Mating the Omega (MM Gay Shifter Mpreg Romance) (Mercy Hills Pack Book 1)

by Ann-Katrin Byrde

  “Your Honor, I’d like to establish the legal standing of the omega first, before we move on to what I believe really happened.”

  Orvin’s lawyer stood up. “Your Honor, I don’t see what this has to do with anything—”

  Wilson stopped him with a look. “You don’t believe the legal standing of the person in question is pertinent? Well, I do. Sit down.” He turned to Laine. “Continue, but know that I’ll stop you as soon as you start to stray.”

  “Of course, Your Honor.” Laine turned back to Orvin. “Alpha Montana Border, please tell us how, exactly one identifies an omega shifter. Is there a mark or some significance in the way they’re born?”

  Once more, Orvin’s lawyer interrupted. “Your Honor—”

  “Sit down. It’s a reasonable question.” Wilson turned to Laine. “Continue. I’ll admit, I did some reading, but it’s hard to know where fact ends and rumor begins.”

  “It’s absolutely fascinating,” Laine told him, before turning back to Orvin. “Alpha, could you answer the question please?”

  I watched Orvin squirm on his seat. How could they not have expected this question to come up? Unless they thought that they could scrape by on the cultural parts and not get into the whole thing. Maybe they thought we wouldn’t tell them as much about shifters as we did? I decided Abel was right—the more the humans knew about us, the less strange we’d seem and the less they’d be worried by stuff we did that was different.

  The silence stretched, until Orvin gave in. “In girls, it’s hard to tell. Generally you don’t notice until they’re teenagers and they, they…” His voice petered out and his face turned bright red. I had to work to keep the grin off my face. Say it! Say it, you prick! “They come into heat.” He looked as if he wanted the floor to swallow him, having to talk about omega heats. I hid my face in Mac’s chest and snorted a little with laughter.

  “So their heats are different?” Oh, Laine. He spoke so coolly, as if they were talking about, I don’t know, different tomato varieties. And Orvin was nearly dying of embarrassment, having to talk about dirty, horny omegas.

  “They’re stronger. It’s hard to control them, they want to go out and get a pup, but of course, they’re too young.” With the last words, he seemed on more solid ground, and my amusement faded. He was right about wanting a pup. I stroked my belly again for reassurance, and Little Mac pushed back at me.

  “And what about the boys?”

  Orvin looked like he was going to choke; I kind of hoped he did.

  Mac looked down at me. “What evil thoughts are you thinking?” he whispered.

  “Me?”

  He frowned at me, but it wasn’t a scary alpha frown, more of a ‘behave yourself’ type of frown. Still kind of alpha, but it left some wiggle room.

  Orvin’s voice had that strangled sound to it, as if he was only now realizing the kind of details he was going to be asked about. “That’s… not something you talk about in public!”

  “Then, not being a shifter myself, I’ll do my best to explain. Your Honor,” Laine turned toward Wilson. “When omega males are born, they have a wide, thin patch of skin that runs from hip to hip, called an omega line. Omega males are born with the ability to carry pups, and that line is where the flesh separates to allow the passage of the infant.”

  “Fascinating. Is there some evolutionary explanation for this?”

  Laine shook his head. “There hasn’t been enough research done, and most of shifter history is oral, so it’s hard to tell when and why this all started. But what does come through loud and clear in all shifter history is that there has been systematic discrimination against omegas of both sexes, simply because of their increased fertility.”

  “Has there now? But what about non-omega girls? Surely they can have children?”

  Orvin sputtered and Laine raised one elegantly shaped eyebrow. “Yes, indeed, Alpha. Are non-omega girls treated the same way as omegas?”

  The Montana Border Alpha looked to his lawyer and, to my great delight, got a subtle shake of the head in return. He had to answer. Reluctantly, and with an expression of hatred that should have melted Laine on the spot, he said, “No.”

