Rebound (Latent Series Book 0)

by Alana Timms

  “You keep saying alpha. Like saying it enough times will make Zach my alpha. He isn’t. I have a co-op alpha, but that’s it. No household alpha.”

  Though soft in tone, the words felled Noah. He turned the engine off with a quick flip of his wrist, that instinctual bulldozer pushing him to wade into matters that didn’t concern him. “And yet he behaves like he is. Apparently without caring that his behavior puts you at a disadvantage.”

  “Sorry, but you can’t say that.” The first sign of peppery heat from Trent, in his voice, his eyes. “You don’t know the first thing about Zach.”

  “I know young people these days—”

  “What are you, thirty? Thirty-one? Zach’s twenty-eight. So am I. You don’t qualify to call us young people.”

  “Thirty-two, since you asked. But wisdom has nothing to do with age.”

  “Yeah, patronizing is ageless.” Trent made an ugly sound, a snort chiming with derision. He quickly recovered, saying, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. Can you drive me home now, please?”

  “What’s your address?”

  Trent buckled his seatbelt, reciting his address. Noah cleared downtown East District before speaking again.

  “I’m not the only one who thought Zach was your alpha. I mean, for the past six months or so, he’s been treating you like his omega, setting the two of you up in a pairing. You responded like his omega, reinforcing that pairing. But it’s not real, is it? It’s a false pairing. And when he leaves, what happens to you?”

  Trent glanced out the window. “It was no strings. I knew that going in and accepted it.”

  “No strings doesn’t apply when there are feelings involved. As alpha, it was on Zach to check where you were at and back off if necessary. Hell, it was his responsibility to get another alpha to stand in for him at Pegasus. There’s a reason the law prohibits omegas from being sole proprietors of drinking establishments.”

  Noah bit off the rest of his rant. Beneath his indignation on Trent’s behalf lurked unsettling self-interest. A vicious thing, gleeful that, with Zach out of the way, the path to Trent was now clear. Noah doubted he could keep the self-interest under wraps if he carried on talking. He took his eyes off the road to glance at Trent, who had his face turned away.

  Trent’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Zach’s not a bad guy.”

  Noah sighed. “No, I know. Just thoughtless. Like so many other alphas who don’t realize that with the privilege of power comes the burden of responsibility.”

  Trent lived in Logan’s Reach, the territory owned by Zach’s co-op. Each co-op, a loose devolution of what were once packs, had land and an overarching co-op alpha, the Supreme Alpha. Most households within the co-ops had an alpha who reported to the Supreme.

  Lone latents like Noah had no place in East District. They mostly lived in West or North Districts, rarely South.

  He pulled up outside Trent’s single-story house and fished his phone out of his pocket. “Your number?”

  “What for?”

  “So I can text you. Maybe call you sometime.”

  A smile, so fleeting it almost never happened. Then Trent rattled off his number. Noah saved it in his contacts, a ping going off somewhere on Trent when Noah sent him a text. Trent didn’t look at his phone but stepped out of the car.

  “See you next Friday, Teach.”

  One day Trent would call him by his name. He’d make sure of that. His phone pinged with an incoming text seconds after Trent disappeared behind his front door.

  Trent: FYI Zach wanted to get a stand-in alpha for Pegasus. I turned him down.

  Noah: Because?

  Trent: I got Pegasus handled. Don’t need an alpha.

  Noah: Well if you change your mind…

  Trent: You’ll be the first to know.

  Noah hoped so.

  ****

  Trent

  Trent rolled onto his back and tried again to will himself to sleep. The red glow of the numbers on his bedside clock called to him from his peripheral vision. He flipped onto his side, presenting his back to the clock. Eyes closed, he breathed slow. But sleep remained far away while longing smothered him.

  Sighing, he sprawled on his belly and buried his face in the pillow.

  Zach’s face paraded through his mind along with Noah’s words. False pairing. Legend had it that before, when latents were still shifters, they mated for life. An alpha took an omega or a beta, and together they formed this unbreakable bond. They became bond-mates for life. Two betas, two omegas, or a beta and an omega couldn’t form this kind of superglue bond. They had to have an alpha in there. Something about chemistry, receptors in the brain and hormones. Such non-alpha pairings weren’t called bond-mates, they were just pairings. Still strong, just not superglue.

