"Wait," Isme cut him off. "I'm an alpha. Maybe I can help you."
The omega paused at that, a beat too long in which Isme almost said something to break up the pause. "I don't believe you," hissed Matthias. "No alpha would work a job like that. With humans."
He hung up again. Isme cursed. He knew he should dial again but all of his alpha instincts were screaming at him to do the stupid, reckless thing. The instincts that before, he'd just thought were borne from experience, from being good at his job, good in the field. His partner stared at him, judgment flashing in her eyes.
"Don't do it, Isme. Follow protocol."
"Sorry, I just can't this time. Sorry, Carmen."
"Isme. This isn't the way we do things."
He ignored her and walked quickly toward the front entrance. Police milled around Carmen and his radio buzzed with alarmed questions. Pushing open the door, a bell announcing his entrance startled him. He drew his gun. An omega spun toward him, carrying only a long hunting knife. His yellow eyes glittered, not unlike Jonah's, but with more ochre in them. There were three dead bodies at his feet, blood everywhere. His breath was ragged. His gaze tore into Isme's face. "You weren't lying." He choked back the words. "But you're different, somehow."
He raised the bloody knife and Isme pointed his gun straight for his skull. But he was only raising his arms in supplication. He sniffed the air, his nostrils quivering.
"You smell weird," he said. "Why did they send an unmated alpha to me?"
"They? What do you mean by they?"
"The Council," said the omega. "They're coming, aren't they?" The man faltered. His hair was long, tied in a ponytail. His frame was bony and slender. He wore a plaid shirt and drawstring pants that wore him. He reeked of something awful. Nothing like Jonah's ocean breeze-cinnamon-home smell. Something putrid. Like something had died.
"Why would they be coming?" asked Isme, still with his hands on the gun, his elbows straight.
"I killed my mate," sniffed the omega, but he didn't seem sad about it. He raised his chin. "Fucker had it coming. He had his fucking knot in me for ten hours straight. Got some kind of sick perversion out of torturing me. Now that fucker can't hurt anyone else."
"I'm sorry that happened to you," said Isme. "It's not right how omegas are treated. What did these people do to you?" He nodded to indicate the corpses on the ground.
"They got in the way," said the omega. "They were just there. I was trying to make it stop."
Isme didn't ask what he was talking about, this time. He felt they understood each other about what "it" was. "I cut myself sometimes," he said, his voice quiet, knowing he could be heard over the radios. "I want to make it stop, too."
"You won't make it stop until you make him your mate," the omega said, his voice small too. "Maybe your omega is a nice one."
Isme snorted at that. "I don't think the bond is very nice," he said. Red and blue lights pulsed reflections in the window behind him. "It's not love if it's forced."
"The bond doesn't force anyone to do anything they don't want to do," said the omega, still holding the knife, his shoulders shaking. Isme spotted an Asian woman with cropped hair and a dress with a sweetheart neckline looking at them from between shelves of canned peas. "People force themselves on each other. It's people who are corrupt, not the bond."
"Why don't you put the knife down, Matthias?" he said. "And we can talk Council ethics in a better place. A quiet place. Where we don't have to hurt anyone else."
"You're not taking me to them," he hissed, holding the knife out and stepping backwards in the pool of ever-increasing blood. "They'll just force me on a new, unbonded alpha. Someone crueler, maybe. Because omegas are so precious and rare. They won't even care what I did." He sneered the last part.
Isme's mouth went dry; he didn't know what to say to that. "What's your name?"
"Jace," said the omega. His voice was subdued, then, almost a whisper. "That's not the name they gave me, though."
"Okay. Jace," said Isme. The omega twitched. There was a trail of wetness running between his legs, thick and viscous, coating his pants. Isme kept staring at it, something tingling in his senses. It smelled different than the omega's body odor. Sweeter.
"It's slick," hissed the omega, backing away from him. "What kind of alpha are you if you don't know about that?"
