A row of omegas stood in leather paramilitary wear. To the side, men sat like obedient beasts, wearing black blindfolds and spiked choker collars in strict obedience. The building itself was a small warehouse with some spare medical equipment and weapons.
The woman who looked like Wren stepped forward to analyze Killian. After shining a light into his eyes, she butted the rifle against Killian’s cheekbone, sending him hollering to the floor. Lucas watched, numb to it all.
“I stitched your wounds. Where is she?” Wren asked.
“Your guess is as good as ours,” Lucas said.
Again, she raised the butt of her rifle, but Lucas quickly braced for the shattering impact. Strangely, it didn’t come.
“Vash?”
Killian grunted and wiped the blood from the raised wound. “He left. Went to the barracks, but he’s MIA.”
“Off to find the mother,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?” Killian said.
Wren turned and flagged four men forward. “I don’t know what to do with them yet.” She walked through a set of red curtains.
“Hey, don’t you fucking leave!” Lucas screamed.
The blindfolded men snickered. “Great,” Killian sighed. “We’re stuck with these freaks now.”
“Maybe they’ll let us live,” Lucas said.
Again, the men laughed. “Who’s the omega?” Killian asked.
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.
“He will stretch over it the line of desolation and the plumb line of emptiness,” Lucas whis
pered.
“What did you just say?” Killian asked.
Lucas shook his head and inched his arms back into a more comfortable position. Slumping to the floor, he swayed to his side. “Her eyes were blue. Wren’s are hazel.”
Hours passed until “Wren” stepped out of her tent. Face strained with thought, she motioned for the men to step away. Finally, she pulled up a chair and sat down. “We are the Kali, the last men and women willing to fight for the Republic. We’ve initiated the first sequence of four. Very soon, every major city will forego their supremacy. Dagon was the first, and so far, we’ve taken three coastal ports.”
“You will lose this fight,” Lucas said. “Cassian wields far too much might.”
“Cassian has restrained himself for the girl,” she said.
“The girl. You mean, you,” Killian muttered.
She locked her lips together and bit the inside of her cheek. Clicking the bed of her tongue against the roof of her mouth, she paused, face turning a deep shade of red.
Finally, she threw them a key. “Wren is my twin sister,” she said. “My name is Ruby. We were separated at birth.”
Lucas quickly unlocked his wrists and allowed the imprinted skin some air. Killian did the same.
“I was born defective,” she said, quite simply.
Wren’s sister stood up and walked to the alphas, unafraid. Her leather body harness reflected against the pale light. “If I were to explain, you wouldn’t be able to follow. Even now, seeing a woman leading a pack of men. It doesn’t compute, does it?”
Killian grinned. “Explain.”
“I am from the same facility, born in the same artificial womb as my sister. But I was born with a weak womb. He sold me to a group of rebels in the south as payment for a feud,” Ruby said.