Feral Omega: A Dark Reverse Harem Omegaverse Romance (Ghost Alpha Unit Book 1)

I wake with a start, my eyes flying open as consciousness returns in a disorienting rush. For a few giddy moments, I can’t place my surroundings—the harsh fluorescent lights, the clinical scent of antiseptic, the steady beep of a heart monitor.

Then it all comes crashing back in a wave of dizzying clarity.

The mission. The firefight. Valek and the sniper’s nest. My desperate flight through the frozen wilderness.

Wraith.

My breath catches in my throat as fractured images from the past few days flicker through my mind. The bone-deep chill of that icy cave, the hulking shadow keeping silent vigil over me. Those pale, merciless eyes boring into mine as he tended to my wounds with clumsy gentleness.

I shudder, the memories vivid enough to raise gooseflesh along my arms. Wraith was like something out of a fever dream, a living nightmare cloaked in shadow and menace.

And yet, he saved me. Sheltered me from the punishing elements, shielded me when the others came hunting through the blizzard.

My hand drifts to the thick dressing swaddling my bicep, the ache deep and throbbing. A constant reminder of just how close I came to oblivion out there in those merciless peaks.

A rustle of movement draws my gaze, my pulse kicking up a notch as Plague emerges from the shadows.

‘You’re awake,’ he rumbles, that deep rasp sending an unexpected shiver racing down my spine. ‘How are you feeling?’Published by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

I blink at him, struggling to marshal my scattered thoughts into some semblance of coherency. ‘Like I got shot in the arm,’ I mutter, cringing at the raw edge to my voice.

Plague chuckles beneath his eerie mask. ‘Lucky for you, you still have an arm,’ he says dryly. ‘If that wound had gone untreated much longer, you might have lost the whole thing.’

A tremor works its way down my limbs at the thought. He’s not wrong—the agony radiating from that ugly furrow is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Like someone took a hot poker and rammed it straight through flesh and bone.

Shoving aside the thin blanket, I move to swing my legs over the edge of the cot. ‘Where are we?’ I rasp, fighting a sudden wave of vertigo as the room tilts sickeningly around me. ‘Back at the compound?’

‘Not quite,’ Plague says, already crossing to my side with long, purposeful strides. ‘We’re in the oligarch’s mansion. I set up a temporary clinic here until I could get you stabilized enough to move.’

He leans in, light eyes narrowing behind those burnished lenses as he studies me with a clinical intensity that has heat blooming in my cheeks. I tense instinctively, every muscle coiled like a wire as he takes off one leather glove and reaches out to press the backs of his fingers to my forehead.

‘You do seem to be running a fever,’ he muses, his thumb tracing the sharp line of my cheekbone with a tenderness that does not at all match his bloodthirstiness. ‘Odd. It should have broken hours ago.’

I swallow hard, mouth suddenly dry as cotton. My tongue darts out to wet my lips, the innocuous gesture seeming to ensnare his focus.

Those golden lenses track the movement, that rich scent thickening in the air between us. Arousal, heady and intoxicating. I breathe it in, the scent flooding my senses and stoking the embers kindling inside me.

Oh no.

Not now. Please, not this…

‘I need to sit up,’ I grit out, fighting the wave of dizziness crashing over me.

Plague moves to assist, those long-fingered hands sliding beneath my shoulders to guide me upright. The contact is electric, every brush of his skin against mine igniting fresh sparks of blazing need.

My stomach clenches, a low moan escaping my lips before I can stop it. Heat blows through me in a scorching wave, liquid fire pooling between my thighs.

Plague freezes, that predatory stillness falling over him as realization dawns. ‘Ivy,’ he rumbles, voice pitched low with a gravelly edge I’ve never heard before. ‘Are you going into heat?’

I whimper, fingers twisting in the thin sheets as my body revolts against me. Every nerve is a live wire, every brush of fabric sheer torment against my oversensitive skin.

This can’t be happening. Not here, not with them…

Memories of the Center assault me, twisted flashes of sneering guards and cold, clinical ‘procedures.’ I was just a thing to them, an object to be used and discarded, my heats nothing more than a fresh torment to be endured.

