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

I try to ignore the hollow ache in my chest as I sprint through the tunnels, focusing instead on finding my way out of this labyrinth. Geo’s security system is good, but I know all its weaknesses. I helped design half of them, after all.

Not even once.

Nikolai’s words echo in my head, cutting deeper than they have any right to. I grit my teeth, pushing the memory aside. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters except finding Cosima.

My moonlight goddess.

My mate.

She’s close. I can feel it. The same inexplicable pull that drew me to her at the airfield is stronger now, tugging at something deep in my chest. Logic tells me it’s impossible, but rationality isn’t a sin I’ve ever had on my conscience.

Heavy footsteps echo behind me. Nikolai must finally be catching up after freeing himself. Imagining how much of a dumbass he probably looked like when he had to reach for those keys with his arms still bound soothes the sting of my own humiliation, but only a little.

Asshole.

Movement ahead catches my eye. One of Geo’s guards rounds the corner, gun raised. ‘Freeze!’ he shouts, but his hands are shaking. Poor bastard probably drew the short straw.

‘Sorry,’ I mutter before launching myself at him.

The confusion barely has time to register in his expression before I duck under his arm and drive my knee into his stomach, following up with an elbow to the back of his head as he doubles over. He drops like a sack of potatoes.

‘Still pulling your punches, I see,’ Nikolai drawls from behind me while I’m picking a gun off the unconscious guard’s body. He quickly snatches the second one out of the holster under the guard’s shoulder.

I spin around just as another guard appears. Before I can react, Nikolai’s stolen gun barks twice. The guard crumples, red blooming across his chest.

‘What the fuck?’ I snarl, rounding on him. ‘You didn’t have to kill him!’

Nikolai arches an eyebrow, that infuriating smirk playing at his lips. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘Geo would have ordered them not to use lethal force,’ I snap.

Before he can reply, three more guards appear, guns blazing. Nikolai curses and dives for cover as bullets pepper the wall where his head was a moment ago.

‘Yeah, maybe not on you!’ he shouts over the gunfire.

Shit.

He’s right.

I spot a metal pipe running along the ceiling, probably part of the ventilation system. Without thinking, I leap up and grab it, using my momentum to swing forward and kick the nearest guard in the chest. He goes down hard, his gun skittering across the concrete floor.

The second guard turns his weapon on me, because apparently he didn’t get the memo about the princess treatment, but I’m already moving. I drop from the pipe and roll, coming up inside his guard. A quick strike to his throat has him choking and stumbling backward.

The third guard takes aim at Nikolai, who’s pinned down behind a stack of crates. I grab the fallen guard’s gun and throw it, catching the man in the temple. He drops with a satisfying thud.

‘Now we’re even,’ I call out to Nikolai. I brush the gunpowder off my shirt and turn to keep going. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him emerging from cover.

‘I didn’t need your help,’ he growls.

‘Right,’ I drawl. ‘You had it completely under control.’

His eyes narrow dangerously. ‘I did.’

I weave through the familiar tunnels, my boots barely making a sound on the concrete floor. The path to Geo’s office is burned into my memory from countless late nights spent wandering these halls when I couldn’t sleep, but I try not to think about that.

Just like I try not to think about the other alpha following close behind me.

‘Left here,’ I mutter, more to myself than him.

‘You seem to know your way around,’ Nikolai remarks, his voice dripping with that infuriating smugness I remember all too well.

I roll my eyes, not bothering to look back at him. ‘Of course I do. I lived here.’

‘Ah, right.’ His tone sharpens. ‘You left my operation for this dump.’

‘Better than your tacky supervillain lairs and your merry little band of degenerates,’ I snap, ducking around a corner just as gunfire erupts behind us from one of the other corridors.

Nikolai dives after me, returning fire with practiced ease. ‘At least my men can shoot straight,’ he sneers as two guards drop.

‘They’re under orders not to kill me, you insufferable prick.’ I grab a piece of pipe from a nearby maintenance cart and hurl it at another approaching guard. It catches him in the throat, sending him sprawling. ‘Unlike yours, who’d shoot their own mothers for a pat on the head.’

