Winterstoke Wolves Collection : An MM Mpreg Shifter Romance Bundle

by Sasha Silsbury

  Gregor commits the image to memory, then nods. “It’s your stepdad who’s taking him, right? Will he accept money?”

  Ben nods.

  “What if I challenge him?”

  Ben’s eyes widen. “I, uh. I don’t know. Probably not. He’s a beta not an alpha and he’ll have already taken the money for the Red Run. You’ll have to persuade him to break that. Or pay it back.”

  “Hmm. Have you got any way to get in contact with your brother? Let him know I’m coming?”

  Ben shakes his head.

  Gregor grins. “Okay, then. Sounds like a challenge.”

  “Gregor—”

  “I’ll get him. I promise, but I need to get going if I’m going to get there in time.”

  He walks out before he has the chance to change his mind, shutting the door behind him as he leaves. Ben never did like an open door. It’s only been in the last year that the omega has ventured out of his room at all.

  A challenge. And that’s putting it lightly. Gregor pulls his keys out of his pocket and heads for his truck.

  GREGOR

  long drives and suspicious cops

  “You’re from Blood Moon originally, right?” Gregor asks.

  Dan Callister gives him a suspicious look, as if trying to work out the trap in the sentence.

  “The town? With the Red Run?” Gregor prompts.

  It took him all of the five-minute drive from the packhouse into town to realize that his grand plan of turning up at the Red Run and grabbing Ben’s brother wasn’t going to work without some inside knowledge.

  “Um, yes?” Dan answers.

  Gregor has cornered him outside the sheriff station, just as he’s arrived for the morning. Dan reaches into his car and grabs his coffee mug from the holder, before locking the car with a beep. “Haven’t been back in a long while though. Why?”

  “What are the chances I can persuade you to take a day trip? Maybe a couple of days.”

  Dan unlocks the station door and pushes it open with his shoulder. “Sure. I guess. What for?”

  To steal an omega.

  No. That’s not a good answer to give a cop.

  To steal an omega who wants to be stolen. Probably. Maybe. Okay, I haven’t met him yet but I’m pretty sure.

  Even in Gregor’s own head, he’s losing the argument.

  Dan is still looking at him quizzically.

  “You know Ben Schibold?” Gregor starts.

  “Sure. The omega who’s been hiding out at your place,” Dan says, flicking the light switch. “What about him?”

  “It turns out he’s got a brother,” Gregor says. He explains what Ben told him which takes all of three minutes.

  Dan sighs, and leans back against his desk, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Okay. Look I need to say something here, and it’s not going to be something you like.”

  “I know. I’m kinda walking a dodgy legal line here and I shouldn’t be telling a cop about it.”

  Dan harrumphs and takes a sip of his coffee. “Nah. I’m not bothered about that. If the kid doesn’t want to be there, I’m not going to get in the way. I grew up there, remember? The run is brutal. No one should be doing it if they don’t want to. Hell, they probably shouldn’t do it even if they do. No one sane volunteers for the Red Run. Not even the alphas.”

  He uses his coffee mug to point at Gregor. “No, it’s about something your big brother said to me before he left.”

  Gregor gives an inward sigh. When he agreed to take over leadership of the Winterstoke pack, he thought it meant just that: he was going to be the leader. Instead, Adam had left him a seventeen-page instruction book of ‘everything you need to know’.

  He suppresses a wave of irritation. It seems Adam gave Dan a list of instructions too.

  “Adam’s not in charge any more. I am,” Gregor says. “Besides, I’m not going there to cause trouble. I’m just after one omega and I’m willing to do it fairly. Look, I don’t have a whole lot of time. I have to leave in the next half hour—” he checks his watch, “—twenty minutes if I want a hope of being there on time.”

  Dan raises his eyebrows. “So, when you said a day trip, you meant—”

  “Right now,” Gregor admits. “I know. It’s not ideal.”

