It had started with whispers. Exchanged gossip overheard by the higher-up's wives over brunch, a gathering of anxious parents at the school gate as the whispers trickled down from the ever-listening ears of servants. Then people started going missing, more reports creeping onto the evening news, flyers littering the streets a constant reminder all was not well. A few weeks later the testing began. With little warning apart from a few news reports, hordes of soldiers swarmed schools, blood samples forcefully taken from children as young as 4, university campuses transformed into walking med centres.
Outrage sparked violent protests, which acted as a smokescreen for the other increase in violent crime, the violent kidnappings of both men and women, the increase in gang prevalence and the increase in hospital patients suffering fever and severe abdominal pain, the increase of domestic abuse. Curfew was put in place, schools segregated into Male and Female in order to stop the violence that seemed to suffuse the very air, that seeped into every corner of society.
The protests stopped abruptly once the broadcasts began. The violence paused in an unnatural way. The streets became bare, the only faces to be seen were those on the old missing posters that stared out from lampposts with haunted eyes. No one missed the first broadcast that occupied every screen in the country and linked together the snippets of truth that the abundance of rumours held.
The day the broadcasts began, was the day everything changed. The day the broadcasts began, was the day that Evolution started again. The day the broadcasts began was the day a whole nations fate was sealed.
Lana listened with a rapt intensity as she finished listening to her grandmother speak of the before time. Nothing had changed about that; the one constant of her life was that she always ALWAYS wanted to learn more about what had happened. About why from a little girl she had been shunted from place to place, with a new hairstyle every few weeks. About why they'd had to leave her mother behind. She sighed and stood, kissing her grandmother's cheek as she left the room. Maybe it was best not to dwell on the past, her life was as it was, and hiding was her life.
Dreaming of a past where she would have been at university by now, of where she would have had scars on her knees from falling off a bike instead of being hunted down by dogs, would not help her situation. She snorted at that thought, as she walked along the narrow corridor to her own room. Dogs, I wish it were dogs that hunted me down, multiple bite marks were better than that one dreaded claiming bite.
Her fingers automatically traced the curve of her neck where her shoulder joined, feeling the goose bumps that had formed on her skin at the thought of sharp teeth tearing into her tender flesh during a heat.
She had been 14 at the time and had been out fetching supplies. Technically it was less fetching and more sneaking as she had slipped off to get a cake for her grandmother, to celebrate her 65th birthday. All was fine getting to the store. It was even fine inside the store; the manager didn't look twice at the girl in the scruffy chuck tailors and the knee length summer dress. It was fine exiting the store; one of the guys hanging about outside, as teenage boys are bound to do, even held the door for her so she could carry the cake out with ease. She was in the carpark of the store, a summer breeze brushing against her bare legs, her smile broad from carrying the chocolate cake she had bought and thinking how happy her grandma would be when things suddenly became the opposite of fine. She'd just finished walking past the group of youths when the fever had started, and every eye from the group had zeroed in on her retreating back.
She'd stumbled not knowing what had caused the sudden sweating in her palms or on the back of her neck when the first cramp kicked in, her thighs suddenly becoming sticky. She continued walking quickly forward on wobbly legs, towards the highway she'd heard the first growl and the smack of a fist hitting flesh. She'd dropped the cake from suddenly numb hands and started to run, vaulting the small fence and pounding along a back road.
She'd broken several rules that day. First, she'd gone alone. Second, she'd not let anyone know where she was. The third rule she broke was the worst; she'd looked behind her. Lana closed her eyes against the memory, the cake being squished into warm tarmac by the gang of males all growling, eyes dilated and focused on their target; her.
She'd tripped over when she'd seen that sight. Tripped when she'd seen the bloody shirt of the teenaged boy in the lead. Tripped at the sight of the body on the ground behind them, oozing blood onto the summer sun warmed tarmac like the cake oozed chocolate filling.
She'd scrambled back up immediately, leaving blood from her torn hands and knees and worse, drops of her slick on the pavement below her.
