Omega Wanted: Bad Boy Mpreg Romance

by Stephan James

  But, everyone wore the same cold stares. The receptionist hurried over to the desk again and picked up the phone, and that was when he knew he was in trouble. An angry and upset person in a place of business was only going to call one number, and he didn’t think he wanted to spend time in a jail cell if he could help it.

  So, he ran and wound up here in the middle of freaking nowhere. The trees overhead were so thick that they blotted out the sky. The only light was from thin slices of moon peeking shyly through the branches, but hardly any of it reached the ground. Stopping to look back over his shoulder, Gale realized that the last of lights from the city he’d left behind were gone as well.

  From now on, it was only him and whatever his adjusted eyes could show him. Which wasn’t much, honestly. His arms were scraped up and probably bleeding from stumbling into branches, and he kept tripping over stuff he couldn’t even see. In front of him, behind him, all around him, it was nothing but darkness filled with crickets and rustling of wind-rattled leaves.

  Crunch!

  Gale froze in his tracks, his heart hammering in his chest as sick fear began to worm around in his stomach. That was no wind. That was a deliberate sound and he had no explanation for it. Was it an animal? Maybe a wolf, but hopefully a deer?

  Crunch-crunch!

  It came again, rapid-fire. Too heavy for a deer, but too slow for really anything else. Then again, who the hell did he think he was fooling, thinking stuff like that? He had no idea about anything. Hell, it might even just be a mouse.

  Still, he hurried on a little faster and tried as hard as he could not to turn this situation into something it wasn’t. He bet that this turn in the path was good. He would bet that as soon as he got around it, he would see lights, and…

  His foot struck something. Gale went down hard, without even time to try to put his hands down to catch his fall. His face hit gravel and scraped along it for a few inches before he felt the rest of him come to a jarring halt as well.

  Rattled and breathless, Gale heaved in a gasp –and then shoved it back out again as a boot slammed into his stomach. There was more crunching now and he rolled onto his back, gasping and getting nothing, tears streaming down his face as he looked up and watched four men surround him. One from around the bend, two from the forest on either side, and one from directly behind him.

  “What…” he stared to say, but the guy who came up from behind just kicked him again.

  Gale blacked out for a few seconds, his mind shutting down to deal with the pain. When he opened his eyes again, the four men were all surrounding him. One was sitting on his legs while the other two held his arms, and the fourth was kneeling over him.

  Gale was too scared to move, to try to fight back. There was no light, nothing to tell him whether any of these people had weapons. They could have been pulling a cannon along with them and he wouldn’t have known.

  “Well, well,” the fourth man said, sticking his fingers in his pocket and pulling out the wallet his parents had given him on his birthday. Gale blushed. Somehow, despite the obvious life or death situation, he was very glad that this guy couldn’t tell his wallet was in rainbow colors. “What do we have here? A tourist huh, little man?”

  Gale had no idea how to respond, so he stayed quiet as the guy opened his wallet. A debit card and two dollar bills fell out.

  The man stared at him in astonishment. “What the hell kind of tourist are you?”

  Maybe they’ll let me go now that they know I’m not worth anything!

  But, that wasn’t his luck.

  The fourth men stepped away and started undoing his belt. “Turn him over,” he commanded. “His pants. Down. Now. He ain’t got any money; I want something else for my time.”

  Oh, god.

  All of a sudden, Gale realized what they were going to do with him. Hopelessness rose up in his throat and he let out a sob as cruel fingers felt for the waistband of his jeans. If only he’d budgeted better…

  And then it happened.

  It came.

  Gale didn’t know what it was, only that it crashed through the trees like a gigantic wolf with no need for stealth or cunning. The crashing and snapping of tree limbs chilled his heart even further, and then a gout of flame split the night in two. In the light of the fire, he saw it.

  Covered in scales from snout to tail tip, the dragon was enormous. It was gigantic and serpentine, wings flared out to a full and impressive length of 30 feet.

