by Shannon West
All the rest of that long weekend, I managed to stay away from him by going on a fishing trip with my dad that took up the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday. By Monday morning, I was on pins and needles waiting to see if he’d say anything when he saw me. When eight o’clock rolled around and he still hadn't come looking for me, I went downstairs to the dining room in our big pack house. He was in there having coffee as I walked in and nodded at him. “Morning, Logan.”
“Good morning. Sit down and join me—I overslept a little, so I didn’t have time to come by your room to check on you.”
“No problem.” I smiled nervously at him, and he just gazed back at me, neither of us mentioning our Friday night out. Not then, nor for the rest of the day. We were thankfully pretty busy, working on some taxes that were coming due soon, but I did notice Logan giving me long, sideways glances whenever he thought I wasn’t looking. The next day he worked outside overseeing a building project, and the next I had some business with security to take care of, until pretty soon, a whole week had gone by and neither of us had mentioned what had happened over the weekend or how drunk we had been. I never got around to talking to my dad about leaving, and I wondered sometimes if I ever would, or if I’d just keep making excuses. As for the night Logan and I spent together having sex, I honestly thought I was in the clear. And I thought, thank God, he doesn't remember, and he’s never going to find out what happened between us that night.
I let another month rock by. Then another. I knew I had to do something soon, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to make the break. I knew it would kill me when I did. We were both trying hard to pretend everything was back to normal, though there was a distance and awkwardness that hadn’t been there before. I began to wonder if he remembered more about that night than I’d thought.
Then I woke up one morning and barely made it to the bathroom before I threw up everything in my stomach. I’d never been so damn sick in my life, and even the idea of coffee made me want to vomit again. I thought I had a stomach virus, and I dragged myself back to bed and sent a text to Logan to tell him I'd be staying in bed. He called as soon as he got it.
“Kade? What’s the matter? Can I bring you up anything?”
“No, I’m fine. Must be some kind of bug going around. Those are usually short-lived. Violent, but short.” I tried to laugh, so he wouldn’t know how sick I really was, but I didn’t fool him.
“If you’re not better by lunchtime, you need to go see a doctor.”
“I will,” I said, and almost barfed again at the idea of lunchtime. Just the whole concept of food in general made me feel ill. “Okay, I’ll see. I’m going to try to sleep this off. Maybe I’ll text you later.”
I did go to sleep, and when I woke up around eleven, I felt—wonderful. Better than I had in days, actually. I got up, got dressed, and decided to go downstairs after all. I’d always hated just lying around, and I’d get to work at least a half day. Logan was doing paperwork in his office, so I talked to a few of my friends, changed out some batteries on smoke alarms, and finally went for a short run along the perimeter of our land. Things were fairly quiet, and I went to bed early after feeling a little queasy after eating supper. I spent a quiet evening in my room alone, reading. I wondered if it had just been something I ate.
The next morning, however, I woke up as sick as a dog again, and once again, by lunchtime, I was feeling miraculously better. I decided to go to down to the clinic that took care of the wolves in Asheville. The doctor there could maybe tell me what the hell was going on with me. I took one of the pack cars and made it to Asheville by early afternoon. The doctor did some tests, ran some scans, and called me in his office to tell me I was pregnant.
I just blinked at him, thinking I must have misunderstood. That's when he came around the desk, put a hand on my shoulder, and carefully explained about silent heat. He told me he'd run all the bloodwork and there was no mistake.
“There has to be. I'm not an omega!”
“Not exactly. To tell you the truth, the bloodwork was ambiguous. Your blood has some markers that indicate you're an omega, but there are indications of beta too. Look, Kade, genetics is rarely all or nothing. In almost every case your version of a gene will give you an increased or a lowered chance of a particular outcome. But that outcome isn't certain. Your other genes and environmental influences all work together to determine how you end up. One of the simplest things DNA can tell you is whether someone is male or female. Apart from some very rare cases, that doesn't even involve looking at their DNA sequence—all you need to know is whether they have X and Y chromosomes, which make them male, or a pair of X's, which makes them female. But even those chromosomes aren't a sure thing. Intersex individuals might have XX chromosomes, XY chromosomes, or both. In wolf shifters, there's also the double X, double Y, which makes them omega.”
