by Kari Gregg
“You deserve better than him.” Joth blew out a prolonged sigh. “You were happy before he came along, weren’t you?”
I could only vaguely remember what happiness felt like. Before our father died, I’d learned to be content, though. I’d fought hard to learn it. I shrugged.
“You aren’t defective like I am. You could’ve and should’ve been more than some alpha’s bitch, doomed to raising a brood of pups.” He waved a hand in disgust. “I regret what I did, have spent years regretting it, but I’m not sorry what I did gave you a chance at some kind of life that doesn’t revolve around breeding for some douchebag of an alpha. As terrible as what I did was and is, at least you had a shot at better because of it.”
I smothered my surprise the human doctors hadn’t told Joth about their medical tests or their bizarre hope I might be capable of breeding. I wouldn’t be the one to clue him in, not a chance.
“Dio… is okay.”
“That’s his name?”
“Yes.”
“He’s still taking advantage of you. They are.” Joth grunted. “Sometimes I think I let you live because I wanted someone as cursed by damaged uselessness as I am.”
But I wasn’t useless. Not entirely. When my brother had stripped my purpose from me, I’d found another to take its place. “I make furniture.”
“I know.” Joth grinned. “The guards aren’t always as thorough as they should be while censoring the newspapers I receive to help pass the time. They missed cutting out the article on your last show at the arts council.”
My forehead creased. Confusion swept through me.
Show? What show?
His lips thinned. “They didn’t tell you.”
I blinked at him. “I don’t talk to them.”
“Humans, no, but the pack—”
“I don’t talk to them either.” I squirmed in my seat because Dio had prodded me into interacting with several pack members since my first prison visit. “I didn’t,” I corrected. “Just Farron. He said my craftsmanship was better than Dad’s because raising a family didn’t divert my attention. I could concentrate on improving my skills like Dad couldn’t, and Farron encouraged that. He said work would keep my hands busy and my mind focused on something besides grief.”
“It didn’t occur to you he supported you because the pack makes a mint off the work you produce? They’re exploiting you, brother.” Joth chortled, his stare bitter. “You’re a renowned regional craftsman, some say an artist, but you didn’t know.” He pinched the bridge of his nose in disgust. “According to the newspaper article, bidding wars over your pieces drive prices up despite the steady influx of supply from you every month. You’re worth thousands of dollars.”
Money didn’t mean much to me, never had. Didn’t matter to shifters in general. Oh, alphas had to be aware of such issues. They were tasked with keeping the pack on a paying basis and buying as much land as the pack could afford to expand hunting grounds and to provide a bigger hedge against encroaching humans.
The towns seemed to creep closer to our territory by the day. Few shifters were more aware of that than I was, with my den near our northern border. Purchasing property required money, though, as did the taxes humans demanded of us, but that’s all I knew or cared to know. The pack owned my den, like all the others in our territory, and they provided whatever supplies I required too. The human schools had taught me how to count money, but if someone thrust a grubby roll of bills into my hands, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Perhaps the furniture I created and tithed to my pack would allow us to buy more land. Good. Despite my barren womb, I’d proven myself a blessing rather than a burden to my people. Satisfaction thrummed through me.
“Did you hear me? They’re making a fortune off you.” Joth glowered. “They shouldn’t use you like that.”
Schooling my features to a placid mask, I studied my brother. That he cared about money was another indicator of selfishness that shouldn’t shock me, but somehow did anyway.
“I’m glad.” And I was. Genuinely grateful. The bubble of warmth filling my chest and the lightness uncoiling the tense set of my shoulders served as a reminder of how little I’d experienced those feelings in the past years. That I could muster those feelings again thrilled me. “Thank you,” I told my brother because, regardless of his wickedness, Joth had poked my long dormant happiness back to life.
“You should be as outraged as I am.” He thinned his lips. “Do they at least take care of you properly? Tell me that much.”
