by J. L. Wilder
“Those are early signs,” Grant said. “She’s an omega for sure.” He rested his hands on Cait’s shoulders. “We’ll take care of her.”
Cait hoped they would be able to do that.
GRANT WAS THE FIRST one to shift, to nobody’s surprise. It happened when he was three years old. He was running around the clearing, burning off some of his excess energy, and suddenly, there was a little wolf pup.
The shift only lasted a minute. He snapped back to his human form and tumbled to the ground, clearly taken aback. “Mama!”
Cait ran to his side and scooped him up, determined to make sure that this experience would be a positive one for him. “Look what you did!” she exclaimed, kissing his forehead. “Good job, baby!”
“I want to do it,” Chloe said, staring up at her brother.
“You will,” Cait promised. “You’ll all be able to do it soon. Just like Daddy and me.”
But it was James who shifted next. Cait’s middle son was quiet and thoughtful, so it was no real surprise to her when the shift happened in his sleep. She went to check on her children before going to bed one night and saw him lying on his side, legs twitching, clearly dreaming of running.
“Grant,” she whispered.
He came and stood beside her, wrapping his arms around her. “Look at that,” he said, smiling.
One by one, each child made the shift. Mia was last, and she seemed to do it almost deliberately. She sat by the fire one evening, staring at the flames, and then she simply stood up and shifted.
By then, Little Grant had mastered shifting at will, and he got up and ran around with her for a while. Cait watched them play, knowing that her alpha son would keep his siblings safe, knowing that they would never run off or leave the clearing as long as he was by their side.
This is what an alpha should be. This is the kind of guidance I should have had when I was growing up.
She was overwhelmingly grateful that her children had Grant for a father, that he could teach them how to look out for each other. They were the luckiest pack in the entire world.
WHEN THE CHILDREN WERE five, Cait and Grant took them on their first fishing trip.
Mia had the nimblest fingers, so Cait put her in charge of tying the lines. Grant and others sat by the river, poles propped against rocks, waiting for the fish to bite.
“How long are they going to take?” Chloe asked. She had emerged as the most impatient member of the pack. Now she threw herself back as if she was under extreme torture and stared up at the clouds. “I’m so bored.”
“You have to wait,” Grant murmured. “And try to sit quietly, if you can. Making noise will startle the fish, and then they’ll swim away without biting.”
“When can we learn how to catch them in our mouths?” Grant Jr. asked eagerly.
“When you’re bigger,” Cait said. “That current’s still too strong. It would carry you away, and you don’t know how to swim yet.”
“I know how to swim,” William said.
For all Cait knew, that might be true. William was forever going off on his own. The children had been forbidden from going into the river, but there was a little pond not far from camp that they were permitted to go wading in. William might have taught himself to swim.
Still, swimming in the still waters of the pond was a very different proposition from swimming in the current of the rushing river. “You know the rules,” she told him firmly. “Stay out of the river.”
“Mama!” James cried.
Cait hurried over. His line was twitching frantically. James’ fingers fluttered over the stick. He clearly wanted to grab it, and he was just as clearly frightened, worried that he might lose the catch if he did something wrong.
“Give it a nice sharp tug,” she told him. “That’ll make sure the hook catches.”
He picked up the stick and yanked it.
The stick yanked back. “It’s a fish!” James exclaimed.
Cait helped him pull it up onto the shore. It wasn’t a very big fish, but it was the first one he had ever caught on his own. She helped him take it off the hook and drop it into the pack of water they’d brought along with them. “Tonight, Dad will show you how to clean it, and we’ll all have some for supper,” she said.
Tenderhearted Mia looked up in alarm. “We’re going to eat him?” she asked, her voice tearful.
Grant wrapped an arm around her. “It’s okay,” he said. “Fish don’t live a very long time. This one would probably have died in a few days anyway.”
It wasn’t true, but it did seem to calm Mia down. She looked trustingly up at her father and nodded.
He’s lying to her for her own good, Cait thought. When Mia was older, when she was better equipped to handle harsh truths, they would be more honest with her about things like this. But right now, she would follow Grant’s lead, as she always did.
I wonder if he ever lies to me?
The thought didn’t trouble her as it would have once. If Grant had ever lied to her, Cait knew he had done so for her own benefit, just as he had for Mia. She had enough trust in him now to know that he would never deceive her for any other reason.
WHEN THEIR FIRST PACK of children was seven years old, Cait gave birth to their second litter. There were six this time, three boys and three girls, and Grant told her he was confident there wouldn’t be an alpha or an omega among them.
“It’s rare for any omega to give birth to two alphas,” he explained. “And I think two omegas is unheard of. I know I’ve never heard of it.”
“Why is that?” she asked him.
“It helps to avoid competition within the pack,” he said. “The hormones your body produced when Grant Jr. and Mia were born are still there, signaling the fact that you already have an alpha and an omega child. That signal stops any of your future children from developing those traits.”
“More information from the library?” she asked him, grinning.
“There’s nothing in the library on shifter lore,” he laughed. “The humans might find it, and then where would we be! But a member of the Shifter Council has written a book on the subject. I got you a copy.”
“You did?” She was floored. Since neither one of them held a job, it was uncommon for Grant to approve a purchase of any kind. Most of the things they did buy were for the children.
He handed her the book. “You never got to finish school,” he said. “I still feel badly about that.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Besides, you teach me everything I need to know. I don’t really need school, now that I have you.”
He smiled. “There are things I don’t know,” he reminded her. “Shifter lore is rich. There are plenty of things you can learn by doing research on your own—and you can teach them to our kids.”
“You want me to help teach them?” she asked.
“There are eleven of them now,” he said. “It’s definitely going to take both of us to get that job done.”
WHEN THE OLDEST CHILDREN were ten years old, Grant decided it was time for the family to leave the Moose Jaw area.
