The Omega Hybrid

by J. L. Wilder

  His hand shot out onto Echo's ass, giving it a firm squeeze.

  "And as much as I love to kill, I love fucking even more."

  That was it —Jack didn't need to see any more. Faster than the bear had managed to move, Jack rushed to the other side of the cave and grabbed the man by the neck. Squeezing him hard, Jack lifted him up against the cave wall.

  He was so furious that he couldn't believe it. All he wanted was to take this asshole apart, piece by piece.

  "What...what the fuck!" said the man, each word a struggle.

  "I've got a third option for you," said Jack, his animal coming closer and closer to running wild, his eyes shifting into the amber color of a wolf's. "I break your fucking neck for laying a hand on her."

  "You...you wouldn't fucking dare," said the man, his face ketchup red. "You'd...you have the entire clan on your ass."

  "You leave, now," said Jack. "I won't warn you again."

  The man laughed in response.

  "Big words for someone who just signed his own death warrant," he said, each word a struggle though Jack's grip.

  "Jack!" shouted Echo. "Don't!"

  "I'll take that as a ‘no'?" asked Jack, his eyes still on the man's.

  "Take it as a ‘fuck you'."

  Jack shook his head, as if disappointed.

  "Sorry to hear that," he said.

  With a sharp turn of his hand, he twisted the man's neck in a sharp, unnatural way. It wasn't the first spine he'd broken, and the feeling had always seemed to him more like breaking a thick branch than anything else.

  A sick crack sounded through the cave, the lights of the man's eyes turning off and his body going limp. Echo let out another scream as Jack let the man's body drop to the ground in a heap.

  "Done," said Jack, stepping back and taking a look at his work.

  Echo's eyes were wide with terror, and as soon as the first scream was done, she opened her mouth for another. But before she could get it out, Jack ran over to her and cover her mouth with his hand.

  "I know you're scared," he said. "But you keep screaming like that and you're going to get the rest of the clan on our ass. And I won't be able to break all of their necks."

  Echo was stiff in his grasp, but she didn't struggle.

  "Now," he said. "I swear I'm gonna keep you safe. But you need to work with me—be nice and quiet and don't attract any attention. I'll get you out of here, just like you want. Got it?"

  Jack couldn't believe his words. He'd just made the shitlist of one of the most powerful shifter clans in the region. But he knew that he'd done the right thing. No way was he going to let Echo go off with a prick like that.

  "I'm gonna take my hand away now," he said. "And you have to promise you won't scream—our lives depend on it."

  He felt her nod against his hand. When he was certain she wasn't going to freak out, he removed it. Echo scrambled away from him, her eyes on the body.

  "You...you killed him," she said.

  "I did," said Jack. "And I'd do it again. Hope he wasn't a friend of yours."

  Echo shook her head.

  "No one in that clan is a friend of mine," she said.

  "Good," said Jack. "But we still need to get the fuck out of here."

  "Get the fuck out of here and go where?" asked Echo. "There's an entire pack looking for me, and once they find him, they're going to know I had help. That means they'll be looking for you, too."

  "Yeah," he said. "But I know just the place we can hide out."

  Echo cocked her head to the side.

  "Where?"

  Jack flashed her a smile.

  "My place, of course. Or, should I say, our place.”

  CHAPTER 10

  ECHO

  Echo couldn't believe what she was doing. She'd gone from running away from her pack to meeting a strange man to sleeping with him and then following him through the woods after he'd killed one of her own.

  No, she reminded herself. He wasn't one of my own. I'd only been a Hearteater in name. Maybe if Stone had gotten his chance to claim me...but he didn't. Not yet.

  The image of the man's body was burned in her mind.

  "You know that guy?" asked Jack as they made their way through the woods.

  Echo it seemed strange how Jack always seemed to be able to know what was on her mind. And more than that, she felt an odd closeness to him that she couldn't put her finger on. It was like she'd already known him.

