by Tanya Chris
“I’m not going to take you somewhere against your will.”
“But won’t you get in trouble?” Owen asked, and Fortis only shrugged again. That was an alpha. Owen wished he had understood better what he ought to look for in a mate before he’d allowed Prince Devin’s physique and scent to talk him into making such a big mistake.
Fortis veered off the path they’d been running along, which was only a faint trace of dirt winding between the trees, and Owen followed him. Was this where they needed to turn to get to Central Pack territory? Had Fortis made the choice for him? It would be a relief if he had, but after only a minute of running Fortis stopped on the bed of a stream and lowered his head to drink. Owen mimicked him. The water was cold and fresh, bubbling into his nose as he lapped at it. He’d never tried to drink in wolf form before, but it was hot today, even hotter than yesterday, and he appreciated the break.
He caught sight of Keesh in the reflection of the stream—not drinking like they were, but slinking up behind Fortis. Owen turned around just in time to see him headbutt Fortis’s hindquarters. Fortis went into the stream with a splash big enough to get Owen wet too, then jumped back up onto the bank and gave a fearsome snarl. Keesh responded with a noise that was as close as a wolf could get to laughing and took off. The two wolves danced in and out of the trees, circling around until they were heading straight for Owen again with Keesh yipping up a storm and Fortis close on his heels.
Owen couldn’t help running. His paws were sore and his muscles ached, but all that vanished in the thrill of being chased. Fortis went after one of them, then the other, never quite catching either until he got Keesh cornered against the rotting trunk of an old oak tree. In a burst of courageous camaraderie, Owen jumped him. He’d never attacked another living thing in his life, never mind an alpha, and he had a moment to question his sanity before he landed on Fortis’s back.
He sank his claws into Fortis’s sides, clinging as Fortis tried to buck him off. Fortis rolled, twisting and snarling as the two of them tumbled down a slope of dirt and leaves until Owen lost his grip. He ended up on his back staring up at a white muzzle framing whiter teeth that were about to tear his throat out. He whined, only half pretending, and Keesh came to his rescue, inserting his head between the two of them.
Fortis clamped down on Keesh’s muzzle and used it to wrestle him around until he lay next to Owen, both of them belly up at his mercy. He nipped first at Keesh’s throat, then at Owen’s—a play bite, deep enough that Owen could feel teeth sharp against his hide but not deep enough to pierce—and then he shifted, becoming a human body with one leg thrown over Owen’s hip, one over Keesh’s, and his cock rutting into the spot where their thighs met.
Owen shifted without consciously initiating it, and Keesh shifted too, which left the three of them in a rough pile of naked human skin and hard cocks, their mouths close enough that their breath mingled in a triangular space too small to contain enough oxygen for all three of them. Owen whimpered, unable to stop himself from voicing his need. The bodies pressed against his were so hard and male. Alpha or beta—it didn’t matter. He wanted them both.
Fortis leaned down and licked up his neck as though they were still in wolf form. Then he fastened his mouth over Owen’s, as if trying to steal what little breath Owen had left. The flicker of his tongue had Owen’s pulse jumping, but he didn’t know what to do next. Was he meant to bite? To lick? Fortis’s tongue crept inside his mouth, teasing at his tongue until he understood he should tease back.
His slick scented the air, thick and heavy. It dripped between his thighs, leaving a damp patch on the leaves beneath him. Fortis pulled his head away, giving Owen the space to suck in a deep, ragged breath. Fortis’s nose twitched, and a wide grin spread across his face, wolfy in its hunger.
“Someone’s wet,” he growled.
Owen couldn’t make any words come out in response—could only wiggle and hope. But Fortis drew farther away. He turned his head in both directions, an expression of confusion crossing his face as he scented the air.
“Alpha?” Owen didn’t understand what he’d done wrong. Fortis had wanted him, was going to take him, and he was ready for it. His throat was exposed and his channel was slick and open. But Fortis popped to his feet, seemingly no longer interested. “Alpha?”
