts, try to crawl, but he's already got my ankle. The gravel tears what's left of my dress as he drags me, leaves a trail of blood and mud toward the storage building. My fingers claw at earth, break more nails, find nothing to hold.

The storage room reeks of motor oil and rust, old tools hanging from pegboards like medieval torture implements. He throws me against the concrete wall hard enough that my vision goes white, then black at the edges.

"Strip."

"No."

"Wasn't asking."

I try to stand, to fight, but my body won't work right. The silver threads spark pathetic, like fireflies dying. When I swing at him, he catches my wrist easy, laughs at how weak the attempt is. His other hand tears at what's left of my dress, buttons scattering across concrete.

"Lost your fire, little mud wolf? Good. I prefer them helpless."

I knee toward his groin but he blocks it, slams me back harder. My head connects with concrete, stars exploding across my vision. His weight presses against me, hands moving to his belt—

The door explodes inward with enough force to crack the frame.

Not investigators. Not rescue.

Every omega in the compound floods through—Rosie wielding a cast iron skillet, Hugo with garden shears, Ben carrying a shovel, little Tam with a length of chain. Behind them come more, faces I recognize from years of shared suffering. Maya from the laundry, ancient Homer who tends the chickens, even pregnant Violet who shouldn't be here but is, carrying a pitchfork.

Hector releases me, turns to face them with a sneer that doesn't quite hide the fear. "Get back to your quarters before—"

Hugo moves first. The skillet connects with his temple in a sound like church bells, deep and resonating. He staggers sideways. Ben follows with the shovel handle to his kidney. Maya brings her knee up into his nose with a crunch that sprays blood across the wall.

They move like a pack, coordinated without words. Years of watching each other's backs in small ways prepared them for this moment. Hector tries to fight but without his wolf strength, he's just a man facing twenty people who've reached their limit.

Rosie kicks his knee sideways until it bends wrong. Homer, seventy if he's a day, brings his walking stick down on Hector's fingers until they break. Even pregnant Violet gets in a solid kick to his ribs.

"Tam, the rope," Rosie commands with authority I've never heard, voice carrying the power of an omega who's finally done pretending to be powerless.

They work with silent efficiency. Someone gags him with his own socks, the ones he peeled off before he started on his belt. The rope winds around his wrists, his ankles, then connects them behind his back until he's bent like a bow.

"Closet," Maya suggests, and for once, her mousy voice has steel behind it.

They drag him to the supply closet, past shelves of cleaning supplies he's made us use until our hands bled. Shove him inside among the mouse s**t and spilled bleach. The padlock clicks with beautiful finality.

Rosie wraps her shawl around my destroyed dress, helps me stand on legs made of water. "We need to move. Now."

We run through servant passages most of pack don't know exist, routes we've mapped through years of avoiding notice. My bare feet know every splinter, every loose board, even weak as I am. The others surround me in protective formation that makes my chest tight with something too big to name.

We round the corner toward our basement quarters and collide with walls of expensive wool.

The Morrison brothers.

All three stand in our path like they've been waiting. Gabriel's green eyes catalog everything in one sweep—my destroyed dress, the blood, the violent shivering, the way twenty omegas have circled protective around me like I matter.

"What happened?" His voice drops into registers that make my weakened silver threads try to spark.

"Nothing," Rosie tries, but she's shaking too hard to sell it. "Just—"

"Hector." The middle brother states it flat, not a question. The air around him ripples with barely contained power. "Where is he?"

Nobody answers. We stand frozen, caught between investigators who could destroy us with one report and the beta who will absolutely destroy us when he gets free.

Gabriel moves toward me slow and careful. This close, his scent washes over me—pine and winter storms and something underneath that calls to parts of me that shouldn't respond but do.

"You're hypothermic." He shrugs out of his suit jacket, wraps it around my shoulders. The warmth of him clings to the fabric, seeps into my frozen skin like sunlight through leaves. "Who did this?"

"Please." My voice comes out cracked and strange. "Just let us go. We'll handle—"

"Supply closet," Tam blurts out, then claps both hands over her mouth.

The youngest Morrison brother laughs dark and appreciative. "You locked him in a closet?"

"Seemed fitting," Maya says with defiance that surprises everyone, including herself.

The three men exchange looks that speak in languages I don't understand. Some silent communication passes between them that makes my weakened silver threads pulse with recognition.

"Get her warm," Gabriel tells Rosie, but his eyes stay on me. "All of you, back to your quarters. Stay there."

"What about—" someone starts.

"We'll handle Hector." The middle brother's smile could freeze blood in veins. "I'm sure he'll have an interesting explanation for why he was found locked in a closet, beaten by multiple assailants, when he's supposed to be maintaining order."

They step aside, create a path. As I stumble past, supported between Rosie and Maya, Gabriel's hand brushes mine—just fingertips against fingertips, but heat races through me like lightning finding its home in earth.

"The auction—" I start.

"Won't include you." He says it quiet, meant just for me, with certainty that makes no sense.

Then we're past them, hurrying toward our closet-room sanctuary while my body shakes from cold and shock and the lingering warmth of his jacket around my shoulders.