  "Kind of," she said. "He joined the pack a year or so ago from one of the other branches. Think his name was Rick...Red...something like that."

  Jack let out a snort of a laugh as they went on.

  "Getting the impression that you don't have much fondness for your own clan," he said. "Pretty strange for a shifter."

  Echo took in a deep breath and went on. Part of her wanted to still be guarded with Jack...but on the other hand he had killed for her, killed to keep her safe. She considered that the least she could do was trust him.

  "I'm not a Hearteater," she said.

  "I get that," he said. "If they didn't kick you out of the clan for running, they will after what just happened."

  "No," said Echo. "It's not like that. I was never really one of them."

  Jack looked back over his shoulder, his blue eyes narrowed in confusion.

  "Call me a simple wolf if you want, but I like to have things told to me as clearly and with as minimal of bullshit as possible."

  "Sorry," said Echo. "Just that I'm not used to being able to be open about this kind of stuff."

  "You need to get used to it," he said. "Because it's not just me you're going to have to get on the good side of."

  Echo remembered what Jack had said, that he had other men he lived with—not quite a clan, but something like it.

  "Okay," she said. "My clan was killed before I was born. My mother was the last survivor and get managed to flee when it all went down."

  "Whoa," said Jack. "Your whole clan was killed? Where? How?"

  "West of here," she said. "My mother really never told me the details. Whenever I asked, she'd always just tell me that I was a Hearteater now, and the less I knew about my clan, the better."

  "Makes some kind of sense," said Jack. "Go on."

  "And when she fled, she...got lost. Ended up finding a wolf in the woods who took her in. And they...you know."

  "Holy shit," said Jack. "This story's sounding kind of familiar."

  Echo knew he was right but didn't want to think too much about it.

  "She got pregnant, and when you're a bear that's a bad thing to have happen."

  "Yeah," said Jack. "People have all sorts of strange feelings about hybrids."

  "So, when she stumbled upon the Hearteaters it took all the convincing she was capable of to let her stay with them. The last thing they wanted was some pregnant bear to look after."

  "How the hell did she pull that off?" asked Jack. "The rep the Hearteaters have...I'd think they'd kill her and be done with it."

  Echo gulped, thinking back to exactly how her mom had earned their keep.

  "She worked as something like a maid for a while," said Echo. "And once she had me, the guys in the clan...found other uses for her."

  Jack nodded slowly.

  "I...see," he said.

  "They figured that she was a bear that they didn't need to treat her one of the clan, thought they could just use her for fun. I had no idea what was going on until I got a little older, old enough to realize."

  "Sorry to hear that," he said. "Fucked up situation."

  "No kidding," I said.

  "What happened to your mom?" he asked as we started up a steep hill.

  "She died," I said. "Around when I was ten. Went off into the woods with some of the other women in the pack to meet with one of the other clans and then just...never came back. They said they'd been ambushed by some rival clan and that she didn't make it."

  "And you believe them?"

  "I don't know," she said. "Stone, the alpha
of the pack, told me that he'd have revenge. And he did—he led an attack against the clan who'd killed her and wiped them off the map. One of his many victories on the way to becoming alpha."

  "That's...fucking rough," said Jack. "Sorry to hear that."

  "It's all in the past," said Echo. "And after that they kept a close watch on me, never letting me go too far from the clan. The other girls hated me, treated me like a half-breed freak."

  "Bitches," said Jack.

  Echo allowed herself a smile, trying not to think of what the girls had done to her.

  "Yeah," she said. "Bitches."

  They went on, continuing through the woods. Minutes passed in silence.

  "Holding up okay back there?" asked Jack.

  "Yeah," said Echo. "Just worried about them finding me."

  "Don't be too concerned about that shit," he said. "I know these woods like the back of my hand. And that means I know how to travel through them without getting found. Just stick with me and you'll be fine."

  His confidence put her at ease, but she was still uncertain about exactly what was happening, where he was taking her.

  Echo took a deep breath and decided to get right into it.