‘Some people value loyalty,’ he shoots back. ‘And once upon a time, you put a high premium on my approval. Does that grumpy old bastard know you’re going to turn on him eventually, too?’

‘Shut up,’ I snarl, my fingers itching to wrap around his throat. Or maybe just shoot him. Starting to think Geo had the right idea about that all along. ‘You don’t get to talk about him.’

But Nikolai, being the insufferable bastard he is, just smirks. ‘Then again, he betrayed you first, didn’t he?’ His voice drips with mock sympathy that makes my blood boil. ‘Locked you up and even collared you. Just like old times, wasn’t it?’

I whirl on him, shoving him against the wall hard enough to make his wounds bleed through his shirt. ‘Geo is trying to protect me in his own obnoxious way,’ I snap, getting right in his face. ‘At least he doesn’t use his bark to control me.’

Something dangerously close to guilt flickers in his eye, but I know better than to think he’s capable of that. It’s gone in an instant, anyway. ‘You made your choice,’ he says bitterly. ‘I just helped you along. Face it, little bird. You traded one cage for another.’

My fist connects with his jaw before I can stop myself. The impact sends pain shooting through my knuckles, but it’s worth it for the way his head snaps back. Blood trickles from his split lip and I feel a surge of savage satisfaction.

‘Don’t you fucking dare call me that,’ I seethe. ‘And you don’t get to compare yourself to him. Not when he’s the one who helped put the pieces you left me in back together. If Geo wanted to control me, he wouldn’t have trained me to resist other alphas’ commands.’

‘Did he?’ His eyes glitter viciously. ‘Then why did you drop like a good little omega when I commanded you at the airfield? Seems like all that training he gave you didn’t take.’

His words are like a slap across my face. Because he’s right. All those years spent building up resistance, all Geo’s careful work… and I still folded like wet paper the moment Nikolai used his bark.

I thought I had backslid completely, but I was able to withstand the doctor’s command easily enough.

So why the fuck is Nikolai the exception?

But before I can respond, gunfire erupts from the end of the tunnel. We both dive for cover behind a stack of crates as bullets pepper the wall where we were standing.

‘We don’t have time for this shit,’ I growl, checking my ammunition.

Three rounds left.

Fucking fantastic.

Nikolai peers around the corner, returning fire with his stolen gun. ‘For once, we agree on something.’

We agree on more than that.

Omegas, too, apparently.

Because fate isn’t done fucking with me.

More guards pour into the tunnel, their boots thundering against the concrete. I risk a glance and count at least six of them. Not great odds, even for us.

‘There’s a maintenance shaft two corridors over,’ I tell him, already plotting our escape route. ‘It leads straight to the upper levels.’

‘After you,’ he says with mock courtesy.

I flip him off before darting out from cover, laying down suppressing fire with my last few rounds as I sprint for the next tunnel. I’m better at killing people than intentionally trying not to hit them, but the last thing I need is to hear Geo bitching for the next ten years that I took out a favorite guard.

I’m pissed, but not quite that pissed.

Nikolai follows close behind, his presence at my back both familiar and unsettling.

Just like old times.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

Everything about this feels like stepping back in time. Running through hostile territory with him at my side, trading barbs and bullets in equal measure. It would be so easy to fall back into old patterns.

But I’m not that person anymore.

I’m not his little bird, desperate for approval and affection he’d sooner die than give in full. I have someone who actually cares about me now. Even if he shows it in the most aggravating ways possible.

And I have my mate.

Even if she doesn’t know it yet.

‘This way,’ I call out, skidding around another corner. The maintenance shaft is just ahead, its rusty grate barely visible in the dim lighting.

But as we approach, I hear voices echoing from above. Familiar voices.

And a familiar scent. The same one that’s been guiding me throughout this whole chaotic, suicidal quest.

My heart stops.

