Shared Omega (Quarantine Omega Book 2) Page 2

  Parsons lets out a bloodcurdling shriek as the Alphas tear into him, quite literally. Claws and overdeveloped canine fangs bite and rend his black environmental protection suit, sinking into the soft flesh beneath. A fist cracks the visor of Parsons’ helmet. A second blow shatters it.

  The image blurs as the poor man’s eyes fill with tears of agony. There is a sickening splash of red, and the screams turn to choked gurgles.

  At last, mercifully, the image disappears in a spasm of static, and the hologram goes black.

  The tension in the dark briefing room is palpable. For a long moment, it is so quiet you could hear a mouse fart, as my old orphanage director used to be fond of saying. Finally, there is a collective exhale as everyone lets out the breath they’ve been holding in.

  Finally, Dr. Frostgrave speaks.

  “Except for a handful of researchers here at SynerGen, you are the first people to witness that footage. The reason I showed it to you is that I wanted you all to witness first-hand the absolute savagery of the Alphas that populate the Quarantine Zone.”

  The holograph lights up again, lines of light tracing a new image.

  “Now I want you to watch this second clip for a very different reason,” Frostgrave says, gesturing toward the rectangle of light. “These images were obtained from the neural chip of a SynerGen scientist named Lily O’Neal. Miss O’Neal was also part of an excursion into the Zone. She was captured by a pack of particularly dangerous Alphas and taken as their mate against her will. Witness now the depths of her degradation at the hands of these monsters…”

  CHAPTER 2: SLOANE

  Now the holographic field fills with the different neural chip recording. The viewpoint is within a dark but seemingly massive space and surrounded by three Alphas who are circling like predators. There are hushed sounds, as if a crowd is watching from the shadows. Once or twice, I catch a glimpse of shining eyes in the background.

  I cringe at the thought that we are about to witness this woman’s violent demise too.

  Yet my eyes stay open. They are glued to the image, unable to look away.

  Lily’s point of view swivels around as she looks at the three encircling Alphas, each in turn. These males are different from the ones we saw before. They don’t display the same frenzied movements we just witnessed in the previous recording. Instead, these males prowl with a slow, animal grace, like stalking panthers.

  And it quickly becomes clear that their intentions are not to kill the female.

  Abundantly clear.

  Their massive Alpha members are fully erect and ready for mating.

  The tips of their erect cocks glisten with dribbling fluid—the precursor of their seed.

  And something else catches the light, glinting in the shadowy dimness.

  The Alphas are pierced. My God, their erections are adorned with steel piercings.

  Sudden and uninvited, a strange warmth blushes between my thighs. I have been keeping my legs apart to ward off Donovitch’s manspreading, but now I squeeze them together, ashamed at my body’s inappropriate reaction to these foul, Alpha beasts.

  In the darkness of the briefing room, one of the other marines whistles at the wanton display on the holographic screen, and the other troopers burst into laughter, though they are quickly silenced by an angry bark from Colonel Fulgore.

  The briefing room grows silent again. The only sound is the woman’s heavy breathing in the recording.

  Then another sound emerges. A deep, guttural rumbling like an idling motor, but much softer.

  Purring.

  The Alphas are actually purring.

  As we watch from the woman’s point of view, the first Alpha mounts her and claims her body. I look on in stunned amazement as that long, thick, pulsating member disappears between her spread legs. The woman mewls and whimpers, and I can only imagine how the Alpha’s girth must be painfully stretching her opening.

  The woman’s viewpoint jolts as the Alpha repeatedly thrusts his engorged cock, roughly sheathing himself inside her again and again. The other two Alphas hold the helpless woman’s limbs, purring deeply with satisfaction as they watch her get taken and used by their comrade.

  That purring sound seems to vibrate from the speakers straight to my core.

  Another shocking pulse of arousal moistens my panties, and I squeeze my thighs even more tightly, as if that will help.

  God, what is wrong with me?

  In the recording, the Alphas take turns using the woman’s body in the most disgusting and animalistic ways. When one of them has released inside of her, another of his brethren immediately takes his place, each one’s rough and bestial fucking lubricated by his predecessor’s spilled semen.

