by L. C. Davis
His Reclaimed Omega
L.C. Davis
Copyright © 2017 L.C. Davis
Acknowledgments
Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
L.C. Davis acknowledges the trademark status of all brands and copyrighted works mentioned in this work of fiction.
Warnings: This book contains explicit male/male sexual content intended for mature audiences only. This is the ninth book in The Mountain Shifters Series, but it can be read as a standalone and ends in an HEA.
L.C. Davis
The Mountain Shifters Series
His Unclaimed Omega
His Reluctant Omega
His Unexpected Omega
His Runaway Omega
His Second Chance Omega
Their Omega
His Reformed Omega
His Verum Omega
Queer Magick
Queer Magick (Vol. 1)
Fairytales
Wolf Conan & L.C. Davis
The Undercover Alphas Series
Gray
Jayce
Lionel (Coming soon!)
MM Romance Mailing List Sign-Up
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter One
NATHAN
“Checking the mail again?”
Nathan froze, looking up at the beta who was watching him from across the narrow creek that separated two quaint homes in the otherwise isolated forest between the Southeast and Central Units of the Mountain Ridge Pack. Toval was on his knees across the way, pulling up the weeds choking out the flowers that led up the pathway to his house. They had been planted by the late omega Mel, whom Toval had shared with an Alpha for years before Mel’s tragic and unexpected death. While Nathan knew for a fact that gardening wasn’t a natural interest for the beta, he’d never so much as seen those flowers wilt in the three years that had elapsed since Mel’s death.
“Come on, Uncle Tov. You know I’m waiting for my package from Chase Wesson.”
“That college still hasn’t gotten back to you?” he asked, standing to brush his hands off on his jeans. He jumped across the creek and sauntered over to Nathan as the young omega dug around in the mailbox, ignoring the promotional leaflets and correspondence meant for his parents.
“No, but a few people from the college message board I’m on said they got their acceptance letters yesterday,” Nathan replied, his heart pounding as he caught sight of the elegant red university seal that haunted his dreams. Unlike the other omegas he’d grown up with, the idea of wearing some Alpha’s mating mark had never appealed to Nathan, but he’d been dreaming of attending Chase Wesson’s graduate program since he was in fifth grade. He had convinced his parents to let him study independently with tutors and had flown through high school and three years of undergraduate work at Mountain Ridge University while most of his peers were still finishing high school, but as the only child of the Southeast Unit Alpha and the omega who held the title of Chief Intelligence Officer of the entire Mountain Ridge pack system, Nathan had two overprotective parents to contend with. They had refused to let him leave Mountain Ridge until he finished his undergraduate education, but after years of begging and some well-printed chart presentations, Nathan had finally convinced them to let him attend a human graduate school.
The graduate school, where neurobiology was concerned. Nathan had been nothing short of obsessed with the program for years and he hadn’t even bothered to apply anywhere else. As far as he was concerned, Chase Wesson was the only university with faculty who were researching anything worthwhile. It was also his ticket out of the societal pressure that had been pressing in on him from all sides since he could remember. The university was only an hour away from the pack proper, and part of the agreement was that Nathan’s parents would send a guard to live with him off campus, but graduate school was finally going to be his chance to breathe.
Nathan was Duke and Connor’s only child. As the omega formerly known as the infamous Cutter, criminal mastermind and once the Federation of Wolves’ most-wanted criminal, Connor had some sizable shoes to fill. Duke was exceptional in his own right, from his illustrious career as the head of the Tribunal Task Force and then a Mountain Ridge Unit Alpha to the unique properties that had earned his beastform the title of “hellhound.” Nathan had lived his whole life knowing that, as their child, he was expected to not only be as exceptional as each of his parents but to show emergent properties of his own. But while he had always had a natural curiosity toward the sciences and a quick mind, Nathan was far from the genius Connor was. He’d had to work for everything he had achieved, and condensing his formal education into three fewer years than it should have taken had meant sacrificing any semblance of a social life, with the exception of his family.
Chase Wesson would be different. Eighteen years of scraping and studying and pushing himself were going to pay off and he would finally have a chance to just breathe for a bit. Maybe he would even get to start a social life, since he would be surrounded by humans to whom the name Cutter meant nothing, neither a boogeyman to fear nor a legacy to live up to. For the first time in his life, he would get to know what it was like to just be Nathan.
Nathan grabbed the corner of the letter and tugged it free from a stack of coupons. His heart sank into his stomach when he saw how small the envelope was. He didn’t even need to open the standard-sized letter to know what was inside: rejection. The rest of the mail slipped from Nathan’s grasp as he stared at the letter in disbelief.
“Nate?” Toval asked warily, gathering the fallen mail. He waved a hand in front of his nephew’s face. “Earth to Nate, you in there?”