I thought of Dio fucking me once this visit finished and recalled my cozy den. Tolerating the human doctor was a trial to me, made me anxious in ways I hadn’t felt since my early teens. Even that was evidence of the pack’s care and nurturing. Farron might’ve been easier for me to cope with, but only under Dio’s leadership had the pack acted to confirm I’d reached the full potential of my recovery, whatever that might be. I didn’t like it. Dr. Bennet was a pretentious jerk and I cherished less interest in meeting the specialists he’d mentioned. I trusted none of them.
But Dio, the alpha fixer brought into the pack when Farron stepped down from leadership, was doing his job, part of which was trying to fix me.
My stomach knotted, but when I gamely met my brother’s gaze, he would’ve scented the truth in me if the human prison hadn’t prevented it when I said, “They give me everything I need.”
Even when it hurt.
Chapter Four
Back on the pack lands, my driver returned me to the bench outside the alpha’s great room, but my satisfaction in providing a proper seat to wait upon didn’t lull me for long. Edgy with discontent, annoyance strumming inside me, I lingered scant minutes. Dio might punish me for my disobedience, but nothing could dissuade me from escaping. The moment the others left me alone, I stripped off the clothing the pack provided for my visits to Westfield, and before I shifted, I placed those items in a neat pile on the bench I’d made as a full moon offering to Dio.
Then I ran.
Wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. Before the murders, I’d raced my brothers through the thickly wooded forest, splashed in streams with them, and joyfully played in my wolf form when everything became too much, which was often. Mom had encouraged it.
Once I mated and began breeding, I wouldn’t be as free and as an omega quickly approaching my ripening, I’d needed the outlet for the frenetic nerves roiling inside me more than most. My anxiety wasn’t unusual. Many omegas, especially male omegas, struggled against their fate as our breeding age neared. Mated at the cusp of adulthood? Usually to a stranger too. No one with a scrap of sanity would desire that.
With Kinessa and Joth accompanying me, my restlessness wasn’t just tolerated, though. Farron and the elders had indulged me. My pack was more than strong enough to protect me from poaching alphas, so much so Farron and my parents had procrastinated in selecting an alpha to mate me. That could wait until I’d matured and I’d made peace with my destiny. In the meantime, the pack deemed me safe with my brothers as escort.
After Kinessa’s died and Joth had been locked in a human cage, I’d run again—for the first time, alone. No one had cared about defending me then. I’d streaked through the woods, desperate to leave the aching maw of my shattered life behind me and later, equally determined to evade my pursuers. Humans and shifters alike had sought to end me, some judging me dangerous in my grief while others considering my death a mercy. I’d shown them all. Omega though I might be, newly defective or not, I avoided them. I hadn’t just survived those months. I’d thrived. I’d learned to hunt for my food, to find a source of water unguarded by vicious predators, and where to take shelter for rest. Forget the teams hunting for any sign of me. Without Joth catching juicy rabbits to fill my belly, without Kinessa’s stubbornly wary guard against attack, I should’ve died, but I hadn’t. Instead, I proved I could swim up from the mourning that dragged me down. That a broken, barren omega could find a way to live.
&nb
sp; My brother hadn’t managed to kill me. Damned if I would give my pack or humans the satisfaction of correcting Joth’s failure.
I’d been running ever since. Always alone. Once the pack had been convinced I was no danger to anyone, after my return to my father’s den, I couldn’t tolerate others in my shifted form especially. As a man, I didn’t trust them and as a wolf, even less. My wolf trusted no one. Joth had taught me that. My pack had taught me that.
Omegas weren’t supposed to be independent. Many believed omegas weren’t built to be self-reliant. Why else had the traditions meant to protect omegas developed? Yet, I’d become both. If I’d shown plentiful indications of being uneasy with my destiny as an omega before the murders, my barrenness after the attack had intensified that. Elder shifters had dipped their grayed heads, whispering my youthful defiance had foreshadowed my tragedy. They said my stubborn unsuitability as an omega had been a gift from the goddess to prepare me for my loss.
I’d wanted to scream.
Break something.
Make them listen.