  At first, I think these Alphas are forcing themselves on the woman. However, her whimpers and moans seem to suggest otherwise. Though laced with pain and shame, the main ingredient of those sounds is something else entirely.

  Desire. Hunger. Need.

  Her words erase any final shred of doubt.

  “Fuck me,” she whines. “Oh God, please fuck me.”

  I can’t believe it. She’s enjoying this.

  She’s actually begging for it.

  That’s when something strange happens. Without even meaning to, I find myself identifying with the woman whose eyes we are looking through. For an instant, those spread thighs up there on the screen are my thighs, and I’m the one being ravaged by those long, thick, pierced cocks.

  I’m the one being shamefully shared by the merciless pack of brutal Alphas.

  I’m the one being bred and filled with hot Alpha seed.

  “Is this making you hot, Sloane?” a voice whispers at my ear.

  Donovitch. I jab an elbow at his ribs, but he blocks it with his arm. With a snicker, he settles back into his seat beside me. Fucker.

  The embarrassing truth, however, is that it is making me hot and very bothered. My face and chest are fairly burning now, and I’m grateful for the darkness of the room, which conceals my deep blush. Sweat trickles along the crevices of my body—the hollow of my throat, my armpits, the creases of my thighs.

  Worst of all, my traitorous little nipples are as hard as glass beads, and my panties are dampening with arousal.

  I cross my legs and squeeze my thighs until it hurts.

  Where the hell are these feelings coming from?

  Those creatures up on the screen are the enemy. Hell, they aren’t even human. So why is my body reacting this way?

  This is so frigging wrong.

  Mercifully, the video stops, cutting the woman off in the middle of an especially loud moan, as all three Alphas move forward, preparing to fill all of her holes at once.

  “All right, that’s enough of that,” Dr. Frostgrave says, stepping back to the front of the room. The lights come up once more. “I wanted you all to see that so you would understand the level of…of abuse that Miss O’Neal is being forced to endure, perhaps on a daily basis.”

  Abuse? That’s not exactly the word I would use to describe what I just witnessed. But nobody around me questions the doctor’s assessment.

  Frostgrave gestures to the holographic projection, where the beams of light are tracing a new image.

  “She is your target,” Dr. Frostgrave says. “You are to locate Lily O’Neal and bring her back alive and in one piece.”

  The new image resolves itself into a portrait of an attractive young woman with auburn hair.

  More murmurs run through the room. Someone behind me whistles again.

  “Bring her back in one piece?” Donovitch whispers beside me. “Hell yeah. Once I get my hands on this little slut, I’ll check every inch to make sure there aren’t any pieces missing.”

  I roll my eyes and let the comment slide. I’m too intrigued by the picture. There’s something here that doesn’t add up. The innocent, ingenuous expression on the woman’s face doesn’t match the wanton lust we just witnessed.

  What happened to this woman to make her change?


  It’s the contamination of the Zone, of course. The omega mutation.

  “I don’t understand, Doctor,” I find myself blurting suddenly. “Why are we risking the lives of an entire cadre of marines to rescue a woman who obviously doesn’t want to be rescued?”

  A dozen pairs of eyes turn toward me, shocked that I’ve spoken out.

  To be honest, I’m a little shocked myself.

  “Please, don’t be deceived,” Frostgrave answers in a patronizing tone. “While it may appear that Miss O’Neal is…enjoying herself, I can assure you, she most certainly is not.”

  I can’t help wondering how the hell Frostgrave knows what this woman enjoys.

  “There are numerous explanations for the apparent willingness that Miss O’Neal displayed in that recording,” he explains. “It may simply be self-preservation. It would be useless for her to attempt to fend off even a single Alpha, let alone three. Or she may well be experiencing an advanced form of Stockholm Syndrome, in which a hostage develops misplaced feelings of affection for her captors. It’s not unheard of for this attachment to take on a sexual dimension. And this, of course, is further compounded by the fact that Miss O’Neal has most certainly been tainted by the contamination of the Zone, metamorphosing her into an omega.”

