The Omega's Desperate Escape

Chapter Seven

DESMOND

The October wind carried the scent of violence before I heard the first impact—flesh meeting flesh with the wet sound of consequence. I'd been walking past Murphy's Law, finalizing pack business on my phone, when the cocktail of pheromones stopped me cold.

Fear. Rage. And underneath it all, something that made my wolf sit up and pay attention for the first time in months.

Omega.

Not just any omega. The one I'd been determinedly ignoring since she'd stumbled into my territory six months ago, trailing rogues and secrets like perfume. The dishwasher at Murphy's who thought men's cologne and a baseball cap could hide what she was. What she'd been hiding successfully, until three Lakeshore idiots decided to corner her in an alley.

I ended my call and moved toward the disturbance, already knowing what I'd find.

The girl fought like poetry written in violence. No wasted movement, no hesitation. She dropped the first alpha with a knee to the groin that made me wince in sympathy. The second went face-first into brick with enough force to rearrange his features. The third managed to get his hands on her—mistake—before she introduced the back of her skull to his nose.

Blood painted the alley walls. The Lakeshore wolves writhed on the ground, three alphas taken apart by one small omega who moved like she'd been trained by assassins. Or by necessity, which was often the same thing.

"f*****g b***h—"

"Is there a problem here?"

The words left my mouth with the kind of authority that made even alphas remember they were prey to something bigger. The girl froze, still radiating violence, while the Lakeshore wolves scrambled upright like puppets with tangled strings.

"Just a misunderstanding." The biggest one wheezed through what must have been spectacularly bruised balls. "We were just—"

"Leaving." I didn't need to move. Power radiated from me in waves, the kind that came from controlling forty-three percent of Toronto's supernatural economy. "Now."

They ran. Pathetic.

I turned my attention to the girl, and for the first time in six months, let myself really look.

Delicate features hidden under that ridiculous cap. Brown eyes that held too much history for someone who couldn't be older than twenty-one. She was small, built like omegas were built—for beauty rather than battle—but she'd just dismantled three alphas like it was a casual Tuesday.

"Are you hurt?"

Two steps closer and her scent hit me properly. Jasmine and vanilla under the chemical assault of Old Spice, suppressants working overtime to hide what nature had made her. My wolf, who'd been decidedly uninterested in every omega paraded past me for the last decade, suddenly wanted to know everything about this feral little creature.

She bolted.

The kitchen door slammed behind her, leaving me alone with Lakeshore blood and too many questions. I could have followed. Should have, maybe. But something about the naked terror in her eyes when she'd recognized me made me pause.

I knew that look. Had worn it myself, once upon a time in northern Quebec when escape had seemed impossible and submission felt like death.

My phone buzzed. Roland, my second, wondering where I'd disappeared to during a territory negotiation that could determine whether Toronto saw war or peace this winter. I ignored it.

Instead, I made a call to my head of security.

"I need everything on a dishwasher at Murphy's Law. Goes by Jinx. Start with the last six months."

* * *

The report came back within hours, because that's what happened when you owned half of Ontario's data infrastructure.

Jinx—no last name on any employment records, paid in cash, address listed as a building on Queen Street that made my urban properties look like the Ritz. She'd appeared in Toronto six months ago with four other unregistered shifters. No official pack affiliation. No history before that, like she'd materialized from smoke.

But the security footage my people pulled told a different story.

Six months of careful observation showed a girl who moved like prey expecting hunters. Who checked every shadow, mapped every exit, kept her head down and her scent hidden. Who lived with the kind of hypervigilance that only came from running.

The building on Queen Street was a shithole. Water damage, structural issues, the kind of place where people went to disappear. I stood outside at 3 AM, watching windows flicker with the light of lives lived in the margins. Somewhere up there, my mystery omega was probably washing dishes off her skin and trying to scrub away the memory of her scent.

I bought the building before sunrise.

The owner, thrilled to unload a liability, didn't ask questions about cash transactions or immediate possession. By noon, I owned every brick, every roach, every broken dream in that concrete tomb.

"What exactly are we doing here?" Roland stood beside me as we surveyed the lobby that smelled like piss and shattered ambition. My second didn't question much, but buying slums wasn't exactly my usual investment strategy.

"Improving property values."

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Roland had been with me since the early days, when I'd arrived in Toronto with nothing but spite and a trust fund left to me by my maternal grandmother. Roland knew when to push and when to let me work through my own particular brand of insanity.

The improvements started small. Fixed heating that actually worked. Water pressure that didn't require prayer. Locks that might keep out more than a determined toddler. Nothing too dramatic—couldn't have the tenants getting suspicious—but enough to make their lives marginally less miserable.

Then the fifth floor unit became available. The previous tenant, who'd been running some kind of exotic animal smuggling ring, had fled in the night leaving behind an apartment that needed gutting anyway.

"I want it renovated. Completely." I stood in the destroyed space, envisioning something else. "Three bedrooms, two baths, modern kitchen. Make it... nice."

"Nice?" Roland's tone suggested I'd lost my mind. "In this building?"

"Call it an experiment."

The renovation took two weeks. New everything—appliances that worked, fixtures that weren't held together by rust and hope, actual insulation so you couldn't hear every word from adjacent units. The cameras were my personal touch, hidden in smoke detectors and air vents, connected to a private server only I could access.

