The Runaway Omega: M/M Wolf Shifter Mpreg Paranormal Romance

by Apollo Surge

  But Joseph continued saying nothing. Instead, he stood up, walked over to his suitcase, opened it, and rummaged in there for something that Wes couldn’t see.

  He could see the edges of a smile from his profile. He wondered what he was doing and couldn’t help but be a little concerned, but when he turned around, he held a white cotton handkerchief

  “From when I first started knitting,” he said. “But that was when my eyes were better. I made this scarf. But then I realized I’m better at something like crochet, because my fine motor skills just aren’t there for this.”

  Wes blinked. “Wow.”

  “What? Not good enough?”

  Wes shook his head, taking the handkerchief and looking at it. “It’s really beautiful, actually. Did you seriously do this?”

  “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “My alpha—”

  “No,” Joseph said. “The alpha you know.”

  Wes shrugged. He couldn’t see that much of a difference. “He’s nothing like this,” he said. “He would never do anything this beautiful, this delicate.”

  Joseph smiled, though the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’s been hard to train myself to be the person I want to be. I’ve had to do things like see the beauty in small things. I’ve learned to really love crafting things, knitting things, making small things.”

  Wes watched him.

  “Long story short, it helped me when I needed to get away from my own pack.”

  Wes smiled at him. Maybe he did understand, even if he didn’t understand completely. Maybe he got it a little bit.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be such a weepy mess in front of you.”

  “It’s okay,” Joseph said. “You’ve only been away for a little bit. It must still be really hard for you.”

  “It’s… an adjustment,” Wes replied.

  Joseph nodded. “I get it,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “You do?”

  Joseph looked around him. “There’s no one else here, is there?”

  Wes smiled at that. “Yeah, I guess not,” he said, sniffling again. He was done crying, but he had already broken down in front of this guy, and being vulnerable didn’t seem so bad anymore. It was clear that he had made a fool of himself in front of Joseph and things couldn’t get that much worse. “My father left when I was little and I've been trained all my life to do this.”

  “Right.”

  Wes shook his head. “It’s not right, Joseph,” he said. “It’s anything but right.”

  “Why?”

  “Because these are all wolves that I'm related too,” Wes said, looking away from Joseph, his hands fists at his side. “I don't know who impregnated my father though I'm pretty sure it was our current alpha, Griffin.”

  There was a long silence, a pause, as Joseph absorbed this information. “Oh.”

  “And then I’m supposed to just have another baby, and he can be the omega when he gets to eighteen, and I don’t know if I’m okay with that.”

  Joseph closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That sounds really hard. The rest of your pack?”

  “Betas,” Wes said, waving his hand in front of his face. “They, um, have a turn. After Griffin.”

  “Your alpha.”

  “Yeah,” Wes said.

  “Jesus, Wes… that sounds horrible.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, shrugging his shoulder. “I mean, I’m not afraid of the prospect of it. I just don’t want to bring a child into it. I’m… I don’t want a child to be trained by the same people, so that he has to be impregnated by them when he gets to be my age.”

  Joseph blinked. “Wouldn’t you also maybe give birth to an alpha?”

  Wes furrowed his brow. He hadn’t thought about that, not really, but now that Joseph said it, it made sense. How else was there going to be an alpha to take over when Griffin died?

  Wes shrugged. “I’ve been told that the omega only ever gives birth to omegas.”

  Joseph cocked his head. “That’s a lie.”

  “Yeah,” Wes said, licking his lips. “Yeah, I just figured that out.”

  “You might have siblings you don’t know about.”

  Wes nodded. “Yup, that’s probably right,” he said. “I… I feel like an idiot.”

  “It’s okay,” Joseph said. “You’re supposed to trust your pack. I get it.”

  Wes trained his gaze on Joseph. “Were you exiled too?”

  Joseph chuckled, a little dryly, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I left when I came of age. Kind of like you.”

  Wes watched him, his eyes narrow. “And what have you done since?”

  Joseph took a second to think about that. “I don’t know,” he said. “Lived.”

  “Okay,” Wes said. “Thank you for the tea, I’ll—”

  “No,” Joseph said. “You can stay.”

  Chapter Four

  Joseph wasn’t sure what had gotten into him. He should have known better, but when Wes was in front of him, crying openly, telling him how horrible his pack was, Joseph couldn’t bear the idea of sending him back to the people that were so eager to hurt him.

  Because that was what they were doing.

  Joseph remembered what it had been like in his pack. It had been about five years since he had left, and he could remember everything as if it had happened only a few days ago. Wes would have felt safe with Joseph’s pack, because their philosophy was very different from the philosophy that Wes’ pack seemed to have.

  But even when the omega was treated like a precious gem by the rest of the pack, there was something about the whole thing that had rubbed Joseph the wrong way since the very beginning.

  The boy who was supposed to be his omega felt like a brother to him. They had been raised alongside each other since they were very little. They had played together when they were little boys, talked about their crushes when they were teenagers, dared each other to do stupid things when they were a little older. They had learned to drive alongside each other, gotten each other drunk more than once, held each other when crying as their parents started fading, as they passed away.

