Unhinged Omega: A Dark Reverse Harem Omegaverse Romance (Ghost Alpha Unit Book 4)

The world slowly comes into focus, like a radio tuning between stations. Static. Glimpses of clarity. Then static again.

I blink, trying to orient myself. My head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton, my thoughts sluggish and disjointed.

Did those bastards drug me?

No… this haze is familiar. A special cocktail of fugue and delirium my own brain has cooked up plenty of times before. I forgot how much worse it is without the pills.

How long has it been now?

Days? Weeks?

I try to direct my thoughts through the blips of lucidity in the static. The bunker. The pack of assholes interrogating me about Azarel, even if they called him by a name I’ve never heard before. The brief glimpses of consciousness in the back of a vehicle with heavily tinted windows gliding jauntily down rough terrain.

And through it all, the same darkness—the same nightmare—that kept pulling me under.

Glowing blue eyes.

Grinning jaws full of sharp teeth.

A monstrous face straight from hell.

It’s a struggle to put it all in order, let alone string it into any logical sequence of events, and my head throbs from trying. So I decide to just focus on the pressing issues that actually matter right now.

The monster is coming for me, but that’s nothing new. He’s been hunting me my entire fucking life.

What matters right now is figuring out how I’m going to escape. The other things I need to deal with can wait.

First, I need to wake up.

A small underground room materializes around me as my vision clears. Bare concrete walls. A single flickering light bulb dangling from exposed wires. The flimsy cot beneath me creaks as I try in vain to move a little, every bar of the metal frame pressing at my back through the thin mattress. The pillow, if you can even call it that, stinks too.

At least I have my own personal metal bucket for a toilet and don’t have to share with anyone. Although there’s no wall or even a curtain around it.

Just a toilet. Awesome.

This isn’t where the Ghosts brought me. It’s so much… tackier. And that’s saying something. This is like something out of those crime novels Monty is always pretending to read when guests come over.

Even the sheets beneath me are threadbare. Is it possible for the thread count to be a negative number? The scratchy yellow cloth isn’t even thick enough to hide the bloodstain on the mattress beneath.

Gods, I hope that’s a bloodstain.

I try to move away, but my limbs are still heavy and haven’t quite remembered who they belong to yet. Better just wait it out. A bitter laugh escapes my lips, startling me with its harshness.

‘Sold again,’ I mutter, the irony not lost on me.

History repeating itself as usual. My mother, bought and shipped off to my father like a prized breeding bitch. And now me, passed from my father to Monty, and now whatever fucker the Ghosts sold me off to.

One set of hands to another.

It’s par for the course in the life of an omega. The moment that identifying designation mark appeared on my right hip, an unusual place for one to appear but clearly an omega mark all the same, my fate was sealed the same as my mother’s.

I should care. I should be terrified.

Instead, a strange numbness has settled over me, dulling everything to a distant ache, and it’s not just in my physical body. It’s not that I think whoever bought me can’t be any worse than Monty. I’m not that naive.

It can always be worse.

Always.

But without Azarel…

My chest constricts painfully at the thought of him.

My alpha. My protector.

No… not mine. He didn’t even tell me he has a brother. A brother who belongs to the Ghosts, the most notorious pack of special ops alphas in Reinmich. There’s no other explanation for the resemblance they share, except the one I met a few days ago isn’t quite as jacked.

Four years, and I guess I still don’t really know him. No, not mine at all.

But a girl can dream, can’t she?

The possibility that I won’t ever see him again—that this cramped, dank room is just the first stop on a journey taking me further and further from him—threatens to shatter the fragile composure I’m clinging to.

I close my eyes, digging my sharpened nails into my palms until I feel the blood pool at the surface. It’s all I can reach. I let out a slow, steady breath as the haze fades and the world sharpens to those five little points of pain.

Crying changes nothing, mylita.

My mom’s voice echoes across the dank stone walls as clearly as if she were here, her Vrissian accent soft and soothing.

My father wouldn’t let her speak her mother tongue at home, but she made sure I learned anyway. Each bruise and mark on her smooth skin was proof of her insistence that her daughter remain connected to the world she was ripped away from at barely the age of sixteen.

Everywhere but her beautiful face.

Never the face.

We look so much alike. I inherited her long silver hair that falls in waves down the length of my back. Her violet eyes, her full lips, her heart-shaped face. Sometimes, if I stare in the mirror long enough and lose focus, I can pretend it’s her staring back at me. And sometimes, if I watch her for too long, another face appears.

The monster’s.

Guess it’s only fair to be haunted by both a devil and an angel.

I used to wake up screaming, terrified of those iron claws gripping my soft body, his jaws full of gleaming razor-sharp teeth parting to devour me, long tongue snaking out.

Now? If I can’t escape, if I never see Azarel again… at least I know there’s an end in sight. Without Azarel’s protection, the monster I have endless nightmares about will find me eventually. He’s out there somewhere, even now, hunting me. I can feel his approach in my very bones.

With any luck, he’ll take out my new captors in the process.