“Keesh?” Fortis called out, and then Owen remembered that there’d been three of them. A dogpile with him and Keesh on the bottom and Fortis on top. He turned to check, but he already knew Keesh wasn’t lying next to him anymore.
“He went down to the stream, probably,” Fortis said. “Come on. We left our bags down there.”
How Fortis knew exactly where he was going, Owen couldn’t imagine, but they reached the stream at the same spot they’d been at before, and there was Keesh, just as Fortis had said, sitting against a tree trunk.
“Where’d you go?” Fortis asked him.
Keesh spread his arms to indicate that he was right there.
“All right, I know where you went, but why?”
“You didn’t want me there.”
“Did I ask you to leave?”
Owen hadn’t noticed Keesh leaving, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t wanted him there. It was just that he’d been caught up in how Fortis had kissed him like that. Prince Devin had never kissed him like that. Keesh hadn’t kissed him like that either. It was new, and he thought he liked it. He wanted to try it with Keesh.
“We didn’t do anything,” Fortis said.
Keesh shrugged like he didn’t care, but Owen didn’t believe it. Keesh and Fortis had known each other a long time. They said they were only friends, but Owen was starting to see it wasn’t true. The way Fortis had reacted last night—that hadn’t been about him. That’d been about Keesh. And Keesh running off a minute ago? That hadn’t been about him either.
Owen wasn’t sure who he wanted—Keesh or Fortis—but now he understood that he couldn’t have either of them. Because they already belonged to each other.
Keesh
The next morning, Keesh plodded after Owen feeling like he was the one lagging today. The atmosphere around their campsite had been so strained last night, with no one knowing where to look. They’d quenched the fire early and curled up separately to sleep—supposedly because it was warm, but really because of all the weird tension—and he hadn’t managed more than a fitful doze.
Now they were headed to Western Pack territory, and he didn’t know why. The path to Central Pack territory was half a mile back, more overgrown than the last time he’d seen it, but he would know it anywhere. Even his fur seemed to turn in that direction.
But this morning Owen had shaken out the fur in which he’d slept, shifted into human form to eat the remains of last night’s dinner, and announced that he wanted to go home. Then he’d corrected himself—as if he was changing his mind—and said he wanted to go to Pertha.
It shouldn’t bother Keesh so much. Owen had the right to make his own decisions, whatever those might be. He’d led a protected life and had no idea how to take care of himself. He would need more than a veneer of faked courage to throw all that off and escape to a land he’d only ever heard stories of. Negative ones at that.
In packs like Owen’s, omegas were fed full of scary stories—warned about rogue alphas lurking in the woods and humans who would skin a captured wolf alive for their fur. They were told they might freeze to death in the snow or drown in a raging stream. All in an attempt to keep them complacent and contained. With the outside world a terrifying uncertainty, they were forced to rely on their alpha protectors.
Of all the lies omegas were told, the ones about the Central Pack were the worst—perpetuated by alphas like Devin to keep them from knowing there was a better place. That was why Keesh had been proud to do his Circling.
But maybe it was time to go home.
He’d like to talk Owen into going home with him, but it seemed their sexual interlude hadn’t meant much in the end. Owen responded to whoever touched
him, that was all. He’d talked himself into wanting Prince Devin, for moon’s sake, and now he was all over Fortis. Not that Keesh could fault him for that.
His crush on Fortis had only grown worse since Owen had come into their lives. Fortis had pinned him often enough in the past—because Keesh could never resist the chance to tease him—but they’d never ended up in human form with their cocks hard and straining against each other’s bodies. And Fortis had never looked so icily hot, so teeming with strength and confidence.
That was because of Owen though. Nothing to do with Keesh.
Maybe when they got to Pertha, Fortis would ask Owen’s father for permission to claim him. Maybe that was why Fortis hadn’t fucked him yesterday after Keesh had slipped away—so they could wait and do it right. Maybe that was why they were headed to Western Pack territory now. Fortis might stay there, leaving Keesh to make his own lonely way back across the continent.