  Then came the 1916 Truce and the Global Suppressant Program.

  Shifters stopped shifting. They stopped making superglue bonds. Now, all latent couplings, whether including an alpha or not, were just pairings. Still strong, though. Strong enough to be agonizing when broken. The only difference between alpha and non-alpha pairings these days was that pairings that didn’t include an alpha were not legally binding. This meant only alphas could officially register their pairings through marriage, kind of in substitution for the superglue bond-mate they’d lost.

  Trent kicked his comforter off. His eyes were gritty, his mouth dry, heart racing. All because Zach had inadvertently set them up in a false pairing. And Trent, his wolf instincts triggered, had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the role of being Zach’s omega.

  They both should have known better than to fuck around and tip their friendship into a pseudo-pairing. Now Trent couldn’t sleep. He was a mess while Zach was in some lush jungle boning his crush.

  Trent threw his pillow across the room. It landed with a soft thump so undramatic he had to laugh. He couldn’t even pitch a fit right. It was just after four, according to the clock. He rolled out of bed, got dressed, and slipped out into the night.

  Dawn smelled imminent, all dew wet and fresh. Yellow street lights burned the darkness away. He shivered at the sharp breeze, zipping up his hoodie. This, sneaking into Zach’s house in the early hours, was insane. But also, it was a long fall from a pairing, even a false pairing, to nothing. He wasn’t a cold-turkey kind of guy. He needed something to take the edge off. That something was Zach’s scent.

  The Supreme Alpha and Zach’s grandfather, Arthur Logan, had a private police force to uphold the general safety of his co-op. A pair of those cops had parked their patrol car outside Zach’s house. They flashed their lights at Trent—they’d made him. He couldn’t turn back because that would look suspicious. Couldn’t go into Zach’s house because that would look even more suspicious, letting himself in at this hour.

  All he could do was raise a hand in greeting and keep walking. Nothing suspicious about that. He didn’t own a car and walked everywhere…when Zach or Zach’s driver weren’t driving him.

  There was only one place he could go so early in the morning. Long walk, but what else was he doing? Not sleeping, that was for damn sure. He often volunteered at the omega community center anyway. Also, staying busy would help keep his mind off Zach.

  He arrived in downtown East District just as the sky was turning dawn red. The community center was housed in an old stone-built church. The stained glass windows were still intact, as was the original heavy wooden door. Inside, a long desk was stationed a few feet from the door, functioning as a twenty-four-hour reception.

  “Do my eyes deceive me?” The receptionist rubbed said bleary eyes.

  “Thought Mason could use a hand with breakfast service.”

  “You thought right. It’s so rare he gets an unscheduled Saturday volunteer, he might actually propose.”

  Trent had to walk through the nave to get to the kitchen. He kept his step on the stone floor light so as not to disturb those sleeping on cots on either side of the walkway. Although no longer used for worship, the church still smelled of in
cense. A century’s worth of aromatic smoke had become part of the stone walls and arched ceiling beams, lingering in the air long after the last stick had been extinguished.

  Several doors led off the nave. One of these opened onto a dining hall, with the kitchen situated at the bottom end of the room. Mason, the shift manager, didn’t propose but greeted him with a huge smile and a strong coffee before planting him in front of the griddle.

  “Could you help out with bacon duty? Six new runaways last night brings our total to forty. That’s a lot of bacon.”

  Omega runaways from all over the country gravitated toward La Tragua, the first place in the country to enact the Truce. Like they thought La Tragua offered omegas a better life than anywhere else. The joke was on them. An omega was an omega, location didn’t matter. Trent had long ago accepted what his Status brought him, good, bad, or ugly.

  It had mostly brought him good. He co-owned a thriving business, owned his own home, was financially independent. What more did he need?

  Zach.

