Besides, I’d stood right next to the guy, and hadn’t gotten a single whiff of the pheromones typical to bonded or unbonded omegas. He smelled – neutral, like most betas did. A bonded omega would have smelled good, like walking past a restaurant when you’ve just had dinner and you enjoy the scent without really craving it.
An unbonded omega? Would have smelled like the best thing on earth. It’s something no unbonded alpha like me could possibly ignore.
Jim couldn’t have been an omega. He’d have been bonded years back, and no way would his alpha allow him to work at a summer camp without his presence for three months out of the year.
Nope, he was a beta. There wasn’t much else he could be.
Lin still looked a bit worried, though, which wasn’t surprising – alphas are a protective bunch by nature. “If you’re concerned about her settling in, I can have a word with their camp director – I talk to them every few days. We can arrange something if she’s homesick and he thinks a call or visit with you would help.”
Lin looked relieved. “Yes, thank you, sir. She’s never been away from home. I think she’d like knowing that a quick visit is a possibility – even if she doesn’t take it.”
“I’ll make a note,” I promised him, and finally, finally, was able to get back to my office undisturbed.
I got as far as pulling out the phone number for Bob McPhail over at Lake Omega before I sat down on my chair and just stared at the phone.
I had known Bob for most of my life. He was the older brother of one of my best friends growing up. It wasn’t easy being the only beta in a family of alphas and omegas, but Bob did all right. All his omega siblings had gone to Camp Lake Omega as kids, and because of that, he’d seen first-hand how much good it did for them. It was why he’d been determined to work there once he was old enough – and eventually, he’d been given the job of camp director. Well deserved, I’d always thought.
I’d seen the good Lake Omega had done, too. And I’d been envious of it my whole life – which was why when my trust had come in, I’d started Alpha-By-the-Lake with the money my grandparents had left me, right across the lake from our sister omega camp, with Bob’s full support.
My grandparents probably wouldn’t have approved. They’d wanted me to meet an omega, bond and breed, have a 9-5 job in the city somewhere. Not camp out in the woods all summer, every summer, teaching alpha kids who weren’t mine how to be good people. They wouldn’t have understood the legacy I was trying to instill. They only understood bloodlines.
Bloodlines were important, sure – and I was sorry to abandon mine. But bloodlines weren’t so important that I would be willing to ignore what was more important to me.
Which was why I preferred to call Bob now that the camps were open, instead of hop into a canoe and paddle over, something I would have happily done the day before. It was Camp Lake Omega’s first day, too, and the place would be crawling with omegas. The young ones – the campers themselves – didn’t bother me.
Their omega parents and grandparents did.
Bob answered the phone so quickly, I wondered if I’d gotten the dates mixed up.
“Camp Lake Omega! Bob speaking.”
“Don’t you have campers coming in?” I asked. Bob laughed.
“Don’t you?”
“Not like you to hide from them, that’s all.”
“Whereas I know you’ve thrown the lock on your door,” Bob said. I heard the tell-tale creak of his chair and the thump of his feet landing on his desk. “What’s the scoop?”
I explained why I was calling. Bob scratched down the information. “Haven’t met her yet, but I’ll keep an eye out. She’s not the first sibling we’ve had for one of yours.”
“Really?” It made sense that there’d have been others – but no one had ever said anything to me.
“Man, you really do wear your blinders during that dance, don’t you? There’s at least one sibling reunion every session. Last year there was a set of twins.”
I frowned. “Peter Delmonico?”
“Brother of Paulo, yup. Pretty sure they were the cause of at least one of our runaway canoes last year.”
“I thought they were boyfriends.”
Bob snorted. “No wonder you never bonded, if you think that’s how boyfriends greet each other. They don’t slap each other’s backs and start poking each other in the stomach, that’s for sure. Well, not with their fingers.”
The good thing about a locked door is that no one can see you blush. “Shut up.”
“Which reminds me. I think we do have a set of girlfriends this year – you got a camper named Cammy Winchester?”
