by Aiden Bates
Darren came with a scream, clenching down around Blake’s knot, walls rippling, and Blake groaned against his mouthful and slowed his hand. He stroked his omega through until Darren was twitching with the too-much overstimulation of the touch. Gentle then, Blake turned them both so that they lay on their sides, an arm around Darren’s waist pulling him in close.
“That was…” Darren sounded like he was still trying to remember how to speak.
“Yes,” Blake said, nuzzling against the nape of Darren’s neck, because he knew what his mate was trying to say. He pressed a kiss to the place where bone arched under the skin. “I know.”
“I love you,” Darren said again, and this time it was soft and content, the urgency bled away with their coupling.
“And I love you,” Blake answered. He smiled against the skin under his mouth. “Always.”
Chapter Fifteen
They left for Silver Bay the next afternoon, Darren riding curled against his Alpha’s side, his head on Blake’s shoulder. He didn’t strain, this time, for any views, didn’t press against the window to try and find something that might jog his memory. He knew now who his parents had been. And he knew, now, that it didn’t matter. Because he wouldn’t change what he had. Not to have them back. Not for anything.
Four hours north, the house he and Blake had made their own over the last two years was waiting for them. The house, and the lake, and their son. And in six months, there would be another. A son or a daughter. Alpha, beta, omega. It didn’t matter. The child would be theirs, and loved. Kept safe.
Ahead, too, was the rest of their family. Blake’s parents, his brother, Nicholas, Morgan, even his uncle. All of them Darren’s too, now. He snuggled a little closer against his Alpha, and smiled at the road unrolling ahead of them.
“You okay?” Blake’s voice asked above him.
He felt his Alpha’s eyes, glancing at him through the rearview mirror, and he nodded against his mate’s shoulder.
“I’m okay,” he answered. “More than okay.”
And he was. It was good. All of it was good. He looked up at the bright sky, the white clouds scudding across it in the brisk fall air, and he felt his smile widening.
“I want to take Alex out on the lake soon,” he said. “With a lifejacket, of course. But I want him to see it. To know it.”
Alex would grow up like Blake had, with family all around him, the lake an ever-present stretch of glittering grey water to the north, the national forest to the south and the west. Running in the woods with his pack. With his cousins and his siblings and his parents.
“We will,” Blake said. “Him, and the other one. And any others.”
Darren laughed softly. “You’re so sentimental, Blake.”
The strong arm wrapped around his shoulders tightened a little, squeezed him close.
“You know I love them,” he said. “The one we have. The one you’re carrying. All the ones that will come after.”
Darren closed his eyes, letting the familiar hum of the truck wash through him, the sound of his Alpha’s breathing just above him. The world slid in and out of focus, caught between waking and dreaming, and sometimes he felt his mate’s hand, toying with the hair at the nape of his neck. Sometimes Blake reached around him to fiddle with the dial on the radio, and he let himself slide down a little, rested his head against his Alpha’s thigh, and the warm hand settled down just between his shoulder blades.
The truck fell still, and Darren blinked awake, sat up. They were sitting in the driveway at Blake’s parent’s house, the light of late afternoon slanting over the grass. Blake opened the door and slid out of the car, offering a hand to Darren. He took it, stepping out into the lawn.
When the door opened, Blake’s mother was there, and so was Alex, immediately reaching out for him, waving his hands in the air, and Darren caught his son in his harms, pulling him in close and breathing in the scent of cinnamon.
“How was it?” Blake’s mother was asking, stepping back to let them further into the warmth of the house.
The table was already set, Morgan and Grey and Nicholas and Gerard sitting around it. Blake looked at Darren.
“It was good,” Darren said. “I’m glad I went.”
He took his place next to Grey, Alex still held close in his arms, and Blake sat down on his other side and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, reaching down to ruffle their son’s hair. His father-in-law came in from the backyard, and Blake’s mother sat down at the table. In from the windows, everything was painted gold.
Blake filled his plate for him, and happy chatter began around them. Darren remembered his first night here, the fear of being found out, of everyone knowing he wasn’t good enough for Blake. Sitting at that same bench now, the warmth of family around him, he wasn’t afraid of anything at all. And it was perfect.
Omega Unchained
Omega Awakening Book 4
Preston Walker / Aiden Bates
© 2015
Disclaimer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.
This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
Gavin curled his fingers around the thick stem of the weed and pulled. It came free, roots scattering dirt, and he dropped it into the bucket with the rest. When he lifted a hand to brush a hair from his face, he felt the faint tickle of dirt falling from his fingers and laughed. There would undoubtedly be a dirt smear across his forehead, guaranteed to please his father. The smile on his lips faded. His father. Gavin pulled up another weed and tossed it aside, shifting carefully down the row between the tomato plants.
There was very little that pleased his father these days. He’d been in a bad mood recently. Sometimes it seemed he’d been in one since the news had come back that Blake, the nephew of the Silver Bay Alpha, had mated an omega from Iowa without a word to his pack.
