The Omega Awakened: A M/M Omegaverse Erotic Short Fiction (Omegan Tales Book 1)

by Elijah Stierne

  Micah had never wanted that for himself, and yet… fuck.

  With a heavy sigh, the omega watched the snow come down overhead. It was eerily silent in the clearing. With most of the students gone for break, it felt as if the whole world had gone quiet. Micah had wanted to go home, and then with every item of clothing he’d packed in his suitcase, he’d gotten more and more aggravated. The thought of being a few states away from his mate was irritating. Eventually, he’d called his mother and apologized, and she’d been so quick to understand. Don’t worry, she’d said, it happens to the best of us.

  So true to form, omega instincts were still a fucking hassle.

  Micah laid in the snow for what felt like forever. It was so cool beneath his back. The temperature was just on the right side of uncomfortable. It was keeping him grounded, making sure he didn’t float off too deeply into his thoughts. The omega was reaching above himself, collecting flakes from the sky when his pocket vibrated.

  He paused, and then yanked his hand from his glove by biting the tip of the garment. When he reaching into his pocket and pulled out his phone, the screen was blaring brightly, another message coming in just as the first notification cleared.

  hey

  youre not at the dorm but i have something for you :)

  a gift

  Micah unlocked his phone and went to the messages, another alert hitting him as he started to read properly.

  you free now?

  Micah smiled in spite of himself. He was as befuddled as he was endeared by Jackson’s continued attempts to court him. The whole process usually happened the other way around. The courting came first, not second. But Jackson seemed to be trying hard to make up for lost steps, and so it was an easy glitch to overlook. Holding his phone carefully, Micah typed out a response, sitting on it for a moment before boldly hitting ‘send’.

  I’m free. Come find me.

  The speech bubbles popped up immediately, as if the alpha were sitting on the other line waiting for a response, and Micah snorted.

  you wont tell me where you are?

  really want me to come find you?

  Micah put his phone to sleep and shoved it back in his pocket. There was no question that Jackson would take the silence as an affirmation and start the hunt for him.

  With another soft sigh, Micah went back to staring at the clouds, thinking. If he was being honest with himself, there was a seed of worry, just the smallest doubt, that once the honeymoon phase dissolved, the feelings of happiness would dissolve with them. Micah worried that he would hate what had happened to him. At the same time, just thinking about how warm his body had been with an alpha tucked up beside it, how gently the morning had woken him when someone’s hands were filtering through his hair, how much more bearable life had become in the short week that he’d been mated. It was alarming. The power of the bond, the raging hormones, they were all so strong.

  Gently, Micah reached up and hooked his cold palm over the back of his neck, fingers dancing along the bandage that covered his bite. Snow had already melted against the gauze and dampened it. The bite was so sensitive it was almost jarring. He hadn’t touched it much since he’d left the hospital, afraid of what toying with it might do to his mood. Already, every ounce of pressure against the bandage was like a jolt of electricity shooting through his system.

  Micah was fiddling with the bandage, dozing in and out of his daydreams when he heard the first snap of a twig at the treeline, and then the rustling of old and empty branches. The scent came second, a pungent mixture of his and Jackson’s original scents. It was a soft smell, one that was very much the end of the year chill with hints of pine and mint and other sharp scents interwoven. Together, they smelled so clean and so neat.

  Micah crinkled his nose, unwilling to open his eyes and watch the alpha approach him from the other side of the clearing, but he could hear the snow crunching beneath the man’s boots, and the complimentary sound of the alpha’s tinkling laughter as he moved. In an empty space like this, the sound of it echoed and Micah’s body responded viscerally to it. He bit his bottom lip and tilted his nose in the direction of his mate.

  He could imagine what the man looked like this very moment: smug, elated, with his skin kissed pink from the low temperature. Maybe he’d be wearing a scarf, or maybe he’d be in a too-thin shirt that screamed machismo. Either way, his bulk would probably fill it out well, and he’d look as good as ever.

