Anarchy, p.35
Anarchy, page 35
My mind was strangely blank as the pack introduced themselves, barely perturbed by the state (and likely smell) of us. Ransom was the auburn haired alpha who’d been in the back seat with their omega. And the driver introduced himself as Dusk, the final member I didn’t know.
Shatter—I heard her announce to Crescent enthusiastically—had thick brown hair down to her waist, a backpack hanging from her shoulder, and bright eyes marking her gold pack.
I caught her scent—something dark. Made of a thousand ancient memories that scratched distantly at the walls of my mind, begging to come loose.
The scent they’d visited the vaults to ask me about.
I shoved those memories away as the host of the scent took form in a mousy omega full of tangible excitement, and far less fear for my blood-stained pack than she should have (she was currently shaking hands enthusiastically with Phantom.)
The omega in a lab gown with hollow cheeks and dull eyes, destined for things so much worse than death—she didn’t exist anymore.
Umbra nudged me, and I realized the others had all loaded into the van, which had more than enough seats for us.
“You brought her?” I asked, voice rough.
“That, Vandle—” Umbra nodded to Shatter who was shoving Ransom over a seat so she could take the one beside the door. “—Is a queen-bee omega. And if she wants to see the Vaults for herself, she sees the Vaults.”
I glanced at him. Another changed creature from the fragments of memory I had. With more colour to his skin and less hollowness in his eyes.
How long had it been since he’d visited me in that cell?
It had woken me up.
Hazy memories of feral insanity for who knows how many years preceded that visit. But desperate for information, Umbra had used her scent—one tied to so much pain—to wake me.
I don’t know how long I’d been in the vaults before that, but after he’d left, I had a second lease on life.
A second chance.
And with it, I’d asked to go to the floor in the vaults that had given me a chance at freedom.
I’d asked to go to Anarchy.
I opened my mouth to speak when Umbra voiced the words I’d been about to.
“Wouldn’t be here without you.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “None of us would.”
I stared at him, frowning, parsing through what he could mean by that.
“Without the information you gave us, we’d be dead and she’d be…” He trailed off, gaze lingering on Shatter, a shadow crossing it for a moment.
I remember so little of that conversation.
Just the scent of poison. The insanity. The way speaking to him had taken me back to a worse place than even the vaults: to the white walls and flickering lights of a centre where alphas came to die. To be animals. A place I’d survived only because a scientist had taken an interest in me, and how my eyes might affect the experiments done.
I took a breath trying not to let it drown me, catching Crescent’s golden eyes peering at me from the seats of the van, as if she’d sensed my tenseness.
I looked back at Umbra, who’d lived one of those stories, too. I held out my hand. “Even, then?”
The tension within the pack bond slowly unwound as the van took off down the highway.
Not completely.
I noticed Sin kept shooting glances through the rear window, as if expecting sirens to start blaring to drag us back.
Karma held Crescent in the crook of his arm. She was still shell shocked, but occasionally nuzzled his chin, and he’d calmed down further in the bond. Phantom was on her other side, and I was in the back row of seats with Sin.
I’d told myself I needed to hold on until we were safe, but now we were hurtling away from the prison, I still couldn’t take my hand from my side, pressing against my wounds occasionally to make sure I stayed alert.
The bandages, at least, were secured well, and there was no more bleeding to soak the seats of the van.
Time started to behave a little oddly, the world blurring occasionally, and the conversation around me jumping topics as if I was missing pieces.
At one point I felt warmth, and glanced up, eyes focusing on a hand pressed to my shoulder. Sin was steadying me. I think he’d said something.
“I’m alright…” My words were weaker than I’d meant.
“You want to rest…?”
I shook my head, though when I blinked, I was leaning against him. His arm had come around my shoulders to steady me.
From here, I could see into the rows of seats before me.
“I might have…” Shatter’s voice floated in. She was leaning over her seat, and rummaging in her backpack. I watched as a pencil case spilled onto the floor of the van. “Oh… bother,” she muttered, glancing up at Dusk. “We don’t even have snacks. I told you we should have packed more—”
“They said it was urgent,” Dusk snorted from the driver’s seat.
“It’s okay,” Ransom said. “We’ll get somewhere safe, then we’ll sort out food and clothes.”
“I did bring my spares…”
I heard a rummaging and the pull of a zip, and then Shatter leaned around the seat she was in to press a pencil case into Crescent's hands as if that was a very normal thing to do.
And what did I know? I’d never been a part of polite society.
Crescent stared at it for a long moment, and I could see worry flash in her eyes, as if she didn’t know what to do with it. But before anyone could intervene, she relaxed, a smile lighting her face as she unzipped it. She was handing back fistfuls of pencils and pens to a very startled Shatter before digging in her pocket.
Sin snorted as we watched her cram her heavy keyring into the pencil case, and force the zipper closed. I was surprised she’d managed to get through the process without having them confiscated, but apparently the presence of two omegas had sent all protocol out of the window.
