Page 10 of Ruined Omega

God, he’s huge.

Even standing one step below me, his face is still above my eye level. He chuffs and shakes his head like an angry wounded animal.

“Source,” he grunts, rubbing at his eyes. “Source, that fucking burns.”

I’m acting on pure instinct now. I know I need to take advantage of his distraction and pain to put some distance between me and him, so I lash out, kicking him in the chest with my high-heeled shoe. I think my plan was to knock him off balance, make him fall down the stairs.

But it’s like trying to kick a pillar of stone. His body doesn’t even budge.

Plan B. I need to get inside.

While the giant is still growling and rubbing his eyes, I drop into a crouch, and search for my keys. My panicked fingers scramble through the contents of my handbag, which are now strewn all over the concrete stoop. I frantically brush aside lipstick, hand wipes, spare credits. My panic mounts.

At last, my fingers light on my keys.

A pulse of relief surges through me.

I stand and face the door. My clumsy fingers fumble with the jangling key chain, searching for the right key. Why the hell do I have so many of these damn things?

Behind me, the attacker snarls.

I find the right key. It takes my trembling hands three tries to find the keyhole and drive it home. I turn it.

The door swings open, and I rush inside.

My breath is coming in quick, shallow gasps.

But before I can shut the door behind me, something slams into it hard. Something big and heavy. The metal door buckles with the impact. It swings wide, smashing against the inner wall. A giant body forces its way inside, capturing me in an impossibly strong grip and pressing me back against the wall.

“Be quiet.” The voice is deep, bestial. It rumbles straight through my body. “Don’t struggle.”

I open my mouth to scream, but an oversized palm clamps over my mouth, silencing me.

“I said be quiet.”

Still keeping me pressed hard against the wall, the man toes the door shut with his boot. Now I’m truly trapped. Completely cut off from the outside world. Alone with a strange and dangerous man.

This is it then. This is how it ends.

I can only hope he makes it quick.

Here in the buzzing fluorescent light of the corridor, I finally get a good look at my killer.

He is massive.

I already knew that when I saw him outside, but now, towering over me and completely invading my space, I realize just how huge he really is. His body envelopes mine completely.

His face, however, is strange. Not like a normal man’s. His bone structure is heavy and angular, as if it has been carved from solid stone. His hair is jet black and pulled back into a short ponytail. His skin is deeply tanned, and it accentuates the glacial blue of his intense eyes, which are still raw and red-rimmed from my pepper spray.

And his bottom lip—the only soft part of his hard face—is pierced in the middle with a steel ring. That’s strange…I’ve seen piercings like that before.

Suddenly, another sensation hits me.

His smell.

It’s overwhelming. Leather and wood-smoke and a pungent animal musk that completely envelops my senses like an invisible cloud. It’s a scent I’ve encountered before, when I still worked for SynerGen.

This man is an Alpha. And a handsome one at that.