  “But that’s just the thing,” I persist. “She’s an omega now. If we brought her back—”

  “Lance Corporal Sloane!” Colonel Fulgore cuts me off with a pissed off growl, “the details of this mission are on a need-to-know basis. You don’t need to understand the purpose of the mission. All you need to know is your objective, and that is to find and retrieve the target.”

  A renewed blush scalds my cheeks and sizzles the tips of my ears. The colonel is right, of course. I’m a weapon. A tool. My job is to keep my mouth shut and get the job done, no questions asked.

  I don’t know why the hell I blurted out that question like that.

  But there is an inexplicable connection that I feel to this woman.

  Dr. Frostgrave eyes me with a silent, appraising look.

  “Now, here’s how this is going to go down.” Fulgore continues, “You will be parachuting in. A cloaked jump-ship will fly you in over the wall and carry you to Ground Zero, here.”

  He points to the map that has reappeared on the screen.

  Another low murmur passes through the small audience.

  “Ground Zero?” Donovitch scoffs beside me. “Hell, boss, everyone knows that Ground Zero is off-limits. Even the best protective gear we’ve got won’t let us go half that deep into the Zone.”

  Colonel Fulgore scowls with annoyance at Donovitch’s interruption.

  The thing is, as dumb as Donovitch may be, he’s correct. Like they say, even a broken clock gives the right time twice a day. Trying to go all the way to Ground Zero would be suicide, plain and simple.

  The entire Zone that is contained within the Quarantine Wall is pervaded by a mysterious contamination that even the top scientists at SynerGen don’t fully understand. Some think it’s a virus. Others say it’s radiation.

  There are only two things that are known for sure.

  First, without adequate protective gear, the contamination will mutate a human in a matter of minutes.

  Second, the levels of contamination increase in intensity the farther one ventures into the zone, culminating at Ground Zero—the place where the cataclysm occurred over a century ago, giving birth to the horrific aberrations of the zone.

  “Shut your gob, Donovitch,” the colonel’s voice snaps from the side of the room. “If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. This is a briefing, not a debate.”

  Dr. Frostgrave, steps forward again and raises one scrawny arm to calm the colonel down.

  “Actually,” Frostgrave says. “The soldier raises a good point. He’s right, we don’t have the technology to travel deep into the Quarantine Zone. Even our best protective gear can’t hold up to the contamination levels of the deep Zone…”

  Frostgrave lets his words trail off. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Donovitch nodding to himself like he’s won some little victory. The Colonel gives him the stink eye.

  “Until now,” Frostgrave adds.

  A new murmur passes through the briefing room.

  “That’s right,” Colonel Fulgore goes on. “SynerGen has developed new contamination shielding that will allow you to penetrate all the way to the very heart of the Zone. This is cutting edge tech, and you grunts are gonna be the first ones to use it, so you’d better not fuck this up. Now, as I was saying…”

  He plucks the cigar from his mouth, using the soggy, gnawed end of it to point out our flight routes on the map.

  “You’ll be divided into two teams of four. Red Team will jump just outside the western perimeter of the city ruins. They will be providing long-range reconnaissance support. Blue Team will touch down to the east and infiltrate the city center. For the purposes of stealth, you’ll be performing a nighttime HALO jump—high altitude, low opening. You’ll be landing a few miles outside of the city ruins, and you’ll make your final approach on foot. The target, Ms. O’Neal, is believed to reside somewhere in this central radius. Her neural chip has been deactivated—we believe, by surgical removal—which means we don’t have an exact location. You’ll have to hunt her down.”

  Surgical removal? Do the primitive Alphas even have the capabilities for that kind of procedure, I wonder.

  Fulgore turns toward us marines, jabbing his chewed cigar in our direction as he calls out names.

  “Red team will be Weaver, Lowry, Curtis, and Pitts. Blue team will be Esposito, Donovitch, and Sloane.”

  “Boss,” Donovitch interrupts again. “I thought you said we’d be going in teams of four.”