“They rejected me,” Nathan murmured. His heart had stopped beating at some point and didn’t feel ready to start again anytime soon. He should have felt panic, disappointment, confusion, something, but all he could feel was blankness.
“What?” Toval frowned, looking down at the unassuming envelope. “You haven’t even opened it.”
“When they reject you, they send out a letter,” Nathan said in a monotone. “When they accept you, you get a folder. It’s full of information, forms, a bumper sticker, the whole nine yards.”
“So maybe they’re going green,” Toval said, taking the letter from Nathan’s hands. “Here, let me see.”
Nathan watched with pure detachment as Toval tore open the plain white envelope and his eyes scanned the page. He already knew what the letter said.
“Dear Mr. Miller,” Toval began in an optimistic tone. “The admissions
department at Chase Wesson University wishes to thank you for your application to the Graduate Department of Neurosciences. Your application has been carefully considered, along with all the supporting documents, and we are impressed with all the academic accomplishments you’ve accrued at such a young age. However, we…”
Toval trailed off and looked up, his eyes full of pity as he folded the letter. “I’m sure it’s just a mistake, kid,” he said gently, putting a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “This doesn’t mean anything.”
“It’s not a mistake,” Nathan said, clearing his throat. It felt tight all of a sudden. Hard to breathe. “Chase Wesson doesn’t make mistakes.”
“Everyone makes mistakes, and even if they didn’t, this is crazy,” Toval said, crumpling the letter. “If they don’t want you, so are they. You’ll get in somewhere else, somewhere better.”
“I didn’t apply anywhere else.”
Toval hesitated. “Well, then you’ll just have to apply next year. And there’s always Mountain Ridge University. Lucy says the grad program is great. They’re always adding new study tracks. I’m sure they’d let you apply late.”
“I’m a Unit Alpha’s kid,” Nathan said with a choked laugh. “I’m sure they’d print me a PhD tomorrow if I wanted one.”
Toval gave him a thin smile. “Listen, kid, I know this feels like the end of the world, but you’re eighteen. You’ve got so much in life ahead of you, all the best stuff. If Chase Wesson is what you want, you’ll find a way in. It just might take a little longer than you thought.”
Nathan nodded, feeling like it was a chore just to puppet his own body. “Right. Thanks, Uncle Toval.”
“Hey, you wanna come over to the house? Hassan’ll be home for dinner soon and I can bake those oatmeal cookies you like so much for dessert.”
“No, thanks. I think I’m just gonna go lie down for a bit before my parents get home.”
“Okay. Well, if you need anything…”
Nathan tried to crack a smile for his uncle’s sake, but he couldn’t quite get the muscles in his face to cooperate. He went into the house, trudged up the stairs and closed his bedroom door, staring at the wall for a moment before the numbness subsided. In its place, anger took over with a vengeance.
“Fuck!” he cried, swiping his arm across the desk, toppling the books and the model car he’d been working on. Hot tears coursed down his cheeks as he lost his temper for the first time since he could remember. Nathan had always been keenly aware of the fact that everyone was just waiting for him to snap and reveal whatever sociopathic tendencies he may have inherited from Connor. Hell, sometimes even his own parents looked at him like that was a possibility. On some level, he knew that was probably how his obsession with the human brain had begun. It had started out as an attempt to understand his own mind, because he was afraid there were rooms inside that might just unlock one day and let out the monster everyone else was so afraid of.
Well, something had finally been unleashed, alright, but it didn’t feel like a monster. As Nathan collapsed on the floor in the middle of the debris of his once perfectly organized room, crying so hard he could barely take in a breath between sobs, he felt like nothing but a failure.
Chapter Two
KENT
Home, sweet home. Kent paused for a second after he stepped out of his truck with his military-issued duffel bag draped over his shoulder and his keys in his hand. It had been two years since he’d set foot in Silver Lake, but the idyllic plains and the small yet bustling town he’d called home all his life were never far from his heart.
As a middle child of the former verum Alpha and omega pair, Kent had spent years trying to make a name for himself within the pack. His older brother, Adam, always was and always would be the golden child, even if Barnabas and Cameron loved their six children equally. While Kent had spent most of his formative years resenting Adam, the brothers eventually made their peace when Kent had first signed up to defend their homeland in the Federation-Alliance war ten years earlier. Adam was proving to be as beloved an Alpha as their recently retired father had been, and Kent had made his own name far from the verdant countryside he loved.