But here, surrounded by alphas—by Plague—the terror is laced with something darker, more primal. The promise of pleasure and pain, of sweet surrender and the loss of everything that makes me who I am.

‘Ivy.’ Plague’s voice cuts through the haze, his fingers curling around my chin to tilt my face up to meet the blank golden stare of his lenses. ‘Look at me.’

I obey the gentle command, frozen. His alpha scent swirls thick and heady between us. I’ve only ever experienced an alpha’s bark as a brutal, self-serving command, but as simple as this one is, it fills me with… relief. Some of the tension seeps from my muscles, the heat building beneath my veins becoming a little easier to bear.

There’s no menace behind his command. No cruelty, no condescension, no dark promise of violence to come. Just a strange sort of reverence, a hushed awe that seems out of place on this hardened killer.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he murmurs, the words a rasping caress that sends goosebumps rippling across my skin. ‘Not like they did.’

A shudder wracks me at the implication, the memories clawing at the edges of my consciousness. He knows. Somehow, this twisted, ruthless alpha has glimpsed the horrors of my past and promises to shield me from them.

‘Please,’ I whisper, fingers curling in the coarse fabric of his shirt as I lean into his solid warmth. ‘Make it stop. I can’t… I need…’

Plague’s free hand comes up to cup my cheek, those calloused pads tracing the line of my jaw with infinite tenderness. ‘I can’t stop it completely with a suppressant—not with the other medications already in your system.’ His voice is a low, smoky rasp that seems to vibrate in my very bones. ‘But I can ease the fire, if you’ll let me.’

I nod mutely, too far gone to protest, to cling to the shreds of dignity and pride I usually wrap around myself like armor. The need is too great, the desperation too all-consuming.

Plague rumbles low in his chest, the sound sending fresh shivers racing down my spine. Slowly, with aching tenderness, he lowers me back onto the thin mattress and begins to strip away the clothes I was already clawing at, without even realizing it. The heat seems to grow each second and the fabric becomes a torturous prison.

I tense at first, my instincts screaming at me to fight, to flee. But he soothes me with murmured reassurances, his touch light and reverent as inch by inch, he bares my overheated flesh to the cool air, taking extra care with my arm.

When I’m finally naked beneath him, he pauses to simply look. To drink in the sight of me, as if committing every dip and curve to memory.

‘So beautiful,’ he rasps, the words little more than a worshipful exhalation.

His hands roam—one gloved, one not—tracing patterns of delicious torment across my feverish skin. The contrast between the leather and his skin is maddening. Each caress stokes the inferno raging through me higher, the pressure building to an aching crescendo.

And still he denies me what I need.

‘Plague,’ I whine against his lips, writhing helplessly beneath him. ‘Please, I can’t… I need…’

‘Shh,’ he soothes, running a circle around the hardened peak of my nipple with his thumb. ‘I know what you need. Just let me take care of you.’

My fingers grip his shirt as he maps a scorching path down my body. I want him to take off the mask, to kiss me, to press his naked body against mine and devour me whole, but even though all he’s doing is touching me with one ungloved hand, he’s eliciting feverish sensations from my body with clinical precision.

A soft purr rumbles in my throat before I can stop it. It’s jarring, since I can’t remember the last time I purred, but not quite enough to make me put the brakes on.

“What a lovely sound,” Plague murmurs as the heat roars through my veins like wildfire, each featherlight caress of his long fingers feeding it.

My back arches, a desperate whimper escaping my lips as he torments me with maddening precision. He knows just where to touch, just how much pressure to apply to keep me teetering on that razor’s edge between agony and bliss.

I’ve never actually wanted an alpha to touch me before. Even in the throes of heat, the pain is always so much sharper than the pleasure, but this is… different. It hurts, there’s still a deep, gnawing ache in the pit of my stomach begging for relief, but rather than amplifying it, his touch soothes it. Only temporarily, only for as long as he’s in contact with any given spot, but still.

This is new.

‘Please,’ I beg again, fingers twisting in the sheets as he continues to circle my nipple with his thumb. The friction is exquisite torment, the barest brush of his skin against mine enough to make my toes curl.