“Do you need one?” Shatter asked, peering at Sin, who was beside me in the back row of seats. “I have extras.”
“I’m fine, but thank you,” he said. He returned to anxiously staring out of the back window, but I caught what I thought might be a pleased smile on his face.
He’d always kicked back at being too obviously associated with the title of ‘omega’ in Anarchy. Perhaps because he’d always known it wasn’t right, or maybe it was a matter of survival, but I wondered if out here, he might not be as rigid about the association.
“They can get you I.Ds and all that,” Shatter was saying. “They’re great at that.”
I forced myself to focus on that. “Wherever we end up, it’s got to be as far from the Institute as possible,” I said.
“Already getting it sorted,” Ransom said from beside her.
“Know all about that.” Dusk added. “They wanted us dead, dead for what we knew. We’re experts on keeping out of the Institute's sights.”
Umbra, up in the front passenger seat, nodded, eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror. “Did it for years.”
This pack had been a Hail Mary—the most recent attachment any of us had to the outside, aside from Crescent—but they might just be exactly what we needed. They knew what it meant to be used by the Institute and then tossed aside.
Those experiments that haunted me had been one story, Anarchy another—but now I was ready for the next.
That warmth I’d seen radiating from Umbra—an alpha who was impossibly whole despite everything he’d gone through—that was my next story, too.
PHANTOM
The silence was the strangest part.
It was a quiet I had forgotten. Even in the van, I’d felt it like a blanket of snow, as if the absence of something was a presence in itself.
I hadn’t realized until now that the endless howls and screams, the sound of distress from other creatures just like me, were small scratches, constantly reopening a wound I’d had for so long that I didn’t even know it was there.
It felt impossible, though, that I would get used to this quiet.
We arrived at a cabin deep in the woods, a twenty minute drive from the nearest small town. We hadn’t stopped on the way except to grab some fast food, so it felt odd to walk up to the massive, beautiful, wooden A-frame cabin with nothing in my hands at all.
It felt like a vacation home—something you’d approach with a suitcase or bag…
A few errant drops of rain cascaded through the broad canopy of trees above.
“This is yours, if you want it.”
I turned, staring at Ransom with bleary eyes as if I must have misunderstood.
“Ours?” My voice cracked with fatigue.
“We have one not far away,” Umbra added from the van. “Shatter and Dusk are finishing their studies in the city, but we used to live out here full time. Might again soon. But no one comes out here—it’s safe from prying eyes.”
I just stared up at it in blood-stained prison clothes, with nothing to my name but a pack, as Ransom kept speaking, but I couldn’t process all of it.
“…Sort you some new IDs—they won’t take long… anything you need for the nest, there’s a room at the top, a nice sunroom—all good options… five bedrooms in all, and a trail out the back… don’t know if any of you can drive, so we might have to organize something… be around in the next few weeks if you need anything.”
I nodded, though I didn’t pick up much.
Ransom clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll write it down,” he chuckled, then went to help the others.
I still stood, staring blankly, until the scent of ocean storm filtered into my senses.
Karma had joined me. He looked… confused, as he, too, stared at the house.
“I don’t… understand.”
“I think…” I said. “We got out?”
“I don’t know…” Karma muttered. “How do you think they fit a whole cabin down here?”
A chuckle rose in my chest, and he shot me a dirty look.
Still, that strange silence was deafening.
No… not quite silence…
I focused on the massive pine trees stretching above us. They swayed in the wind, rustling against one another, and there was a chorus of distant birds, bickering back and forth between the branches.
But no howls, or pain, or insanity…
Karma tilted his head, like the cabin might begin explaining how it had arrived in Anarchy in one piece.
We watched as Umbra and Sin helped Vandle up the steps. Crescent was clutching her pencil case against her chest, eyes wide, as she trailed them.
When they’d vanished through the doors, I tilted my head toward Karma. “You know, I don’t think it could fit in Anarchy.”
“Has to, or how could it be here?” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Hmm… Maybe in the square?
No, I decided. The silence was too much.
There was nothing that could make Anarchy this quiet. And that meant… “Well, while you try to figure it out, I’m going to go and claim the best bedroom.”
He straightened, eyes snapping right to me. Before I could say another thing, he was crashing past me and through the double doors of the beautiful wooden cabin.
And finally—finally, I think it hit me.
We… were out.
I’d spent a long time imagining what it might be like when we got out of Anarchy. There were a thousand obstacles—after tests and gruelling check-ins, we might be deemed stable. And then the old grind would begin.
Finding a way to stay above water.
Work.
Survival.
It would be easier this time—I’d have a pack at my back, and no crippling illness to make it all but impossible. It would be enough—it had to be enough.
When we’d found Crescent, though, those pathways had all seemed bleak and inadequate.
But this…
This was freedom from all of that.
A chance to be able to care for her—for the whole pack.