Which would probably be for the best. He didn’t know if he had the strength to be alone with Fortis without making his pathetic crush clear anymore. As if Fortis hadn’t always known how he felt. The way Fortis had looked at him yesterday, as though he could see right into his soul and knew everything Keesh wanted and would give it to him if he could. Not only was Keesh hurting, but Fortis was too. And that made Keesh hurt even worse.
Around midday, Fortis came to a stop. He shifted into human form and plopped down onto a mossy bed beneath the shade of a broad elm. Keesh followed his example. Owen remained in wolf form, on his feet. His tongue lolled from his mouth, and he gave a yippy bark as if urging Fortis up to play, but Fortis only shooed him away.
“What’s up?” Keesh asked when Owen ran off to nose into what was probably an ant hill. Owen was going to regret doing that, but there were some lessons a wolf had to learn for himself.
“Just wishing we’d taken that turn.” Fortis manhandled Keesh around in front of him, trapping him between his knees. Keesh leaned back against Fortis’s shoulder and let him pick brambles out of his hair. His roughly textured coils picked up everything.
“You don’t think we should bring Owen home?” He definitely didn’t like the idea himself. Even if Fortis intended to claim Owen once they got there, the Western Pack was a horrible place for an omega to live.
“I don’t think he calls it home.” Fortis leaned down to get at one of the snarls with his teeth. His breath fluttered warm and tempting over Keesh’s ear.
“Still, it’s what he chose.”
“Mm,” Fortis hummed with typical alpha arrogance, so certain he knew better. “But he hasn’t got all the data. He doesn’t know what the Central Pack is like.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“A visit. A stopover. Owen doesn’t know one trail from another. If we just happened to end up—”
“No.” Keesh slapped Fortis’s knee. “We’re not lying to him. That’s how he’s been treated his whole life.”
Fortis made a noncommittal noise and went back to worrying at the knots in Keesh’s hair. He had deft hands. They never pulled more than he intended them to, but he made sure Keesh felt them. The sensation had always been borderline erotic, and Keesh’s nerves were on edge. When his cock started twitching, he tried to push himself out of Fortis’s arms, but Fortis snatched him back. He latched his teeth into the meat of Keesh’s neck and tugged with the same force he’d been using to detangle his hair—right on the edge of sexy.
“Stay.” The command sent a tingle of anticipation down Keesh’s spine. He wanted to stay, but he wanted Fortis to mean more by it than he did.
“Good boy,” Fortis purred when Keesh relaxed against him, and that was more than Keesh’s cock could ignore. It stood up in three beats of his heart—soft, chubby, hard. Like it was keeping time.
Fortis didn’t say anything about the club waving right there in front of him, just went back to worrying through his hair, using his claws and teeth to remove debris and restore the spirals back into order. Keesh wanted to fidget, but that would only call more attention to his state, so he watched Owen who’d shaken off his snout full of ants and was now chasing birds—darting so noisily and obviously from one to another that he didn’t have a prayer of catching one.
“We should teach him to hunt,” Keesh said to distract himself from what Fortis was doing to him.
“We should teach him a lot of things. And he’s not going to learn any of it in Pertha.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just saying it’s gotta be his decision. You could talk him into it, Alpha.”
Fortis’s answering rumble said he didn’t dislike the idea of being Owen’s alpha.
“But if you’re going to knot him—”
“Who said I’m going to knot him?”
“You want it, he wants it.” Keesh tried to shrug as if he didn’t care, but Fortis had him wrapped up so tight he couldn’t generate much movement. “I’m just saying that if you’re going to knot him, you should find out what it means to him first.”
“What does it mean to you?”
“Why should it mean anything to me if you knot Owen?”
Fortis sighed and let him go. “Aren’t betas supposed to be better than this at communicating?”
Keesh touched his hair and found it smooth and free of twigs and brambles. From twenty or thirty feet away came a crash of branches that suggested Owen might’ve tumbled into a ravine.