  “Aren’t you cold? It’s freezing out here.”

  “Just a little bit,” Micah laughed. “It took my alpha so long to get to me.”

  Jackson growled playfully and Micah could hear the snow give way beneath the man’s knees as the man knelt beside him.

  “What’s wrong with your bite? Does it hurt?” Jackson asked.

  “What?”

  “You’re holding it,” Jackson clarified. “Is it hurting?”

  Micah opened his eyes slowly. It was like unveiling a classical painting, stripping the white tarp from the canvas so that he could see the art beneath it. Micah was lucky. He was so god damn lucky. Alphas that looked this pretty usually didn’t act this pretty. The omega just stared at him, awed by how well the snowflakes matched his alpha’s sharp cheekbones, how they tangled with his eyelashes and dissolved into the dark hair. Micah wanted to kiss him, over and over again, until all that remained on Jackson’s skin was the warmth of his lips.

  “Lemme look,” Jackson said, smirking as if he knew the thoughts running through his omega’s head. He reached out to help Micah sit up.

  “It’s fine,” Micah promised. “I just wanted to touch it.”

  “Does it feel good?” Jackson asked. He sounded so curious. As soon as Micah was sitting, Jackson’s fingers went cautiously to the bandage. Micah could feel the sticky adhesive pull against his skin as the gauze was removed. He tilted his head forward a bit more so that Jackson could see it properly. “Baby, your neck is freezing. How long were you out here?”

  Micah sputtered, going for a response but unable to produce a coherent one. Baby. Jackson had never called him that outside of his rut, but the word seemed as natural here as it had in the heat room. It fell from Jackson’s mouth so easily, blending with the air and settling on Micah’s skin like glitter. He loved it. The way it sounded, the way it made him feel. At the same time, the anxiety was spiking. Was he actually losing his mind, or had every single part of his body rewired itself to his alpha? Micah didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t help it. Swallowing hard, Micah turned to look at Jackson properly, eyes wide and words trapped in the back of his throat.

  “Baby?”

  Jackson chuckled, “Is that okay? It’s not hurting you, right?”

  Oh. He was talking about the bite. The alpha’s fingers were moving gently along the edges of it. That would explain why Micah was suddenly being doused in his own pheromones.

  “If it’s too much, just say so. You can tell me.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” Micah whispered. His eyes fluttered closed and he whined, hand latching onto Jackson’s thigh as the man touched him. Jackson was always running so warm, and his scent was cloying up Micah’s senses, and Micah wasn’t coping. He shouldn’t have told Jackson to come here. He should have cleared his head properly, first, and then asked his alpha to collect him.

  Right now, Micah was useless. He felt like a box of lead, each limb going limp with relaxation.

  “You smell so fucking good,” Jackson grumbled. “Shit.”

  The alpha leaned over, rubbing his nose against the scar before kissing it gently. Then he replaced the gauze.

  “I’m sorry I took so long to get here.”

  “I was joking,” Micah huffed. “It’s okay. I like it out here. I would’ve stayed even if you hadn’t texted me.”

  Jackson smiled, his hand lingering on Micah’s neck. When he leaned in, Micah didn’t question it. He merely tilted his head so that their lips could catch more easily. Jackson was breathing Micah’s scent so deeply that h
is chest was rumbling from the effort, and Micah tilted toward the sound, wrapping his arms around Jackson’s neck and tugging on him. Jackson snickered, letting his omega sink back to the snow and take him with. Within seconds they were kissing again, Micah’s body pinned to the ground by Jackson’s weight.

  Micah didn’t believe in magic. He knew that this was all physiological. But it was so hard to be discontent when he was feeling so safe and so loved. Stranger or no, Jackson had the alpha role down to a science, and as Micah hummed against the alpha’s lips, breathing in the scent of the two of them rolled up together on the lawn, he wondered if this was what life would be like from now on. If he’d truly get his own ridiculous love story and live happily ever after on his knees for his mate. Or if this was only temporary, and if in the weeks and months that were to come, he’d wake up out of the spell and be back to himself, looking for a way to get out.