54
The Institute
An organization with the stated purpose of protecting alphas and omegas. They developed the injection administered to omegas, which renders them less volatile and ensures their alpha offspring are less unpredictable.
This alteration allows them to coexist more easily within the broader society of betas, leading to a reduction in the violence and animosity that, for so long, preceded the rejection, discrimination, and even eradication of Alpha-Omega populations.
‘Gold pack omegas’ and ‘rogue alphas’ (the alpha children of gold packs) are modern terms for those unaffected by the Institute’s injections. Before the Institute’s inception, and currently in the Global East, these individuals remain unlabeled, as they represent the natural presentation of the population.
The injection, alongside other experimentation on the Alpha-Omega population, has also led to developments such as the princess bond, and the more notorious dark bond—an unintentional consequence of attempting to rebalance bonds via the princess bond.
The Institute has stated that they no longer actively engage in the alteration or ‘betterment’ of the Alpha-Omega population.
SIN
We’d been free for a week, and things still felt surreal.
I kept waking from dreams where I was back in Anarchy—of the cool, damp air, the tenseness, stares of prowling alphas, the constant need to watch over my shoulder. Even when I woke, it took a few seconds to remember that the walls around me were wood instead of stone, that the safety wasn’t a trick.
The cabin felt like a kind of heaven, far beyond anything I’d ever dared to dream of. It had three floors—the top the smallest, with a single room tucked beneath the roof. The second floor held four bedrooms, and the main level was an open, beautiful space that let the whole pack exist together, with a large deck at the back.
A perfect house for a pack who had spent years trapped.
We had what we needed, at least for now. The Kingsman pack had stocked the fridge until it was almost absurdly full of meals, and Umbra had insisted on leaving us a lot of bananas and ice cream, which was great, but I wouldn’t have complained about anything after years of prison crap.
They were also organizing furniture and nest supplies for us—things for the cabin, and eventually for the garden, once we were ready to think that far ahead.
Leading out onto the wooden deck at the back of the cabin was a sunroom, half inside the house and half outside, with windows set into the ceiling. From there, you could see the forest stretching away from us, and at night the stars framed by dark branches. There was a hot tub just beyond it, steam rising into the trees when the air turned cold.
That was where Crescent had built the nest.
Our nest.
It was a perfect place for a pack that had spent so much time in prison. We’d barely touched the bedrooms, sleeping either in the nest or on the couches in the open-concept living room.
One morning, after having passed out to superhero movies Phantom was binging, I’d woken to the burning smell of Karma and Crescent trying to figure out how to make breakfast. As I blinked bleary eyes, tucked in lovingly with blankets and a few pillows, I saw Phantom stumbling from the nest, clearly having been woken too. I’d grinned as he’d barrelled into the kitchen to wrestle the frying pan from Karma before he started a fire.
We were all together in this beautiful place.
This was heaven.
Even the location was perfect. From almost every room in the home, there was a view of the trees outside. I loved it when it rained. The faint patter against the sunroom glass was deeply comforting, and in the main living space, Phantom kept a constant stream of ambient sounds or movies playing on the big TV. It was good. I needed the noise—I think we all did—but it mattered that the noise was something we chose, something we controlled.
During the day, we worked on setting up the house, which mostly meant building Crescent’s nest into something that felt permanent. Soft layers piled high, and string lights woven carefully throughout, their glow warm instead of harsh. She’d hung threads along the walls and attached to them were keys, charms, sunglasses, and other little objects she’d claimed as hers. There were also piles of hats, and she’d pick out a different one daily in case she had to go outside.
We’d added Karma’s art wherever there was space, splashes of colour that somehow fit perfectly. And for me, they found paintings and prints of nature—forests, skies, and oceans.
I was still working on how to nest. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but I’d buried that instinct for so long. For now, it was enough to watch Crescent work it out, to see her excitement as she found something perfect for me, or for her.
Of course, the first installation added to Crescent’s nest, was Vandle.
Her wounded alpha.
The Kingsman pack had sent someone over to check on him, and though the alpha hadn’t looked like a doctor with those piercings and tattoos up his neck, he stitched up the gashes and dressed them better than we’d managed. Then again, how unprofessional he looked was probably a blessing in disguise—the fact he wasn’t wearing a lab coat might have been the only reason Vandle let him touch.
The rest of us had mostly recovered with sleep, though we were still carrying a few scratches. The bruise on Crescent’s cheek was already fading, which was good—because every time I saw it, I felt like I might crack a tooth from how hard I clenched my jaw.
Vandle had been getting more frustrated by the night, though, as one (or more) of his packmates were relentlessly fucking Crescent into the sheets right beside him. He was forced to watch, tense and unable to join in because of his wounds.
So, she took the opportunity to explore something I knew made her nervous. But with her pack lead injured, she had more dominance over the situation, and I think that was what gave her the confidence to climb over him, and lower herself down between his legs.
She wanted me there, holding her hair back—maybe for comfort, or because of the guidance I couldn’t help but offer as I watched.