She got up and continued running, ignoring the pain, ignoring the moisture between her thighs. Her belly had dropped as a car had come out in front of her blocking the way and she had stumbled again her brain freezing in place. The door had opened, and her grandmother had been there, and she'd run. Her grandfather had rolled down the window and the muzzle of his gun had peaked through the window before firing. She'd heard a body drop, and a few seconds later another shot and a howl of agony. She'd dived headfirst into the car, over her grandmother's lap and the door slammed behind her. She'd glanced behind her as the car squealed away, noticing more bodies on the ground. Her grandfather had been an Alpha Male even before the Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamic has existed. A ferocious protector with a terrifying aim to match, he protected his family to the very end. The headless bodies had faded in her vision as it sought out the bloody shirted teen of its own accord. Unlike some of the others who were still chasing after the car he was hunched down, fingers trailing through her blood and the drops of her slick. He's looked up then and their eyes had collided as he'd brought his fingers to his mouth and licked her essence. She'd sworn she'd heard his growl as his gaze became heavy lidded, the spark of lust and possession in his eyes evident even as she'd been driven away.
That had been the start of her first heat. It had very nearly ended in her being claimed by one stranger, if not torn apart by the rest in a mating frenzy.
It had taken 3 days to break, and 4 weeks til her grandfather would speak to her again. She'd had 4 more heats in the past 8 years, and only because those were unavoidable. Black market heat suppressants were rare and were becoming more so now that the government was becoming stricter on their production and monitoring the omega population. She lay on her bed wrapped in her blankets to try to keep the memory of her first heat at bay. She'd suffered through every heat alone, locked away, not daring to go out to find an alpha or beta to fuck her through it.
And through every heat the blue green eyes of the teenage boy had haunted her.
She shivered and looked at the calendar on her wall. It had been almost 2 years since her last heat and next month her heat suppressors would run out.
Here she faced a quandary. With her grandfather now dead, she only had her grandmother to depend on to look after her during and after her heats. Whilst still fierce as ever in her battle to keep her granddaughter safe, at the age of 73 the toll of the struggle had started to show.
They had to move straight after each heat Lana had had; despite their best efforts there was no way to stop the scent of it suffusing into the tight spaces their homes usually consisted of. This meant it would cling onto any clothing in the vicinity and if they went out in public carrying the scent, well, their carefully concealed existence would have been for nothing.
She decided then and there that she would not move her rapidly deteriorating grandmother from the relative safety of the cabin they called Home.
She had a month to decide where she would have her next heat, and how she would care for herself during and after. Just thinking of her grandmother trying to move Lana, who would be exhausted and unable to do much but sleep and eat, and all their worldly possessions half way across the country was enough to make her stomach drop. They had been careful the previous times yes, but part of not getting caught was pure luck. And now with only 2 of them left, their luck was sure to run out soon. If her grandmother was caught moving an Omega, despite being one of the first herself, she could be publicly executed as an example.
Lana shivered again in horror and stood up from the bed, moving towards her desk. There was one folder on it that contained everything Lana needed to know about the outside world and the dangers that existed for her and her grandmother.
First was an article dated the day her grandfather had died. "Rogue Alpha shot dead in standoff, takes 6 government officials with him". She traced her fingers over the photo of her grandfather. It was grainy from a security photo, but he still looked like how she remembered. He'd been moving the last of the things out of the place she'd had her last heat in when the feds had turned up. She knew they'd have tried to take him alive, to try and find the omega who had left her scent all over the small apartment, but he had refused. He felt he had failed his daughter, but he would never fail his granddaughter. The article said he'd tried to burn the place to the ground but didn't succeed. It then continued to go on about the dangers of "hoarding omegas" and how resisting always ended in heartbreak and death. She snorted, "hoarding omegas". That was one way to call what a man who protected his wife, daughter and granddaughter from being attacked by Alphas, or taken from him to be sold for either "a mate" which consisted of being a glorified broodmare to a rich alpha, or kept by the government for study, did. There was a small section at the bottom on his life in the "before time" as her grandmother called it. He had been a horse trainer, with his own company which had stables all over the country. All of that he'd given up to protect them all. Her grandfather had loved them more than life itself, and he'd looked at his wife like the sun rose and set with her.
Lana pushed the article aside and turned around, grabbing her jacket from the floor. It was time to find a place where she could go into heat safely, privately and alone. She was her grandfather's daughter, never having known the beta who was murdered by an alpha whilst he tried to get to her in heat mother, and she would protect her grandma with her last breath.