I frowned. “I’ve got a first-year counselor by that name.”
“Well, shit. I’ve got a camper – Molly Mendoza. Her last year. Hasn’t had estrus yet, but her parents let slip that she’s been seeing this Cammy person for the last six months. Thought she might be over there with you. I don’t think they realize she’s old enough to be a counselor, though.”
Bob’s counselors tended to be older, I knew – at least twenty or so. And he didn’t have a system of junior counselors like I did. I could understand his worry, knowing he assumed mine were older, too.
“Junior counselor,” I corrected him. “She’s eighteen – and she was one of mine. I asked her back as a junior counselor before she even left camp last year. She’s a good kid, Bob. I trust her to do the right thing by Molly, even if the girl goes into estrus in the middle of the dance floor.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Bob wryly.
“I might not say it for all my kids, but I’ll say it for Cammy. She’s got excellent control of herself,” I said firmly. “As good as mine. Maybe even better.”
I heard Bob’s sigh of relief. “Well, if you say so. And she was one of your campers? At least she didn’t sign up just to be near Molly. That’d worry me, to be honest.”
“Same here, but I assure you, that’s not the case. I’ll talk to her, make sure she doesn’t try anything stupid this summer.”
“I’ll talk to Molly, and her parents. She’s got a good set of counselors this summer—”
“Jim?” I don’t know why I asked – it wasn’t like it was any of my business. Even if just thinking about him talking to one of his fellow counselors made my face heat up. Not that I’d really heard what they were saying – not that I needed to hear, what with Jim on his hands and knees.
Beta, I reminded myself. Jim’s a beta. He couldn’t know what that position would do to a guy like me.
Bob continued talking. “No, but that’s a good idea, Jim should talk to her too. I’ll give him a word. And maybe keep a closer eye on the roving canoes.”
“Same here,” I promised. We coordinated a few more details about the upcoming dance before signing off.
As soon as I hung up the phone, I rubbed my face with my hands, lost in thought. Cammy Winchester was a good kid – and as kind, strong, and protective an alpha as I’d ever had the privilege to mentor. She’d been one of my kids from way back, even before I had the camp, when I was just a school counselor trying to help a thousand kids at once.
Cammy was the reason I ended up starting Alpha-By-the-Lake in the first place. Not directly, but I knew that unless there was a place for kids like her to go, she’d be lost as yet another overpowering, uncompromising, self-centered alpha. Cammy was better than that. I didn’t want her lost in that shuffle.
I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I trusted her – it was true, I did. Maybe I’d been stretching the truth to say I trusted her alone with Molly if Molly went into estrus – hell, I wasn’t sure I could even trust myself in that instance.
The scent put out by an omega going into estrus was some powerful stuff. It wasn’t just the typical every day pheromones – they put out a super-charged version of the stuff that could send any nearby alpha into a lust-filled haze. In close contact, the alpha would lose control of every rational thought in their head and turn into a rutting beast, wanting
only one thing in the world – and they wouldn’t stop until they got it.
Lin had been right about one thing – there were some things I did with the oldest of my campers that I didn’t do with any of the rest. One of them was to teach them how to recognize when an omega was going into estrus and how to keep both themselves and that omega safe, so that no one had any accidents, up to and including bonding, pregnancy, or intercourse. Self-control was something I taught them all, right from Day One. The sixteen-year-olds just got a more intense course of it.
It wasn’t fool-proof, though. And all the prep work in the world couldn’t really prepare anyone for what it actually felt like to be lost in a sea of pheromones. You couldn’t think straight; all you wanted to do was get closer to the source of the delicious scent, wrap yourself around the warm body, nuzzle in and never let them go, until you were both writhing and wanting and naked, engulfed in heat and entirely apart from the rest of the world, which might not even exist while you had each other.
I was all too aware of exactly how hard it was to resist the draw of an omega in heat. I’d spent ten years watching my father driven by pheromone lust… and I wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to me.
