“I could take you,” I offered, but Zach shook his head. “You can’t be overprotective of me forever, you know.”
“Watch me,” said Zach. He helped me carry the canoe back into the water, and then held it steady as I climbed in. He braced the canoe as he leaned in for a goodbye kiss. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”
“I know,” I said, suddenly loathe to paddle away. “My parents will want to meet you.”
“I want to meet them. Just let me know when and where.”
I nodded, trying to swallow around the lump in my throat. Our separation would only be for a little bit. It’d be over before I knew it, no matter how long I tried to delay. After all, we couldn’t stay here forever when we both had responsibilities. “Just….”
“I know,” said Zach, and kissed me again. This time it lingered, and when he finally pulled away, I kept my eyes closed. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I whispered.
The canoe jerked a little bit as he pushed it out into the lake. The water slapped against the sides, all at once comforting and a little dismal.
And a very, very welcome reminder.
I tightened my fingers around my oar.
Oh, yeah, I got this, I thought smugly to myself. I paddled a few strokes out into the lake, out of Zach’s reach, before I turned around with a deft flick of my oar. “Hey, Zach!”
He was still standing in the water, watching me go. “Jim?”
I grinned at him. “Better grease up your cabin door!”
I saw his mouth drop open right before I turned the canoe around again, and began paddling as fast as I could toward the omega camp.
If I knew anything – it was how to handle a canoe.
And what’s more – Zach knew it too.
Alphas aren’t the only ones with power to control their fates, you know.
Zach was laughing when he called after me. “Don’t you dare!”
“Try and stop me,” I shouted back, and kept on paddling for shore.
Twelve Years Later
“Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up!”
I like waking up in our cabin by the lake. The rest of the year, Zach and I wake up to alarm clocks, but at the lake, we wake up to birdsong. It’s much nicer.
“Come on, it’s time to go! We’re going to be late for our first day!” Joanie, age ten, bounced on the bed at my feet, but I could tell just by the amount of bouncing that she wasn’t alone.
“Mom! Wake up! You don’t want us to get the crappy cabins, do you?” That would be her twin sister, Jessie, no doubt bouncing at Zach’s feet.
Zach groaned and rolled over next to me. “Your cabins are already assigned. Being late isn’t going to affect that.”
“Wake up!” wailed Joanie. I rolled to my side and checked my phone for the time.
“It’s not even seven,” I groaned, and flopped back down onto my pillow.
Joanie mimicked me by flopping onto my back. “We have to be there in an hour.”
“Oh my god, you’re heavy! Get off,” I groaned, because having ten-year-old girls flop over you first thing in the morning is not the way I want to start my day.
“Joanie, off your mother,” said Zach. The bed shook as he sat up. “Just because campers can start arriving at eight doesn’t mean we have to be there at eight.”
“I’m getting breakfast,” said Joanie, and the bed gave another shake as she and her sister ran out to the kitchen.
“On second thought,” I said into my pillow. “Let’s get them to camp by eight. The sooner the better. That’s a great idea.”
Zach chuckled and kissed my shoulder. “I don’t think she’ll give us another choice.”
“No kidding,” I muttered.
Twelve summers after our first one, the little lone cabin on the side of the lake looked a lot different. For one thing, it was structurally sound now – no chance of a stray wind knocking it over, and no need for the plethora of blankets to ward away the chill. Zach and I had spent an entire year fixing it up, adding on a proper kitchen and porch, as well as a fully-equipped bathroom and a couple of bedrooms. It was our summer-time home-base, halfway between the alpha and omega camps, so that Zach could continue to act as camp director, with Reba taking on more and more responsibility, and I could work at the omega camp as a day counselor.
At least, that had been the original plan, until the first summer when I turned up pregnant. First with the twins, Joanie and Jessie, and then four years later with their little brother, Todd. I still worked as a day counselor, but it was hard with three little ones underfoot.
But this summer was the first summer the girls were old enough to attend the camps themselves. Todd was still too young – but I could already tell it was the beginning of something big. The start of me finally getting to live my life, instead of theirs.
Suddenly, Joanie’s plan to be at the camp at the stroke of eight wasn’t such a horrible idea after all.
Especially when I got to the kitchen to find the counters completely covered in fruit-flavored cereals and helpfully coated in an entire jar of peanut butter.
“Four more years,” I told Zach, “and we can send all of them to camp.”
“Not soon enough,” said Zach grimly.
Justine was waiting for us at the shore with a grin on her face when we paddled up in our canoes with Joanie and her bags in tow. Bob McPhail had retired three years before and turned the entire camp over to Justine, who’d never really left. She was the perfect choice for camp director – not just because she was a beta, but because she also had a good working relationship with the new camp director of the Alpha camp across the way.