  He squashed that thought and got busy introducing slices of bacon to the griddle. The center liked to provide its clients with a hot breakfast because for most, it was the only food they’d get all day. While Trent took care of the bacon, someone else did the eggs. Mason ran oranges through a juicing machine.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on, Trent?” asked Mason.

  “Why does anything have to be going on?”

  “Because you’re here pre-dawn. And you look like shit.”

  “Really not the proposal I was hoping for.”

  Mason chuckled, loading more oranges to the machine. “Sorry. Already spoken for.”

  “Yeah, how’s Clarence? That lucky beta.”

  “Not subtle, McIntyre. You don’t get off that easy.”

  Trent sighed, flipping slices of bacon. “Guess you’ll hear about it eventually,” he said, and told Mason about Zach’s adventure.

  Mason shook his head. “I know you guys weren’t official or anything, but I thought you were pretty solid.”

  “We are. Pretty solid friends. Everything else was just me. It was always just me.” The admission brought a lump to his throat. He transferred crispy strips of bacon to a chafing dish, avoiding eye contact with Mason.

  “I’ve been there, man. Heartache central. Know what I did? Had that alpha sucked right out of my blood.”

  He frowned in confusion. “The hell are you talking about?”

  Mason wiped his hands on his apron and pulled out his phone, tapping away. Soon a ping went off on Trent’s phone. “I just sent you a voucher.” Mason went back to juicing. “Three bites at the Red Lounge.”

  Trent’s mouth fell open. He pushed words out of it with great effort. “The Red Lounge? In South District? Are you nuts?” He quit waving his spatula around and concluded, “Yeah, you are. Fucking nuts. Letting a vampire bite you, three times.”

  “Not all in one day. That would be nuts. Three separate visits over a week. Best thing I ever did. By the second bite I was like, what alpha? What heartbreak? Ask for Roman, he’s got the sweetest bite. You can thank me later.”

  “Yeah, later. After I get eaten by a vampire.”

  “It’s not that dangerous. I’m right here telling the tale, aren’t I?”

  “But look at me. I’m tasty. I’m not tempting a vampire with this.” He waved the spatula again, a sweeping up-and-down motion at his delicious self.

  Mason smiled, his gaze compassionate. “Know who’s nuts? Or maybe just plain blind?”

  Trent turned back to the griddle with its spitting bacon, hoping Mason would drop it this time. He didn’t want to talk about Zach anymore. Talk about him. Think about him. Dream about him.

  Runaways seemed the wrong word to describe the grown men and women who descended on the buffet table. Yet that was what they were, from the nineteen-year-olds to the eighty-year-olds. Trent himself could be reported as a runaway if he moved out of Logan’s Reach without Alpha Logan’s permission.

  And maybe it was true what people said, that omegas were too sensitive, because it tore at Trent’s heart to see some of the runaways stuff food into their backpacks. Insurance in case they didn’t return on time tonight. The community center tried not to send anyone away, but that wasn’t always possible. There weren’t enough beds. Never enough of anything.

  “Are we any closer to finding space for extra beds?” he asked, loading the dishwasher after breakfast.

  “We’ve got the space, money’s the issue.” Mason brought over a bacon sandwich and a glass of orange juice. “There’s a fundraising meeting after the shift, if you’re at a loose end.”

  Saturday afternoons were strictly designated for beer, pizza, and kicking Zach’s ass at Zombietown, which wasn’t all that thrilling with one player.

  Trent stayed on for the meeting and volunteered for the afternoon shift. By the end of the shift, the sun had gone down, and he could barely see straight from the exhaustion.

  He hitched a ride from a fellow volunteer. The smell of grilled bacon clung to Trent’s hair and clothes. He itched for a shower. Silently begged his ride to stop talking. But what he said aloud was yes and no kidding, nodding and smiling in the right places. He was the definition of niceness while a sudden and violent bout of grief gripped his throat at the sight of a flickering street light.

  Zach had taken him to senior prom. And had kissed him under the flickering porch light, with Trent’s mother not even hiding the fact that she was watching through a gap in the drapes. Excited when Trent came inside, like she was the one who just got her first kiss.

  “He’s yours,” Mom had declared.

