He blinks hard. He’s been staring at the screen for hours and his eyes are burning.
He scrolls left, then zooms in so that the map now shows the furthest most reaches of the Aylewood mountain range.
The ancient box-shaped monitor doesn’t have the same image depth as modern ones, but it will have to do.
He’s just grateful it’s lasted this long. Same for Gary’s old PC. It’s the same age as Aaron and still going.
He leans forward, peering closer as if simply getting closer to the screen will reveal something that he hadn’t seen the first thousand times that he did it.
He glances at up at the clock on his bedroom wall. He has seventeen minutes before Gary’s alarm goes off.
Hey, you okay? Another pop up appears with a ping. He swipes that away too, interested in nothing but the images on the screen.
Aaron knows the place intimately. The river is there. It splinters there and there. He knows the fastest route into town, and the quickest way to get stuck down the ravine. He knows the trees that have fallen, and the cabins hidden in the forest.
Or rather he knows the cabins that have roofs visible through the trees. There will be others. He needs to be prepared for those.
Are you still there?
Aaron clicks on the window and types in hurriedly: No. Not gone. Just checking the map again. Just in case. Don’t distract me.
The reply comes within seconds. It’ll be fine. Just follow my directions. You’ve still got three weeks.
Aaron taps out a response. I need to be sure. This can’t go wrong.
It won’t. It’ll all be over soon, Ben says.
Chat later, Aaron types. Ben’s safe. He can afford to be positive. Aaron can’t. He’s not there yet. He closes the window and sets the notifications to mute. He has three weeks before the run starts. That’s three weeks to make sure he’s not going to mess it up.
A loud banging sounds at the door.
Aaron jumps, pushing the button to turn off the machine in one instinctive movement.
The door handle depresses and the door starts to open.
Adrenaline spikes through Aaron’s veins, sending nausea rising up through his throat. Gary rarely comes in. This is a bad sign.
He’s up from the chair in a flash, pushing back against the door before he’s even thought the action through.
“I’ve still got fourteen minutes!” he yells without thinking, slamming his full body weight against the bedroom door in a desperate effort to keep it shut.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gary pushes the door open as easily as if Aaron were made of rice paper, and Aaron has to scramble not to fall on his ass.
As he watches, the big hand ticks over the twelve. Now, it’s twelve minutes. He was supposed to be safe for another twelve minutes. Gary’s rarely up before nine in the morning.
Somewhere in the back of Aaron’s mind, he knows he is being ridiculous. His stepfather isn’t going to care about a thing like that. It doesn’t stop the panic from rising.
“I don’t care, boy. It’s Thursday. You’re twenty-one. The stipend your mama left you has run out and you’re no longer my problem.” Gary steps into the bedroom and stops dead. “What is all this shit?”
He stares at the walls, plastered with sticky notes, colored pins, pen marks and hand-drawn maps, then he shakes his head. “Actually, I don’t care. Come on. Time to go.”
Aaron stands his ground. Or he tries to. “The run doesn’t start for three weeks. I don’t have to go now.”
“What run? The Aylewood run?” Gary says with disdain. “I’m not wasting money on that.”
Aaron’s blood runs cold, even as a little voice in his head tells him that he knew Gary wasn’t going to stand by his word.
He pushes it away in a panic. It has to be Aylewood. That was the plan. He’s been studying the Aylewood run for months. He knows every rock and boulder, every tree and hidden cabin. Or at least as many as he can make out from satellite images and hiker blogs. He has a plan.
“But I paid for it. I gave you the money,” Aaron whispers, his voice suddenly hoarse. He’d signed over every cent he’d inherited from Mom to Gary. The only money he had that was meant for just him. It wasn’t a lot but it was enough for the fees and a bit left over.
Gary has the grace to look embarrassed even if it only lasts for a split second before his usual irritable expression returns.
He shrugs.
Aaron’s blood runs cold. Gary spent the money. Of course, he did.