  "Tell me about these other shifters," she said. "I...don't exactly have the best luck fitting in with packs I don't belong to."

  "Then that's good news for you," he said. "Because we're a group of fucking misfits."

  "Is that right?" asked Echo.

  "Yep," he said. "Three of us all belonged to wolf clans—different ones."

  "Really?" asked Echo. "And now you live together? How did that happen?"

  "Told you," he said. "We were all misfits. Most shifters work just fine in the normal pack setup. You know—you got your alphas and betas and omegas and all that. But some shifters just...don't play well with others."

  "And you guys are that."

  "Yep," he said as he ducked under a low-hanging branch. "My own clan, the Stone Claws, they were...Let's just say they weren't all that different from the Hearteaters. Difference is that while there were a few dozen in the pack, there couldn't have been more than a hundred brain cells between them."

  "That right?" asked Echo.

  Jack glanced back over his shoulder and flashed her a charming grin.

  "That's right," he said. "Bunch of fucking wannabe bruisers who thought all it'd take to conquer the region was pure power. Now, I'm not against cracking skulls when it's necessary, but you gotta be smart about it."

  "And I'm going to guess that didn't go over well with them," said Echo.

  "Not even a little," he said. "Whenever I'd suggest some actual strategy, they'd tell me to shut the fuck up, sit down, and know my place. Now, no one talks to me like that, but after about the tenth ass-whooping they gave me I started thinking less about getting them to see the light of day and more about getting the fuck out of there."

  "Then what happened?"

  "The Stone Claws eventually set their eyes on some other wolf pack in the area, the Sharp Eyes, one low on men and high of gorgeous young ladies ripe for the plucking. Problem was that they were crafty fuckers, knew how to fight and make their numbers seem like more than they were. But the boys in my crew thought all they'd need would be to ‘swarm and crush', as they always said, like always."

  He went on.

  "I tried to warn the guys of how the Sharp Eyes had been scouting us out for weeks, finding exactly how we were weak. They didn't give a fuck, just wanted to swarm and crush, swarm and crush. So, the day of the attack I could read the writing on the wall. We were going to get buttfucked six ways from Sunday, and I wasn't about to be there for it. The alpha lets us know the rendezvous, and I just so happen to ‘forget my way'."

  "Then what happened?" asked Echo.

  "You ever hear of the Stone Claws?" he asked.

  "No," she said. "Never."

  "Exactly. They only idiots who got swarmed and crushed were those pricks. Sharp Eyes got them down to a man, and I was the only one who got out of there with my life."

  "Wow," she said. "Guess we've got that in common—both of our clans wiped out."

  "I'm not crying over it though," he said. "World's a better place with the Stone Claws gone."

  They continued on, putting more and more distance between them and the Hearteaters territory. Echo didn't hear a single engine rev or anything else that would've suggested that they were hot on the trail. Slowly, she allowed relief to take hold.

  "Listen," she said after taking a deep breath. "I never got a chance to thank you."

  "Huh?" asked Jack. "For what?"

  "You know," she said. "For what you did back there."

  "Oh, you mean snapping that prick's neck?" he asked with a chuckle. "My pleasure. Would've done that shit for fun."

  "Not just that," she said. "But saving my life, bringing me back to health, looking out for me. Protecting me."

  "Um, yeah," he said. "No sweat."

  Echo got the sense that he still wasn't sure why he'd done what he'd done. And between that and the sex...it was all so much for her to process—he had to be feeling the same way.

  "Well, I'm grateful," she said. "And I just want you to know that."

  Jack nodded, his mouth a flat line, before turning his attention back to the woods ahead.

  After another half-hour or so of walking, they arrived at the face of a sharp incline, one that seemed to go up and up and up.

  "Here," said Jack. "Right here."

  Echo looked at the incline, unsure what he meant.

  "You live inside of this?" she asked. "Like you're hobbits or something?"