  Fulgore inserts the smoldering stub of his cigar back into his jaw and narrows his eyes at Donovitch. He gives it a couple of puffs before answering.

  “I was just getting to that. Blue Team, you’ll be accompanied by a special agent. Dr. Frostgrave?”

  Frostgrave nods his assent, and motions toward one of the scientists seated along the wall, a smallish, mousy woman with dark hair and oversized spectacles.

  “Hines, would you be so kind as to escort Dog in?”

  Dog? Did he just say Dog?

  The woman, Hines, rises from her seat, nervously pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. She taps a button on the wall, and a mechanical door appears at the side of the room, opening onto a dark chamber.

  “Dog,” Hines says, trying to make her small voice sound commanding. “You may enter.”

  As soon as I see what steps through the door, my breath catches in my throat. There is a collective screech of metal chairs on the hard floor as the sight jolts the other marines to attention as well. Some of them even spring to their feet, ready for a fight.

  Before us stands an Alpha.

  A living, breathing Alpha.

  CHAPTER 3: SLOANE

  “Please,” Dr. Frostgrave intones in what passes for an amused voice. “There’s no cause for alarm.”

  “No cause for alarm?” another marine half gasps behind me. “Doc, that’s a fucking Alpha!”

  “Gentleman,” Frostgrave says calmly, then nods toward me, “and lady…” he makes a sweeping gesture toward the hulking Alpha beside him. “Please allow me to introduce you to Dog.”

  At almost seven feet, the brute towers over even the largest marines in the room, and his head nearly scuffs the low ceiling. Standing next to the small, mousy woman named Hines, the contrast is even more exaggerated.

  Dog is clad in a pair of black combat pants, boots, and a simple black T-shirt that clings to his hardened, rippling physique. Dangling from his neck by a thin chain are a pair of military dog tags. His powerful forearms and neck are corded with muscles and wrapped with curving veins. His hair is cropped close to his massive skull, and his jaw is covered in a short but dense black beard.

  It is his facial features, however, that truly give him away—the slightly inhum
an angle of his pointed brows over his dark and deep-set eyes. The broad, flared nostrils, instinctively testing the air for scents. The overdeveloped canine teeth pressing out his lips.

  And then there is the smell—a heavy, animal musk that immediately pervades the room.

  I tell myself that the odor is repulsive, but my body seems to disagree. The stiffness in my nipples from watching the video had nearly abated, but now it comes back with a vengeance, and yet more unwanted heat pulses again between my legs.

  “Please, return to your seats.” Dr. Frostgrave says with a gesture of reassurance. “As the marine so perceptively noted, Dog is in fact an Alpha. But I assure you, he poses no threat to anyone in this room.”

  The fierce look on Dog’s face makes me doubt that. Then again, the Alpha hasn’t attacked anyone yet.

  Everyone sits down again, and an uneasy silence descends over the briefing room.

  “You’re probably wondering how we acquired this exquisite specimen,” Frostgrave says, clearly proud of his pet. “The Alpha you see before you was reconstructed from a marine commander named Bishop who was exposed to the contamination of the Zone.”

  “You mean that Alpha used to be a marine?”

  The Alpha just stands silently, his massive shoulders heaving slightly with his slow, steady breath. His dark, impassive eyes survey the soldiers in the briefing room with cold confidence.

  “Not exactly,” Frostgrave says, plucking at his bearded chin. “Commander Bishop was grievously wounded in a battle by a pack of feral Alphas within the Zone. His body was mangled beyond repair. However, we were able to recover samples of his mutated tissue, which we used to create Dog.”

  “So it’s a clone?” Someone asks.

  “More or less,” Frostgrave answers. “Using an accelerated process of cellular division, we were able to grow Dog to the state of a mature adult within a matter of months. Since then, he has proved invaluable to our operations. He will be accompanying Blue Team on this mission.”

  Beside me, Donovitch shakes his head emphatically.

  “You’ve got to be kidding, Doc. That thing is a fucking wild animal.”

  The woman, Hines, winces at the comment. Frostgrave just gives a patronizing smile.