  “No? So, what I’m understanding—and please correct me if I’m wrong—that all shifter teenagers go out and get into trouble, but only the omegas are ever subject to peer pressure? And that is why they have to be locked up all the time, just in case. Alpha, what exactly is the legal status of an omega in shifter society?”

  Orvin gaped at him for a moment, then sputtered, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean, at what age do omega’s gain certain rights due to adults. When can they drive a car? When are they allowed to get a job, sign a contract, marry? Without the permission of someone else in the pack?”

  I’d told him all this, and I squirmed with excitement. Mac tightened his hold on me, pinching my shoulder to settle me down. I laid my head on his shoulder and sighed contentedly as I watched Orvin look to his lawyer for help.

  “Your Honor,” the lawyer said, rising to his feet. “If I might have a moment to confer with my client?”

  “I don’t see why,” grumbled the judge. “It’s a perfectly valid question. If the pack alpha questions the validity of a marriage—sorry, mating—that the young man entered into on his own, then obviously I need to know more about the specifics of the rules surrounding these marriages.”

  Orvin looked at his lawyer again. I missed what the lawyer did, or said, but I didn’t miss the glare Orvin shot in my direction, and if I hadn’t had Mac there, I might have cowered. Definitely, if he got me in his power again, I’d be in for it.

  Laine leaned on the barrier separating the box Orvin sat in from what Laine called ‘the well’, where the lawyers were. “Alpha Montana Border? Can you please explain it to us?”

  Orvin grunted. “They don’t.”

  Laine looked surprised. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You’re saying they don’t have any legal standing? As in, they can’t get a job, they can’t drive a car, they can’t marry unless someone gives them permission?” At Orvin’s furious nod, Laine stepped back, his hands spread wide. “I admit, I didn’t quite believe it when I was told this story. But since you have stated that it is true, I suppose I must.” He turned to face the judge. “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I’m suffering from a bit of whiplash, having just been dragged back to the nineteenth century. I’d thought that all sentient beings had moved past the concept that possession of a womb meant the bearer was not much better than a child.”

  “I does seem rather antiquated.” Wilson gave Orvin a hard look and I barely suppressed a squeal of delight. Oh, I hoped he’d kick us all out and let me go home with my family. My real family.

  Laine was on a roll. “And this continues even after the omega has turned eighteen?” Orvin nodded. “What about the other young shifters? The alphas, the betas, the gammas? Do they require permission?”

  “No.” The word sounded like it had been dragged out of him through his teeth.

  “No, they don’t. So you specifically discriminate against a subset of your kind over the possession of a set of reproductive organs.” He turned to the judge. “Your honor, can we truly allow this young man to be treated as a possession, to be bought and sold and bargained over, in a way that sets society back by a hundred years?”

  I thought we’d won, really thought we’d won. Laine finished his argument and sat down beside Abel. He didn’t appear to gloat, but the smell of satisfaction came off him strongly.

  Until Montana Border’s lawyer stood up and said, “You Honor, may I redirect?” And from then on, it all started going downhill.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I was nearly in tears by the end of the day, and my head spun so I didn’t know what to think. They called Dad up to the stand, then Abel, then Mac, and made them all look like money-grubbing thieves, or power mongers, thwarting the Alpha of Montana Border pack’s efforts to see me suitably settled. Orvin’s side bro
ught forth alphas who claimed they had been approached with an offer of betrothal, and paperwork was produced, saying that I would stay in Montana Border until my eighteenth birthday, and then be delivered to whoever it was decided would be the best mate for me. They had emails, and a paper trail, and though we’d known about them, the way they wove their story made it all hang together, and even my father saying he’d never been told about any of this was discounted—it was the alpha, looking after one of his pack members, and when he had decided on two or three good candidates, he would present them to us to decide.

  That was a lie. He’d told me himself that he meant to have me, and have me soon, because he wouldn’t risk someone else catching me in heat. He had been ecstatic over my spring heats, for reasons I still didn’t understand. And I also remembered with utter clarity the night he pushed me up against the fence, clawing at my jeans because I’d snuck out of the house—I’d been too young yet to really understand that I had to stay inside until all signs of heat were done. I still had a scar on the back of my hip where a bent nail had dug a furrow through the flesh, and he still had one where I had partially shifted and tried to claw his eyes out.