The pack might wish to rewrite history, but I knew better. My own mother had told me she too had resisted mating until she’d met my father. Nervousness was natural for us. Longing for more from life than breeding pups was too. Omegas could do and be more. We could achieve anything alphas and betas could. We wanted careers alongside raising our children like they did. Before her death, my mother had worked for a florist in the towns. Maise, who the pack accepted as a traditional omega, served the pack by collecting the full moon tithes. Seeking useful occupation outside child-rearing and our dens wasn’t as rare or scandalous as shifters liked to make it out to be.
Why should I be ostracized and regarded as a freak for working to support my pack, simply because I was no longer capable of carrying children? While I remained grateful that interference from the elders had persuaded the others to stop trying to kill me, their intractable prejudices in denigrating omegas pursuing work as merely a hobby or unnatural gritted my teeth.
At least no one would be surprised I’d run again. The only genuine shock was I’d lasted this long.
I sprinted through the woods stretching from Dio’s cabin in the center of the pack lands toward my den on the territory’s border. Ignoring the buffet of scents from prey animals and the sly scent trails of fellow pack members, I just ran. Hunger didn’t gnaw at my belly, nor thirst parch my throat. Leaping over the streams that bisected the pack’s territory was no burden to me, the tinkle of rushing water soothing in my ears. So too was the rustle of leaves from squirrels shooting up trees as I passed and the croak of bullfrogs preceding the plunk of them leaping into the water when I neared.
The forest soothed me. Buzzing insects hadn’t hunted me, nor chirping birds sought to kill me. Towering oaks that dripped vines of wild grapes hadn’t intended to force me to couple with a stranger because of my audacity in being born with a womb. Instead, oaks provided the wood I shaped with my hands and their companion vines gifted a tasty snack when humid summer fell upon the land. Cool under my paws, the verdant earth thick with a carpet of dead leaves comforted me. The forest didn’t care if I ever bred a pup, hadn’t judged me for questioning whether I wanted to be a father. The creatures sharing the woods with me didn’t sneer in derision or pity at the workshop I’d claimed from my sire and put to steady use. They didn’t doubt my ability to fill my belly with them if my stomach grumbled. They fled at my approach because these animals knew I would ferociously defend myself should any of them spring to attack.
The pack had failed me, but the land never had.
Rather than racing to my den, I veered south. I streaked toward the miniature lake I’d shared as a swimming hole with my brothers once upon a time, where branches of trees heavy with green leaves provided cooling shade and black-eyed Susans fought with Queen Anne’s lace to claim the muddy banks from flourishing cattails. Here, my memories were sweet. Though Kinessa had risked punishment for teaching an omega, he’d schooled me on following a scent trail at the lake. Only to the beaver’s dam that formed the eastern edge of the lake. My brothers, already fierce hunters, hadn’t preyed upon them because beaver population numbers were scant, but the lessons I’d learned about tracking had faithfully served me after both my brothers had been gone.
Upwind, I crouched in the tall grasses around the water to watch the beavers busily add to the sticks and mud of their den, my tongue lolling in delight when beaver kits splashed playfully in the shallows nearby. Spring rains had weakened part of their dam, but these beavers were stubborn. They’d rebuilt.
I could rebuild too, but into what?
Dio believed I could be fertile despite what my brother had done to me. He probably wouldn’t have fucked me otherwise, and the human doctors entertained the possibility I might conceive too. I settled to the dirt and rested my snout on my front paws, the rigged knot of scar tissue at my stomach flattening against the damp earth. I should be elated. As hotly as I’d feared my role as an omega in my pack, tearing that duty from me at fourteen had destroyed something elemental inside me.
Joth’s claws had wrecked my womb. I couldn’t conceive or carry pups anymore. The human test results after I’d woken from my coma said so, and for the past six years, I’d believed it. With my purpose destroyed, I’d fought to find another. Maybe building furniture wasn’t as important as raising a litter of whelps and no matter the high price the pieces I produced added to pack coffers, the money paled in comparison to the significance that strategically mating me to an alpha would’ve benefited the pack. As a boy, the idea of mating and breeding had shaken me to my bones, but even I had recognized the asset in solidifying alliances I, as an omega, would provide.
