“You’re welcome.” He touched my cheek. “Are you thirsty?”
I wasn’t, but our attention was quickly changed as Jarret shifted back. He fell forward and would have landed on his face if Preston hadn’t grabbed him. “Gotcha, little brother.”
Jarret blinked rapidly. “Pres, what is going on?”
“Yep.” Preston didn’t respond to the question asked. Instead, he caught him as he fainted into his arms. “Got you. I’m going to put him to bed. Watch this one when he shifts, would you?”
Gus winced. “First one always comes with the fainting. You’re holding on pretty well, little Omega.”
Why did he call me that? The world tilted left, and Rainer held tighter. “Come on. We’ll follow Preston. Don’t shift back yet, Anton. Or if you do, do it next to Gus.”
“I’m sorry about this, Rainer.”
My Alpha blinked. “For what? Oh, it must be for running out of the room where I could protect you and leading two dangerous crazed Loup wolves out on your own to be some kind of… bait? It must be that.”
I sighed. “I’m not clear on what I did, but if I did that, then I’m sure there was a good reason to do so. I want to protect you.”
He shook his head, laying me down on the mattress next to Jarret. He stared at me for a second. “You’re mine. You know that, right?”
I didn’t get to answer him before Jarret closed his eyes. I was his. And I was Rainer’s. And Preston’s. And Anton’s. They were all mine. And I was theirs. I didn’t know how we were all going to give this up. The idea was so awful I couldn’t even fathom it. Why had Gus called me an Omega? They were all gone.
Preston exited the room and returned a second later with an unconscious Anton. He laid him on the other side of me. “Go to sleep, Mac. You’ll be better this time. Not as lost when you wake up. Clearer memory.”
I knew he was right. I could already feel the fog lifting. “You’re all going to suffer now. I didn’t want you to. Or suffer more. You had to shift. You’ll have to detox again.”
Rainer stepped next to Preston. “We were already suffering and… MacKenzie, we may not have to give it up now. I don’t know how this is going to go. I can tell you that I’m not going to go back to pretending, or contemplating how I can date human women, when there is a you in the world. I can’t speak for Preston but that’s how I feel.”
Preston shook his head. “Just been waiting on you, brother. All these years. Yes, you’re ours. Worst-case scenario, we hide in this swamp for the rest of our lives. But maybe it won’t come to that. You might be here to save us all. We’ll see.”
Anton shifted, drawing me close to him in sleep just as Jarret rolled over and pressed closer to my side. Rainer and Preston looked at each other and the younger grinned. “Where was our beautiful mate when we had to learn how to shift? No one to hold. Just hours of loneliness.”
Rainer shook his head. “I’m going to go check on Gus. Then we’ll hash some of this out.”
I swallowed. “I don’t think I can save anyone. I’m not strong, and I’m so confused.”
Preston bent down and squeezed my foot. “Worry about that later.”
I wanted to but there were a million thoughts rushing through my too thick brain. “Where is my family?”
“We’re going to find that out.” Rainer nodded.
“Are the Loup coming back?”
Preston shook his head. “Not unless they want to lose their heads.”
I stared at Rainer. “It’s hard for me to imagine it, you going mad like that. I look at you and you’re strong, healthy. You don’t smell like you were ever lost to that.”
Rainer winced. “It’s hard for me to imagine that, too. But people saw. Close those brown eyes.”
He was my Alpha. I wanted to listen to him, only, first… I reached forward and grabbed onto Rainer’s hand, which was hot, almost burning. “It’s going to be okay. All of it.”
I passed out.
Chapter 6
I pulled myself to the surface of consciousness. I hadn’t done what I needed to do, and I couldn’t leave those men like that, not if I could fix them. Somehow, I recognized I was capable of such a feat. I stumbled off the mattress on the floor. Neither Jarret nor Anton moved or woke. Sweat broke out over my body.