“Thought you’d come by canoe,” Justine said cheerfully. “Hello, Joanie!”
“Hi, Ms. Fieser!”
“Faster than driving,” said Zach. “Especially since we have two camps to visit today.”
“Call me Justine for the summer,” Justine told Joanie, who grinned at her. She turned to Jessie. “I know you have run of the camp the rest of the year, Jess, but now that you’re officially a camper at Alpha-by-the-Lake, it’s just like we talked about.”
“I know, Ms. Fieser,” said Jessie, polite as always. “Don’t go into the cabins, stay with my parents at all times, and no returning unless I have a responsible adult with me.”
“Good girl,” said Justine, as Zach ruffled Jessie’s hair.
“Dad,” she wailed, and reached up to fix her ponytail.
“Let’s get your sister settled, and then we’ll take you across the lake,” he said.
“Me too!” yelled Todd, jumping out of the canoe and racing up the shore.
“Doing all right, Jim?” Justine asked me. “It’s your first time coming as a parent.”
“Yeah, and I swear this place is more run down today than it was yesterday,” I replied with a grin. Justine laughed.
“Wait ‘til you see the cabins at Alpha-by-the-Lake. Those squirrels did a number on Wolf Cabin over the winter, Reba’s been having kittens.”
I groaned. I’d forgotten about Camp Alpha’s policy of making the kids do the fixing up.
It didn’t take long to settle Joanie in at her new cabin, or to show her around – after all, the kids had been coming to the omega camp for years. I was still kind of surprised when Joanie gave me an extra-tight hug as we were readying to paddle across the lake to Camp Alpha.
Then again… she’d just given her twin sister the longest hug I’d ever seen either of them give the other, and when they’d broken apart, Jessie had made a bee-line for the canoe. A quick glimpse of her red eyes confirmed my suspicions.
Jessie was the alpha twin, sure – but she’d always been the more sensitive of the two. For Joanie to cry, though? She’d been the one who climbed up on a rooftop when she was five just because it was there.
Even so, she was hugging me so tightly that I couldn’t see anything but the top of her head. I squeezed her tight. It’s what moms do.
“This is going to be such a good summer, Jo
anie,” I soothed her. “I know it’s hard, being separated from your sister for three months – you guys have never been apart since the day you were born. You’re going to have a wonderful time, I promise. You’re both so brave and wonderful and—”
Joanie pushed away and looked up at me, digging her small chin into my stomach. “Oh my God, Mom. Please don’t go all Harry Potter on me now.”
“Huh?”
“If you tell me I’m named after the two bravest camp directors you’ve ever known, I’ll kick you.”
There was my Joanie.
“If that was true, we would have named you Krusty the Klown Bob, instead of Joanie Yuuko.”
Joanie groaned. “Moooom.”
“I am so glad I get to come here twice a week to hear you say that,” I said. “It’ll make missing you the rest of the time so much easier to bear.”
Joanie pulled me down for a kiss, and then ran back up the shore to her cabin.
“One down, one to go,” said Zach cheerfully as I climbed into the canoe.
“You guys don’t have to sound so happy about it,” complained Jessie.
“Who’s happy? I’m crying inside,” I said, just as cheerfully, as I started to paddle.
All our joking aside: it was strange not having the girls there that night. Todd reveled in being the only child – we made pizzas and had a burping contest and put our feet on the tables and watched boy movies to his heart’s content. He ended up falling asleep in between us on the couch an hour after his regular bedtime, after having sworn he’d stay up until midnight.
I let Zach carry him to bed while I cleaned up. Half an hour later, he found me out on the dock, my feet kicking at the water as I watched the lights flicker at the two camps on either side of the lake.
“Thought I’d find you here.” Zach handed me a glass of wine, and then sat down next to me. “They’re fine, you know.”
“I know,” I said. “Just remembering.”
Zach knocked against my shoulder. “Jessie’s got a great cabin – she was really excited to be a Lynx.”
“I know.”
“And Reba will take excellent care of her. She’s really settled down since marrying Justine.”
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”
“Only that they never had kids of their own.”
I shrugged. “Justine says they have enough kids every summer. They like having winters just the two of them.”
“I think I can relate,” said Zach, nuzzling at my shoulder.
I snorted. “Bull. You miss the girls more than Todd does.”
“You don’t?”
“Ask me in another couple of days,” I said. The last few words were muffled into a kiss, though. Not that I was going to complain – twelve years on, and I was just a susceptible to Zach’s kisses as I had been from the very first night I’d snuck into his camp.