The creak of a distant door snaps me out of my morbid thoughts. The thump of heavy boots echo down what sounds like a long corridor, growing louder with each passing second. My muscles tense involuntarily, fight-or-flight instincts kicking in despite my body’s sluggish response.

A face appears in the small window of the cell door. Scarred. Alpha. Female. But gender doesn’t matter. All alphas are the same.

All but the one I might never see again.

The lock clicks and the door swings open. I manage to scoot back on the cot, my limbs finally cooperating enough to put some distance between us. It’s not nearly enough.

The alpha strides in with a metal tray. She’s wearing a battered black leather trench coat that brushes the tops of her steel-toed boots, and the leather is faded in patches as if someone tried to bleach stains out of it over the years. And succeeded, but at what cost?

‘Well, well, well,’ the alpha drawls. ‘If it isn’t sleeping beauty looking all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.’

I glare at her, willing my eyes to burn holes through her face. And judging from the looks of those jagged scars extending from either side of her smirking lips all the way up to her ears, someone else has already given it a respectable attempt. The smell of whatever slop is on that tray makes my empty stomach churn even more than her awful alpha scent.noveldrama

Burned motor oil.

How is that even a scent a person can have?

But even when it’s the usual smoky pine and wet dreams and sandalwood bullshit half of them smell like, the revulsion is instant. It’s an almost allergic reaction my body has to every alpha’s scent.

Well, not every alpha.

‘What’s the matter? Still not in a chatty mood?’ she asks, her raspy voice grating on my nerves.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ I spit out.

Her lips twist into a grin that makes her look like a hyena, stretching the scars in the corners of her mouth. ‘And here I heard the great Arthur Maybrecht’s daughter was a prim and proper little housewife.’

I snort, raising an eyebrow. ‘I am when I’m in the company of civilized people. Not criminal trash.’

To my confusion, she lets out a loud, hearty laugh. ‘You really don’t remember your old pal Lex, do you?’

Old pal?

I search my foggy memories, but come up empty. How the hell did I get here?

Lex clicks her tongue, setting the tray down on a rickety table by the door. ‘Guess I lost that bet. Thought for sure the lifeless doll routine was an act.’ She shrugs. ‘But Jamie was right. Three days is a long time to keep it up, anyway.’

‘Three days?’ I whisper, more to myself than to her. Has it really been that long? Assuming she’s telling the truth, anyway.

‘Give or take,’ Lex says, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms. ‘You’ve been in and out. Well… mostly out. Had us worried for a bit there.’

I scoff. ‘I’m sure you and your merry little band of omega traffickers were all beside yourselves with concern.’

‘Hey now,’ Lex says, holding up her hands in mock surrender. Her palms are badly scarred, like she wrapped her hands around a hot iron. Judging from the burned motor oil smell, maybe she did. ‘Flesh is about the one thing Nikolai doesn’t trade in.’

“And who the hell is Nikolai?” I demand, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Is that who those bastards sold me to?’

Lex’s face twists into a confused frown, but the frown smooths out as quickly as it appeared. A low chuckle rumbles from her throat. ‘Oh, you’ll find out tomorrow night. He should be home by then.’

I curl my lip at her. This alpha gets under my skin more than most, and that’s saying something.

‘In the meantime,’ Lex continues, gesturing to the tray, ‘you’d better eat up. Wouldn’t want your daddy to think we’ve been starving you.’

A weird flicker of hope sparks in my chest. Are they… giving me back?

No. It can’t be that simple.

Nothing ever is.

Lex’s eyes drift over my body, lingering on my curves. ‘Hate to see those curves waste away,’ she adds.

The spark of hope is replaced by a familiar surge of anger. I force myself to my feet, ignoring the way the room sways. My legs feel like they’re made of lead, but I manage to stumble over to the tray.

Without hesitation, I grab it and dump its contents all over Lex’s boots. Some of it splashes on her coat, too. Good. She can ruin it with even more bleach.

For a moment, she just stares. I brace myself for the blow I’m sure is coming, but instead, that obnoxious laugh fills the small space again. She kicks the tray away, sending it clattering across the floor.

‘Careful, now,’ Lex warns as she turns to leave. ‘Keep showing those claws and Nikolai just might decide to keep you.’

The cell door slams shut behind her, leaving me alone with that ominous statement echoing in my ears.

Who the fuck has me now?

The lights flicker out, plunging me into darkness. Lex probably turned them off out of spite. As if that’s supposed to scare me.

At least I don’t have to look at the toilet anymore.

I slump against the wall, sliding down until I’m sitting on the cold concrete floor. My stomach growls, reminding me that I just wasted what might have been my only meal for who knows how long. I’m certainly not going to eat off the floor.

But the satisfaction of seeing shock on an alpha’s face is always worth it.

I close my eyes, not that it makes much difference in the pitch black of the cell. I’m used to the darkness. If there’s one thing that makes me feel a twisted kinship with the monster who haunts my dreams, it’s that. We’re both creatures who came from the dark.

For a brief moment, I had a glimpse of the sun with Azarel. But deep down, I’ve always known I’d return to that darkness eventually.

And when I do, the monster will be waiting.