“And I have that? Double X, double Y?”
“Yes. But your SRY gene, the one that is turned on to determine male gender, is activated on one of the Y chromosomes and not on the other. I know this is complicated, but this SRY gene gives instructions for making the sex determining protein.”
“What the hell does that mean, doc? Am I an omega or not?”
“It's not that easy. It's more of a yes and no. Gender, for the most part, is a social construct. Humans decided long ago that things should be more straightforward, despite Nature presenting us with gender spectrums. Though we often speak of gender as an inborn condition, some anatomy doesn’t always just show up at birth. Sometimes a person isn’t found to have omega or intersex anatomy until she or he reaches the age of puberty, or beyond, as in your case. Sometimes not until they find themselves an adult or die of old age and are autopsied. Some people live and die with this anatomy without anyone, including themselves, ever knowing. Obviously, you were able to get pregnant. But it's hard to say. As a wolf, it's almost as if you were both beta and omega at the same time. But again, now that you're pregnant, most people will say, very unambiguously, that you're an omega. I'm sorry, Kade, I know that wasn't the answer you were looking for.”
“Will I...do I have a uterus?”
“Yes. You have both some male and some omega characteristics. In your case, the wolf male is more predominant.”
“But I'm still an omega male.” I buried my face in my hands, completely at a loss as to what I was going to do. I was pregnant, and life as I knew had just ceased to exist.
A few days later, after a great deal of soul searching and some pretty sleepless nights, I packed up a suitcase. I decided not to tell anyone where I was going, because—A, I had no idea. And B, I just couldn't face anyone. In a panic, I sneaked out of the lodge in the middle of the night. I walked to the main road and caught a ride to town, where I then took a bus to Virginia. It had been the first bus leaving town.
So, that's the story of how I came to be here on this street waiting for a bus, broke as a convict, alone, and in desperate need. I knew I could pick up the phone and make a call and someone would come for me. But my pride wouldn't let me. I was an omega—not a strong beta that my father could take pride in and that my alpha could have by his side. I felt humiliated and despondent, and I couldn't wait to have this baby out of me. Once it was born, I'd give it up. Take it back to my pack to raise and then run as far and as fast as I could. I didn't see any other way.
Chapter Three
When I got home that afternoon after my adventures at the Family Omega and Children’s Services and the police station, the first person I saw was my landlord. He was shirtless, despite how cold it was, and his fat belly was lopping over his belt as he dragged his battered trash cans in from the street. He stopped in the yard to look at me as I came up the sidewalk.
“Did you have any luck with getting a check started?” the nosy bastard asked. I bit back the response I wanted to make and shrugged.
“I qualified, and they said I’d have a check in a month or so.”
“A fucking month? You expect me to wait th
at long?”
“I don’t expect you to do anything. The rent’s not due until Thursday. I’ll have your money by then.”
“You better or you can get the fuck out. That’s a nice room up there, and there’s plenty of people who’d love to have it.”
It was a goddamn attic room, with a partitioned toilet and sink and a mattress on the floor. About six hundred square feet, with an outside entrance and cheap linoleum floors. I didn’t think people were exactly lining up for it, but I saved my breath and just nodded. It was cheap and a roof over my head. I’d figure something out, because I had to.
“You’ll get your rent on time.”
He pointed a meaty finger at me. “I better.” He started back toward the house and stopped to look at me, scratching his hairy chest. “Although...if you don’t come up with the money, we might be able to work something out, I guess.” He cupped his groin. “If you know what I mean.”
I knew exactly what he meant, and the idea of it was almost enough to make me throw up on his lawn.