"I'm an alpha who doesn't want to hurt you," said Isme quietly. "If you'll just put down the knife, and let these people go."
"You're an alpha," sneered the omega. "It's in your nature to hurt me."
At that, Isme quietly put his gun down on the floor, hands up, keeping eye contact with the omega the whole time. "See? No more weapon. I don't want to hurt you. Do you trust me?"
They paused for a moment, Matthias panting before he lunged for Isme. Mid-leap, Isme grabbed his wrist, wrestling with him for the knife. The man's wrist slackened and it clattered to the ground as he shed it to dive for Isme's gun. Isme heard the chatter on the radio again and pulled it off his hip to ask them to wait, but it was too late. A team of officers in bullet-proof vests burst through the door. If he weren't an omega, "precious and rare," Isme thought, then, stepping back from them, Matthias would be dead by now. The omega didn't make it to his gun before they grabbed him. Isme picked up his gun as he wailed, shoved out of sight.
The omega sobbed as they collected and bagged the knife and handcuffed him behind his back. But he pierced Isme with an angry glare as they dragged him away. "You'll just be like everyone else! You'll see! You'll see! Fucking alphas! You're all fuckers! You all deserve to die!"
His beta partner appeared at his side, and he finally rose to his feet. Bile rose in his throat. "What are they going to do to him?"
"I don't know," Carmen admitted, her blonde hair tousled and blowing in the breeze from the open door. The convenience store was ransacked. Isme stared at the bodies on the floor, the blood; his lightheadedness from earlier was gone. He holstered his gun. Carmen continued. "It's not our jurisdiction anymore."
"Oh?" he said.
"A Council agent's coming here to close out the scene," she said, cagey, stepping away from him. "I just thought... I just thought you should know."
"Why would that concern me?" He frowned, then, his hands trembling as he smoothed out his jacket.
She rolled her eyes. "I can't help you if you don't let me in, Isme," she said, and Isme went cold at that. "Why won't you tell me about your omega? He's unregistered, isn't he?"
Isme blew out an exhale through parted lips and squeezed his hands into fists in his pockets. "What makes my personal life any of your business?"
"When you're an alpha, it's everybody's business," she hissed. "You would know that if you knew anything about our ways."
He raised his chin. "I know the law, but I didn't grow up with a family who taught me all that stuff," he said, his voice small. "You know that, though. You know that much. I'm not courting an omega. I just have a friend. That's all."
"We'll see what the Council agent says when he gets here," shrugged Carmen. "You should expect a call, Isme. This is serious."
"Do I need a lawyer?" Isme raised his chin.
"I'm sure it won't come to that," she said. A cop's answer. He pinched his mouth.
"Thanks, Carmen."
"Good work in there," she said, changing the subject abruptly. "You were reckless, but you helped save an omega's life. I'm sure the Council agent will take that into consideration."
He smiled weakly at that, unease growing in his stomach. They finished documenting the scene and taking notes for their report over the next hour, but there wasn't much to do without tainting the scene for the Council investigators.
Isme and Carmen talked to the witnesses, though, while the events were still fresh in their mind. There were three of them, all shaken, all humans. One of them repeated the prejudices now swirling about omegas, which made him cringe. A skinny white guy with freckles and a hook nose. "It's true what they say, isn't it? Unmated omegas are violent and need to be kept in their place. This is just a prime example," he'd sneered. Isme had stiffened at that. Carmen had shot him a warning look.
After finishing up their work, he and Carmen said their good nights, a new coldness between them that he couldn't help but feel he'd hurried along by his own actions toward her in the last few months. He didn't let her in. He didn't let anyone in. Shaken, he pulled his phone from his pocket as exhaustion well and truly set in.
He dialed Jonah, who picked up immediately. His breathing sounded thick and ragged over the phone. "Can you come get me? We're in some deep shit here that I need to talk to you about."
"Coming. Pin me your location." They hung up, and Isme did just that. He paced along the sidewalk as he waited, the red lights pulsing behind him as a headache threaded along his temples. r