  Dan stares at him for a minute, then bursts into laughter. “You know what? Why not? I could do with getting out of the house. Give me a minute to lock up again and make sure the deputy knows she’s on call.”

  Gregor opens his mouth.

  “I know. Twenty minutes. And we take my car.”

  “Deal.”

  Dan’s as good as his word. Or better. He’s slipping into the driver’s seat less than fifteen minutes later.

  Gregor sneaks a glance at him. Dan’s been a fixture in Aylewood for almost a decade now.

  He’s young for a sheriff, just over thirty and a lot quieter and easier going than others might be. The Winterstoke pack got lucky with him.

  The interaction between pack law and state law has always required a fine balance with one side often dominating small towns, depending on the strength of the local packs.

  Far too many sheriffs are either in the pay of the local leader or all too keen to show they’re independent by coming down hard on the packs in the area.

  Dan seems to be neither of those things: just a man happy to do a decent job.

  Dan puts his coffee mug back in the holder, then turns the key in the ignition. “Should be around a thirteen-hour drive,” he says.

  Gregor looks over at him. The sheriff is watching the rearview mirror as he reverses and Gregor gets the idea that he’s deliberately not paying attention to Gregor beside him.

  He said yes a little too easily. Gregor’s the one with a reputation for being impulsive, not Dan. The most impulsive thing Gregor has ever seen the sheriff do is buy three books instead of one at a time in Gregor’s brother’s bookstore.

  “Everything okay with you and Elyse?”

  Dan looks away. “Well enough. It’s a marriage. You know how it is.”

  Actually, Gregor doesn’t but he keeps his mouth shut anyway.

  Don’t go picking holes in your good luck.

  “So, what do I need to know about the Red Run?”

  Dan’s green-gray eyes flicker to Gregor’s and then back to the road. His shoulders visibly relax. “How much do you know?”

  “It’s outside Blood Moon. Run by a pack who call themselves blood wolves. And...it’s bad?”

  “That’s it?”

  “I dunno. I know as much as anyone who never planned on going anywhere near it. And for the record, I’m still not. If we do this right, we’ll be able to get Aaron out before the run even starts.”

  The look on Dan’s face makes it clear what he thinks of that plan.

  “You don’t think that’ll work?”

  “I don’t know. I do know you have to do it above board.”

  Above board. Not quite what the Red Run was notorious for. “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah. The blood wolves are protective over the run. They don’t like people running things on the side and you’d be surprised how many alphas try. They’ll have it locked down tight. Follow their rules and you’ll be fine. Do anything sneaky and you won’t be.”

  Gregor frowns, folding his arms. ‘Sneaky’ describes almost the whole of his plan.

  “What do you suggest then?”

  “Get there before Aaron goes into the registration center and buy him off his stepfather. Once he’s in the center, that’ll be it. They won’t let him out of the Red Run, and you’ll have little chance of sneaking him out.”

  Gregor glances over at the speedometer. “Better put your foot on the gas then.”

  Dan nods, his lips tight. The car speeds up. After a few minutes, he starts talking again.

  “Current leader of the blood wolves is a guy called Oz Corrigan. He’s hard nosed, but he’s got a soft spot if he thinks no one will find out about it. You mig
ht be able to exploit that. Just don’t let him know that you know. He’s been in position for the last ten years and had a bunch of contenders. No one’s even come close to taking him down. Not yet.”

  Gregor nods, absorbing the information.

  “Blood Moon’s an odd little town,” Dan continues, his jaw set in a tight line. “The Red Run is one week of the year and everyone makes a pile of money off the tourists and the alphas, and then the rest of the year, no one mentions it. At all. Everyone knows how bad it is and no one wants to be the first to put up their hand and say maybe they should stop doing it. It’s like this weird secret shame that the whole population is in on. Makes for an unhealthy dynamic. I guess that’s a long way to tell you not to bother with the town. They get plenty of people there begging for help in one way or another during the week of the Red Run, and they’ve got plenty of practice ignoring them.”

