The Omega's Desperate Escape

Chapter Two

Water hit like resurrection—cold and brutal and absolutely unnecessary.

"Jesus Christ, she's alive!"

I came up swinging, blind and choking, infected shoulder screaming as my fist connected with something solid. Someone grunted. The water stopped.

"Did she just punch you?" Delight threaded through the new voice. "Oh, I like her already."

Vision cleared in stages. Four figures stood in a semicircle, backlit by afternoon sun streaming through broken windows. The warehouse had seemed like salvation in my fever dreams. Now it looked like what it was—a graveyard of rust and abandoned dreams.

"You smell like something crawled up Death's ass and died twice." The speaker was compact, all coiled energy and sharp edges. Asian features, maybe seventeen, with the kind of grin that promised trouble. "I'm Puck."

Wolf. I could smell it under leather and teenage bravado. But wrong. Everything about him screamed wrong—no pack scent, no deference, his wolf living wild just under his skin.

"Hank." This from the mountain I'd apparently punched. Dark skin, broader than any wolf had a right to be, because he wasn't—

My brain stuttered. Bear. The scent hit like a physical blow, triggering instincts I didn't know I had. The Cascade elders spoke of other shifters in hushed tones, like fairy tales meant to frighten children. Bears were myth. Legends. Not standing in abandoned warehouses wearing flannel and concerned expressions.

"Sorry about the hose. You were starting to smell like an actual corpse."

"We voted." The girl who spoke made every hair on my body stand at attention. Sleek and dangerous, with tilted green eyes and skin like burnished copper. The scent—cat, predator, something that made my omega instincts scream contradictions. Run. Submit. Fight. Hide. "Democracy in action. I said let you wake up naturally, but these idiots thought hypothermia by garden hose was more fun."

Cat. An actual cat shifter. The elders said they'd died out, too proud to bend to pack law, too solitary to survive the modern world.

"You voted for the hose too, Jules." The last voice was soft, uncertain. The girl couldn't be more than thirteen, all knobby knees and anxious energy. Human? No, something else, something waiting to bloom. "You said the smell was making you sick."

"Details." Jules produced something from her pocket—a tiny soap wrapped in paper. "Hotel luxury. Don't say I never gave you anything."

I stared at the soap like she'd handed me the moon. Individual soap. Wrapped in paper. At Cascade, we'd shared lye bars at the communal wash basins, everything reeking of ash and animal fat. My hands bore permanent scars from the stuff, from scrubbing the bathhouses before dawn, making sure the alphas had clean water drawn from the well before their morning training.

"There's a bathroom." Hank pointed toward the back. "Probably want to deal with that shoulder too. Looks infected."

A bathroom. Indoor plumbing. Not a dozen stalls open to the elements, where you learned to piss fast in winter or risk frostbite. Not the humiliation of monthly bleeding with no privacy, just other omegas pretending not to notice while you cleaned yourself with rags that had to be washed and reused.

"We've got clothes." Puck's grin widened. "Nothing fancy, but they don't have blood or s**t on them, so that's an upgrade."

They stood there, waiting. No orders. No hierarchy. Just four teenagers offering choices like they had the right to make them.

The bathroom was a revelation disguised as decay. Cracked mirrors, rust-stained fixtures, but—a door that locked. Privacy. I turned the handle three times just to feel it catch, to know that for these few minutes, nobody could enter without permission.

Steam rose as I peeled away the ruined clothes. Every layer revealed new damage, new evidence of the last four days. But underneath the wounds were already pink with new skin. Omega healing—the one gift that came without strings attached.

That hotel soap smelled like a different world. Lavender and something soft, nothing like the harsh lye that had stripped my hands raw every morning. I scrubbed until my skin felt like my own again, watching days of survival spiral down an actual drain instead of into the cesspit behind the omega quarters.

The clothes they'd left were a revelation. Jeans—actual jeans, not the shapeless hand-me-downs sorted from community donations, always three sizes wrong and patched until more thread than fabric remained. This flannel was soft, worn but cared for. The boots almost fit, maybe only worn by one person before me instead of passed through a dozen omega girls until the soles wore through.

When I emerged, they'd formed a circle on the warehouse floor. No assigned positions. No one standing while others knelt. Just... sitting. Together. Like equals.

In the center sat the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

"Burrito." Jules said it like prayer. "Figured you hadn't eaten anything that wasn't moving or rotting lately."

I'd never seen one before. The Cascade pack ate traditional food—venison jerky, root vegetables, wild greens. Anything beyond their borders was considered contamination. This thing wrapped in foil smelled like rebellion.

The first bite made me cry.

"Easy." Hank's warning came gentle. "Your stomach's been empty for days. Go slow."

But slow was for people who'd grown up with choices. Who hadn't spent years eating whatever the alphas left, grateful for turnip peelings and meat scraps. This had flavor beyond salt and smoke. Cheese. Spices that made my tongue sing. Beans that weren't half-rotted from poor storage.

"So." Puck studied me with too-sharp eyes. "Which circle of fundamentalist hell did you crawl out of?"

The words stuck like bones. But these weren't Cascade wolves. These were impossibilities made flesh—bears and cats and whatever Ami was becoming.

"Cascade. Northern Oregon. Presented omega four days ago."

Jules hissed—an actual hiss, like house cats in the barn when you got too close to their kills. "Cascade's bad news. Traditional values, alpha supremacy, all that Old Testament wolf bullshit."