I’d never bond. Ever – because I never intended to fall in love with an omega, much less get close enough to an unbonded one to make it a possibility.
Cammy was young, plus she had an emotional tie to Molly already. No matter how much I trusted her, if Molly went into heat and Cammy found out, she probably wouldn’t have been strong enough to resist.
I couldn’t figure out how Jim could possibly help Molly. Sure, the kid might be smart, he might be good-looking, and he might hit every one of my buttons – but he was a beta, at the end of the day.
And what could a twenty-year-old beta have to tell a sixteen-year-old omega about anything?
Chapter Three
Jim
It was the first official night of camp being open. All day, we counselors had been run off our feet, greeting kids and calming down parents, helping carry too-heavy suitcases that refused to roll over rocky ground, mediating arguments over the cutest One Direction boy (I tried not to get involved, but honestly, some kids have no taste whatsoever).
By dinnertime, I was exhausted. I’d been put in charge of one of the youngest cabins. I guess the theory was that they’d be all too green to fool me, and maybe I’d be a calming, maternal influence on them. Fat chance. They all snuck into the kitchens after dinner and ate a dozen containers of chocolate frosting. The little bastards didn’t even share. It took me until eleven to get them all calmed down and in their beds. I could have done it earlier, but I’d have had to tie them down, and ten’s a bit young for shibari.
I was asleep, happily dreaming of things that I assure you had nothing to do with Hottie McHot Alpha, when I felt someone shake me awake.
“Jim! Jim!”
It was Elizabeth, one of the other counselors. I liked Elizabeth, mostly. She was pretty and funny with that classic California-girl vibe of blond hair and blue eyes and perfect skin, plus she was just genuinely nice. Utterly wasted in a beta, if you ask me, but that’s life.
“Wha—?” I mumbled, and illuminated my watch. It was just after one in the morning.
“Brandon’s missing,” said Elizabeth.
“Brandon?”
“He’s not in his bunk, he’s not in the showers, I can’t find him anywhere, his sister says he’s missing his twin—”
“Twin?”
“He’s got an alpha twin, Brian, at the camp across the lake. Bree says Brandon might have taken a canoe….”
“Fuck,” I groaned as I swung my legs out of the bed. “Why are you waking me up? Go wake up Hottie Mc—I mean, Mr. What’s-His-Face Alpha Camp Director.”
“Jim,” hissed Elizabeth. “We can’t do that. If they catch Brandon over at the alpha camp, he’ll be kicked out! He’ll never be allowed to return. And it’ll be a black mark when he does enter the bonding pool – you know that! You have to go after him. You’re the only one of us who might convince him to come back.”
“Why me?” It was almost a whine. Hey, I was tired.
“He likes you.”
I groaned and tried to find my shoes in the dark (successful!), and then tried to find a flashlight that worked (not successful!). Elizabeth helped me carry a canoe down to the lake so I could paddle across to the alpha camp on the other side. At least the moon was bright, so I could see despite the crappy flashlight. Not that this seemed to bother Elizabeth, who waved way too cheerfully from shore as I headed across the lake .
I’d been paddling for about five minutes when the oar broke in half. Clean broke in my hands, so that I had a short stubby stupid oar that was sure to give me a backache.
Like someone’d tampered with it.
And even then I didn’t figure it out. Nope, I just kept paddling, with the too-short oar, calling out for Brandon in a loud whisper that probably didn’t carry all that far.
“Brandon! Brandon! Dammit, Brandon, I was having a really fabulous dream about Hottie McHot Alpha! I could be still dreaming instead of wandering around the lake looking for you. Brandon! Brandon! I can’t even remember which one you are. The one with the glasses, or the one with the lisp, or the… oh, damn.”
Because that’s when I realized. I didn’t have a camper named Brandon in my cabin.
In fact, I was pretty sure there wasn’t a Brandon – or a Brian, or a Bree – anywhere in either the omega or the alpha camps.