  One of the muggers screamed, and Gale wrenched himself free. Stumbling away, scooting on his butt and kicking out with his legs, he shoved himself into the ditch and watched as, in the last fading bits of ember, three of the four men pulled out weapons. A gun and two switchblades, it looked like.

  And then, the fire was gone and the dragon faded into a hulking mass of blackness that crouched like a cat, and then lunged like a loosed coil. The gun fired and the knives slashed out, but there was a distinctive sound of snapping metal and something hit the ground by Gale’s foot. Absentmindedly, he reached out to take it and realized it was the blade of a knife that had been snapped clean off.

  More fire exploded from the dragon’s mouth, wreathing around its tongue and teeth. The blast knocked one formless man to the ground. Another raced forward, but the dragon spun through its own fire and lashed out with a huge paw. Its claws glinted orange and then a spray of dark wetness spattered the rocky path.

  “Agh!” the struck man said, before falling down limp.

  Gale covered his eyes, but then peeked through his fingers because he had to know what happened. Dragons weren’t real. Dragons didn’t exist. However, there was no other word for this impossible creature currently lashing its head around and grabbing one of the attacker’s arms in its strong jaws. Wrenching away, there was a horrible sound like a chicken leg being pulled away from the rest of the animal. The carnage was impossible, devastating. The dragon was a blur of catlike motion, visible only between lashes of fire, and there was a lot of fire. Every moment saw flame loosed from its mouth, igniting the trees, spraying over the path.

  As another particularly strong blast came his way, Gale pushed himself further off the road. Thorns pushed at his back but he didn’t care, shoving and shoving with his legs until he was lodged in the brambles. His heart continued to pound and he couldn’t understand any of what he was seeing, but at last the final man went down, and he went down with a fight, too. Covered in flames and screaming, he grabbed the dragon’s neck as it bit into his shoulder. The dragon shook its head from side to side and then let out an impossible howl of fury; the man whipped out his gun again and pressed it to the base of the beast’s skull as his lower body dangled around like crazy, thrown this way and that.

  There was a distinctive click as the trigger was pulled.

  The gun was empty.

  Digging its claws in, the dragon lunged backward and shoved its wings forward to catch the man’s head between their powerful apexes. Then, there was no more head and the body slid away uselessly.

  The whole world smelled of smoke and blood. The dragon lifted its head high and stared around, as if searching for someone.

  As if it were searching for Gale.

  He held his breath and wished that his heart was quieter, that the bushes weren’t rattling with his shivers, and especially that his blood wasn’t pumping in his veins so hot and tantalizing for this hungry monstrosity to…

  Huh?

  The creature didn’t eat anything. After looking around some more, the giant mass simply turned and receded back into the forest as though it never was. Gale held his breath until he was seeing stars and sick ribbons of color, and then it burst out of him. That dragon just saved him. That animal just saved his miserable life.

  But, saved or not, Gale stayed in that thorny bush until well into dawn.

  “I can’t believe we’re having this discussion again,” Noah groaned. “Seriously, Stefan?”

  Stefan, his advisor, stared up at him from the foot of the throne. �
��And I cannot believe that you aren’t, sir! The kingdom is in shambles!”

  Noah grunted and turned his head away, feeling his blood boil just a little bit. “It looks just fine to me. I can look at my window anytime and see the towns from here, Stefan. You know that. Nothing is burning yet.”

  “Which is more than we can say for here,” Stefan said scathingly. “And is that really what it would take? Because I will go set a town on fire just for you if that would convince you. Not all tragedies are as obvious as you seem to think they are.”

  No, Noah though, only the important ones.

  He was, of course, thinking of the recent deaths of his mother and father by poisoning at the last grand ball, only a few weeks before. There were so many delegates and representatives from all the surrounding countries that it was impossible to tell who was responsible –and it hadn’t been an isolated incident aimed only at Moldova, mainly because many others were also stricken with illness. He sighed to think of it. No one else had died, but his parents had just both been getting over a rather nasty bout of flu and were so much more susceptible to the poison…

  An antidote had been administered, but not nearly with enough time to spare. They died only the next night, fallen into a coma from which they were never to awaken from or speak again.