  “That why you left?”

  Dan startles as if he wasn’t expecting the question. “Something like that. The town didn’t suit me and I didn’t suit the town.”

  Gregor watches the trees whiz by as they drive. He frowns again, a thought coming into his head.

  “You said Adam said something to you about me. What was it?”

  A small smile plays at the corner of Dan’s mouth. “He said you’re impulsive, and I might need to slow you down on occasion. Tell you to look before you leap. That kind of thing.”

  Gregor glances down at his phone where he’s opened the wiki page for the Red Run. He shrugs. “He wasn’t wrong about that.”

  AARON

  pink dust and plain white underwear

  Aaron gives up any pretense at politeness and pinches his nose closed with his fingers.

  It’s too much. There are too many people. Too many smells and too much noise. After so long isolated in his bedroom, the registration center is overwhelming.

  He’s not the only one holding his nose. All around him, other pale omegas pinch their noses shut or clap their hands over their ears to drown out the noise.

  Gary’s fingers dig painfully into his upper arm as he pulls Aaron through the crowd. He’s going to leave bruises but for once Aaron is grateful.

  He imagines Gary letting go and letting Aaron sink into the mass of leering alphas and terrified omegas, never to re-emerge.

  Don’t let go.

  He picks up his pace, making it easier for Gary to pull him along, as they bump and nudge their way through the masses toward the large overhead banner that reads ‘Omega Registration’.

  The queue is insane when they get there.

  “Should have left earlier,” Gary mutters under his breath as they move to the back of the line.

  It’s almost two hours before they reach the front, and Gary has been low-level grumbling for the whole of it.

  The beta behind the desk doesn’t even look up when they approach. “Name of the omega?” he asks in a bored voice.

  “Aaron Schibold,” Gary replies, tugging Aaron closer to the table. “We’ve pre-registered.”

  The clerk taps at his keyboard, then nods. “Right. Gotcha. You the legal guardian?”

  “Yeah.”

  The beta nods, then presses a button. A form starts printing on the portable printer behind him. He pulls it off and passes it over.

  “Sign at the X please.”

  Gary bends and scribbles his name in the slot, then slides the paper back over the desk.

  Aaron watches with a sense of the surreal. That’s how easy it is to sell him: a squiggle on a piece of paper. It’s over in seconds.

  The clerk squints at it and then tosses the paper on a pile of others before rifling through a small box of envelopes on top of the desk until he finds the one that he’s looking for. He holds it out.

  Gary takes it and rips it open. He pulls out the check inside and scans it, presumably checking it’s in the right name and for the right amount.

  He stuffs it in his back pocket, seemingly satisfied.

  “You need anything else from me?” he asks.

  “Nope. That’s it,” the beta beckons to the pair of alphas by the desk and points at Aaron.

  Gary turns his back and walks away, without so much as a ‘good luck’.

  Aaron doesn’t even have time to process his anger before the Red Run alphas are at his side.

  They each take an arm, and Aaron has to wonder how many other omegas they’ve done this to. How much did the others fight that they feel the need to frogmarch him when he’s not even protesting a little bit?

  After the first panic, or rather the first dozen, a sense of calm has settled over him. He’s here now, and there’s nothing he can do. He’s going on the Red Run whether he likes it or not.

  The only thing he can do is try to remember everything he studied, make the best of it and try not to die horribly.

  It won’t be that bad, he tells himself. The death rate for the omega run is five or six a year. There must be a couple of hundred omegas here. The odds are good.

  A sense of shame flushes over him immediately. That just means it’ll be someone else. No one deserves this.

  The alphas are manhandling him across the crowded floor as easily as if he were made of cotton.

  Alphas turn to watch him as they go. They look up him up and down, and sniff the air as he passes.

  Sizing you up before the run, a little voice in his head says. The sense of panic returns, tightening his belly and sending ice flowing through his blood.

  The alphas tighten their grip on his arms as they scent his panic rising.