‘That’s her,’ I breathe, already changing course. ‘She’s in Geo’s office.’

Nikolai freezes, his eyes narrowing. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘You’re telling me you don’t smell moonlight?’ I challenge. ‘That’s her scent.’

He hesitates, then his eyes go wide as he scents the air. ‘Fuck. What the hell is she doing here?’

‘I don’t know,’ I mutter, turning to head in the last direction we should be going. But if Cosima is here, I’m not leaving without her.

And something tells me Nikolai won’t, either.

Before I can even make it to the end of the hall, armed guards block the route and I have no choice but to halt in my tracks, fresh out of bullets. But despite Nikolai standing right beside me, none of them fire.

When the guards part to make room for the man who signs their checks, I realize why.

‘Geo,’ I seethe.

He looks at me, then at Nikolai with a sneering twist of his mouth. Then he looks back to me. ‘So you slipped your cage. Should’ve known better than to send in a fucking alpha,’ he mutters with a sigh, dragging a hand down his face and shaking his head.

My heart nearly stops as Nikolai raises his gun, but I don’t hesitate. I throw myself between him and Geo before he can pull the trigger. The cold metal of the barrel presses against my back as I spread my arms wide, making myself as big a target as possible so neither side can fire without going through me.

‘Move,’ Nikolai snarls—almost a bark—but I can hear the strain in his voice. The slight tremor that tells me I was right. He won’t shoot through me. Or bark. Interesting.

Guess that risk paid off.

‘No,’ I say firmly, meeting Geo’s eye over the sights of the guns trained on us. ‘I’m fucking done with this bullshit. All of it.’

Geo’s expression darkens. ‘Behave yourself,’ he growls. ‘Or you won’t get your present.’

I freeze, my heart skipping a beat. ‘Present?’ The word comes out more hopeful than I intend. ‘Cosima? You brought her here?’

So my nose wasn’t lying to me out of desperation.noveldrama

‘It’s complicated,’ Geo says dryly. His remaining eye studies me with that infuriating mix of exasperation and fondness I know so well. ‘Do you want to see her or not?’

The gun barrel digs harder into my spine as Nikolai tenses behind me, but I feel the subtle click of the safety going back in place and hear him cursing softly in Vrissian.

‘You know I do,’ I mutter. ‘Call off your dogs first.’

Something in Geo’s expression shifts. He stares at me for a few moments before heaving a beleaguered sigh. ‘Stand down,’ he orders his men. Then, to Nikolai, ‘You too, Vlakov. Take the gun off my boy, or this reunion’s over before it starts.’

My boy.

Even though I know he means it in the boring, non-kinky sense, it makes my spine go all tingly and for a moment, I almost forget how fucking enraged I am at him for collaring me and putting me in a cage.

Almost.

For a long moment, no one moves. I hold my breath, hoping I haven’t miscalculated. Hoping that Nikolai’s hatred for Geo doesn’t outweigh the same obsession for Cosima I feel, if we really did somehow both end up matched with the same omega.

Finally, slowly, the pressure against my back eases.

The gun clatters to the floor.

Geo’s men move forward immediately to retrieve the weapon. When they reach for Nikolai’s wrists with cuffs, though, I step between them.

‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘No restraints.’

The guards look between me and Geo. He works his jaw in frustration, but he shrugs it off and turns back the way he came. ‘She’s this way,’ he grumbles. ‘Unless her pet monster’s chewed through my men in the time I’ve been gone.’

I stumble slightly. ‘Pet… monster?’

‘She’s with the Knight?’ Nikolai demands, his voice sharp with disbelief. ‘That thing didn’t eat her?’

Geo barks out a harsh laugh. ‘Eat her? She’s got the damn beast on a leash. Does whatever she says.’

I exchange a bewildered look with Nikolai, momentarily forgetting our mutual animosity. The memory of that massive, terrifying alpha tearing through Nikolai’s men flashes through my mind.

And my moonlight goddess has him with her?

This is going to be interesting.

Or deadly.

Probably both, like everything else.