It was, of course, an affront to pack tradition to mate without informing one’s family. But if it had been only that, Gavin’s father would have been mildly irritated, might have written Blake Marrock off as a shirker and left it at that. It hadn’t only been about that, though. His father had been maneuvering for years to mate Gavin into the Silver Bay pack. The fact that Blake had never shown much interest in his son had never seemed to phase Karl Bodolf. There were other Alphas, but the pack in Silver Bay was one of the strongest, and they still held–if not quite as strictly–to the traditions that the Rollins pack deemed sacred.
Personally, Gavin didn’t see what the uproar was. If Blake wanted to marry Darren, what was wrong with that? It had been three years. His father needed to get over it. Gavin had moved past it a long time ago, and he’d been the one who’d thought he was going to be mated to Blake. He’d been the one half in love with the Silver Bay wolf. His father hadn’t had that kind of emotional tie to the issue, but it seemed the damage to his pride had been deeper than the damage to Gavin’s feelings.
The breeze ruffled through his hair, tugging at the
hem of his shirt, and Gavin let a sigh slip from his lips. It was warm in the summer sun, and he liked the way it felt on his skin. Liked the soft dirt under his knees and the easy, repetitive motion of weeding. It left a lot of time to think. Not that Gavin was supposed to be particularly given to thinking, being an omega, but he had always been fonder of it than was strictly prescribed.
Three years since Blake Marrock had married, and Gavin’s father still hadn’t found him a mate. He wasn’t sure what the difficulty was with it. There were plenty of eligible Alphas in the area, and Gavin knew his father had toyed with the ideas of several of them, but he’d never made a commitment to any, though more than one had approached him to indicate interest. Gavin wasn’t sure if his own lack of desire to be mated to any of them had played a part in his father’s turning them down. His father didn’t make a habit of ignoring his only child’s wishes, but he had never shown much inclination to supplant his own in favor of them.
Those mating offers had been fewer and farther between lately. Gavin was nearly twenty two. Soon he’d be well past the traditional mating age, and it would be harder for him to find a mate among those packs his father favored. He wasn’t exactly complaining though; he’d been so interested in Blake Marrock in part because of the Silver Bay pack’s more lax attitudes about tradition. And there was someone he wanted.
Pulling another weed, Gavin dropped that in the bucket too and then stood, his knees protesting a little at the sudden change in position. This would do for the day. There were always more weeds to pull, it seemed, but the afternoon was wearing on and he needed to get inside and start dinner.
Lifting the bucket that held the weeds as well as the basket with the first of the summer’s produce in it, Gavin headed up the slight rise of the yard to the house that sat at the front end of the property. It wasn’t a particularly large house, though for a community as small as Rollins it was large enough. And it was certainly big enough to fit two people. Gavin’s omega bearer had passed on when he was a child. It had been just him and his father for years. He wondered sometimes if that wasn’t perhaps part of the reason his father was so slow to find him a mate. When he was paired off, his father would be alone in the cabin.
Pausing just outside the door to brush any lingering dirt from the knees for his jeans, Gavin left the bucket of weeds sitting on the concrete stoop to be taken out to the compost heap with the scraps after dinner. The basket he took inside. He set it down on the counter and bent to check the fridge, contemplating the options for dinner. There was a steak thawing in the sink. He just needed to decide what to put in with it. Perhaps it would be good sliced up and cooked with some peppers and onions. The new tomatoes would lend themselves well to the dish. Gavin started pulling supplies out, setting them on the counter for use later.
He looked over the selection, then left it a moment to pour himself a glass of water, welcome after working out in the garden’s heat all afternoon. His eyes strayed to the clock. Four. His father would be home in about an hour. Plenty of time to get dinner ready, then. Reaching over, he switched on the radio, flicking through the stations until he found one he liked, then turned up the volume. It always made cooking go faster, to have something to listen to. And though he would never confess it to his father, who would take it as omega foolishness, Gavin kind of enjoyed dancing around the kitchen to the beat.
It would be easier if his carrier had lived, he thought sometimes. He wondered often if his father would be more cheerful had his omega not passed on so young. Surely he hadn’t been so temperamental when his mate was alive. But then, perhaps he had been. The Rollins pack stuck to the old ways. An Alpha made an offer for the omega they wanted and it was up to the omega’s Alpha parent to make a decision. Most parents these days consulted the omega in question, but there were plenty of reasons an omega might accept an invitation from an Alpha he didn’t particularly like. And back then, it would have been even more likely.
He remembered his carrier only vaguely, as a soft voice and warm, freckled hands, copper hair that must have been responsible for the strawberry tint in Gavin’s own blond locks. He’d inherited his carrier’s freckles too. His pale blue eyes he shared with his father.