“You and I have never communicated.” The two of them helped each other out, like how Fortis had just groomed him or how Keesh would drop by Fortis’s place with leftovers to make sure he got the nutrients his human body needed and wasn’t just living on meat. They spent most of their free time together, and while they did things, they talked. But not about the important stuff, not about what it would mean to their friendship if one of them mated.
“So maybe it’s time we tried,” Fortis said. “How would you feel about me and Owen getting together?”
“I’d be happy for you.”
“Happy for me,” Fortis repeated flatly.
“Sure. Happy for both of you. He wants an alpha.”
“You think that’s what he wants?”
“And you want an omega.”
“You think—”
“I know that’s what you want.” He’d been watching Fortis sniff after every omega who crossed their path for five years. “If you didn’t want an omega, you’d—”
Fortis cocked his head, daring him to finish his sentence, but he couldn’t. It hurt too much. There was nothing wrong with being a beta, but there was nothing wrong with Fortis wanting an omega either. It was his right. And Owen’s right to want him in return.
“Knot him. Claim him. I don’t care. Just get his consent. No lying, no half-truths. That’s Prince Devin. It’s not you.”
“All right.” Fortis put his fingers between his lips and gave a whistle to summon Owen back from whatever he’d gotten himself tangled up in. “Full disclosure.”
Owen galloped up to them, his fur in wild disarray as if he’d been playing with electricity. Fortis made a gesture and Owen shifted—all skin now except for that cloud of black that had to be cobbled into order after every shift. They probably wouldn’t be spending long in human skin before they started running again, but Keesh got Owen settled into a cross-legged position in front of him so he could sort through it anyway.
“You’ll never catch anything that way, little one,” Fortis clucked.
Owen ducked his head, but Fortis put a lightly clawed finger under his chin and raised it again.
“I could teach you.”
“Even though I’m an omega?”
“Of course. Keesh is as good a hunter as I am. Or he would be if he wouldn’t rather play with the critters than catch them.” Fortis smiled at him over Owen’s head, and Keesh returned the smile. It was an old joke. Truthfully, if wolves were better suited to being vegetarians, he’d be one, but that only made him a sharper hunter when he had to hunt. His kills were
quick and merciful and no more frequent than necessary.
“Keesh is a beta though,” Owen said.
“Alpha, beta, omega. We’re all wolves. You know those designations aren’t as important as we make them out to be, right?”
Owen shook his head. He was predisposed to believe anything an alpha told him, but Fortis was trying to tell him something contrary to what he’d always been told before.
“Yeah, alphas tend to be bigger than omegas,” Fortis said, “but you’re bigger than a squirrel, right? Lots bigger. Plenty big enough to catch one. You’ve got teeth, claws. Show me your claws.”
Owen held out a smooth-fingered hand with a scowl.
“Pop them out,” Keesh said into his ear. “You can do it. Just think about it.” He held out his own hand in illustration, willing his claws to pop through the ends of his human fingers, then raked them gently down Owen’s side, more a tickle than a threat. Owen giggled, but the tips of his claws made a brief appearance before retreating again.
“You can do that because you’re a predator.” Fortis took Owen’s hand in his and raised it to his lips. “Just like me and Keesh. You can hunt, track, run, fight, just the same as we can. I want to teach you.”
Owen nodded, all eagerness now. He focused on the hand Fortis was toying with and suddenly all five claws popped out, startling Fortis into dropping it. Fortis roared with laughter, and Keesh joined in. Owen couldn’t seem to decide if he was pleased with himself or afraid of being in trouble, but when neither of them made any move to hurt him, he held up his hand and flicked his claws in and out several times. Then he opened his mouth and snapped at Fortis with a jaw suddenly full of fangs. Fortis grabbed him by the throat and rumbled out a warning growl that made Keesh laugh even harder.
“You scared him,” he told Owen. “I guess you really are a predator.”
Fortis released Owen’s throat with an annoyed sniff. “He caught me by surprise is all. Be good,” he reprimanded Owen.