He rumbles deep in his chest, the gravelly vibration sending delicious shivers racing across my oversensitive nerves. ‘Patience, Ivy,’ he rasps, leaning in. ‘Let me take care of you properly.’

Those sinful fingers trail lower, tracing the curves and valleys of my body with a tenderness that seems at odds with the ruthless killer I know him to be. He maps every inch of my fevered flesh, as if committing the terrain to memory through his touch alone.

When he finally reaches the slick heat between my thighs, I cry out—a broken, desperate sound ripped from the very depths of me. He chuckles darkly, the rasping purr seeming to reverberate through my very bones as he parts my folds with agonizing slowness.

‘So wet already,’ he murmurs, voice pitched low with that same hushed reverence. ‘Such a good girl.’

The words should shame me, should have me recoiling in outrage at being addressed like a pet praised for a trick well-performed. For rolling over and showing my belly. But from his lips, they’re pure sin given sublime voice, and I can only whimper as he circles my entrance with one blunt fingertip.

‘Look at you,’ he rasps, pulling off his mask to reveal eyes full of the same dark desire I’ve so thoroughly succumbed to. He takes the tip of the glove on his free hand between his teeth and tears it off, and I’ve never envied a piece of fabric so much in my life. He trails his newly ungloved hand up my body to cup my breast and roll the hardened nipple between his fingers. ‘The way you writhe in desperation is poetry in motion.’

I moan, arching helplessly into his touch as he finally—finally—breaches me with one long finger. The stretch is pure bliss, every nerve ending aflame with sweet, burning ecstasy as he works me open with excruciating care.

‘More,’ I beg, hips rolling in a frantic bid for deeper penetration. ‘Plague, please…’

‘Shh,’ he soothes, thumb finding my swollen pearl to tease tight, maddening circles around the bundle of nerves.

‘That’s it,’ he croons. ‘I’ve got you, little omega. Let me have all of you.’

I moan again, back bowing off the mattress as he curls his fingers in a come hither motion that has stars bursting behind my eyes. He swallows each desperate sound with a hungry kiss, his free hand roaming to tease and torment every last inch of my trembling flesh.

Plague’s touch ignites every nerve ending, my body a livewire of sensation. His fingers work me open with exquisite precision, stroking places inside me I never knew existed. Each caress sends shockwaves ricocheting through my core, building and building until I’m trembling on the knife’s edge of release.

‘That’s it,’ he rasps against my throat, teeth grazing the sensitive skin there. ‘Let go for me, little omega. Show me how good it feels.’

His thumb circles my clit faster, pressure increasing until I’m thrashing, writhing beneath him. The coil of tension in my belly winds tighter and tighter, ready to snap at any moment.

‘I can’t,’ I whimper, overwhelmed by the intensity of it all. ‘It’s too much, I⁠—’

‘You can,’ Plague growls, curling his fingers inside me. ‘And you will. Come for me, Ivy. Now.’

His command shatters the last of my restraint. I cry out, back arching off the bed as my orgasm crashes over me in a tidal wave of white-hot ecstasy. My inner walls clench around his fingers, milking them as wave after wave of utter bliss rocks through me.

Plague works me through it, drawing out every last tremor until I’m limp and gasping beneath him. Only after he coaxes me back down does he withdraw his fingers, bringing them to his lips to lick them clean with a low growl of appreciation.

He leans over me and his lips ghost over mine, butterfly-soft and somehow more intimate than anything else he’s done to me so far. I taste myself on his mouth, slightly musky and sweet.

‘That’s my good girl,’ he murmurs against the corner of my mouth, the rough pad of his thumb brushing away the damp tendrils of hair clinging to my flushed cheeks. ‘Just breathe.’

I do, gulping down ragged breaths as the fire inside me finally banks to a low, smoldering ember. The ache is still there, that delicious tension humming through my core, but it’s less torturous.

At least for a moment.

I’m still struggling to catch my breath when the heat starts to rise again, and while his ministrations took the edge off…

It’s not enough.