Gavin laid the peppers out on the cutting board and began seeding and slicing them, dropping them into a bowl when they started to fill up the space. He was still caught up in thought, only half listening to the music that was playing, thinking about mates, and what it might be like to finally have one. Part of him didn’t want it, didn’t want the ties to a new pack and the new rules to learn. A new household to run. He was comfortable where he was, and though his father was strict a mate might be even more so. And yet, part of him couldn’t stop yearning for one. He wondered sometimes whether it was the human or the wolf who wanted that. Or maybe they were one and the same, and they shared their longings.
Of course, there were options for mates that meant he wouldn’t have to learn new rules. At least, not the way he would if he was mated off to one of the traditional packs. Raul had wanted to ask his father for permission to mate for months, but Gavin still wasn’t certain.
The trouble with it was, if Raul asked and his father said no, they had no more chances. Right now, they were outside the bounds of propriety, but they hadn’t taken anything far enough to really rouse the anger of the conservative heads of the local packs. And Gavin had moments free, times he could slip away to visit. If his father said no, and if he knew that Gavin and Raul had been seeing each other behind his back, he wouldn’t give Gavin a moment’s peace. They’d never see each other again outside of local pack functions, and there were only a few omegas were regularly invited to. Some Alphas brought their mates and grown omega children anyway. Gavin’s father wasn’t one of them.
Raul was strong and well-bred. The local packs respected his leadership. He was the Alpha of a large and powerful pack. His suit should be simple. But the Superior pack was far too permissive for Karl Bodolf’s taste. He’d railed against it often enough, especially in the months following Blake Marrock’s mating, and even more vehemently when they had joined the Silver Bay pack against the hunters who had tracked Blake and his mate from Iowa. Of course, they’d all found out the hard way that the Duluth and Superior packs had been right to join. It was a Rollins wolf that had showed up dead at the hunters’ hands, and Gavin wasn’t sure that his father had ever forgiven the Silver Bay pack for that, though it hadn’t been their fault.
Gavin ran the onions under water and set about chopping them. He hummed along to the radio as he worked, the rhythmic clack-clack of the knife providing a bit of background. His eyes burned a little, and he blinked back the sharp sting.
Vegetables finished, Gavin pulled the meat from its packaging and started slicing it to throw in the pan with the rest. His father had always been more of a basic meat and potatoes kind of man, but Gavin preferred some variety to his dishes every now and then.
Dinner was simmering on the stove, filling the kitchen with its scent, when the sound of a key turning in the door reached Gavin’s ears. He took a step back from the stove for a moment, glancing down at himself to make sure he’d brushed all the dirt off the knees of his jeans before he came back inside. His father wouldn’t be pleased if he’d tracked it into the house, and sometimes he forgot, but today his jeans looked clean enough, and he bent back over the food, turning down the heat.
“Smells good,” his father said from the kitchen doorway, and Gavin turned to smile at him.
“Thank you, sir. I think it will be.”
His father’s eyebrows rose. “You know you have something on your face there?”
Oh. He’d forgotten. The dirt. Gavin flushed and hurried over the sink to wash it off, snagging the towel to dry his face.
“Sorry,” he said when he emerged from its fluffy depths. I didn’t realize.”
His father just shook his head, an indulgent smile hiding at the corner of his severe mouth, and took a seat at the table. Gavin dished up the food ont
o serving platters, then carried plates over for both of them. His father reached for the serving utensils and started preparing his plate. Gavin wanted until he had finished to reach for them himself.
“How was work?” he asked quietly as he filled the tortillas laid out on his plate. “Did everything go well?”
Mouth already full, his father nodded. He swallowed before he spoke to confirm the gesture. “It was a good day. Very productive.”
Productive. Yes. His father’s main concern.
“And your day?” his father asked.
Gavin lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “It went well. I cleaned the kitchen and the living room. Weeded the garden. The tomatoes are ripe out there. I brought some in for dinner.”
“They’re good.”
For a moment it was silence as Gavin’s father ate and Gavin picked at the food on his plate. He noticed his father’s eyes on him and picked up a bite, chewing and swallowing the food down so his father wouldn’t ask why he was moody. He wasn’t moody, exactly. Just thoughtful and not particularly hungry. Funny, since he’d been nothing but hungry for most of the afternoon.
Broaching the subject of Raul with his father was not, of course, something he was considering. If Raul was going to ask for his hand, he was going to have to do it without any influence from Gavin. Asking would only let his father know that he had some reason to want Raul as his mate, and to his father’s knowledge he knew very little of the Superior Alpha. They hadn’t spent much time together in public.
It had been a mistake that brought them together in the first place. Raul had asked permission to run in the Rollins pack’s territory, and had come up north for a vacation. Getting away from the city. He’d just so happened to run into Gavin while he was out looking for mushrooms. Literally, actually. Nearly ran him over. Raul’s hands – big and calloused and warm – had steadied Gavin when he stumbled, and Gavin had looked up into dark eyes and been momentarily speechless.