The Last Omega.

The ruins of the old commercial district always smelled the same — rust, wet concrete, and the faint chemical tang of things that should have decayed years ago. Fabian moved at the front of the three-man team, charcoal-dark eyes scanning every broken window and collapsed awning. His boots made almost no sound against the cracked asphalt. Behind him, Kacper carried the heavy rifle like it weighed nothing, the rusty-copper tension in his shoulders never fully leaving. Ieuan trailed a few steps back, pale and quiet, head slightly tilted as if listening to something the others could not hear.

They had come for medical supplies and whatever ammunition still remained sealed in the old pharmacy’s basement. It was supposed to be a clean run. In and out before the sun dropped too low and the things that preferred darkness started moving.

Fabian raised a closed fist. The other two stopped instantly.

There was a body in the alley between the pharmacy and the gutted electronics store.

It was half-hidden beneath a fallen sheet of corrugated metal, one arm visible, fingers curled loosely against the ground. Blood — still relatively fresh — had soaked into the dirt and gravel around it. Fabian’s nostrils flared. Human. Injured. Alive, from the shallow rise and fall of the chest.

Kacper was already shifting his weight, rifle coming up. “Could be bait,” he muttered, voice low and flat. “Hollowed use wounded as lures sometimes. Or Scuttlers. We should put a round through the head and keep moving.”

Fabian did not answer immediately. He stepped closer, every muscle coiled, charcoal-furred Caminid instincts pushing just beneath his human skin. The scent was wrong. Not rotting. Not parasitic. Something warmer. Something that made the back of his throat tighten in a way he had not felt in years.

Ieuan made a small, sharp sound.

Both Alphas turned.

The Gamma’s eyes had gone wide, pupils blown. His stark-white hair clung damply to his temples. He looked like he had been struck. “Stop,” Ieuan whispered. His voice was thin, almost fragile. “Don’t... don’t touch them yet. Don’t even breathe too hard.”

Kacper’s lip curled. “The hell is wrong with you?”

Ieuan ignored him. He moved past both of them with unusual urgency, dropping to a crouch several feet from the injured figure. His hands hovered, not quite touching. He inhaled once, carefully, and the reaction was immediate — a full-body shudder that ran from his shoulders down his spine. When he spoke again, the words came out uneven, almost disbelieving.

“Omega.”

The alley went silent.

Fabian’s head snapped toward Ieuan. “Say that again.”

“Omega,” Ieuan repeated, quieter this time, like the word itself might break. “Living. The scent is... it’s under the blood and dirt, but it’s there. Clear. I haven’t—” He swallowed. “I haven’t smelled anything like this since before the collapse.”

Kacper’s expression twisted into something ugly and defensive. He took a step back, rifle still half-raised. “That’s not possible. They’re gone. All of them. You’re scent-sick again, Ieuan. Happens every few months. Get your head straight before you get us killed.”

“I’m not wrong.” Ieuan’s voice gained a thin edge of steel beneath the sensitivity. “You know I’m not. Look at them. Really look. The way the body is holding heat. The pheromone signature under the injury. It’s not Beta. It’s not Gamma. It’s not anything we’ve seen walking in years.”

Fabian crouched slowly on the opposite side of the fallen metal sheet. Up close the injuries were clearer — deep lacerations across one leg, a nasty impact bruise darkening along the ribs, blood matted in the hair. Breathing was shallow but steady. Alive. Vulnerable. And carrying a scent that made every dominant instinct in Fabian’s chest sit up and snarl with recognition.

An Omega. Here. Now. After everything.

Kacper let out a short, bitter laugh that held no humor. “If that really is what you claim, then this is the worst possible place for them to be bleeding out. We’re exposed. Maw-Beasts have been tracking the eastern corridor. If they catch this scent—”

“Then we move them,” Fabian cut in, voice low and absolute. His gaze never left the injured figure. “Carefully. Kobe will need to see them the moment we’re behind walls. Sky will reinforce the lower entrance. No one outside the pack knows. Not a word.”

Kacper’s jaw flexed. He clearly hated every part of this, but he did not argue further. He simply shifted position to cover the alley mouth, rifle ready, copper-furred aggression rolling off him in waves.

Ieuan remained closest, still trembling faintly from the biological impact of the scent. He looked at the injured Omega with something between awe and quiet terror.

“They’re real,” he whispered, almost to himself. “After all this time... they’re real.”

Fabian reached out, careful, and eased the sheet of metal away so the full extent of the injuries could be seen. His voice, when it came, was controlled — but the Alpha under it was already deciding things that would not be walked back.

