by J. L. Wilder
“To drive?” Xavier asked.
“If you wanted to,” Zoe said.
“It’s an awfully human thing,” Xavier said. She heard the doubt in his voice.
“It’s an independent thing,” she pointed out. “If you had wanted to go somewhere tonight, and neither Louis nor I had been willing to take you—”
“I would have ordered you to do it,” he said. “I’m your alpha.”
She laughed. “You would never order anyone to do something they didn’t want to do.”
“You know me so well already?” he asked.
“Well enough that I know you would never force anyone into anything,” she said. “Why do you think I decided to stay with you?”
“I thought it was because we were in love,” he said.
Zoe hesitated. It was the first time that word had been spoken between them. “Is that what we are?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said. “I did imprint on you.”
“That isn’t the same thing,” she pointed out.
“What’s the difference?”
“Imprinting is animal,” she said. “Love is human.”
Xavier was quiet for a long time—so long, in fact, that Zoe was afraid she had finally scared him off.
“Then I guess I am still human,” he said at last. “Because I do love you, Zoe.”
She couldn’t keep the grin from spreading across her face. “I love you too,” she said.
Xavier let out a little laugh. “Maybe it’s a good thing Louis didn’t come along with us after all,” he said. “I guess this conversation wouldn’t have been much fun for him.”
“Probably not,” Zoe agreed.
“Pull off here,” Xavier said. “This town has a few fast-food restaurants.”
The town, such as it was, turned out to be nothing but a minor highway pit stop with three gas stations and four restaurants. Zoe recognized all of their names and went to her favorite. She took Xavier’s money and ordered them cups of vanilla and chocolate ice cream with chunks of candy mixed in. Then they drove to the back of the parking lot and pulled into a space to eat their dessert, passing the cups back and forth so they could try both varieties.
“How often did you get this?” Xavier asked. “When you were living human, I mean.”
“Not often at all,” Zoe said. “Hardly ever. I wasn’t allowed to.”
“You weren’t?” Xavier asked. “Why not?”
“I’m an omega!” Zoe said.
“So what?” Xavier asked.
“So...” Zoe trailed off. She had never been in the company of someone who had needed this point explained before. It seemed as obvious to her as the idea of night following day. “One of an omega’s most important duties to her alpha is to keep her body in perfect physical condition,” she said. “And this isn’t exactly health food.”
“What if an alpha wants his omega to enjoy herself from time to time?” Xavier scooped up a spoonful of chocolate ice cream and held it out to Zoe.
She opened her mouth and allowed him to feed it to her. “That would be something for the alpha to decide once they were mated,” she said. “But I’ve never been mated. Not until now.”
“So you mean to tell me that you’ve spent your whole life getting yourself ready to impress a potential mate who you didn’t even have yet?” Xavier said.
“Something like that,” Zoe said.
“Well, why on earth would I care if you ate ice cream or not!” Xavier exclaimed.
“Because omegas are breeders,” Zoe said. “You must know all this. You’re so animal.”
“I know that omegas are breeders,” Xavier said. “I know that they’re excellent breeders. You can’t expect me to believe that your fancy school teaches that a little ice cream would prevent an omega like you from being able to have healthy children.”
“Not exactly,” Zoe said. “It’s just that health was always prized above everything else. Health was always considered the most important thing any of us had to offer until we were actually ready to have babies. Nothing could be more important. Nothing could recommend us to our potential mates any more highly than a healthy body.”
“Well, the hell with that, I say,” said Xavier. “I think what’s most important is that you take the time to enjoy your life. Eat your ice cream! We’ll get it every night if that’s what would make you happy.”
Zoe laughed. “I think we would run out of money sooner than you might like if we tried that,” she said. “But I do appreciate the thought.
When their cups were empty, they threw them away. Xavier got behind the wheel, and Zoe talked him through starting up the truck. Slowly, carefully, he pulled back out onto the highway, and in no time, he was up to speed.
“There, you see?” Zoe said. “You did remember how to do it after all.”
“There’s a lot more human left in me than I’d realized,” he said. “I’m learning that today.”
“I bet I’ll wake up even more of the human in you if you give me time,” she said.
He was quiet for a moment, and Zoe thought she might have upset him.
“We’ll see,” he said at last.
They parked the truck and walked through the woods hand in hand, taking their time getting back to the cave. Zoe was in no hurry. She was concerned that Louis might still be angry with them, and she didn’t particularly want to face that. It was her hope that Xavier would take him aside and talk to him, reassure him that he didn’t have anything to worry about. Zoe had no intention of breaking up their pack.
If anything, she was thrilled to be included in a pack. To be thought of as a member of a group. The idea of packhood had always been very powerful to Zoe. It was what had driven her to attend Omega University in the first place—a desire to please her pack.
Well, that and the trust she had been offered.
Suddenly, Zoe felt as if her spine had frozen solid.
