Not the Other Alphas

The moment shatters. 

Rough fangs bury into the scruff of my neck. There’s an earsplitting roar, as I’m hurled back at least fifty feet away from the Edge. The adrenaline dissipates, as I crash into the snow. The momentum takes me another twenty feet back. 

And I’m nothing but a sopping-wet, weak Omega once again. 

The Alpha is upon me within seconds. Gold flashes. 

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

I laugh, the moment I see the twisted expression marring his face. He pins me down to the snow, a massive dark figure swallowing up my tiny, white body. His rage is unmistakable. And I laugh, knowing that I’m the one who drove him to this point. 

“Why,” I say, laughing still. “Scared that you’re going to lose your only hope of sleeping well at night, Alpha?”

I had nothing to be afraid of anymore. 

But then the sheer fury in his golden eyes fades, the longer he looks down at me. It turns into something like pity. And the moment I see it— myself, reflected in the pools of his eyes—

I lose it. 

Don’t look at me like I’m some unhinged, weak little thing. 

“Don’t touch me.”

I spit at him. It hits him straight in the face, but I’m still not satisfied. I lift my wet claws and drag them roughly down the front of his chest. It leaves lines of thick blood amidst midnight fur, but he doesn’t even flinch. 

Instead, he only lowers his body further down over mine. 

“I said get the hell away!” 

I scream. I thrash in his grip, shoving into him as hard as I can. But he doesn’t move a single inch. My blows must feel like cotton pads to him. Because all an Omega can do is cry. Because that is all I can do. 

But I cannot cry. Not in front of him. 

“Not until you calm down,” He whispers. “Breathe, Omega.”

Calm down?

I roar. His words bring another fresh storm brewing, over the exhaustion already there. The Alpha’s blood runs thicker, into the snow. My howls echo and dissipate into the empty winter air. 

All an Omega can do. 

“Are you done?” He breathes, as my soaked paws drop uselessly into the snow. My chest rises and falls with uneven, broken gasps. I don’t know what will be the thing that kills me first— the exhaustion or the humiliation. 

“You’re going to regret this.”

“Regret what?” He asks, and I don’t even have the strength to put the snap I want in my voice. I just breathe out the words and hope they connect. 

“You’ll regret taking me back. Make me sing. Fine, whatever. But I swear— I swear that the moment you slip, I’ll be there to shove my claws straight down your throat. Or into your eyes. Whatever does the most damage.’

“You’ll regret this moment when the next place you wake is hell.”

He sighs. The sound of it blends and twists with the winter wind. 

“Omega.”

“Do not do this in front of the others.”

I scoff, turning my head to the side. Even moving an inch feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But enough time has passed for me to regain a bit more spark. 

“Do what? Talk trash to you? Or claw you until you bleed? Specify.”

“Resistance,” He echoes. Then he bends, leaning over me. I instinctively flinch when his tongue runs over a scar I’d torn open on my cheek while thrashing so hard under him. 

I shove his head away with a swipe of my ragged paw. 

“Why? Scared to show how weak you really are to the other wolves?”

“Packs are often not loyal to an Alpha built from blood,” He murmurs. “The moment an Alpha shows weakness, they will exploit it ruthlessly. Either by direct challenge or harming you, Omega.”

His fangs flash, for a brief second. “I wouldn’t want to kill all of my warriors. Especially my Beta.”

What was he trying to say?

“What are you trying to do?”

“So you’re letting me talk to you this way? When we’re alone?” I say, half-incredulous and the other half-spiteful. “I’m the lowest-ranked wolf in the pack and you’re going to let me treat you like this?”

My voice shifts into sarcasm as I recall a time when the Senna Alpha had backhanded me hard enough for my jaw to dislocate. It was when I’d accidentally given his pup something that he was allergic to. No one had told me. And I was just trying to give the kid a treat. 

His eyes are so gold that it’s unsettling. It makes me ramble. 

“I should have my throat slit for just looking at you the wrong way,” I hiss. “Because that’s just what Alphas do to Omegas. It’s always been that way.”

His body tenses. 

“I am not like the other Alphas.” He says. And I see the blood darkening a rivulet down a strip of his matted fur. It’s from one of the good blows I’d gotten in earlier. “All you have to do for me is sing. And I will make sure that not even the Beta will be able to treat you as he pleases.”

Not even the Beta. His violet eyes, promising murder, flicker in the back of my mind. 

“Sing,” He repeats, softer. 

“That’s all you need to do.”