“Come on, boy,” Gary says, tapping his watch. “We have to hit the road right now if we want to make it before sundown.”
Fury burns through Aaron’s veins. He pushes it down with a struggle.
Don’t make it worse, he says to himself.
Instead, he takes a deep breath, breathing out through his mouth. His heartbeat sounds in his ears. “Where am I going?”
“Never you mind,” Gary says. “We’re leaving in five minutes. If your ass isn’t in the car by then, you’ll get what for.”
Aaron’s stomach tightens. Never you mind. That means it’s bad enough that Gary thinks Aaron’s going to risk arguing.
Gary stands in the doorway, arms folded. “And you are waiting for...what exactly?”
Aaron stares frantically around his tiny bedroom. What to take?
Clothes. He grabs a backpack and shoves spare shirts, underwear and jean inside. What else?
He’s never been allowed his own phone so that’s not an option even if he wishes it was.
Atlas. He grabs it from the bookshelf. He also has an old compass and a couple of boxes of matches.
If he’s going on a mating run, and if he’s allowed them, then they might come in useful.
If he’s being sold like Ben was, then not so much.
“Two minutes,” Gary says from the doorway.
Damn it. Aaron grabs his sneakers and a pair of socks, then runs barefoot out of the house. Gary follows him, his footsteps heavy.
Aaron darts across the yard, pulls open the car door and darts into the back.
Gary sits down heavily in the driver’s seat letting his elbow hang out off the window, a lit cigarette dangling from his hand.
He snorts. “You had thirty seconds, boy. Leaving it close.”
Aaron doesn’t answer. It’s never worth it.
The only good omega is a quiet omega. That’s one of Gary’s favorite sayings.
Aaron mentally shrugs. That’s one good thing that’s going to come out of all of this. He’ll almost certainly never see Gary again. That’s no great loss.
The car pulls out of the drive, and onto the street, heading west.
He’s desperately curious to know where they are going but doesn’t dare ask. Not yet. Gary’s waiting for him to do it so he can slap him down.
Instead, Aaron hunkers down in the back and tries to think through a fog of panic.
Before the Aylewood plan, he had others. Gary’s not big on omegas getting educated or getting ‘soiled’ by socializing without chaperones so Aaron has been effectively stuck in his bedroom with the internet since he was fourteen.
That’s a lot of planning time.
His studies of the Aylewood region might be wasted, but it’s not the only place he’s studied. It’s just the most recent.
Right. Think! It’s going to take them until sundown to get where they’re going. That rules out anywhere close by.
Oh no. Gary wouldn’t do that. Except he would, wouldn’t he?
Aaron’s heartbeat sounds in his ears, and his vision blurs. He shuts his eyes tight and breathes out slowly.
When he opens his eyes again, Gary is watching him from the rearview mirror.
“It’s the Red Run, isn’t it?” he whispers. He can smell himself now. He’s stinking up the car with fear and terror.
Gary wrinkles his nose and winds down a window. “Ah, come on, kid. It’s not that bad,” he says. “Hundreds of omegas do it every year. You’ll have
a great time.”
Hundreds of omegas.
And how many survive? And how many end up mated to some thug they don’t want?
The Red fucking Run. Gary is sending him on the Red Run.
Aaron grits his teeth and resists the urge to call Gary an asshole.
“Besides,” Gary continues. “They were paying good money this year. They’ve got too many alphas and not enough omegas. You’ll be in demand, boy. You’ll have your pick.”
Aaron’s stomach turns over. He risks glancing up, meeting Gary’s eyes in the rearview mirror. The idiot actually looks pleased as if he thinks he’s doing Aaron a favor.
Aaron looks away and stares out of the car window unseeing as stats and figures roll down inside his head.
Before he planned for Aylewood, he’d half-planned for the Red Run, although not seriously.
He’d never considered it a real possibility. He’d thought Gary would have sold him to a single alpha before selling him to the run. The money really must be good.
