by J. L. Wilder
© Copyright 2021 by J.L. Wilder- All rights reserved.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Midlife Omega
Mid Life Shifters
By: J.L. Wilder
Table of Contents
Midlife Omega
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
PART TWO
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
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About The Author
Midlife Omega
PART ONE
Chapter One
OZZY
“Everybody, gather up,” Randy called. “Make sure you’re where you can hear me and see me.”
Ozzy didn’t move from his position against the far wall of the common room. The other members of the Pacific Northwest Wolf Pack—most of whom had been eating dinner at the long, cafeteria-style tables that stretched across the length of the room—stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to their alpha.
Randy held up a magazine.
Someone whistled.
“It’s a news magazine, not a girlie magazine, idiot,” someone else hissed.
Ozzy, who was used to this kind of thing from the members of his pack, said nothing. He waited to see what it was Randy wanted to show them. Whatever it was, he doubted it would be very interesting, and already his mind was miles away. He’d set aside a cartography project he had been working on for weeks to come down and eat with the rest of the pack, but he was looking forward to being on his own with his maps again.
Randy showed the magazine around with the attitude of someone who was sharing something really salacious, and for a moment, Ozzy wondered whether it actually was a girlie magazine.
Then Randy flipped it open and held up an article.
Ozzy squinted, but he was too far back to read the headline.
“Lister Prize Finalists to be Honored in New York Ceremony,” someone said. “So what?”
“What’s a Lister Prize?” somebody else asked. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“It’s a children’s literature award,” Ozzy spoke up. It was his first contribution to the meeting, and everyone turned to look at him as if registering that he was there for the first time. He met their eyes, his gaze panning slowly across the room. He knew how he was thought of among his packmates—as strange and bookish, too far on the side of human and not enough wolf. But that had never mattered to Ozzy.
I don’t need to rub my animal side in their faces all the time, the way Randy does, in order to feel confident that it exists.
Attention shifted back to the front of the room. “Why are we talking about some book prize?” a voice asked. Ozzy recognized the voice as belonging to his cousin, Chuck. Twenty years Ozzy’s senior, Chuck had made it known to certain members of the pack that he intended to try to claim the role of alpha someday.
He had a decent case, Ozzy thought. The last decent alpha their pack had had was Chuck and Ozzy’s uncle, who had died with no sons. Chuck’s mother had been the alpha’s sister, and now Chuck was the oldest in their generation. In addition to his cartography project, Ozzy was working on a map of their genealogy.
Chuck would make a good alpha, Ozzy thought. Better than Randy, at any rate. Ordinarily, Randy would have had them all drinking by this point in the weekly meeting. A girlie magazine actually wouldn’t have been out of character for him at all.
“We’re not talking about the prize,” Randy said. “We’re talking about the recipient. Look.” And he tossed the magazine at Chuck.
Chuck got to his feet. “What am I supposed to be looking at?” he asked.
“The woman,” Randy said, with exaggerated patience. “In the red dress. Right there.”
Chuck examined the image for a minute quietly, and Ozzy found himself hoping that he was going to tell Randy to stop being stupid, to actually address some pack business for once instead of talking about something happening on the other side of the country.
But then Chuck squinted, bringing the magazine closer. “Is that...on her arm...?”
“It is,” Randy said. “There are more pictures of her on the next page.”
Chuck flipped the page. He let out a low whistle. “I can’t believe you found this,” he said, and Ozzy was stunned to hear that he was actually speaking to Randy with a tone of respect. “The odds must have been one in...I don’t even know. One in millions.”
“Do you want to tell the rest of us what you’re looking at?” someone snapped. Ozzy looked over and saw Gage, another cousin, but one he didn’t know as well. He had always had a perception of Gage as someone who didn’t enjoy pack life, and though Gage was living with the pack this year, it was hard to predict from one year to the next whether he would be staying in their territory or going rogue.
Chuck was still holding the magazine, so he was the one who held it up and explained to the rest of the pack. “This woman has our tattoo on her wrist,” he said, pointing.
A gasp went up. Reflexively, Ozzy’s hand went to his bicep, where his own tattoo was.
“Are you sure it’s our tattoo?” someone asked.
“Absolutely,” Chuck said. “The ocean wave with the head of a wolf, just like every member of the Pacific Northwest Pack has.”
“But if it’s on her wrist, wouldn’t that make her...”
“The omega,” Randy spoke up smugly. “The one we lost. This is where she is. This is her.”
Murmurs went up all around the room as people processed that fact.