  They were close. They shifted together too and talked about it, and then they shifted together again. Then Maurice had fallen in love with a girl at the gas station, right before either one of them came of age, and Joseph had been expected to get him pregnant. The very thought of having sex with Maurice made Joseph feel sick to his stomach.

  It made Maurice feel sick to his stomach too, Joseph was sure of it. Then he had come of age, and he had turned, and he could vaguely remember chasing Maurice through the woods.

  He remembered cornering him, a gray wolf with white patches, looking luminescent against the dark of night. He was bigger than him, stronger than him, faster than him—he just needed to bite his neck, get him to submit, then he could drag him back to the barn and wait for him to turn again.

  He couldn’t remember any thoughts from that moment, but he could remember his instincts. His instincts were to grab Maurice, to hurt him, to make him feel Joseph everywhere, including inside of him.

  He remembered what he thought about it after he turned, when he had dragged him back to the barn by the scruff of his neck, Maurice whimpering alongside him, his snout close to the ground. He had submitted to Joseph, just the way that he was supposed to, and when they got to the barn, Joseph was supposed to wait for him to turn before he had him.

  But when Maurice had turned, Joseph could see the tears in his eyes, and despite the hormones raging inside of him, he couldn’t go through with it.

  He couldn’t do that to his best friend. He couldn’t do that to his brother. He just couldn’t, no matter what his body was telling him, despite the fact that he was so hard that it was hurting him.

  It wasn’t who he was. He wasn’t going to have sex with Maurice and watch him cry as he did it, because he was pretty sure that it would end with him crying himself. The whole thing seemed barbaric
to him. He ignored his raging hard on and sat at the side of the barn while Maurice panted, clearly ignoring how turned on he was too. The two of them were far enough away from each other that they couldn’t physically engage, which was good because if they had, Joseph would have probably ended up fucking Maurice despite neither one of them wanting it to happen.

  They had talked about their childhood. Swimming in the lake when it was just kissed by a ray of sunshine and still cold. Running in the mud until their shoes were covered in filth. Talking to each other through scary nights when other wolves were coming for their things, as the rest of their pack stayed outside and fought them off.

  They had fallen asleep at opposite sides of the barn. When he had woken up, at the crack of dawn, when the rest of the pack was circling them, he had decided that he had to leave.

  He couldn’t stay there and wait for his nature to take over his good sense. He had run away when they were still trying to look for them, when they were trying to see the aftermath of what was supposed to be the first night of mating.

  He didn’t regret running away. He had known that it was the right thing to do back then and he didn’t think that he would make a different decision now. He didn’t think that it was possible not to miss his family, because of course he did, but mostly he was glad that he wasn’t expected to have sex with people that might or might not be related to him anymore.

  They were never very clear about that in his pack and he was absolutely positive that it was not his place to ask. He had left then and hadn’t looked back. It had been the right decision for him.

  He couldn’t help but see a little bit of himself in Wes. He was defiant. He didn’t want to do what he had been tasked to do all his life. The most important part—the part that endeared him to Wes probably way more than it should have—was the way he was so resolutely against doing anything which might harm someone that he ended up bringing into this world.

  There was something about that. Something that made Wes seem strongly moral and right, though it was clear to Joseph that there was a chance that Wes was afraid for his life.

  The last thing that Joseph wanted to do was to take advantage of Wes, or to make Wes feel like he had to go to a pack of abusive wolves that would undoubtedly get him to submit in no time. His fighting spirit would be lost and that would certainly be a shame.

  He supposed that was the reason that he had told Wes that he could stay with him. He had done it before thinking it through, because the complications that Wes staying with him carried were too many to count, but for the time being, it seemed right.

  It was very likely that they were going to have to find other accommodations for him before the season really started, but for the time being, he could crash there, at least until he felt safer. That was what Joseph told himself.

  He was a temporary stop for a little wolf who still needed to find his place in the world, so Joseph wasn’t going to kick him out and he wasn’t going to prompt him to leave. That would have been cruel. At least until he was ready to go.

  Joseph closed his eyes.

  Wes was still in the kitchen while Joseph got his stuff out of his bag.

  He could hear Wes playing with Devin, laughing as his pig snorted.

  He couldn’t help but smile at the sound, which somehow seemed oddly familiar, despite the fact that he was positive that he had never heard it before in his life.

  He couldn’t be mad at Wes. He wanted to, because that seemed like the perfect defense mechanism, but he couldn’t.

  He got it.

  Yeah, Wes had broken his window and stayed in his house without permission which Joseph didn't appreciate, but he got it. He understood what the little wolf was going through.

  When Joseph had first been away from his own pack, it had been really difficult to have a life away from other wolves. He didn’t understand human society that well and it was hard for him to step into a role where he had to earn money and live among people who didn't understand shifters and who thought that they were a myth.