I liked working with my hands, though. Nothing filled me with satisfaction like the scent of sawdust in my nose and the scraping whoosh of sandpaper smoothing wood I’d fashioned to reflect the project image crowding my mind. Joth had despaired at my ignorance of the humans’ esteem for my skills in the towns, but I’d recognized my own talent. I didn’t need human confirmation of it. My craftsmanship had quickly surpassed my father’s once I’d returned after the murders, when I’d escaped my sorrow and pain by focusing on the tasks I’d appointed for myself. Dad was a mediocre carpenter, fondly tolerating my watchful eyes when I’d joined him in his workshop as a whelp, little comprehending the many lessons I’d learned from him. I’d applied those unintended lessons and developed talents of my own since. He’d been average at his craft.
I was exceptional.
Me. An omega.
My pack had grudgingly permitted a barren omega a trade. They pitied me. I smelled it when any of them drew close, but they left me to my work. I had my life. It wasn’t the life my pack and parents had planned for me, but the work I loved and labored over made me, if not happy, at least fulfilled. Though cruel and brutal, Joth was also right. If breeding me had been possible, my pack would never have allowed me half as much.
What if Dr. Bennet was correct too and Dio’s faith in me proved sound? What if my scarred womb could be healed? And I somehow managed to conceive? The tantalizing prize of finally fulfilling my pack’s expectations glittered like diamonds… diamonds honed with sharp cutting edges. What of the taint of evil in my family line, the wrongness proven by Joth’s killing spree six years ago? I might not be as educated as my brother, but I knew at least some threads of insanity could be hereditary. How could anyone expect me to risk breeding another murderous shifter like Joth? Even if I could breed, why gamble on my bad blood?
Eventually, I tired of the thoughts spinning inside my mind. I rose on four legs, quietly so I wouldn’t alarm the beaver kits, and turned. I walked through the woods, unsurprised to find Dio sitting on the front step of my den when I reached home. He stood, his stare cautiously blank. He swung the door open. I scampered inside. He followed, reaching for the lantern to light the small space. Rather than watching me shift, his stare swept the workshop, my tools and jumbles of wood that were projects in
progress. His gaze slowed at the lump of tatty blankets and dead leaves cushioning where I slept and my few personal items lined up on an upended crate: comb, razor and strop, a cake of soap.
As soon as the ache in my bones from the shift relented, I grabbed everyday clothes from the crate. With shaking hands, I pulled gray sweatpants up my hips. I shrugged into a red flannel shirt I’d left hanging on a nail in the wall, but didn’t bother buttoning it. Dio had seen my scars before, touched and caressed them. They wouldn’t faze him now, and I trembled so violently I wasn’t sure I could manage the buttons. I snatched a pair of socks from the crate too, but my boots were still at Dio’s log cabin. I lived sparsely, with little extras. Until a beta returned my other set of clothes, this was as dressed as I could get.
“I’ve only been inside here once, when Farron introduced us.” Shoulders bunched tight, Dio traced a finger along the length of my lantern. His attention landed on the bottle of oil nearby that provided fuel for it, then flitted away. “He said you could not be persuaded or forced to live in the house with your father, that you preferred this workshop. You were wary and skittish, as it was. No one dared push you too far.”
“I’m not feral,” I said, cutting off the automatic anymore that had completed that declaration when I’d spoken it to Farron. A feral shifter would always be part feral. I was no exception, but when I’d returned to my human form after the attack, after the human hospital and after the hunt for me had died away, I’d assimilated. I hadn’t stumbled at finding my words to communicate as a man or turned up my nose at cooked meals. I’d relearned feelings of safety while sleeping in the shed rather than the open woods. I’d worn clothes, manipulated tools requiring fingers and thumbs. I’d embraced my non-shifted form again. “I’m no threat to anyone.”
Dio arched a skeptical eyebrow. “You are what that night and this pack made of you.”
I frowned because I was more than what had happened to me. “I’m not feral,” I repeated, slowing my words to emphasize them. “I avoid Dad’s house because I still smell their blood. Mom’s and Kinessa’s. I don’t care if it’s just in my head—the place stinks of their deaths.” I lifted my chin. “I stayed the night with you inside your cabin, though. I did okay at the human prison too and that space is more restrictive.”