  As a result, the kingdom was left without rulers. And only a single heir.

  However, this particular heir was rumored to be weak and undeserving. He hardly ever left the castle. No one knew what he looked like. Everyone assumed he was hideously deformed or else mentally unfit to rule, but the Moldovian departure from the USSR had taken many of his relatives in the struggle for their independence as a country. The townspeople wanted someone with mostly undiluted royal blood, which meant the position fell to none other than Prince Noah.

  However, Noah was not weak. Far from it. Instead, he was vastly powerful for such a young man and he hated it. He hated many things and had an awful temper, which activated his curse. Whenever he was angry, he transformed into a dragon. That was why his parents had hidden him in the castle and always warned him to never leave the grounds. No risks could be taken with his safety or anyone else’s.

  And now Stefan wanted to marry him off to some stranger to give the impression that the throne was still strong, but it had just been a string of princesses who arrived from other lands to try and be the one he fancied. The only problem was that he didn’t fancy a princess of any sort. His tastes merely didn’t run in that direction.

  Actually, Stefan didn’t want to marry anyone at all, preferences or not. He hated everyone and everything. He didn’t want this responsibility, and hadn’t asked for the position to be thrust upon him so soon. What did he care if his kingdom was in shambles, anyway? Everyone knew that the Council and the Parliament were the really lawmakers of the land, while the royal families were really honorary figureheads at best. His involvement shouldn’t matter, and he’d said so to Stefan at least a dozen times now.

  And he said it again, trying not to sound like a pouting child.

  Stefan sighed and put his head in his hands. “Sir, my Lord, I have no idea how to get you to understand how wrong you are. Please, can we just get on with this? There is only one more princess here to see you today. Perhaps you should try to be hospitable to her?”

  Noah growled low in the back of his throat, looking up at the ceiling with his own exasperation. “I can’t believe you. I don’t like women.”

  “For the last time, it doesn’t matter! You’re not getting married for love!” Stefan threw his hands into the air. “Just pick one you can tolerate and maybe even be friends with! Something! We can create an interesting scandal later where you divorce her in a few years! Whatever you want! But you are a Prince and you must do what is good for the people, not yourself.”

  “And what’s so wrong with the people?”

  “For the last time. You may not see any fires yet, but you will. You will see riots. You will have commoners at the gates trying to break in –and succeeding. Right now, no one is ruling. No one is relegating. No one is making the very important decisions that your parents did. Most important, the people have no one to look up to right now. All those responsibilities fall upon you and you aren’t doing anything.” Stefan held up one finger and stood on his tiptoes to jab it in Noah’s face, as the throne was raised on a platform that only a high royal could mount. “All it takes is one death for that blood to be on your hands.”

  Noah sighed hugely, and looked around this grand meeting hall. This used to be where his parents sat and ruled from. There was only one entrance, and no windows. The walls were golden, the curtain accents scarlet, and the banisters draped with blue. The one entrance was all the way at the other end of the room, from which commoners or other, lower royals would enter to ask for his opinion or blessing, which he could give or not as he saw fit. There used to be two thrones in here on this platform, but the other one was currently removed and in the small space behind him, draped with a black mourning cloth.

  His bride would sit there, if he ever found one.

  Bride. He hated even thinking about it. That would be such a lie to his people and himself, but his parents never actually gave their approval to make homosexual activities legal. That part of him was just as much a secret as the rest.

  An idea suddenly occurred to him. If he became King, he could change that! Maybe not immediately, but in a few years…

  “Okay,” he said.

  Stefan stared. “Pardon?”

  “Let’s get this over with. Send the last one in.”