The trust.
She had allowed herself to get so swept away in the joys of finally having found a mate that she had forgotten all about the trust. She had forgotten that she had planned to inherit money from her pack’s alpha when she had mated—and that she would only be able to come into that inheritance if she was mated to someone they approved of.
Would they approve of Xavier? Would they approve of this life she had found for herself?
She doubted it.
There could be no question of leaving Xavier. She could feel the strength of the imprint. And besides, she loved him too much. He was her mate, whatever might come.
But was there a way they might still be able to inherit the money?
This car would need repairs someday. And if they ever had children, those children would need things that the wild might not be able to provide. Even Xavier was wise enough to see the need for a bit of money.
She was silent the rest of the way back to the cave, but her mind worked busily, wondering whether or not there might be a way.
Chapter Fourteen
ZOE
Zoe got up early and left the cave, hoping that a little time on her own would be what was needed to help her figure out what to say to Xavier.
She was so distracted that she didn’t even realize her mistake until he found her by the waterfall, absently throwing rocks across the surface and trying to make them skip. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he announced. “If you do this one more time, I will have to issue an order, Zoe.”
“What?” Then she realized. “Oh, the cave. I was supposed to stay.”
“You’re damn right, you were supposed to stay!” he said. “What were you thinking, coming out here on your own? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“No,” she said. “Of course not. I just forgot.”
“She forgot,” he said to no one.
“Xavier,” Zoe said. “You have to admit, we haven’t seen any sign of the bears since the day they attacked me. They might not be around anymore.”
“Sure, maybe,” Xavier sa
id. “Or maybe they’re waiting for us to slip up. Maybe they’re waiting to catch you out on your own. They didn’t follow Louis and me to this part of the woods, Zoe. They’re here because your class is here. They’re omega hunting.”
Zoe felt slightly ill. It was something she had been worrying about since she’d come to the cave. If the bears had been omega hunting, were they still a threat to her friends? She herself had been kept safe from them, but at what cost?
That’s my in, she realized. That’s how I can persuade him that we need to go back.
“I want to talk to you about something,” she said. “I’m glad you followed me out here, actually, because I want us to discuss this and make a decision away from Louis.”
She hadn’t expected to hit a roadblock so early in the conversation—that was the easiest part of her request, after all—but Xavier frowned. “Away from Louis?” he asked. “Why away from Louis?”
“Well, it’s just, you know...” she shrugged. “It’s private.”
“Private from Louis, though?” Xavier asked. “He’s a member of our pack. We need to be very careful about the idea of keeping things private from him.”
“You were fine going out for ice cream without him just last night,” Zoe protested.
“But he was invited,” Xavier said. “And he was upset about that. Remember? We should be careful before leaving him out of anything else.”
Zoe was starting to feel irritated. “The point is that he could have been involved in the ice cream if he had wanted to,” she said. “We haven’t left him out of anything yet, except for when we’ve been having sex.”
“Which I assume is not what this is about?” Xavier asked.
“No,” Zoe said, though she was surprised to find that even her irritation with him made her feel an attraction. She wondered if there was anything Xavier could do that would make her stop wanting him.
“You may as well tell me,” Xavier said. “Now that we’re out here.”
She was nervous. She had known that this conversation would be difficult, but she hadn’t anticipated the problem of Louis. Now she felt she’d been stupid. How could she have not seen that complication coming? How could she not have known that Xavier would want to prioritize what Louis needed?
But this was more important. Louis would survive, she told herself firmly. This was something they had to at least consider. It didn’t make any sense not to.
“I want to go back to camp,” she said.
He looked at her for a long time, saying nothing.
She tried to read his expression. Was he considering it?
“Why?” he asked, at length.
“A couple of reasons,” she said. “I guess the first of which is that I want to make sure everyone is okay. You said the bears were hunting omegas. My friends—they’re all omegas. They were all in the woods that day.”
“What do you think you can do about that now?” Xavier asked. “It’s been days, Zoe. At this point, either the bears got them or they didn’t. I assume your school group was smart enough to pack up and go home once they realized there were wild bears out here trying to get their claws into omegas.”
“I don’t know,” Zoe said. “I don’t know what they would have done. I don’t even know if they know what happened. I was off with just a few people when I was attacked. What if the others were killed? What if the main group still doesn’t know about the bears?”
“What if they don’t?” Xavier said. “You can’t fight the bears, Zoe. You can’t stand against them. What do you think you’re going to do if you go back? How do you think you could possibly help anyone?”
She felt shaky with nerves. It felt wrong to have Xavier angry at her, and she wanted nothing more than to concede the points he was arguing and end the discussion. She wanted to go back to the cave and spend the day in his arms, doing whatever he asked of her. Rebuilding her fragile relationship with Louis. Even practicing her skills at cleaning animals to cook for food would be more enjoyable than deliberately arguing with her alpha.