I sniffed the air. I could find them. The werewolves who had succumbed to madness, who had become the Loup-Garou of legend, they needed me. I stumbled in the hall and someone in the kitchen rushed to me.
“Mac?” Preston grabbed me around my waist. “What’s the matter? You’ve been asleep five minutes.”
I shook my head. “Have to go. I didn’t fix them.”
I pushed at him. He was like a wall that I needed to get around. Rainer came out from the kitchen, followed by Gus. “What’s going on?”
Preston didn’t move despite my efforts to make him. In fact, he smirked at me. If I was in any other state, I might have found that either adorable or annoying. Right then, I just didn’t care. “I need to go help those men.”
Rainer walked over to me, touching the end of my hair. “MacKenzie, we don’t have the slightest idea who those men are. They could be anywhere. I’m not even sure how they found you to begin with. But we can’t just go wandering around the swamp looking for them.”
He didn’t understand. “I can find them. I can feel them. I just have to follow the… knowing.”
Rainer looked at Gus. “Any advice with this? I can’t believe she’s up. Second shift, I didn’t rouse for a full day.”
Gus shook his head. “No advice. I’ve never seen this, but we know the Omegas are different. The last one I knew in our pack before she passed was always around her mates. They watched her like it was their job and… maybe there was something to it. Get too close without permission, and they’d lose it. I thought it was way overprotective. We wanted to keep your mother safe, but we didn’t keep her from walking into rooms first. Now… I’m wondering if they just understood how things were with their mate. Your mother never made any moves to be her friend, so we lived very separately from them. I don’t have any information.”
Why were they having this conversation? “It’s really important.” I might have shouted. I wasn’t entirely sure. I just needed them to understand, and they weren’t.
Rainer ran a hand through his long hair. It had been down since the shift, the first time I’d seen it that way, out of the bun.
“Okay. I think we can all scent her distress.”
Gus shook his head. “Not me. I haven’t shifted in years.”
“Really? We can talk about that later. Fine. Preston, go get her pants. We’ll take her wherever she needs to go and hopefully not have to kill the fuckers since we managed to hold off doing that this time.”
Had that been an option? “Were you strong enough to kill them?”
Preston nodded. “All Rainer would have had to do was indicate that was what he wanted.”
“Don’t… they’re sick. And they need me.”
I shivered. Much as I needed to do this, it wasn’t bringing me any joy to do so. Preston let me go, and I stumbled backward into Rainer whose arms came around me. I was weaker than I could ever remember being, but I was going to accomplish this. There wouldn’t be any rest until I did.
Gus shook his head. “I told them. If we did this… if we put away our wolves and denied what was true, then we’d never know if the Omegas came back. Only when they shift can they be scented.”
Rainer tugged on the end of my hair. “I thought Omegas could be scented at birth.”
“How are we supposed to know that if we can’t smell anything at all? I only knew it was her because when she shifted, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d have to be dead to not know it. She also scented like family. I took a guess that at least one of you would belong to her.”
Rainer pressed his nose against the back of my head, and I closed my eyes. That was nice. Really, ridiculously nice. “She smells like home. And…”
Gus
held up his hand. “Trust me. I get it whenever I am around your mother. I don’t need a description of just how much you guys all like the smell of her.”
“Right.” Rainer shifted his hand to hold me tighter just as Preston came into the room, carrying my pants. I stepped into them like I was a child who had to have help dressing, and even though I knew this should have been embarrassing right then, I didn’t care at all.
I walked forward, and Preston grabbed my hand. “Shoes.” He pointed at the ground, and I put them on. “And we’re not walking. We’ll drive.”
That didn’t sound right. “But they’re out there. In the swamp. I can’t… drive there.”
“Well, you can’t walk on water either, and I don’t think the gators are giving rides. Come on. We’ll take one of the boats.”
Rainer nodded toward Gus. “Are you coming?”