“I’ll come up with the money,” is what I said, though, and I turned away from him to trudge up the side stairs.
I had to do something, but I'll be damned if I knew what. As soon as I had this baby and gave it up for adoption, I'd be free to leave this damn place and start over somewhere else. The baby kicked me hard under my ribs, and I rubbed my thumb over the spot. I wasn't going to get sentimental over a baby I didn't even know and stood no chance of keeping. What the hell did I know about raising a child? I was completely out of my depth, and with no one to help me, I'd have to put it in some kind of childcare. Good luck finding that for the child of a wolf. I wasn't going to trust it to any kind of orphanage either. Like I said, once I had the kid, I could make my way back to North Carolina and back to my old pack. I knew every person there and exactly how they'd react to any given situation, so I knew that if they found a newborn baby on their doorstep, they'd take it in and treat it well. They'd raise it as one of their own.
Of course, they'd look for the “mother,” but by the time they got up a search party, I planned to be long gone. This baby would find a home, and I'd go make myself a new life, if I could. The trick was to not get too attached to the kid. The less time I spent with it, the better.
It was too early to go to bed, but it was so damn cold, I got under the covers on my bed anyway. I turned on the old clock radio somebody had left in the room, just for a little company. The clock no longer worked, but the radio didn't sound too bad. It was the time of year that almost every other song was about human Christmas. Wolves didn't have the same beliefs as humans, but the holiday was so pervasive, we had adopted a few of the human traditions for the holiday we called Midwinter.
Then that song, “I'll be Home for Christmas” started to play.
People sing that song every year, of course, but this year it always made me feel sad every time I heard it. That line about being home for the holidays, but only in dreams. That was the one that choked me up, because I'd been having some of those dreams lately. I knew that I was just feeling sorry for myself, because I was so homesick and missing Logan and my dad, and I was alone in this shitty attic room. After the long day I'd had, I felt as if I’d just gone three rounds with Wladimir Klitschko, who was once the heavyweight champion of the world, by the way.
As I lay there shivering under my cheap blanket and feeling, as stated, plenty damn sorry for myself, I realized how pathetic I was and I hated it. I made a vow that as soon as I had this baby, my life would be different—better. I was going to pull myself together and make a new life for myself. I wasn't going to live like this, or at least not for much longer.
I slept late the next morning, burrowing under the thin blankets, because it was raining outside and so damn cold in that little apartment I could see my own breath. I didn’t have much to get up for anyway. Hunger finally drove me out of bed when I remembered that Tuesday was free lunch day at the Methodist Church three blocks down the street. Sometimes, if I was lucky, they gave out seconds, if there weren’t too many people in line, and they usually had fresh fruit I could pocket to eat later that day. Even though I had no plans to keep this baby, I wanted to give it the best start in life that I could.
I quickly washed up in the stained sink and wet down my hair, trying to tame the curls. I had used up all the expensive products I used to depend on, and I couldn’t afford to buy more. None of my clothes really fit me anymore, either, so just last week, when I couldn't stretch my clothes around my stomach any longer, I had used up the last of my meager savings on thrift store sweatpants to fit around my fat waist. I put those on, along with my puffy jacket and ball cap, and looked sadly at my good leather boots. They didn’t exactly go with the outfit, and it was raining outside, and besides they were all I had left now of my life B.P. or Before Pregnancy, especially since the police had confiscated my Glock. My feet were swollen anyway, so I put on some old tennis shoes instead and went out into the drizzling rain.
I was walking, keeping my head down so the icy rain wouldn't hit me in the face, when a big, black SUV drove past me. It suddenly slammed on the brakes, backed up, and pulled in quickly at the curb. The driver’s door flew open and Logan Grady erupted from the car.
I stopped dead still in complete shock and just looked at him as he barreled toward me like a freight train. I panicked and took a quick couple of steps backward. He yelled at me, pointing his finger. His face even partially transformed a little, and I saw his canines lengthen as he snarled at me.
