Page 60 of Run Wild Omega

The wait begins.

Forty minutes in, my phone starts buzzing.

I ignore it the first three times. Then Miles reaches over and picks it up, glancing at the screen. His expression darkens.

“You need to see this,” he says, holding the phone out to me.

The screen is filled with notifications. Texts, missed calls, voicemails. I scan the names—Kyle, Ben from the station, numbers I don’t recognize.

I open a text from Kyle.

Cap, you need to check the news. It’s bad. There’s a video.

I click the link he sent.

It loads slowly, the hospital Wi-Fi struggling. Then a video fills the screen—drone footage, shot from above, shaky and pixelated. The timestamp reads yesterday evening, right around the time the avalanche hit.

I see the mountain. I see the ridge. I see the slide—a massive wall of snow barreling down the slope, consuming everything in its path. And there, right at the edge of the debris field, I see three tiny figures moving against the white.

Us.

The drone tracks us as we dig through the snow. I can see myself, a dark speck against the white, my arms moving frantically. I can see Dylan and Miles flanking me. And then I see the moment we pull her out—a limp, pale shape lifted from the snow.

The video cuts. A news anchor replaces it, a woman with perfectly styled hair and a somber expression.

“—dramatic footage captured by a tourist’s drone has gone viral overnight, racking up over four million views in the last twelve hours alone. The footage shows the rescue of Tess Hartwell, a twenty-seven-year-old Omega and guide with Sweet Creek Adventures, after she was caught in an avalanche on North Ridge during yesterday’s record-breaking storm.”

The screen cuts to footage of a different rescue—helicopters, a body bag being loaded into an ambulance. The anchor’s voice continues.

“This comes just forty-eight hours after the death of base jumper Maxwell Webb on Quandary Peak, when his chute failed to deploy. Webb’s death sparked a wider conversation about the safety of extreme sports in the Colorado mountains, and now Hartwell’s rescue has added fuel to that fire.”

The screen changes to a panel discussion. Four talking heads sit around a table, and the chyron beneath them makes my blood run cold.

“RECKLESS OMEGA ALMOST DIES: DO UNBONDED OMEGAS NEED LEASHES?”

I feel Dylan lean over my shoulder. His breath catches.

One of the panelists—a smug-looking man in a blazer—is mid-sentence. “—the question nobody wants to ask is whether an unbonded Omega should have been allowed on that ridge in the first place. We know their judgment is compromised without an Alpha’s guidance. Their biology makes them impulsive, emotional⁠—”

“She was doing her job,” another panelist shoots back, a woman with red glasses. “She’s a certified mountain guide. She had every qualification⁠—”

“Qualifications on paper mean nothing when her hormones are calling the shots,” the first man interrupts. “We’ve seen this pattern before. Unbonded Omegas taking unnecessary risks, chasing the thrill-seeking behavior that their biology drives them toward. It’s not a coincidence that both Webb and Hartwell were⁠—”

“Webb was an Alpha,” the woman snaps.

“He was also reckless. And now he’s dead. And this girl nearly joined him.”

The video cuts again. Comments flood the screen, and I feel sick as I scan them.

She knew the storm was coming. Why did she go up?

Another Omega who can’t control herself. Sad.

If she had a proper Alpha, this never would’ve happened.

Unbonded Omegas are a danger to themselves and everyone around them. It’s time for legislation.

My tax dollars paid for that helicopter rescue. Disgusting.