The dreams felt like premonitions. Vash, lost in the middle of the cobalt seas of Dagon, flailing and gasping for air. Her arms wrapped tightly around her belly.
Every night, she’d watch him drown, the life dragged out of him before he hit the shoreline. When she could touch him, he was a deep shade of blue. The more she shook his rigid body, the more dead he became.
“Please,” she whispered. “You have to believe me. Something terrible is happening.”
Silently, Killian placed his hand against the underside of her belly. He firmly pressed and analyzed the movements. “This hurt?” he asked.
Wren shook her head. The shocks were more than physical pain. It felt like the walls inside her were giving out.
“Explain the pain to me,” Killian said.
Wren searched for the right words to use, but she couldn’t explain it. She simply knew it to be true. “If you can’t help me, I will find someone who will,” she said.
Exhaling low, Killian sat down behind her. Slowly, he kneaded the tight clumps of muscle. “Vash will be back any day now.”
She tensed and pulled away. Reaching behind her neck, she felt the subtle teeth imprints. “I need all of you during this process,” she said.
“Killian is right,” Lucas said. “Any day now.”
Wren sucked in a breath and swallowed. More shocks reverberated through her insides. “I need a doctor,” she said, very carefully. “The babies… they will die.”
Killian stopped massaging. “We examined you to the best of our capabilities,” he said. “Everything appears normal.”
“Normal,” Wren repeated.
Lucas took her hands and squeezed. “Precious, the city is crawling with hoarders now.”
Wren closed her cracked lips together and nodded. “I know what can happen,” she said.
“One more week,” Killian said. “If he’s not back by then, we’ll seek a doctor.”
“We can’t wait that long!” Wren cried.
“Stop talking, or we’ll break out the cuffs again,” Killi
an said.
The tension eased inside her womb, but it would be back. The alphas could not understand the strong intuition pregnancy offered an omega. Calmly breathing through her flared nostrils, she came up with a new plan.
“Okay,” she said. “Fine. A week.”
“You got yourself a deal, Precious,” Killian said, smiling.
She wrapped herself in guilt as the alphas realigned her bedding. They kissed her as she left, and she seemed to inhale their scents with stronger passion.
She couldn’t stay in the house any longer than she had. As important as her rest was, she knew the alphas couldn’t understand her forewarning. Her dreams painted a picture for her; one she felt obligated to follow.
She was still missing something. Like a ghost pain, she felt the absence grow inside of her.
Wren waited for the night to wrap over their heads like a warm blanket of deception. She knew where her gun was. Knew how to sneak past the sleeping alpha bodies. And once she was outside, she made sure the weapon was loaded and left.
She walked over the ruinous landscape and wondered how many wars were fought just so she could get to that moment. In some ways, history really worked that way. Was it possible she was the answer to the world’s suffering?
The hardest things seemed to fall on her back, but she was ready for them now. Her time as a captive made her aware of certain rhythms that seemed to guide the world. She could feel the earth’s pulse. All of these perceptions might have been falsely identified. There wasn’t any concrete science to them, as far as Wren was concerned.
Yet, time and time again, she proved herself right. She knew there was something more to her story, that she had a destiny. She’d sensed it the moment she talked to the other omegas in the facilities. The others were empty and devoid of imagination, but her—she was everything to so many people.
She embraced her intuition with a strong and confident attitude. She wasn’t immortal, but she was incapable of failure. The quiet pasture of land eventually led into a wasteland of eroded tools of energy extraction. Large fences enclosed the area, and the sea’s curling foam could be seen in the distance.