“Stop, you son-of-a-bitch. Don’t you fucking dare run from me!”
I stopped. When your alpha roared like that and showed you his teeth, you damn well better stop if you had any sense of self-preservation. He stormed up to me, taking a handful of my puffy jacket and shouting down in my face. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Well, I…”
“Shut up! I’m so mad at you right now, I want to beat your ass, so give me a few seconds to calm down, so I won't hurt you.”
That sounded like an excellent idea to me. “O-okay.”
Not two seconds later, he shook me ‘til my teeth rattled. “I thought you were dead! You just cleared out your room and disappeared! Just packed your damn bags and left without a word! What kind of person does that? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how many people have been looking for you? How scared your dad has been? How scared I’ve been? We thought you must be dead! Well, answer me, damn it!”
“Well, I…”
“Shut up! There's nothing you can say that I want to hear!”
“Okay, but you just said...”
“Shut up and get in the goddamn truck.”
“Logan, I have to…”
“Either you get in that fucking truck or I’ll put you in it!”
I got in the fucking truck. He stomped along every step of the way behind me, herding me with his big body and keeping his hand clamped on the back of my neck. He gave me a little shove at the door to make sure I climbed in, then went around to the driver’s side. The heat was blasting inside the truck, and it was so warm and the moment so unreal I thought I might pass out for a second. He turned to face me and the burning look he gave me snapped me right out of it.
“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” he asked, his voice loud and filling up the truck, his face an alarming shade of red.
I shook my head helplessly and looked down at my lap. What could I tell him? That I ran because the person I thought I was didn’t exist and never had? I ran because I couldn’t face him and all the others and what they’d inevitably think about me now? Because it turns out that I’m an omega and I’m pregnant and I’m terrified, and oh, yeah, by the way, the baby is yours.
Uh, no. Just no. If he was already feeling like he wanted to kill me, that would seriously push him over the edge.
“Are you crazy, Kade? Is that it? Did you suddenly go batshit crazy and forget to tell me? Who does something like that anyway? Who just p
icks up and runs away from their home, their pack, their fucking life and never looks back? Didn’t you think we’d be worried about you—wonder what the fuck happened to you? How could you do that to me? To your father?”
“I’m sorry!” I cried out, burying my face in my hands. Shit, I never used to be so emotional. Was this from pregnancy hormones? I was scared to death that I was about to burst into tears. “But I couldn’t tell you! If you knew—if you or my dad or anybody else knew what happened and why I left, you’d just have hated me, and I couldn’t take that. You’d never have understood! Don’t you see? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t face everybody! I couldn’t face you!”
I looked up at him, and he was sitting there with a look of utter confusion and amazement on his face, like he couldn’t fathom what I was saying. “You really did go crazy, didn’t you? Are you fucking kidding me? What could possibly be so awful, so horrible that you couldn’t even tell me? I’m your alpha. Your best friend, Kade. What the fuck did you do? Kill somebody? Steal some money? Vote Republican? Collude with the fucking Russians? What the fuck would I never have been able to understand or forgive?”
I just shook my head, and I could feel the tears streaming down my face. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing happened. I just stared miserably at him.
He blanched. “Wait a minute. Oh, fuck, did you kill somebody?”
I shook my head, tears streaming down my face. “Worse than that.”
I dashed my hand at the tears, furious at myself for falling part like some-some...weak omega. Logan looked so good, so strong and solid and real sitting there yelling at me. God, he looked like home. And I'd been away from everything and everybody I knew and cared about for far too long. I was scared and homesick, and his face was so familiar and dear all of a sudden that I couldn’t stand it. I knew that the moment I told him, his expression would change to one of contempt, and it would forever ruin any feelings of friendship he’d ever had for me. But I couldn’t put it off a second longer. He had the right to know, and if he killed me for it, at least he’d be putting me out of my misery.