  Stefan kept staring for a moment, but obviously decided it wasn’t worth it to ask any questions, so he just hurried all the way back down the hall to the big double doors down at the end. Muscles straining in his thin arms, he pulled one open and stuck his head out. “The Duchess Yalta may enter now!”

  A Duchess meant she was already married, or at least had been before. That didn’t give him a very good feeling.

  However, he was pleasantly surprised to not have an elderly hag shambling towards him. Yalta had thin dirty blonde hair that draped over her shoulders, and a nice-enough face with a slender nose. She was tall and leggy, with tannish skin.

  Noah tilted his head and thought hard. He was only a little taller than that, which meant they would make a beautiful couple standing together. He had darker hair and lighter skin, so they would be a veritable feast for any sort of eyes but that wasn’t the issue he had. The issue was that the way Yalta walked made her seem very cold and distant. She didn’t want to be here.

  “My Lord,” Yalta said in a thick accent, and then stiffly bowed her head.

  No, I don’t like this one at all.

  Noah didn’t greet her or smile at her, instead looking over her head at Stefan, who was standing back a bit. Stefan rolled his eyes, but stepped forward.

  “I’m sorry, Yalta. It seems the Prince is not interested.”

  “What?” she exclaimed, and stomped her foot down hard. Her heel hit the red carpeting hard, and stabbed a hole right through it. “I come all this way only to be rejected without a word? What is this madness? You will find no better at your side than I!”

  Noah folded his arms, but still said nothing. Let her true colors come out. She would dig herself a grave.

  And indeed she did. “I can’t believe you!” she squalled. “You’re just as weak and ill-minded as they say!”

  That was all it took for the anger to burst alive within him. The change happened swiftly and without any outward warning, but Noah felt every second. His blood began to boil, and his body shook. His pulse in his wrists and ankles thumped hard, and he grabbed the arms of his throne. The gold melted beneath his fingers, the arms warping.

  Yalta didn’t seem to notice until she saw molten gold dripping. “What…”

  And when she looked up, her eyes flashing with anger rather than puzzlement, Noah burst out of his skin. Scales flooded his body. His mass exploded. Wings ripped up and out from his b
ack, and his lunge took him sailing to the carpet so that his claws ripped into it.

  Yalta screamed and turned to run, but her heel was still stuck into the carpet. With an audible snap, it wrenched away and she fell flat on her face.

  Noah put his massive, draconic head beside hers and flickered his pupils at her. She shrieked, leapt to her feet, and dove out of the room with him snapping at her heels. The door wasn’t open wide enough for her him to get through, but he didn’t intend on chasing her any further than that anyway.

  Turning back, he realized he could still hear her screaming. Not for long though. His advanced hearing quickly picked up a thumping sound, and then there was silence.

  Her fainting was the trigger to release his anger, and he dropped down onto his hands and knees, panting and completely naked. All the exhilaration of the moment was gone, and he was shaking and weak.

  After a couple seconds, he heard footsteps and then Stefan was standing over him, clearing his throat. The sound seemed so dull in comparison to the roaring of his blood in his veins, but he tilted his head to listen anyway.

  “Well, as you know, that was the last suitable female candidate. I don’t suppose you would be willing to reconsider any of the others. That baroness…”

  Noah interrupted with a quick shake of his head. Stefan sighed and then nodded, as if he’d seen it coming. “Well, then I can think of only one other thing. Your reign will start with a scandal.”

  Go on, Noah thought.

  “We will put out subtle advertisements for butler jobs in the castle. However, the job applicants will instead be suitors. As you know, royalty must be present for all interviews. You wouldn’t have to do anything, but sit there and let me know when you like someone.” Stefan wrung his hands together, looking a bit distressed, but also rather determined. He could probably tell that he had his difficult charge listening for once. “As for there being legal issues, you will be the Prince! You could pretend with this man that you have known each other for a long time and that as of today, you are making gay marriage legal in our country. It would be scandalous and have just the right amount of drama for our people to focus upon for long enough to ignore the other issues.”