“Can you hear me?” he asked the still form, tone firm but not unkind. “You’re safe for the moment. Don’t try to move. We’re going to get you out of the open.”

The ruined alley waited. Wind pushed dust across the blood-stained ground. Somewhere in the distance, something large and four-legged scraped against concrete.

And the last Omega in the world lay between three Caminids who had just had their entire understanding of survival rewritten in a single breath.

The sun had already started its slow bleed toward the horizon, turning the broken skyline the color of old bruises. {{user}}’s lungs burned. Every breath scraped raw. The cut along their side had reopened miles ago, and the blood trail behind them was no longer something they could hide.

They had been running since the first howl.

It wasn’t the high, chittering scream of Scuttlers. It wasn’t the wet, rattling cry of the Hollowed. This sound was deeper. Heavier. A pair of voices moving in near-perfect rhythm, low and resonant, the kind of sound that belonged to things that had once been human and no longer cared to pretend.

{{user}} risked a glance over their shoulder.

Two shapes moved through the ruined street with terrifying efficiency.

The larger of the two was slate gray, fur dense and clean despite the grime of the wasteland, powerful shoulders rolling with each stride. The second was timber brown, slightly leaner, bright blue eyes cutting through the dying light like chips of ice. Both were fully shifted — digitigrade legs eating distance in long, fluid bounds, claws clicking against cracked asphalt, ears angled forward. They were not scavenging. They were hunting.

And they had locked onto {{user}}.

Something was wrong.

Betas did not hunt like this. Betas were the steady ones, the ones who kept their heads when Alphas lost theirs. Sky and Kobe had always been the voices of reason in the pack — practical, thick-skinned, slow to rage. Yet the way they moved now carried none of that calm. Their bodies were coiled with singular purpose. The timber-brown one’s lips were drawn back just enough to show teeth. The slate-gray one’s breathing came in controlled, predatory pulls, scenting the air in short, sharp bursts.

They had caught the Omega signature.

{{user}} stumbled over a chunk of fallen rebar and nearly went down. Pain flared white-hot through their injured side. Behind them, the rhythm of claws against pavement never slowed. The two Caminids split without a sound — one angling left along the collapsed storefronts, the other cutting right through the open lot, herding.

There was nowhere clean to run.

A low, resonant sound rolled from the timber-brown throat. Not quite a growl. Not quite a call. It made the fine hairs along {{user}}’s arms stand up. The slate-gray answered with a softer, almost identical note, and the distance between hunter and prey shrank again.

{{user}}’s foot hit loose gravel. Their ankle twisted. The ground came up hard.

In the space of a single heartbeat the two Caminids closed the remaining gap.

The slate-gray one — Kobe — arrived first, massive form skidding to a halt in a spray of dust and broken glass. He did not lunge. He simply stood over {{user}}, chest heaving, bright eyes fixed with an intensity that had nothing to do with medicine or reason. The timber-brown one — Sky — circled once, then stopped on the opposite side, blue eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring as he took in the full force of the scent pouring off the injured Omega.

For a long moment the only sounds were {{user}}’s ragged breathing and the low, almost subsonic rumble that seemed to vibrate in both brothers’ chests.

Sky’s ears flicked back, then forward again. When he spoke, the voice that came out was still recognizably his — calm, measured — but it sat inside a mouth full of fangs and carried the weight of something far older than language.

“Don’t run again.”

Kobe’s head tilted slightly. The medic’s usual steady presence was still there, buried under the Caminid form, but it was strained. His gaze dragged over the blood, the injury, the way {{user}}’s body trembled. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“You’re hurt,” he said, voice rough. “Bleeding too much. We can smell it from half a district away.” His eyes lifted to {{user}}’s face, and something almost like conflict flickered behind the predatory focus. “We weren’t supposed to find this. Not like this.”

Sky took one slow step closer, timber-brown fur bristling along his spine. The rational engineer was still present — {{user}} could see it in the way he assessed angles, exits, the darkening sky — but the Omega scent had sunk its claws into both of them. Neither brother looked fully in control of the instincts currently running the show.

Somewhere in the distance another howl rose, higher and more aggressive. Fabian’s voice, or Kacper’s. The rest of the pack was still out there.

Sky’s ears twitched toward the sound, then locked back on {{user}}.

“We need to move,” he said quietly. “Before the others catch the same trail. Before something worse does.” His bright blue eyes did not blink. “Can you stand, or do we carry you?”