  And then, two days later, we’d been moved from our tidy little house, with all the work that Dad had done to it, into a shack that might as well have been held together with bubble gum as nails. And Orvin, his left eye covered in medical gauze, had promised more of the same until I surrendered to him.

  We’d fled the next day. Just packed everything we could into the rusty old junk truck my cousin drove on his rounds collecting human castoffs, and left.

  At three o’clock, the judge called it quits for the day, saying he wanted some time to think about things and he’s see us back again at nine the next morning.

  “I thought he might do that,” Laine commented as we filed slowly out of the courtroom, waiting as the crowd crept through the door. I hadn’t realized how many people had shown up for the afternoon session. The place was packed, but it heartened me to see that not everyone looked at us with disdain or fear. In fact, as we made our way out the door, someone—a stranger—put a hand on my arm, an older woman wearing an expression of curiosity.

  Mac had been watching in the other direction, keeping track of some Montana Border wolves. He didn’t know what was happening until my steps slowed and then stopped. When he saw the woman with her hand wrapped around my forearm, he jerked me away and shoved me at Duke, who passed me to my father and began edging me toward the door.

  “No!” I dug in my heels. “Hang on.” I squirmed until they had to stop. “She didn’t do anything.” Great, now we had a fucking audience. Little Mac kicked and my womb went hard as a rock. I bent over it, gasping for air.

  Mac threw himself to his knees in front of me. “Is it time?” he whispered, his voice tight with worry.

  The contraction died away. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe?” I looked up and saw the woman watching us with worried eyes. “I’m sorry. He’s a little over-protective right now.”

  Mac stood up, but he kept me partially behind him. I scowled and poked him in the ribs. “I’m fine. Let her say what she wants to say, and then we can go.” Little Mac reminded me, by head-butting my bladder, that I’d been sitting in a room for a couple of hours with no food and no bathroom. “You can buy me supper. Something nice. I think Little Mac wants hamburgers.” I didn’t actually know if he did, but I did, and he could eat them and like it. And it gave Mac something else to think about. To add a little incentive, I bounced in place a couple of times and whispered, “I have to pee.” Okay, that wasn’t a lie.

  He sniffed, and grudgingly let me out from behind him. I walked over to her, waving Mac off when he tried to follow me, and gave her my friendliest smile.

  She smiled back. “I remember when I had my kids. I knew where every bathroom within five miles was.”

  “Yeah, it’s the first thing I look for.”

  “How far along are you? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  She was being nice, and treating me like a human instead of a shifter. She could ask what she wanted. “My due date is supposed to be tomorrow, but the nurse says first-timers usually run late, so I’m hoping to be home again before Little Mac makes an appearance.”

  “Is that what you’re naming him?”

  I ran my hand over my belly. “Oh, we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, not for real. There’s no ultrasound at the enclave, and they won’t let us in any of the local hospitals. Whatever it is, we’ll be happy with it.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair, that you can’t get medical care. You are citizens, you pay taxes.”

  I shrugged. “There’s a hospital that accepts shifters about five hours away, but the curfew makes it tough. We have a good nurse, I’m feeling confident.”

  She nodded. Her gaze went to Mac, looming behind me like a Norse wolf-god, then back to me. In a low voice, she asked, “Do you love him?”

  I nodded and smiled sadly. After today, it might not matter.

  The woman glanced back at Mac again. “And does he love you?”

  I turned to smile at him. “Yeah. It looks like grumpy, but it’s really love.” I turned back to her. “I had morning sickness all day for a month. He waited on me hand and foot, took time off work, held me when I was so tired from throwing up I thought I was going to fall in. He’s a keeper.”

  She put a hand on my arm again, friendly and almost maternal. I had a moment of missing my mother so badly it made my eyes tear, then she patted me and said, “Well, if you love each other, that’s all that matters. Look after that little one, whatever his or her name turns out to be.” Then she turned and left, as quietly as she’d come.