“Nope. This is on the three of you. Whatever is happening, it’s not my journey. I’m going to keep working on finding her family. That I can do. See you when you get back.”
Rainer nodded. “Sir.”
They were so formal with him. That thought swept through my mind as I followed Preston out toward the boat he’d spoken of. My family was easier than this. Sometimes we didn’t get along but I’d never at any time called any of the males in my family sir. That would have been weird.
I shivered as we approached the airboat. I’d never been on one before, and it should have been exciting, but the unused power inside of me hurt. I rubbed my arms. They burned. Preston frowned at me while he helped me get on the boat. “You’re pale.”
I shrugged and pointed in the direction where the call was coming from. “That way.”
Rainer shoved on his shirt as he boarded the boat behind me. “This is insanity.”
“This is probably the new normal.” Preston handed me a pair of ear protectors. I put them on, and he started up the airboat. It was loud. I could hear it even with the ear protection, and I was glad for them. Rainer had his on, too, but whereas I couldn’t take my gaze off the trees as they rushed by us, he seemed preoccupied with staring at me.
I squirmed. “I know this is weird. I know that you just got home and shifted after the first time in years. I know how miserable this has to be. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry this is happening to you. The need to do whatever it is that you’re going to do is hurting you. I can smell it. Makes me want to growl, and I’m not in my wolf form right now. Weird sensation, disconcerting to say the least.”
Preston nodded as he steered; he shouted over his shoulder. “Me, too. We’ll probably get used to it.”
“I hope not,” Rainer shouted back. “I’m not even sure how this happened. The Loups could what… scent her? When we couldn’t? And what is she going to do for them anyway.”
“I’m going to fix them,” I answered, even though he’d spoken to Preston instead of me, which was rude. But I’d worry about that later. I was loopy… I might not speak to me either in my current circumstances.
He must have realized what he’d done because Rainer winced. “Sorry.”
Several broken down mansions that had seen better days appeared in the distance. One of them caught my attention, and I couldn’t pull it away. It wasn’t the house we’d been in when we’d been fighting but a different one. The Loups hadn’t run far. I got to my feet, and Rainer tugged me back down.
“Don’t stand up till he comes to a stop.”
I pointed at the house. “That one.”
Preston nodded. “Got it. It’s one of the ones scheduled to come down. The town is getting rid of a lot of the really old ones.”
That was sad. There seemed to be a lot of that going around. Just tearing down what didn’t work anymore, letting things rot. Like the Loups. They were just being left to die, and I’d never given it a single thought. Why would I have? I was going to let my own wolf die. One way or another, I was expected to kill it, either with non-use after a shift or no shifting at all. We were all required to live these lives because of the Loups.
My parents had made it seem simple when they’d explained it. For whatever reason—whether it be a genetic flaw, fate, or some external issue we didn’t understand because we couldn’t afford to study it without risk of discovery—the Omegas died out. There weren’t any born. It wasn’t until after that happened that anyone realized just how much the Omegas did for the pack.
Everyone had understood they played an integral role, keeping an emotional balance of some kind. If a pack member was sad, they sought out an Omega and felt better afterward. But the problem with the Loup-Garou had been unexpected. There had always been Loups, but it had been a rare condition that mostly happened to lone, packless wolves. After the disappearance of the Omegas in the general population, the problem started popping out everywhere, and since the Loups were senseless when they shifted, they’d exposed themselves to the humans in large amounts.
That’s when the Hunters had gotten out of hand.
And hence the Accords. No more shifting, no more exposure, no more deaths from werewolf Hunters.
But here I was and what the fuck was I doing? I didn’t have time to contemplate any of this very long as Preston smoothly stopped the airboat on the decrepit dock. He threw his own headphones on the ground and leaned over to tie his boat. Rainer tugged on my hand, and I let him help me up.
He strode ahead of me. “Stay behind. I’ll go in first.”
“No.” I shook my head. “They’re going to be afraid of you. I go in first.”