Hundreds of omegas and hundreds of alphas on the biggest run in the country and almost completely unregulated.
No restrictions on participants.
No real medical tests to make sure everyone is healthy enough to participate.
Nothing but high death rates and insanity.
Not helpful, Aaron tells himself. What do you know? You studied for this too, remember.
The Red Run is three miles outside of the town of Blood Moon, his memory helpfully supplies.
It’s named for the ubiquitous red sand of the run territory and set in miles of desert and scrubland. A single water source stops participants from spreading out too thinly.
He wracks his brain for more details. He needs to remember everything: the hiding places and the risks, the landscape. He needs to recall every tiny scrap of information from every omega who has done it on every run forum that he has ever read.
There has never been a Red Run without at least one omega death.
His hands loosen from the clenched fists at his side and fall limply the seat as energy drains out of him.
It should have been Aylewood. He should never have trusted Gary with it. Or with his money.
Aaron was prepared for Aylewood. He was so prepared that he wasn’t planning on even doing the run at all.
He’s gone to sleep every night for the past year fantasizing about the route between the Aylewood registration and the Winterstoke packhouse: half a mile to safety and he’s imagined every step hundreds of time.
They won’t turn you away, Ben said. They’re the good guys.
“Right, bathroom break,” Gary says suddenly, turning off the road.
The stop is a small gas station: nothing more than a couple of pumps and a general store set on a highway with nothing but fields in front of it and fields behind.
Gary pulls up.
“Don’t you dare move,” he says, as if there’s anywhere for Aaron to run.
He gets out of the car, taking the keys with him. The door slams behind him.
Aaron is out of the car the moment that Gary closes the restroom door behind him.
He races across the gas station forecourt and into the store.
The clerk behind the counter is an elderly beta who startles when Aaron bursts in.
Aaron is at the counter in three seconds flat. He grabs a novelty pen from the stand and scribbles on an old gas receipt he found shoved down the back of the car seat.
“Please,” he begs. “Please send this. Please.” It’s three pleases in a row, but it doesn’t seem enough, so he adds another one. “Please.”
He thrusts the paper at the startled clerk and runs out again, closing the door of the car just as the restroom door opens again and Gary emerges, still pulling up his zip.
He’s aware of the beta staring at the him through the storefront window.
Don’t rat on me. Please don’t rat on me.
Gary slides into the driver’s seat and starts the ignition. “Ready to go?” he asks as if Aaron has a choice in the matter.
Aaron says nothing. Instead, he watches the gas station recede into the distance and prays for a miracle.
GREGOR
yellow dandelions and oiled hedge-clippers
Gregor is half-way through cleaning his tools when the familiar stink of omega panic drifts in through the open door of the greenhouse.
He stops dead, hedge-clippers in mid-air, then relaxes as he recognizes the scent. Ben.
He reaches across the bench for the oil he uses on the tools. The omega they rescued from Mason Reed still has nightmares and the occasional panic attack, although they’re not as frequent as they used to be.
Gregor has also learnt that a big alpha bursting in to see what’s wrong tends to make the situation worse.
He rubs the oil into his clippers with a rag, breathing through his mouth as he waits for the scent to diminish.
It doesn’t.
He frowns and puts down the trowel, wiping his hands on his jeans as he walks out the greenhouse and into the meadow behind the packhouse.
It’s mid-summer and the meadow is dotted with dandelions and daisies. Luke’s been nagging at him to get the mower out and tidy everything up, but Gregor likes the cheerful yellow flowers. Besides, they attract bees and butterflies.
He has to dig up dandelions in his clients’ gardens. He doesn’t have to do it in his own.
The dandelion heads brush against his calves as he walks around the back of the packhouse.
The stink of panic is even stronger when he pushes the door open and steps inside.
“Ben?” Gregor calls out. “Is everything okay?”
No answer. Gregor frowns again. He heads down the corridor towards the room that has been Ben’s since he first arrived almost two years ago.