While Barnabas and Cameron had first enrolled Kent in military school to curb his troubled teenage ways, the attempt to straighten him out had sparked a passion that turned into a career. It turned out that, while Kent lacked his brother’s eternal patience for pack politics, he was damn good at leading warriors. Kent had lost good men, wolves he’d grown up alongside, and those losses had taken their toll on him the same as they did on any soldier who was willing to sacrifice for his homeland, but the bloodshed? Kent would never admit as much to his refined family around the dinner table, but he lived for that shit. It was the normalcy that had him at a loss, the promise of peace now that the Alliance had been wiped off the earth. The mating between Tyr, the only omega Kent had ever been dumb enough to love, and Jaspar Amari, the verum Alpha who presided over most of the packs in the Middle East, had ensured at least a couple of decades of cooperation and felicity between the once bitterly opposed regions, and Kent had just wrapped up his last peacekeeping tour.
There were still troops to train and drills to run to ensure that the Council forces remained prepared for any threats that emerged in the future--but the real fighting, the stuff Kent had forged an identity on, was done for the foreseeable future.
In the end, Kent had come home both because he had promised his parents that he would and because he didn’t have a damn clue what else he was going to do with himself until the new training season began. As Kent passed the house he’d built years ago, back when he had still been young and naive enough to hope that Tyr would give up on waiting for his destined mate and notice the Alpha who’d always been there for him, he smiled and waved to the shifters who recognized him. Silver Lake had seen a population boom in recent years, and there was even a new drugstore, which had certainly been big news when it was first built. Life in the rural pack went at a slow pace that had felt torturous to Kent as a youth, eager to get out and make his mark on the world. He waited for the nostalgia to wash over him, for the realization that home was where his heart had been all along, but as he walked the sleepy streets to the estate he had grown up in, he realized that the desire to be anywhere else was the only thing about him that hadn’t changed.
The interior of the Silver Lake estate hadn’t changed much, either. Adam’s mate had put in a new chandelier since the old one had been broken ever since Kent and his older sister, Laura had taken out an arm during an ill-planned game of catch indoors, but other than that, the massive foyer looked the same as always.
Footsteps on the stairs gained speed and Kent found himself face-to-face with the twins Bryce and Cobel, his youngest siblings. “Kent!” they cried, descending on him like wild dogs. He laughed as the teen shifters tackled him. He still had a good foot of height on them both, but they had grown so much he hardly recognized them.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” he asked, feigning seriousness as he stepped back. “I used to live here and you look an awful lot like these identical anklebiters who harassed me nonstop, but you’re way too tall.”
The twins rolled their eyes in unison. “You look the same as you did two years ago,” Bryce announced.
Cobel tilted his head, studying his older brother. “I dunno, he does have a few gray hairs he didn’t have before.”
Kent ran a hand through his close-cropped brown hair, scowling. “I do not.”
The twins burst into a fit of giggles as Cameron and Adrian, Adam’s new mate, came down the hallway. Adrian was a lithe, androgynous omega who preferred gender-neutral pronouns and had a penchant for gothic fashion. From the outside looking in, they were just about the last omega anyone, Kent included, would have expected his older brother to imprint on--but the last few years had convinced Kent that Adrian was exactly the mate the stuffy Alpha needed to keep him in check and remind him to enjoy his life every now and then.
“Kent!�
�� Cameron squealed, running to throw his arms around his son. He barely came up to Kent’s shoulder, and while the years were far kinder to shifters than they were to humans, they had been even kinder to Cameron than most. Kent had once been irritated that there were so many people who assumed Cameron was his brother rather than his parent, especially since the age difference between Cameron and Barnabas was so significant, but those days, he found it more amusing than anything.
“Hey, dad,” he laughed, giving the omega a tight hug before he greeted Adrian. “Where’s the old man?”
“Barnabas and Adam are both out at the grill, preparing the feast for your homecoming,” Adrian said, smiling wide.
“Nothing like coming home from war to charred franks,” Kent teased, letting his family drag him into the dining room where the massive table had already been set. That table had been the setting of some of the best moments of Kent’s life as well as the mind-numbing lectures his reckless ways had earned him on many an occasion. He found a bit of that nostalgia setting in as his father and brother came in from the patio to greet him.
“Look at you,” Adam scoffed, giving him a hug and a teasingly judgmental once-over. “What are they feeding you in that army, growth hormones?”
Kent rolled his eyes. “We can’t all have cushy desk jobs.”
“It’s good to see you, son,” Barnabas said, giving him a warm smile. “You know, when we sent you off to Danvers all those years ago, we expected you to come back once in a while.”
“Well, I’m back for the foreseeable future,” Kent said, settling down at the table. Cameron’s freshly squeezed lemonade was certainly to be added to the list of things he’d missed while away from home. “Until training starts up again, at least.”
“We’re so excited to have you home,” Cameron sighed. He hadn’t stopped gazing adoringly at his son since they’d sat down and his eyes were full of that starry look that said no matter how much taller or broader Kent had gotten, Cameron was still seeing a five-year-old sitting at the table in fatigues.