He grabbed my arm. “I’m not compromising on this. I want to let you do what you want. I will always want that. It’s… part of this. But I have to keep you safe. I don’t know how any of this between the five of us can work, but if it’s going to at all, then we have roles in this, and my job is to keep everyone safe. I go in first. If they freak out, they don’t get to have your help. That’s how this works.”
I supposed I could have argued. I’d agreed to nothing. I could have told him that we hadn’t settled that there was going to be anything between them and me. I swallowed. But that would have been lying, and they’d have known it the second I said it. Heck, maybe before I even said it. They’d smell the lie, taste it on their tongue. We all knew there was going to be something. Even if it was just the idea of a mating and the knowledge that we could have it in a kinder world.
Or however we were going to manage this now. The two of them… and the two we’d left unconscious on a mattress in the living room… we were all connected and not just because they were brothers. If we could live our truths, we should be mated.
I nodded to Rainer. “Okay. Keep me safe. Thank you.”
He paused before he nodded back to me. “I’d love to know all the things you just thought about before you answered me.”
“No, brother, you don’t.” Preston laughed. “We never want to know exactly what goes on in her mind any more than she should know your every thought and feeling. We’re all better off leaving some things alone. Besides, you’d know that she preferred me if you could mind read.”
Rainer glared at his brother. “Not the time and place for me to kick your ass or it would be happening, stat.”
Preston nodded. “I’ll take up the rear.”
We lined up, and the closer I got to the house, the more my fingers burned. By the time we stepped inside, I wanted to scream from the pain. Still, I kept my mouth closed. Whatever this was I had to endure it and complaining about what couldn’t be controlled would only make me feel weak.
The two men were face down in the living room when I came in. The house stunk of their sweat and pain. Part of me wanted to run. I’d never done well with illness, my own or other people’s. Puke made me do the same. But I forced myself to walk over to them.
“I think I’m safe enough, Rainer.”
He nodded. “For now.”
I bent down over one of them and rolled him over. He breathed. I wasn’t any kind of medical professional.
That was going to have to be good enough as a medical diagnosis. Not dead would do.
I called the shift onto myself, which shred my clothes into pieces everywhere. This was the first time I’d ever done this purposefully, and it was easy, but it hurt like my bones didn’t want to let my wolf out. I was tired. I didn’t know how much people shifted or didn’t, but twice in a matter of hours seemed like it was too much for me right now.
Preston widened his eyes, and I could smell both his and Rainer’s shock tickle my nose.
“Can you shift right now?” Preston asked Rainer, and I ignored them. I had something to do, and it was going to be easier to do it as a wolf. How did I know that? No idea. I just did.
I rubbed up against the unconscious man. His eyes flew open and a ton of emotions hit me all at once.
He was terrified, sad, confused, and angry…
I ignored all of that. Right now, I needed to make his wolf okay again. Next to me his body reshaped, turning back into his sick wolf. I snorted before I growled. I hated the way he looked, the wrongness of his scent. He should never have gotten to this point. Someone should have helped him.
It couldn’t all be me.
I pictured him healthy and sent all my energy—all of that burn—toward making him that way. He cried out on a whimper, and Rainer squatted down next to me, placing a hand on my scruff. “She’s burning up.”
Preston paced back and forth. “We don’t know what is normal.”
I tuned them out even though I loved their concern. I had to do this. Not just once but twice. The man’s body reshaped again, breaking, reforming, his eyes clearing before he was finally a werewolf I could recognize again.
We stared into each other’s eyes before he dropped his gaze and hit the floor, showing me his belly. I stepped back. No, I didn’t want that. This wasn’t about submission between us. This was who I was, what I did.
I backed away, turning to the other man and repeating the process. This time it was easier. I knew what I was doing. Still, he flung around the floor longer, like it was harder for him to fix himself. The knowledge hit me hard. That was all I was doing—helping him help himself.
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