Ozzy felt dazed. The lost omega had been a story among the members of the Pacific Northwest Pack since before he’d been born. He had grown up hearing about her. He’d grown up knowing that the pack’s weaknesses were because they didn’t have an omega to rally around.
With an omega, they would all have a purpose. They would rally around and protect the mother of the next generation. Having an omega would make them stronger than they had been in Ozzy’s lifetime.
And, of course, somebody would need to mate with her.
If Chuck was the one to do it, he would strengthen his claim to the alpha position. He might finally be able to overthrow Randy.
Ozzy couldn’t deny that that was something he’d like to see.
He got to his feet. “We should go get her,” he said. “If she’s accepting that award, we know she’s in New York. We should go right away.”
Randy sneered. “You don’t make decisions for this pack, little brother,” he s
aid.
Ozzy simmered. Randy never missed a chance to put him down, and he seemed utterly certain that Ozzy was jealous of his position as alpha. The truth was that Ozzy had never given serious thought to being the pack’s alpha—it wasn’t something he’d ever wanted for himself. But he knew he’d be better at it than Randy.
“What do you think we should do?” somebody asked.
“We need to try to get more information about this woman before we do anything,” Randy said. “We don’t know whether we want her to be our omega because we don’t know anything about her.”
Someone snorted. Ozzy thought it was Gage. He had never been shy about contradicting Randy to his face.
But rather than getting sucked into an argument, Randy ignored the slight. “Her name is in the magazine,” he said. “Natalie Harmon. We’ll all take the next week and do some research. See what we can find out about her. See what kind of person she is. When we meet again next week, we’ll share our findings.”
He looked toward Ozzy, who was still on his feet. “You’ll be good at this, Ozzy,” he said. “You love research.”
It was true. Ozzy had always been a fan of reading up on shifter lore and history and recording the stories of the modern-day Pacific Northwest Pack for posterity. But doing an internet search for the name of a well-known author wasn’t going to require any particular research skills. Randy was putting Ozzy down, as usual, trying to make his skills look like less than what they were. As if rather than a talented researcher and historian, he was just a guy who knew how to use a search engine.
But what could he say? Randy was the alpha, and Ozzy didn’t want to start a fight mid-meeting. “I’ll see what I can find out,” he said.
“Are you really saying that there’s a chance you won’t want to bring her back?” Chuck asked Randy. “Having our omega could turn this pack around.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this pack,” Randy said.
Ozzy had to bite his tongue. Of course, his brother was too proud to admit that there might be any flaw in his leadership. Randy would never confess to seeing a need for any improvements. Whether he actually believed it or not, he needed the rest of the pack to think he was perfect.
Slim fucking chance of that. We can all see through him. A real strong alpha would already have been planning a way to get to New York, find the woman, and bring her back.
“What we really need to focus on,” Randy said, “is making sure the Rocky Mountain Pack doesn’t get their hands on her.”
“That’s a valid point,” Chuck said. “If you found this magazine, they could find it too. They’d know what that tattoo means.”
“Do you think they’ll be out hunting her?” someone asked.
It wasn’t clear whether the question had been addressed to Randy or Chuck, but it was Chuck who answered. “They probably will be,” he said. “So we should start our own search, just to be on the safe side.”
“In a week, when we’ve looked into her—” Randy began.
“I don’t think this can wait a week,” Chuck said. “I think we need to start our search right now. This magazine is already three days old, which means it’s possible our rivals have had three days looking for her already. We don’t want our lost omega falling into the hands of the Rocky Mountain Wolves.”
Ozzy waited, feeling the tension in the room. Chuck had directly challenged Randy’s instructions. Would Randy refuse to give ground, even though Chuck’s idea was obviously the better one? Would it turn into a fight?
“Three days,” Randy said grudgingly.
Everyone seemed to exhale at once.
“We wait three days, and then we make a plan,” Randy said. “By that time, we should be able to find out enough about this woman’s history to know what we want to do with her once we’ve got her.”
The meeting broke up after that. Randy and some of the others went to the kitchen for a snack. Chuck went out onto the porch and stood looking up at the sky.
Ozzy went to the front of the room. The magazine Randy had found sat abandoned on a chair. He picked it up and looked at the picture of the woman Randy had pointed out.
The lost omega.
The whole pack had wondered about her for years. She’d disappeared, along with her parents, just weeks after her birth. The tattoo on her wrist still hadn’t healed.
Ozzy scanned the article.
She’s accepting her award the day after tomorrow.