  He wanted the transition for Wes to be a little smoother. He understood that what Wes was going through had to be, by its very nature, harder than what he had been going through.

  His very nature was to feel a pull toward his alpha, and the fact that he had managed to overcome it without any training filled Joseph with a certain sense of awe.

  Even Maurice had been begging him to do it that night after they’d shifted, though there were tears streaming down his face. He didn’t want to see anyone have to go through that again and it was clear to him that Wes was a sensitive guy.

  He didn’t want him to have to go through that at all, not if he could help it.

  Once he had finished putting his clothes away, it was time to go downstairs. He had wanted to give the two of them some space from each other so that they could both think through what was happening. Joseph knew that he needed to have some rules in place before he let Wes stay, including a hard deadline for when he had to leave.

  There was also the upcoming season.

  He shuddered a little, though he wasn’t cold anymore. He wondered how that was going to be. He wasn’t looking forward to this conversation, that was all that he knew for sure.

  He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt because he was almost sure that he would have to go get food from town again and that was a good thirty minutes away. He wanted to get into his pajamas but there was absolutely no way that he was going to let Wes stay in his house when he wasn’t there.

  He walked downstairs and into the kitchen. He found Wes sitting next to a curious and happy looking Devin, who was oinking at him.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Wes looked up at him for a second, then back at Devin. His cheeks had gone red and he was focusing on Devin again. “Hey,” he replied.

  “Sorry I took so long,” Joseph said. “I was just unpacking some stuff.”

  Wes shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s your house.”

  Joseph smiled at that, though he could hear the apprehension in Wes’ voice.

  “I’m not going to kick you out.”

  “I didn’t say that you were going to,” Wes said. “But I don’t know. I wouldn’t be mad if you did. I would get it.”

  “I know,” Joseph said. “But that’s not what I want. We do need to talk, though.”

  Wes nodded. “Yeah.”

  Joseph cocked his head. “Where have you been sleeping so far?”

  Wes looked away from him.

  “I couldn’t smell you on my bed…”

  “The bathtub,” Wes said.

  Joseph’s eyes widened. “You’ve been sleeping in the bathtub?”

  Wes nodded. “I thought that would make it harder for you to know that I was around,” he said. “You know, when you got back.”

  Joseph blinked. “How… weren’t you uncomfortable?”

  Wes shrugged. “Small sacrifice to pay for staying in your house and not paying a penny.”

  Joseph shook his head. “We need to make things clear.”

  Wes watched him, saying nothing.

  “How about we go get some pizza or something? It’d be nice to have dinner in a neutral territory.”

  Wes’ eyes widened. “I can’t go back to town. I can just leave, if—”

  Joseph shook his head again. He was embarrassed at his stupid oversight. “Of course,” he said. “How about we order some Chinese food or something? It might take a little while but…”

  The smile on Wes’ face made Joseph quiet down immediately. He would have waited days if it meant that he would see Wes smiling like that.

  “Okay,” Joseph said, smiling at him. “Let me know what you want.”

  “I’ve never had Chinese food.”

  “Really?”

  Wes nodded. “I ate what Griffin hunted.”

  “So you’ve never had any… human cooked food?”

  Wes shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”

  “Okay,” Joseph
said. “We’re going to fix that.”

  He looked him up and down.

  “I mean, we’re going to… to fix all of this,” Joseph added, more to himself than to Wes. Wes watched him, saying nothing, and for a second, Joseph wondered if he had offended him.

  He hadn’t intended to, but he would understand if Wes was angry at his words then.

  But Wes just nodded, as if what he had said made perfect sense. Of course they needed to fix this. He was glad that Wes agreed, because he didn’t know if he would have been able to cope with it otherwise.

  “Listen to me,” Joseph said, surprised by the intensity in his own voice. “We’re going to make sure that you never have to do anything you don’t want to do. Do you understand? We’re going to make it so that you live the life you want. I promise.”

  Wes looked at him with wide eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but then he clamped his lips shut, and Joseph continued staring at him, half-waiting for him to say that he was wrong, that he couldn’t say anything like that, but he didn’t.

  He was quiet. Then he nodded and Joseph couldn’t help but melt a little bit. He couldn’t believe how much Wes had let him in in such a quick time, and part of him was still a little hesitant, because this was all still a bit much.

  Every time that he closed his eyes, he still thought about the fact that Wes had already been in his house when he had walked in.

  He opened his eyes and found Wes smiling at him, but there was a question in his eyes.

  “I’m still getting used to this,” Joseph said.

  Wes shook his head. “You don’t have to get used to it, Joseph,” he said. “I’m not your responsibility.”

  “No,” Joseph replied. “But you’re here, so I might as well help.”

  Wes’ smile turned into a grin.

  ***

  Joseph couldn’t help but smile when he saw Wes gobbling up the Chinese food. He had finished a huge serving of food, rice and noodles, along with steamed vegetables, sweet and sour chicken, lo mein beef—Joseph had thought that the food was going to last them for at least a couple of days, but he hadn’t anticipated just how hungry Wes would be.