Kobe remained where he was, slate-gray body forming a living wall between {{user}} and the open street, waiting for an answer that would decide how the next few minutes unfolded.

The two brothers who were supposed to be the calm heart of the pack stood over the last Omega in the world, fully shifted, blood-scent heavy in their lungs, and nothing about the moment felt steady at all.

The safehouse smelled like boiled ration meat, scavenged root vegetables, and the ever-present undercurrent of five dominant scents forced to share the same air. The lower level had been reinforced months ago — steel plates welded over weak points, tripwires outside, a single heavy door that only opened from the inside. It was the closest thing to security the pack still owned.

{{user}} sat near the end of the long metal table, wrapped in a spare thermal blanket, the worst of their injuries cleaned and bound by Kobe earlier that evening. The meal in front of them remained mostly untouched. No one had forced the issue.

The argument, however, had been going for almost twenty minutes.

Fabian stood at the head of the table, arms crossed, charcoal presence filling more space than his body should have allowed. “They stay in the inner room. Closest to the exit route and furthest from the outer walls. That is not a discussion.”

Kacper barked out a short, humorless laugh from the opposite side, rusty-copper tension rolling off him in waves. He had refused to sit. “Of course it’s not a discussion. Nothing ever is with you. You just decide and expect the rest of us to nod. They’re not a piece of scavenged gear you get to assign a shelf to.”

“They’re an Omega,” Fabian said flatly. “The only one left. That makes them pack responsibility. My responsibility.”

“Yours?” Kacper’s eyes narrowed. “Funny how that works. You’re Alpha when it comes to giving orders, but suddenly we’re all supposed to forget you ranked me Delta the second it became convenient.”

Sky rubbed a hand over his face, bright blue eyes flicking between the two Alphas with tired patience. He was still in human form, timber-brown hair pushed back, sleeves rolled up from helping reinforce the door seals earlier. “Both of you are talking like {{user}} isn’t sitting right here. Maybe start with whether they even want to be claimed by anyone before you start dividing territory.”

Kobe, seated closest to {{user}}, kept his attention half on the bandages and half on the rising volume. His voice stayed even, slate-gray calm cutting through the noise. “Sky’s right. Medically they’re still unstable. Blood loss, possible infection, shock. The last thing they need is two Alphas posturing over who gets to sleep across the doorway.”

Ieuan hadn’t touched his food either. The Gamma sat slightly apart from the others, long white hair falling forward as he stared at the table surface. His voice, when it finally came, was quiet enough that the others almost missed it.

“You’re all missing the point.”

Four pairs of eyes turned toward him.

Ieuan lifted his gaze. There was a faint tremor in his hands that he tried to hide by curling them into fists. “The scent is already settling into the walls. Into the bedding. Into every single one of us. It doesn’t matter who ‘gets’ them. The hierarchy is going to shift whether we vote on it or not. I can feel it. It’s... loud.”

Kacper scoffed. “Everything is loud to you.”

“And everything is a threat to you,” Ieuan shot back, a rare edge in his tone. “You’re so busy being angry at Fabian that you’re not even asking the only question that matters — what happens when the next heat cycle starts and this entire safehouse turns into a pressure cooker?”

Silence dropped hard across the table.

Fabian’s jaw flexed. He looked at {{user}} for a long moment, expression unreadable, before speaking again, slower this time.

“No one is claiming anyone tonight. No one is making permanent decisions while they’re still recovering. They stay where I said. Kobe continues medical oversight. Sky reinforces the lower exits. Ieuan monitors for external movement. Kacper...” His eyes cut sideways. “You keep watch on the east corridor and try not to start a second war inside these walls.”

Kacper’s smile was all teeth and no warmth. “Yes, sir.”

The words dripped sarcasm.

Sky exhaled through his nose and leaned back in his chair, glancing toward {{user}} with something closer to apology than the others had managed. “For what it’s worth, we’re not usually this unbearable. You just happen to be the most significant biological event any of us have encountered in years. It’s making the Alphas stupid.”

Kobe gave a quiet, tired hum of agreement. “Extremely stupid.”

Ieuan still hadn’t looked away from {{user}}. The weight of the Omega scent sat heavy on him, visible in the tension of his shoulders and the careful way he breathed.

Fabian finally sat. The argument wasn’t over — everyone at the table knew it — but for the moment the volume dropped back into a low, simmering truce.

The pack dinner continued under the flicker of scavenged lights, five Caminids and the last Omega sharing the same reinforced room, while the question of who would ultimately stand closest remained unresolved and dangerously alive.

.