But this was a necessary argument. These were things that needed to be said. “I thought you would come with me,” she told him. “I thought we would go together, and that you could help protect me and explain the threat of the bears to Professor Browning.”
“Professor Browning,” he repeated.
“Professor Browning is my professor from school,” she said. “He’s the one who brought our group out here.”
“I gathered that,” Xavier said.
“You wouldn’t let me go alone, would you?” Zoe asked him.
“Of course not,” Xavier said. “That isn’t what we’re discussing, Zoe. What we’re discussing is whether I’m going to let you go at all. There’s no question of you going off in the woods by yourself. Absolutely not.”
“Would you really order me not to go?” Zoe asked. “Knowing that it’s what I want?”
“What you want isn’t necessarily what’s best for you,” Xavier said. “I haven’t known you very long, it’s true, but I’ve known you long enough to know that.”
“I can’t just abandon my class,” Zoe said.
“You haven’t abandoned them,” Xavier said. “You made your decision, I thought. You chose this life. Me. Didn’t you?”
“You didn’t say that I had to choose between you or them,” Zoe said. “You didn’t tell me that was the choice.”
“Are you saying you would have made a different choice?” Xavier asked.
“No!” Zoe said. This was all going wrong. “I’m saying that I thought we had decided to be together. That’s what I was choosing by choosing you. I wasn’t saying I wanted nothing to do with my former life.”
“So, what else do you want?” Xavier said, crossing his arms over his chest. “If you miss your former life so much, what else about it do you want back? Do you want to go back to school full time? Has living in the cave gotten to be too much for you already?”
She couldn’t help it—she started to cry. “Xavier...”
“Louis warned me about this,” he said.
“Louis warned you?” She felt as if her insides were freezing. “What did Louis say?”
“That you would come between us,” he said. “That you would separate us somehow.”
“I’m not trying to separate you!” she said.
“But this idea, this plan of yours,” he said, “it will separate us. You’re a smart person, Zoe. I know you can see that.”
“No, I can’t! I’m just saying I want to go back and check on them! We can bring Louis with us!”
“Louis gave up a comfortable life to come out into the wild with me,” Xavier said. “Louis was happy enough as a member of the pack he and I once belonged to. The only reason he left was out of loyalty to me. Do you really think I’m going to fail the very first test of loyalty to him? Do you think I would ask him to leave our cave and risk a confrontation with the bears?”
“We don’t have to confront the bears,” Zoe said. “We can just help the omegas get back to school safely.”
“Now you want us to go all the way back to the college?” Xavier said.
Zoe bit her lip.
“There’s something else you should know,” she said.
“I knew it,” Xavier said.
The expression on his face was one of such disappointment that Zoe couldn’t bear to look at him.
“It’s not that I don’t want this life,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t want to live wild, or to be a part of this pack. I just think it might be good for me to go back and finish my studies first. Don’t you think that would be worthwhile?”
“You want to graduate.”
“I know you don’t think much of my school,” she said. “But I’ve learned a lot there so far.”
“Like what? That you shouldn’t eat ice cream?”
“No,” she said. “That it’s my responsibility to follow my alpha’s lead.”
“Well,” he said, “you’re doing a bang-up job o
f it.”
“You could come with me,” she said. “We could do this together, Xavier. Louis could do it too. It would only be for a few years. We could all graduate. We could get our degrees, and then we could come back to the wild together. Is it really so much to ask?”
“I know how things are at those schools,” Xavier said. “Alphas and omegas aren’t even allowed to see each other.”
“That isn’t true,” she protested. “There are social events.”
“We wouldn’t be together at all,” he said. “And we’d have to sit in classes and complete assignments. It sounds horrible. I can’t imagine why you’d think I would want to do something like that. Why you’d think that Louis would want to do something like that.”
“Is Louis all that matters to you?” she asked.
His face darkened. “You know he’s not,” he said. “You know how much I care for you, Zoe. But if you expect me to neglect my second in favor of you, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“That’s not what I want,” she said. “I want to include Louis. I consider him a brother, Xavier. We’re a part of the same pack. But I have to tell you...it would be wrong of me not to tell you...”
“Tell me what?” he asked, clearly exasperated.
“About the money,” she said.
“What money?”
“My old pack—the pack I belonged to before I went to school—set aside a trust fund for each of us,” she explained. “As an omega, I would be able to claim my trust when I mated with a worthy alpha. It’s a substantial amount of money.”
“How much money?” he asked.
She told him.
He let out a whistle. “That is a lot of money,” he admitted.
“I know,” she said. “And it could be ours, Xavier. Our whole pack’s. We’d be set for life. We could still live in the cave, if you wanted to do that, or we could have a house—”
He frowned and looked away.
“Or no house,” she amended quickly. “But we could have things. More blankets. A nicer car, if you wanted one. If we had babies someday, they would have options.”