  They haul him towards a door with a green cross on it. The two alphas guarding it unlock the door when they see Aaron and his escorts approaching.

  Thirty seconds later, he’s being unceremoniously shoved through before it shuts behind him with a click.

  The door opens onto a small room filled with lines of cheap plastic chairs. Another alpha stands beside a door on the opposite end. Omega faces look up when he enters. No one looks happy.

  “Take a number and a seat,” the alpha says.

  Aaron looks around the room and sees the ticket machine. He pulls one out – 61 – and takes one of the plastic chairs next to a young female omega with long blonde hair. Red marks on her upper arms are just darkening to bruises.

  You too, huh, Aaron thinks.

  He leans in and whispers, “What’s this for?”

  She startles as if she hadn’t even noticed him sit down, then whispers back. “Medical check.” She huffs. “Not like it makes any difference. They send you out no matter what.”

  As she says it, a beta in a white coat appears through the other door and calls a number. She checks her number, but it’s someone on the other side who reluctantly gets up from their chair.

  “Hey,” the girl says confidentially. “You want a tip?”

  Aaron nods. He’ll take whatever he can get.

  “See that kid?” She nods at a male omega on the other side of the room. He’s tall for an omega with a shock of bright red hair. He’s sitting with his head back against the wall, eyes closed and arms folded as if taking a nap.

  Aaron nods.

  “Watch what he does. This is his third run. Or so I hear.”

  “No one’s that fast,” Aaron says without thinking.

  The girl nods. “I bet he found a hidey-hole. Wonder how many of us can fit in it?”

  Not all of us, Aaron thinks. The red-haired omega is going to have to outrun the alphas and the omegas this time if that’s the rumor going round.

  The doctor appears again and calls the girl in.

  Aaron waits in silence until his turn. He’s not sure he wants to make friends. All that will do is break his heart.

  He needs to spend his time thinking and planning.

  By the time, the doctor calls his number, he’s got a half-thought out plan going.

  He walks through into the examination room. Like the waiting area he just came from, it has two doors: one in and one out, and there’s an al
pha standing guard inside.

  The beta doctor barely looks at him as she tells him to get undressed, then cough, breath in and out, and asks question after question.

  Yes, he’s healthy.

  No, he hasn’t eaten today.

  No, no tattoos or major scarring.

  Yes, he’s had all his vaccinations.

  Yes, he’s a virgin.

  He answers the last question without thinking, and then immediately second-guesses himself. Maybe he should have said ‘no’. Maybe they’d send him home. It seems unlikely, but he should be looking for any opening he can.

  His half-thought through plan isn’t a great one, even he knows that. It’s just the best he can come up with on the trot.

  He needs to pick the alpha. He’s not going to get out of this. Someone is going to claim him. He just needs to make sure it’s one of the better ones.

  He’s not quite sure how he’s going to pick out the good from the bad, but it’s a start.

  “Right, we’re done,” the beta doctor says finally.

  Aaron jumps off of the examination cot and heads to the chair where he left his clothes and backpack.

  “No, leave those here.”

  Aaron gives him a quizzical look.

  “Take a pair of boxers from the box over there,” the doctor indicates the box with a nod of her head towards a pair of brown cardboard boxes on the other side of the room. “You’ll get your stuff back at the end of the run. Assuming your alpha gives permission, of course.”

  One box is filled with a stack of loose-fitting cotton boxers, the other has a neat pile of white sports bras.

  Aaron thinks of the compass and his map book in his backpack. He’s not going to be able to sneak those into his underwear, and he’d doubts arguing is going to get him anywhere.

  At least the underwear in the box is clean, he thinks, even if it’s not what he’d have picked out himself.

  He pulls up the boxers and tries to ignore the presence of the alpha guard.

  Then he takes a deep breath and heads through the next door.

  A wave of heat slams into him, followed by a myriad of scents and sounds. It takes a second for the world to stop spinning so he can pay attention to where he is.