The door is open a sliver. He taps on it twice briefly, then sticks his head round when there’s no answer. “Ben?”
The dark-haired omega is sitting hunched over his laptop, eyes fixed on the screen as he frantically taps at the keyboard.
He’s filled out since they brought him back from River Beach, but he’s still a lot thinner than Gregor thinks is healthy.
Ben’s dark hair falls across his face as he leans forward.
Other than usual pallor and skinniness, he doesn’t look like he’s hurt or in any danger, but the scent hasn’t diminished. If anything, it’s increased.
“Dude!” Gregor says louder.
Ben startles and looks up. He blinks twice as if he hadn’t even noticed Gregor at all.
“He’s not coming,” he says, his voice high with fear.
“Who’s not coming?” Gregor crosses the room and looks over Ben’s shoulder at the screen.
The website banner reads ‘Red Run registration open now!’
“Oh no,” Gregor says hurriedly. “You don’t want to go anywhere near that. It’s a bloodbath. Trust me, kid.”
Ben’s head swivels fast and his eyes meet Gregor’s, then he bursts into tears.
Oh no. Gregor reaches over tentatively and pats Ben on the shoulder. “Look, whoever you were going to meet? Get him to come here. Trust me.”
And I can get a good look at him.
They have this kind of thing on the Aylewood run almost every year: alpha and omega meet online and decide it’d be romantic to start their mated life with a run. It rarely works out.
Privately, he’d have thought Ben was smarter than that.
Ben shakes his head. “It’s not an alpha.”
An omega, then? Gregor’s aware that sometimes it’s an omega loves omega situation, but that would be an even worse reason to do the Red Run.
“I don’t get it,” he admits.
“It’s my brother,” Ben says, but he’s crying hard enough that it takes Gregor a second for his brain to catch up and translate the words through the wail.
“He was supposed to come here for the Aylewood run,” Ben continues. “We’ve been planning for ages. He’s been
sent to the Red Run instead.”
Gregor’s heart stops. “Oh god, I am so sorry.”
He doesn’t even ask what Ben means by sent. Ben’s stepfather sold him to Mason Reed at twenty-one. He’s guessing the Red Run was worth more this year.
His gaze slips back to the website on the screen. The Red Run. He shivers, despite himself.
Ben runs his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know... I was hoping...” He leans forward and flips tabs on the browser. “I thought I’d see if I could find someone for him, but I don’t know about any of these guys. How do I know if they’re legit?”
Gregor leans over again. It’s some kind of omega/alpha matching site. There are posts from alphas offering to pair up on mating runs for those omegas so desperate that they’ll take the devil they hardly know over the one they don’t at all.
Gregor grimaces. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. “Those guys are usually pretty desperate. Your brother doesn’t want any of them.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Ben says tearfully. “He was supposed to be here. I don’t know what else to do.”
The worry scent rolling off of him is making Gregor’s stomach hurt.
He opens his mouth say it’s going to be okay but it’d be a lie and they’d both know it.
No. Damn it. Ben’s pack now. That makes his brother pack too.
“It’ll be okay,” he says anyway. He squats down beside the omega and peers at the screen. Registration ends in twelve hours. If he leaves now, he’ll get there just in time. “I’ll go get him.”
“What?”
“I’ll go get him,” Gregor says again, the idea cementing in his head even as he says it. “Registration isn’t closed yet. What does he look like?”
Ben blinks rapidly, then he turns back to the laptop and taps at the keyboard. A second later, a photo pops up on the screen. He turns the laptop so Gregor can get a better view.
“That’s him. That’s Aaron,” Ben says, rubbing at red-rimmed eyes with the heel of his hand.
The picture is slightly blurred: a screenshot captured through a poor-quality webcam, but even so Gregor can see the resemblance between them. Like his brother, Aaron is slim, pretty and black-haired with thick dark eyelashes over soft brown eyes.
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