And it was way too much of a coincidence that I’d been given a rotting oar and a flashlight about to give out.
I was being pranked. Hazed. Welcomed to the Fraternal Club of Camp Counselors. With any luck, all the chocolate frosting consumed by my cabin was making the little buggers sick to their stomachs, and Elizabeth was cleaning them up one by one.
Nah. They’d all wait until I got back, and then be sick to their stomachs. Little monsters.
“Well, damn,” I said, and I threw the oar as hard as I possibly could into the darkness.
I expected to hear a splash, maybe a gurgle as the oar sank into the bottom of the lake. It would have at least been satisfying.
KLONK.
“Ow!”
Splash!
All I could say was, “Oh, shit.”
Because I knew that voice. I’d been hearing that voice in my head right before I’d been unceremoniously woken up in the middle of the night to take a canoe into the middle of the lake in order to look for a camper who did not exist.
The way I saw it, I had three options.
Swim like hell for shore and hope he didn’t follow me.
Stay where I was and pretend like I had meant to paddle into the middle of the lake before throwing away my paddle.
Drown myself and hope he didn’t notice.
“Who’s there?” Zachary Ito’s voice sounded sharp, almost militaristic. Commanding and controlling and oh my god, if that didn’t push every single button I’d forgotten I had. I immediately decided to go for Plan B, if only to get more sound bites to incorporate into the next night’s dreaming session.
“Um. Me. Jim. From the omega camp. I’m a counselor.”
“Jim?” Zachary’s voice wasn’t quite so sharp and commanding anymore. He actually sounded concerned. “What are you doing out here?”
“Um. Sightseeing?”
I heard the soft swish of a paddle in the water and waves lapping up against a boat as he came closer. I saw Zachary’s silhouette before I could make out his face in the moonlight.
“Hazing the new guy, huh?”
I sighed. “Yeah. What about you?”
“Returning another one of your canoes,” he said. I noticed that the canoe he was paddling really was one of ours. “I’m not sure why they keep coming unmoored – unless you really do have a missing camper named Brandon.”
I groaned and dropped my head to my knees. “You heard that, huh?”
And then I remembered what else
I’d said while calling for the imaginary Brandon. Luckily you can’t see blushes in the dark.
“Probably just another prank,” said Zachary. I lifted my head. Maybe he hadn’t heard my admission about nocturnal lusting. “I take it your oars are broken?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got an extra,” he said, handing it over to me. It was a near thing, getting hold of it without falling into the water.
“Great, thanks,” I said brightly, because I figured my only saving grace would be to get the hell out of there before I made more of a fool of myself than I already had. “Well, I’ll be off.”
I started paddling as hard as I could – no way I could outpaddle him, of course. Alphas are famed for their upper body strength, after all. But I could at least get a bit ahead and hope he didn’t follow too close.
“Jim?” called Zachary. My heart pounded in my chest.
Oh, God.
“Camp Lake Omega is the other way.”
Fuck.
“I knew that!” I said brightly. I managed to turn the canoe around with a minimum of splashing. I don’t think Zachary was laughing at me, but I couldn’t really tell.
“You have no idea where you are, do you?”
I groaned. “Fine, you caught me. I don’t have a clue.”
Zachary still didn’t laugh. “Follow me. I can get you home.”
“If you’re going to tell me that you’re navigating by the stars,” I warned him as he started paddling next to me.
Now he chuckled. “There’s a distinctive light pattern thrown by the cabins at your camp.” He paused. “Also the stars.”
Hey, sometimes, you can’t help but splash a little bit with your oar as you paddle. It’s a hazard of being on the water, totally not intentional.
Except when it is. Which it wasn’t.
Zachary only laughed and kept paddling. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
Oh, great, here we go. The inevitable So what’s a nice omega like you doing in a place like this? Also, where’s your alpha?
“Sure,” I said, entirely lackluster, because I hate this conversation.
“How was your first day of camp?”
Camp Lake Omega Page 3