  She repeated her declaration over the years. He’s yours. Just be patient. The day is coming.

  He’d been patient. He’d been everything an omega should be. But when the day came, it wasn’t him Zach chose. Lesson learned. Loving someone doesn’t automatically make them yours.

  Surfacing from his memories, Trent took in his surroundings. A reflective sign up ahead read Welcome To Logan’s Reach.

  “Hey, man, is this close enough?” asked his ride.

  “It’s great. Thanks.”

  “Will you be okay? Never know who might be hiding in those trees.”

  “I’ll be just fine. Logan’s Reach is the safest co-op in La Tragua.”

  He wasn’t exaggerating. Logan’s Reach didn’t need to inflate its image to attract new members. Not only was it secure, it was pretty too, with hills, a pine forest, and a lake sitting in the valley. The main road, Caleb Street, ran through the territory all the way from the welcome sign to the lake.

  Trent was about halfway home when, up ahead, he spotted a group of three latents sitting on the grass by the side of the road. Maybe drinking; definitely smoking pot. Too dark to see their faces, but he recognized the loudest voice. He suppressed a sigh as the guy stood to intercept him, his features now visible under the street light.

  “Hey, Trent.”

  “Hi, Peter.”

  Peter sucked on his joint, held the smoke in, and tipped his head back to blow at the sky. “Alpha’s fine.”

  Trent barely managed not to roll his eyes. “Bye, Alpha,” and he walked on.

  “Wait, I’m still talking to you. Trent, hey, wait up!”

  Trent stopped. “What is it? What do you want, Peter?”

  “Now that my cousin’s gone, you and me can party.” Peter took another drag. This time, he leaned in and unleashed the smoke in Trent’s face. “Just you and me. Plenty more where this came from.”

  Trent edged away from the smoke. “Thanks, but—”

  “Aw, come on. You should be flattered I’m asking you when I can have anybody I want.”

  Trent considered his options. Peter Logan was persistent and used to getting what he wanted; he could turn nasty when shown the door. His worst traits were amplified when he was stoned, which was a lot of the time since he mostly had his head in clouds of pot smoke. Partying alone with Peter didn�
�t strike him as a smart thing to do.

  “Come on,” Peter said again. “It’s not like you have anyone better lined up.”

  Trent internally shook his head. What a charmer. The lie tripped off his tongue before he thought about what he was saying. “I do, actually. I have a new alpha.”

  “You do, huh?” Peter’s voice was loaded with doubt. “Who?”

  A patrol car slowed as it approached them, saving Trent from having to elaborate on his lie. The cop in the driver’s seat slid his window down.

  “Hey, there, Mr. McIntyre. Mr. Logan. Need any help?”

  “Peter’s having a party. What time do you get off work, officer? Maybe you could come. He said there’ll be plenty of—”

  “Rain check.” Peter crushed the remainder of his joint underfoot. “That is, rain check on the party.”

  “Oh! In that case, good night.” Trent left, fast.

  He didn’t even try to fight the direction his quick footsteps were headed. He unlocked the door, went inside, and went for a shower. He had a toothbrush in the holder on the bathroom counter. Had items of his clothing mixed in with Zach’s.

  Had to quit crawling into Zach’s bed like this.

  Chapter Two

  Week 2

  Trent

  Monday brought no relief. The staff were crabby. The regular customers uneasy with the sudden influx of posturing alphas and boisterous betas. A new vibe undercut the mellow atmosphere, a new edge. It wasn’t that Zach was particularly scary or dominant as an alpha. But he was a Logan. The Logans were the closest thing to La Tragua royalty. No latent dared cause trouble in Pegasus when Zach was around. With him gone, Pegasus had become the place to go rattle some omegas.

  “You need to do something about this, Trent,” said Kimberly on Tuesday after yet another omega customer complained. “He didn’t want to dance. He said he didn’t want to. The alpha forced him onto the dancefloor anyway.”

  Trent called an employment agency to bring in extra security.

  On Wednesday, an alpha, not one of the regulars, grabbed Trent’s wrist. “Really? You think I’m handsome, or are you just flirting? Are you a tease, omega?”