Was it ethical? Absolutely not. Did I care? Not when it came to understanding the omega who'd taken apart three alphas and then run from me like I was worse than all of them combined.

The day after the renovation finished, a notice appeared on the building's bulletin board. Subsidized upgrade available for one lucky tenant—first come, first served. The catch? Current residents only, must be in good standing, background check required.

I watched through my laptop as they found it.

"Holy shit." The Asian wolf—Puck, according to my files—held the flyer like it might bite. "Three bedrooms? Two bathrooms? This has to be a scam."

"Everything's a scam." The cat shifter, Jules, read over his shoulder with professional suspicion. "Nobody gives away apartments."

But Jinx studied the paper with the kind of hunger that had nothing to do with food. She'd been sleeping on a couch for six months. Her pack-that-wasn't deserved better, and she knew it.

They applied within the hour.

* * *

Watching them move in was better than anything on actual television.

"There's a dishwasher." Ami, the fox, sounded close to tears. "An actual dishwasher that works."

"The shower has pressure." Hank emerged from the bathroom looking stunned. "And the water stays hot."

They moved through the space like it might evaporate, touching surfaces with reverent fingers. The previous apartment had trained them to expect nothing, so everything was a miracle. Jinx stood in the kitchen, running her hand over countertops that weren't held together with duct tape and prayer.

"This doesn't make sense." She spoke quietly, but my cameras caught everything. "Why would they upgrade one unit this nice and leave the rest of the building to rot?"

Because I wanted to see you somewhere that wasn't falling apart, I thought but couldn't say. Because something about you makes me want to fix things, even though I've built an empire on breaking them.

"Who cares?" Puck had already claimed one of the bedrooms, bouncing on an actual bed instead of a mattress on the floor. "Gift horses and mouths and all that."

They settled in over the following days, and I watched it all. Watched Jinx finally get her own room after six months on a couch. Watched her shower with actual hot water and emerge looking younger, softer, like comfort had peeled away a layer of armor. Watched her curl up in a bed that didn't smell like other people's desperation and fall asleep without checking the locks six times.

She was beautiful when she felt safe. Beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with the omega perfection she tried so hard to hide. This was something rawer, realer—the beauty of a survivor allowing herself to breathe.

"You're obsessed." Roland's voice came through my phone as I watched Jinx make coffee in her new kitchen at 5 AM before her shift. "This isn't healthy."

"Since when have I ever been healthy?"

"Fair point. But buying buildings to spy on dishwashers is a new level, even for you."

He was right. I'd ignored her for six months, too busy with territory disputes and Highland's constant challenges to my authority. Toronto was a powder keg waiting for a match, and the last thing I needed was complications.

But then she'd fought in that alley, moved like violence was a language she'd been forced to learn, and something in me had recognized something in her. Pack bonds didn't work between alphas and omegas who'd never properly met. But sometimes, rarely, biology recognized what logic couldn't explain.

Mine, my wolf insisted every time I watched her. Ours.

Not yet, I told it. She ran from me for a reason. Whatever had driven her to hide in my city with black market suppressants and men's cologne, it was bigger than normal omega fears. This was trauma worn like armor, survival carved into muscle memory.

So I watched. Learned her routines, her habits, the way she smiled when she thought no one was looking. Learned that she trained with Jules every morning, knife work and dirty fighting that would make most alphas nervous. Learned that she hoarded food like someone who'd been hungry, saved money like someone who expected to run.

Learned that she talked in her sleep sometimes, nightmares that left her thrashing until one of her pack came to wake her.

"No," she'd whisper into the dark. "Please. I won't... Marcus, please..."

Marcus. A name to research, to hunt. Someone who'd hurt her badly enough that she still fought him in her dreams.

The building improved bit by bit around them. Fixed elevators, better security doors, even a laundry room where the machines didn't catch fire. The other tenants thought they'd won some kind of lottery. Only Chloe, the coyote s*x worker in 3A, seemed suspicious.

"Something's different about you," she told Jinx one evening on the fire escape, smoke curling between them like secrets. "You're settling in. Getting comfortable. That's dangerous for people like us."

"Maybe I'm tired of running."

"Or maybe something's making you feel safe. Question is, should it?"

Smart coyote. Too smart. I made a note to have Roland look into her background, make sure she wasn't going to become a problem.

Winter crept closer, and with it, the territorial tensions that threatened to tear Toronto apart. Highland pushed boundaries, testing. Lakeshore made plays for my waterfront properties. The other packs watched, waiting to see who would blink first.

And through it all, I watched a dishwasher who'd never had a heat learn to live in an apartment that didn't leak. Watched her laugh with her pack over takeout dinners. Watched her pretend to be a beta male at work while her omega nature fought against suppressants that were slowly poisoning her.

Watched her exist in my territory like a secret I wasn't supposed to know.

Three months she'd been at Murphy's. Six months in my city. And I'd spent two weeks watching her like she was the most fascinating thing in Toronto.

Roland was right. It wasn't healthy.

But then again, neither was she—an omega who chose violence over submission, who'd rather hide in plain sight than trust an alpha's protection. We were both broken in our own ways, both running from histories that shaped us.

The difference was, I'd stopped running when I built my empire here.

The question now was whether I could convince her to stop running too.