  When the snow permeated enough of Jackson’s thick skin to chill him, the alpha released Micah’s lips and said, “I wanna take you to dinner tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then I wanna take you back to my dorm and fuck you.”

  “O-okay,” Micah stuttered, squeezing his legs closed to keep from being so obvious about how much he wanted that, too. “Your roommate…”

  “Went home for break. We’ve got the place to ourselves for a while. I won’t have to stink up your dorm anymore.”

  Micah touched Jackson’s jaw with his gloveless hand, feeling the stubble beneath his palm. “You smell good. You smell like me.”

  Jackson nipped at Micah’s bottom lip. “Yeah, and I wanna smell even more like you.”

  “Are we allowed to do that?”

  “Do what?” Jackson asked. He was smiling so cheekily.

  “Have sex in your dorm? Aren’t there rules?”

  “Yeah - get permission from your roommate and then use a neutralizer afterwards. You’re not in heat, I’m not in rut, so they should take care of the scent load. I mean, come on. We’re not some… fifteenth century brutes. I think we can handle a few… pheromones here and there.”

  “Says the alpha that stole a pocket full of candies for a courting gift.”

  Jackson rolled his eyes and stood up, brushing the snow from his knees and then offering his hand to the omega on the ground. He hoisted Micah up with unbridled strength, easily pulling the omega into his arms. When he released, he helped properly situate the man’s coat around his body, adjusting the collar and the hood, wiping all of the excess snow from the clothes, and then bending over to grab the loose glove from the ground so that he could slip it back over Micah’s barren hand. Micah let him fuss until he was warm and comfortable again.

  “I’m the exception, not the rule, okay? Most of us alpha aren’t as single-minded as you think. We’ve got a lot of control.”

  “So you say.”

  “So we know. I think the fact that I’m not fucking you against a tree right now shows that,” Jackson said. “Come on. Let’s get back before my balls freeze off.”

  Jackson gently took one of Micah’s hands and began the trek towards campus. The two of them walked in the desolation together, enjoying the quiet. With each step, the white noise of their coats rustling and the snow crunching beneath their boots surrounded them, and Micah just watched the back of Jackson’s hair gather snow as they moved. He was behind by a few steps, being tugged along with a bit of space between them, just thinking about… everything. The way that Jackson spoke, the things that he said. The omega only looked down at his feet for a second, but it was in that second that Jackson slowed to a stop and Micah bumped into his back.

  “Hey. Look.”

  Micah lifted his gaze immediately. The alpha pointed to the empty patch of land across the way from them. The two of them had arrived at the stretch of campus that was speckled with resting places, just small lawns with bushes and trees and seating areas. In place of the colors that Micah had grown to love, the green leaves and the pink and yellow flower petals, there was only white. All of the benches were empty, all the bushes covered in that same, smooth sheet of snow. It was a small wonderland, and in the middle of it was a family of deer. Micah raised his eyebrows, shocked by how many of them there were. Usually there were only four or five, three of them babies. This time, there were ten, and they were nosing their way through the snow, a few of them staring at Jackson and Micah with their necks tense and their bodies stiff. A few of them were bucks with half-formed horns on their heads. Micah squeezed Jackson’s hand and said, “Geez, there’s so many of them.”

  “I know. We leave ‘em alone for one season and they go and create an army.”

  “It’s not baby making season for deer,” Micah said. “Even those bucks are probably a few months old. Their antlers are coming in.”

  Jackson squeezed Micah’s hand back. “Do you like winter?”