We were so busy kissing, we almost missed the sounds coming from the lake.
The sounds that sounded a lot like the sound of….
“Oh my God,” groaned Zach, breaking the kiss. “Don’t tell me Reba is meeting up with Justine on the first night of camp?”
“Shhh,” I hushed him with a hiss. It wasn’t a full moon, but there was enough light that I could tell the Camp Alpha canoe wasn’t the only vessel on the lake. “I don’t think that’s Reba.”
“Who else would it be?” asked Zach.
And then we heard it, as clear as a bell, as clear as daylight, as clear as the scent of an oncoming estrus….
“Joanie, slow down, you’re gonna—”
CRASH.
“Ah, Jess! I’m sorry! Did you drop them?”
“No, they’re fine! Here, yours is cheese and tomato.”
“Oh, yum, thanks, all we had for dinner was meatballs.”
“Ugh!”
Zach whispered in my ear. “Did our daughters just sneak out of camp to meet each other in the middle of the lake?”
“Tell me about your cabin mates!”
“You first!”
“I told them,” said Zach, exasperated and fond and so, so familiar, “that they were to stay on their own sides of the lake until the party at the end of the year. No exceptions!”
I couldn’t help but grin, remembering.
“Jim!” hissed Zach as I slipped in between his sheets. “I told you to stay on your own side of the lake! We can use Reba’s cabin, it’s too dangerous for you over here!”
The bond bite still stung on my neck, and even if no one else could tell, I could still feel the last bits of my flash heat pool in my gut. Touching Zach felt like the best relief in the world….
And there was no lake in the world wide enough, and no alpha’s ironclad rule, that would keep me from coming to the home I found only in his arms.
“Hi,” I said, right before I kissed Zach. The way he kissed me back – I knew he didn’t mind my breaking the rules at all.
Joanie and Jess’s laughter floated across the water as they shared their sandwiches and stories of their first day of camp.
“Can you believe them?” said Zach, shaking his head.
Twelve years ago, I’d promised Zach that I’d never regret bonding him.
I never had, and I never would.
“Yes,” I said, full of happiness and love and joy. “I can.”
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About the Author
Penelope Peters attended a summer sleep-away camp for two summers as a pre-teen before deciding that the mosquito bites aren’t worth it. The fact that she overheard her cabin counselor having sex with her boyfriend one night probably didn’t influence this book… much, anyway. Penelope continued camping as a Girl Scout, where she learned that she prefers rowboats over canoes, campfires over geo-tracking, and how to recognize a wolf howling when accompanying a tentmate to the latrine at 2am.
Penelope has managed to resist camping for the last twenty years, but is happy to hang out in the extra-large Bedouin tent in the backyard with her husband, two kids, and the cat.
Catch up with Penelope by:
Reading her website at http://www.penelope-peters.com
Signing up for her newsletter
Following her on Twitter @penelope-writes
Following her on Tumblr http://penelopepeters.tumblr.com
Also by Penelope Peters
The Downing Cycle:
The Country Omega
The Country Alpha: Ned’s Story
The Country Alpha: Veronica’s Story
Standalone Stories:
The Omega Nanny
A Christmas Caroling
The Prince and the Omega
Acknowledgements
One day last year, in the dog-days of summer, I sat at my computer trying desperately to write a winter holiday story, despite the August heat and humidity. After all, general wisdom dictates that seasonal stories are written well before the season in which they are published, so I turned on my air-conditioning, opened up my Christmas playlist, and tried to be as festive as I could.
I found myself accidentally writing a summer camp story instead. I was never very good at following directions.
Huge thanks goes out to Hallie Deighton, Sarah, and Marion Jones, for braving the summertime blues out of season and making sure the story sounds right. Sarah gets extra camper brownie points for actually looking up the cost of glitter paint.
Despite all my years as a Girl Scout, camping has never been my thing. (I like air conditioning and actual toilets too much. The s’mores are good, though.) That said, there’s no way I could have written this without the memories of all the camping I did
as a kid, so belated thanks goes out to all the camp counselors, directors, and fellow cabin- or tent-mates, I’ve had over the years. May the s’mores be with you, always.
Thanks also to my ever-loyal followers on Twitter, Tumblr, and my newsletter, who probably started thinking the “summer camp story” I wrote last year was just another campfire tall tale.
Finally, thank you to my sons for putting on sweaters in August, and my husband, who faithfully puts up the Bedouin tent in the backyard in hopes that someone other than the cat will join him.
Camp Lake Omega
Copyright © 2017 Penelope Peters
Cover images courtesy of DepositPhotos. Cover design by Amourisa Designs.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
First Edition: July 2017
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