  "Yeah," said Rick. "You don't see the big wooden door?"

  He let out a laugh.

  "No, we're all the way up to at the top. Just got a hell of a climb."

  "Not very convenient," Echo said.

  "Not at all, and that's the point. Good vantage point over the region, and no one's going to stumble onto us."

  He nodded towards the incline.

  "Let's move—daylight's wasting."

  Echo realized he was right—the last traces of sunlight were visible to the west, the sky already dark above them.

  Without waiting another second Rick started up the incline. It wasn't sharp enough to need to climb it mountain-style—Echo thought it to be more like a very, very steep hill. But each step up was exhausting, requiring every bit of strength she had.

  After nearly an hour of hiking, they finally reached the top. Echo leaned forward, resting her hands on her knees and struggling to catch her breath. Part of her wanted to drop right then and there and rest for hours.

  "There," said Rick, pointing ahead. "We're home."

  Echo lifted her head up and looked ahead.

  She couldn't believe what she saw.

  Through another patch of thick-trunked trees was a massive house, so big that it was more like a compound. It was three stories and built from dark wood, a massive black fence surrounding the entire property. An enormous, well-maintained lawn was in front, three motorcycles parked in the driveway.

  "Wow," said Echo, taking in the sight. "Hell of a place you've got here."

  "Belonged to one of those rich loner types who liked to stay as far away from civilization as possible. The guys and I pooled our money and when we realized we needed to get away from the city."

  "How'd you all meet?" Echo asked.

  "Plenty of time for questions later. Come on."

  Jack started towards the house, and Echo followed. And as she made her way, she couldn't shake the feeling that someone, somewhere, was watching her.

  CHAPTER 11

  CUTTER

  He didn't like what he saw. Coming towards the house was Jack—back early from his trek out into the woods. That, of course, wasn't the issue. No problem if Jack got tired of roughing it and needed to come back early.

  The issue was that following close to him was a woman —one he'd never seen before.

  She was hot as hell. No doubt about that
. Slender and willowy with curves in all the right places, she was like something out of a dream. Curly dark hair, round tits, and a mouth made for kissing—or other activities- she was smoking enough to make Cutter's cock pay attention.

  But he could tell right away that she was going to be trouble. A sick, tense feeling took hold of him as the pair approached. They both looked worn out and ragged, like they'd made the trip back to the house at double time.

  Something was wrong, and he didn't need Jack to tell him that.

  The whiskey was close at hand, and Cutter had a feeling he was going to need it. He poured himself a shot, threw it back, and by the time it'd finished settling in his belly with a satisfying burn the front door opened.

  "Cutter!" called out Jack, his voice echoing through the house. "Mace!"

  Cutter shook his head, grabbed the bottle by the neck, and started off towards the entry hall.

  Sure enough, there he was—there they were. The girl gasped and looked up at him the moment he stepped foot onto the tile of the hall, putting her hand on her chest and stepping back as if she'd gotten caught breaking in.

  "Cutter!" said Jack, a smile breaking out across his face. "There you are!"

  His eyes on Jack, Cutter pointed to the girl.

  "Who the fuck is she?"

  Out of the corner of his eye he drank in the sight of the girl. She was even more beautiful up this close, and it took all the effort he had not to eyefuck her right then and there.

  "And why is she here?" growled Cutter.

  Jack's eyes flicked down to the bottle.

  "Mind if I get a pull of that?" he asked.

  "Speak up first," said Cutter.

  "Come on," said Jack. "Just hoofed it all the way back here."

  Cutter let out a frustrated sigh before tossing the bottle over to Jack. He caught it neatly and yanked the top off and took a long swing.

  "Fucking hell," he said. "Just what I needed."

  "Let's hear it," he said.

  "What?" asked Jack. "I don't need your permission to bring a girl over."

  "You do when she's got trouble written all over her face," he said.

  The girl cleared her throat and stepped forward.

  "I'm Echo," she said, her voice melodic and sweet all at once.