"The Moon Mother made alphas to rule and omegas to serve." The doctrine came automatic, beaten into us like breath. "The natural order. The sacred way."

"Let me guess." Puck's grin turned blade-sharp. "They decided which alpha got to collect you?"

"The enforcer. Marcus Reeves. My uncle—Alpha Brennan—gave me to him after the presentation ceremony."

Silence stretched until Ami broke it, voice small but fierce. "That's f****d up."

I almost choked. Young wolves didn't curse. Especially not females. Especially not about pack law.

"That's how it's done. How it's always been done. Since the first wolves." The words tasted like ash now, here in this strange new world where bears existed and cats made their own rules.

"I ran from my pride when I was fifteen." Jules pulled her knees to her chest, suddenly looking young. "They wanted to mate me to my cousin. Keep the bloodline pure."

"Bear clans are matriarchal." Hank's massive hands moved gentle as moths. "Unless you're born wrong. Too soft. Too weak. Too gay for their warrior culture."

"My pack sold me to hunters." Puck's cheerful voice didn't match his words. "Twelve years old, prime bait for their supernatural fight rings. Took me three years to kill my way out."

They spoke of horrors like weather. Like things that happened but didn't define. At Cascade, you were your designation, your bloodline, your use to the pack. These broken children had become something else entirely.

"That hair's got to go." Jules produced a blade from nowhere—of course cats carried knives. Of course they made weapons look like accessories. "Too pretty. Too memorable."

I touched the tangled mass. Recently washed. With hot water. Back at home, the omega bathhouse only opened twice a week. Before that, careful braids to keep it controlled, to keep it from drawing the wrong attention. My aunt used to help, her fingers gentle, telling me about my mother's hair. The same curl. The same midnight color. The same curse of beauty that made alphas notice.

"Do it."

She worked with efficient brutality. Black curls hit concrete like feathers from a butchered bird. Each cut severed another piece of the girl who'd hauled water from the well before dawn, who'd scrubbed the communal toilets until her knees bled, who'd believed endurance was the only virtue omegas needed.

Night had crept in while we talked. Puck produced candles—actual candles, not the tallow lumps we'd made from deer fat. The warehouse transformed in flickering light, industrial decay becoming almost beautiful.

"Sleeping arrangements are basic." Hank gestured to a corner where blankets and sleeping bags formed a nest. "We pool resources. Share warmth when it gets cold."

My whole body locked. At Cascade, touching was transaction. Alphas took. Betas traded. Omegas endured. Even in the communal quarters, we'd maintained careful distances on our thin pallets, three to a room but never touching. The shame of contact without permission could earn a beating.

"She's panicking." Jules sounded amused. "Look at her face. Bet they had rules about everything."

"Alphas touch. Everyone else maintains proper distance." The words came automatic, another lesson beaten deep. "Scent mixing is—"

"Bullshit." Puck flopped onto the blankets like rules were things that happened to other people. "We're all broken here. No alphas, no omegas, no hierarchy crap. Just us."

They settled in like touch was nothing. Jules curved against Hank's shoulder—a cat finding warmth against a bear, impossible made casual. Ami tucked between them, seeking comfort. Puck sprawled, taking up space like he had the right to it.

"I'll be gone by morning." The words rushed out, desperate. "The pack's hunting me. Marcus won't stop. I won't bring that down on—"

"Oh, shut up." Jules didn't even open her eyes. "You think you're the only one with wolves on your tail? We're all running from something."

"This is different. The Cascade pack—"

"Is a bunch of fundamentalist assholes who think the moon shines out of alpha asses." Puck propped himself on an elbow. "So what? They want to come to Portland and start s**t with a bear? With Jules? Good f*****g luck."

"You don't understand. They believe I'm cursed. A jinx. Everything I touch—" My aunt's throat opening under rogue claws. My parents' car wrapped around a tree. Everyone who'd ever shown me kindness, paying for it in blood.

"Perfect." Hank's rumble held warmth I didn't deserve. "We collect cursed things here. Broken things. Survivors."

"You're pack now." Ami said it simple, like pack could be chosen instead of inflicted. Like four teenagers in an abandoned warehouse could rewrite centuries of law with just their stubbornness.

"I don't even have a name anymore." The confession hurt coming out. "Billie died in that forest. I don't know what's left."

"What do they call you?" Jules asked. "The wolves. When they think you've brought them grief."

The word sat bitter on my tongue. But here, surrounded by impossibilities, it felt like armor. "Jinx."

"Jinx." Puck tested it, grinned. "Yeah. That fits. Welcome to the island of misfit shifters, Jinx."

They made space for me in their nest of blankets and warmth. No ceremony. No permission sought or granted. Just a gap that said you belong here without words.

I approached like it might burn. Twenty years of conditioning screamed warnings—about propriety, about place, about omegas who forgot their purpose. But these weren't Cascade wolves. These were the myths the elders swore had died out, the creatures too wild for pack law.

The first touch—Ami's small hand on mine—felt like revolution.

Sleep came slowly, my body remembering every well I'd drawn water from, every floor I'd scrubbed, every rule written in scar tissue and submission. But underneath that, something else stirred. Something that had looked at tradition and chosen to run. Something that had torn out a rogue's throat rather than submit.

Tomorrow, the hunt would continue. Marcus would rage. The pack would howl for justice.

Tonight, surrounded by impossible creatures who'd claimed me with nothing more than shared food and shortened hair, I learned what Jinx meant.

Not cursed.

Survivor.