Once she’d done that, she would probably leave New York. And after that, there was no telling where she would go.
Having her name would help the pack track her, but it would never be as easy as it was right now. They knew exactly where she was.
It’s insane to wait.
He folded the magazine in half and stuffed it in his pocket, then ran up the stairs to the loft where he slept. Unlike most of his packmates, Ozzy had a little money, squirreled away over the years from card games at the local bar.
It wasn’t much, but he thought it would be enough to buy a plane ticket to New York.
This time, he wasn’t going to do things Randy’s way. He was going to trust his own judgment, not his older brother’s.
He was going to New York tonight, and he was going to find the lost omega and bring her home at last.
Chapter Two
NATALIE
This is absolutely the ritziest hotel I’ve ever stayed at.
Natalie Harmon had checked in two hours ago. She’d been given a packet at the front desk containing her itinerary for the next two days, as well as a few gifts from the Lister Prize organization—a tote bag, a small bottle of champagne, and—this was Natalie’s favorite part—a little plaque that said Lister Prize Finalist.
There was also a one-page information sheet that explained the history of the Lister Prize and revealed that if Natalie went on to be the final winner, she would join an elite group of only twenty-three other authors.
But I’m probably not going to win.
She’d been telling herself that ever since she’d received the news that she was a finalist. She didn’t want to get her hopes up. It was enough to be here in New York, to be honored for her book. It was already way beyond anything she’d ever anticipated.
She picked up the bottle of champagne, thinking about opening it. After all, there was nothing on her itinerary this evening. The first event of the weekend would be tomorrow’s opening breakfast. And that left Natalie with several hours to kill.
Then she put the champagne down.
Drinking alone in my room just seems sad.
She sort of wished she could have brought someone else to the award ceremony with her. Someone who could have sat in the audience and applauded, not for all the Lister finalists, but for her specifically.
But who? Ever since her marriage had ended four years ago, Natalie had been on her own. She didn’t miss her ex—they’d been a wrong fit. But she still felt ashamed of the fact that they hadn’t been able to make it work.
He’s the one who decided to leave, she reminded herself.
But she was the one who hadn’t been able to give him children. That was the reason he had left. Without that, she hadn’t been enough on her own.
Maybe I’ll never be enough for any man.
With a sigh, she grabbed a black cocktail dress from her suitcase and tugged it on, giving thanks for the fact that she’d overpacked. She wouldn’t need this dress for anything over the next few days. She would use it tonight.
She stepped in front of the mirror and examined her reflection critically. In her mind, she still saw herself as a twenty-year-old, but there was no denying the beginning streaks of gray in her hair and the wrinkles that were starting to form at the corner of her eyes. She turned to the side, wishing that she had more curves to fill out this dress. She liked being fit, but sometimes it was tough to feel feminine.
And the fact that she’d been left by her husband didn’t help with that.
She grabbed her purse and hotel key,
stepped into a pair of black pumps, and went out into the hall. Maybe some of the other finalists will be at the hotel bar, she thought. It would be nice if I could make friends with them before tomorrow’s events.
The hotel bar was off the lobby, on a raised area that stood three steps above the main floor. Chandeliers hung everywhere, lighting the space dimly, and as soon as she walked in, Natalie heard the familiar sounds of glasses clinking gently together, of ice clinking gently against glasses.
She moved to the bar and took a seat.
The bartender was with her surprisingly quickly. Natalie was impressed. She’d expected to have to wait. “Evening, Miss,” he said. “What can I get for you?”
“A vodka and soda,” she said. “With two cherries, please.”
“Coming right up.” He winked and disappeared.
Natalie turned slightly in her seat to take in the room around her. Most people, she saw, had come to the bar with others. If any of these people were there for the Lister Prize, it looked like they’d had guests to invite along with them.
She despaired. Wasn’t anyone here on their own? Was she the only finalist who didn’t have any friends or family close enough to invite to something like this?
Of course you are. Most people have plenty of people around them.
But wait—no. There was someone else alone. A young man sat at the end of the bar. His blond hair was neatly combed, and he wore a white button-down shirt.
And he was staring at her.
Natalie’s gaze, which had glanced over him, immediately flicked away, and she felt herself blush. Was this guy checking her out? She felt like she had become completely invisible over the last couple of years. Why would he be looking at her with that hunger?
She glanced over at him again.
He was still staring...but something about it didn’t feel like she was being checked out. His stare was too intense. It felt...it felt personal somehow.
I’m overreacting. I must be. I don’t even know him.