  “Yeah,” Micah answered easily. Then after a beat, “My mom loved it, too. She told me that when I was a baby, she used to take me outside and lay me in piles of snow as big as my head. Make little caves or tunnels for me to crawl through, and she said I’d kick and scream, happy as anything, because I liked the cold. Even when my nose had icicles dangling from the nostrils, I wouldn’t wanna go in.”

  “Really?” Jackson laughed. “I always thought you smelled like snow. Well, not snow, but… the winter. You’re warm but your scent is so seasonal.”

  “I think that’s why our scents work together so well. Summer and spring scents don’t work for me. You’re a late fall kind of guy. Pumpkin pie, s’mores, rain. We’re not pinks and purples, we’re the black and the beige and the gray of the world.”

  “That’s morose.”

  “I’m morose,” Micah laughed. “I hope that’s not disappointing.”

  “You don’t seem that way to me. And even if you did, I wouldn’t be disappointed by something like that.”

  “No? Then what would you be disappointed by?”

  It was strange asking questions like this, fishing for more information that might give Micah more context about what he’d gotten himself into. But Jackson seemed equally curious and so the omega didn’t hesitate.

  “I don’t know. I guess if this didn’t work out, I’d be pretty damn disappointed.”

  “Seems to be working so far, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jackson sighed. “But it’s only been a week. How ‘bout we ask this all again next year?”

  Micah didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility, but he nodded as if he understood, gaze flitting back to the deer across the lawn. The snow was picking up and the image of the animals in the field began to resemble an unclear picture, cut through by static on a television screen. The snowflakes were large, and they marred the view enough that Jackson shivered and tugged on Micah’s hand.

  “Sorry. Let’s go.”

  And as Jackson lead Micah through the winter roads of campus, Micah followed quietly, tampering down the thoughts that told him all of this was far too easy.

  * * *

  The days of winter break went by quickly.

  Each hour of winter break trickled through Micah’s fingertips faster than he could save them. He lost days in Jackson’s room, reading books or watching the television, even laying atop the man’s body, just kissing lazily along his jawline and nuzzling the parts of him that held the sweet scent of their bond the strongest. It could have been weeks or months that Micah was tangled up in his alpha, just the warmth of the room cocooning them against the frigid weather outside.

  It wasn’t until Jackson’s roommate returned to the dormitory that Micah even realized how much time had truly gotten away from them. The second he heard the lock click, he startled upright and stared at the door, unearthing himself from his and Jackson’s nest enough that he could see who was coming through. Jackson had run off in the minutes before to grab something from his car. The alpha was fast, but not superhuman. He couldn’t have gone to the parking lot and come back in such a little amount of time, and
so Micah assumed it was someone else.

  The stranger hadn’t even made it all the way through the door before he froze, nose tilted high. His palm fumbled the handle of his suitcase and it dropped to the floor, clattering loudly. There was a tense second of silence. Then, the man looked directly at Micah, covered in heaps of blankets and staring owlishly back at him, and he said, “Uh…”

  “Oh…” Micah said stupidly.

  A solid first impression if he’d ever seen one.

  Jackson’s roommate was a large guy. The bulk of him filled out the door frame. He looked so much larger than Jackson, though Micah wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or if the man were truly so gargantuan. The man’s facial hair was insanely thick; he looked rugged, almost as if he’d spent the entire break trawling through the woods, hunting small game and lighting campfires for a small family. Rather than wearing his coat, the alpha had slung it over his shoulder coolly, sporting a thin shirt that did very little to hide the tattoos beneath it.

  “Who the hell are you?” The alpha asked, voice a low grumble in his throat. He didn’t sound threatening. He didn’t even smell the slightest bit aggressive. It seemed he was just curious.

  “H-hi, sorry,” Micah stammered, unearthing himself from the blankets and crawling out of bed. “I’m Micah. I’m, uh… I’m Jackson’s mate.”

  There was a brief silence. The alpha frowned and looked off to the ceiling. Then he shook his head, leveled his gaze again, and said, “…what?”