Omega:

Twilight bled into morning. Sunlight whispered through the city canyons. The dog crouched, hidden behind the statue of an angel, a stone memento of forgotten faith. False light splashed through the forest of tombs. Humans. Voices called out to one another, seeking solace in their aloneness, in their confusion. They centered around the dead man, still sprawled on the ground, bloody and torn, his life spent in violence.

Omega hid from the humans. He was alone. His mate and his pack were safe, waiting back in a shadowed alley. He lifted his nose and sniffed the indigo sky. A few stars still colored the heavens, blinking, winking, fading. The coming day was only a promise, slow and hesitant to reveal itself.

And yet, he could smell it. Here. Somewhere. Sunshine.

He closed his eyes and took another deep breath. Fragrant. Beautiful.

The smell of love.

He opened his eyes, analyzed the breath-of-heaven perfume. She had been here, somewhere. The woman. The one human who loved him. The woman who had fed him, who had knelt beside him and stroked his fur through the cage bars. The woman who had tears in her eyes every time he shocked back to life. The woman who had set him free and told him to run and never come back.

She had been here. He needed to see her again. The desire flowed through him like hunger. He needed to find her. In some secret way she belonged to him. She was his. She was part of his pack.

But the other humans were here now. Cutting and slicing the dark morning with their beams of light and their frightened voices.

Just then a moment of silence descended. The humans all grew strangely quiet when one of them picked some whirring metallic toy off the ground. They all gathered together in an anxious huddle, murmuring, playing with the toy, then glancing over their shoulders.

Omega grew weary of the humans and their smell of fear. It hung like acid in the air, sharp and demanding. But he didn’t want to respond. The only thing he wanted was to find the woman.

And she wasn’t here right now.

So he rose from his hiding place and padded off.

Back into the velvet blue.