  I walked back to Mac, who folded me into his arms and held me close.

  “What was that about?”

  “Not sure.” I rubbed my cheek against his chest and closed my eyes for a moment. “I think she wanted to tell me it would be all right.”

  Mac kissed the top of my head. “Of course it will. Laine will make it work.”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t know if I believed that, but somehow, I thought it would all work out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Duke and Laine took us back to the hotel. We had two rooms, connecting, which I thought was pretty cool. I hadn’t stayed in a place this fancy ever, and I spent a good half hour running gleefully back and forth between them before a wave of fatigue hit and I flopped on the bed. Fucking pregnancy hormones.

  Mac laughed and lay down beside me. “I was wondering when you’d slow down.”

  “All I needed was to pee and then I was fine.” I raised my head and looked around to see who else was in this room. Duke and Dad were sitting at the little table—no sign of Laine or Garrick. “Is Garrick gone to get food?”

  “No. He’s in the other room, going over the notes from today. Laine, however, is gone looking for food.”

  “Oh, good.” Darn, actually. I’d been wondering if I could pull a ‘pregnancy cravings’ on him, despite the fact that my real ones had died off about six weeks ago. But I wanted a milkshake, a strawberry one.

  “He said he’d be back around six, if you want to have a nap.”

  “A nap sounds perfect.” I crawled up to cram one pillow under my head, and another between my knees. “Come nap with me? He hesitated, and I could see he had other things he wanted to do, so I reached out and patted his chin. “No, it’s okay. You need to talk to Garrick and Abel, right?”

  Mac took my hand and kissed the knuckles. “I do, but it doesn’t have to be done right now. Roll over so I can scoot up behind you.”

  My favorite position to sleep in, at least since Little Mac had made sprawling out on top of Big Mac impossible. I rolled over, fixed my pillows properly so my joints didn’t ache, and sighed as Mac’s solid warmth settled against my back.

  “Good?” he murmured.

  “Mm-hmm,” I said back, my eyes already closing. His arm went around my waist, and his hand spread o
ut over my belly. I put my hand over his, and then I was gone.

  ***

  I’m not really sure how long I slept, but when I woke, I was alone in the bed and there were voices in the next room. I got up as quietly as I could, and stepped carefully over to the door to eavesdrop.

  Laine’s voice was the first one I heard clearly. “I still think this is a bad idea.”

  “It’s the only option if they win.” Mac, frustrated about whatever they were talking about.

  “They won’t win. And even if they do, I can appeal the case.”

  “And in the meantime, how long is he stuck in Montana? How many pups will they force on him? By the time we get him back by legal means, he’ll be broken.” That was Garrick, which surprised me. Then he said something that scared me even more. “I’ve been doing research, and as much as I can piece together from records and the little bit of written history we have, the shifters we call omegas now aren’t really omegas. They’re a step away, which is why they’re more fertile other shifters, and we get possessive about them. But if Jason is a real omega, a True Omega, then we can’t let Orvin have him.”

  “Why not?” Laine asked.

  There was a pause, and I knew immediately that it was one of those things you didn’t let the humans know. Finally, Garrick said, “He’d break him. True Omegas bond to you and their whole world revolves around you. What would Orvin do with that?”

  Clothes rustled, and then Laine said, “The game’s not over yet. We still have tomorrow. Garrick, if you can think of any other cultural things we can use to combat theirs, it would be helpful. The mating thing was good, but it’s hard to combat contracts and paperwork with tradition. Right now, we’re on a knife’s edge, and we need something to tip it over to our side.”

  “We’ll talk about it tonight and see what we can come up with.”

  Then I heard a door closing, and I figured Laine must have gone home for the night. I was just about to step through the door and see what was going on, when Garrick said, “I think you were right to pack a bug-out bag, Mac. I don’t feel good about this, no matter what Laine says. And Orvin…you know what he’s like. Imagine if he had Jason’s power behind him.”