“Why?” Grant Jr. asked. Of all the children, he was the only one who ever questioned his father. Cait thought it was probably the alpha in him. He still recognized that his father was in charge of the pack. He still deferred to Grant. But he was independent enough to want explanations for the decisions that were made.
And that’s a good thing. If he followed blindly, he wouldn’t be ready to step into a leadership role when the time came. The way he’s acting now, I can see he’ll be prepared when it’s time for him to lead a pack of his own.
Grant seemed to have the same thing on his mind. “There are no other shifters here,” he said. “Not for miles. You kids are getting older now, and you need to socialize with people outside your own pack.”
“I don’t want to leave home,” Mia said, tucking herself beneath Cait’s arm.
“You don’t?” Cait asked her. “Why not?”
“I don’t kn
ow what’s out there,” she said. “And I’ve never met anyone besides our family. What if something bad happens?”
Grant came over and hugged her. “You know I’d never let anything bad happen to you or your brothers and sisters,” he said. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me. I promise to take care of you, always.”
“We trust Dad,” Cait said, knowing that the most important thing she could do at this moment was to reinforce the trust she had in Grant. “He always does what’s best for our family, doesn’t he?”
Mia sniffled and nodded.
“So we know he’s doing the same thing now, right?” Cait asked. “Even if we’ll be sad to leave this place behind, we know that Dad is doing what he has to do to take care of all of us.”
“Yeah,” Mia agreed. She still looked sad, but Cait could see that she was convinced.
“It’s all right to be sad about it,” Cait told her daughter. “It’s okay that you’ll miss this place. I’ll miss it too.”
“You will?”
“Of course. This is where my children were born,” she said. “This was my first home with your father. I’ll always be a little sad that we had to leave it behind. But whatever lies ahead is probably an exciting new adventure. I can’t wait to see it for myself.”
They packed up their things in the morning and left, hiking into unknown territory. After a week, they crossed the border from Saskatchewan into Alberta. The little ones kept the pace surprisingly well. Grant Jr. and a few of the others ran ahead, scouting for water sources and signs of animals and running back to tell Cait and Grant what they had seen. Mia walked with the younger kids, encouraging them when they began to falter.
Ten days after they’d crossed the border, Grant called a halt. “Here,” he said. “Do you smell it?”
Cait inhaled. She did smell something there, but she wasn’t sure what it was.
“Another pack,” Grant explained, seeing her confusion. “More shifters. And that means a chance for our family to grow.”
IT WAS CLEAR VERY QUICKLY that the pack they had found wouldn’t be merging with theirs directly. It was headed by a strong alpha, every bit as proud and willful as Grant, with an omega of his own.
But they also had children.
And that meant potential future mates for Cait’s children.
That was all a concern for another day, though. For now, the children could satisfy themselves as friends to one another. Suddenly, instead of a group of eleven playing together, there was a group of twenty-seven.
Cait sat by the fire, nibbling on the meat from a wild turkey that their neighbor had snared and shared with them, watching the children play.
Grant came over and sat down beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “It’s pretty great, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It’s better than I ever dreamed it could be.” She leaned her head against him. “I think back now to the days when I was so sure I didn’t even want kids...honestly, it scares me to think what would have happened to me if I hadn’t met you when I did.”
“You don’t have to think about that,” he said, kissing her temple. “Nothing can take this away from you now.”
“You saved me, you know,” she said. “I don’t mean just from Bart. I might have found a way out of that situation. I was always going to keep trying to run away from him. But you saved me from myself. The way I was going, I would have destroyed my own life. I would have ruined my chances at happiness by pushing everyone away because I was too afraid to submit.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” he said. “No one had ever been worthy of you.”
“But you are,” she said.
“All I know,” he said, “is that I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to deserve you, Caitlin Sterling. I’ll never stop trying to live up to everything you’ve given me.”
She turned toward him, tilted her chin up, and closed her eyes as his lips met hers. “I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too,” he said, and she felt him smile. “I always will.”
Next in Series: Her Beta Triplets
At Omega University, relationships between betas and omegas are strictly forbidden.
Omega
I’m the golden girl. The perfect omega.
They call me the teacher’s pet.
I’m top of my class at Omega U.
If I’m such a great omega,
How come I can’t resist these betas?
It’s my responsibility to be available to an alpha.
It’s my responsibility to let him claim me.
But now three betas want me.
Three betas protect me.
If I gave myself to them,
I’d be dishonoring my role as an omega.
Triplet Betas
We should have been born alphas,
But our power broke into three.
We crave what alphas have,
especially her, the forbidden omega.
If we can claim her
And win the alpha games,
We can become what we were meant to be.....
More Books by J.L. Wilder
Hell’s Wolves MC Box Set:
A six-book box set of hot werewolf bikers searching for their omega mates!
Book 1: The Omega Games
An omega held against her will.
To protect her, he must win the omega games—or watch her be bred by another.
Book 2: The Omega Purebred
No one ever taught me what to do if I was kidnapped. What did they expect?
I am a rare Omega purebred—the last of my line.
Book 3: Omega’s Triplets
Three triplets need to find a rare Omega,
to carry all their babies at once.
Book 4: Omega’s Second Chance
When I realized I was the Omega, I had to runaway.
The alpha would have killed my beta.
The alpha always claims what he wants...
Book 5: Bitten By the Wolf
I was a good girl. I always wanted to make everyone happy.
Until I was bitten by the Wolf.
Book 6: She-Alpha
I am the first She-alpha of my pack.
Ruling over wolves is in my blood.
But some don’t see it that way.
They think my only worth is for breeding.
18+ Only. Download on Amazon FREE with Kindle Unlimited or 99 cents.
About The Author
J.L. Wilder likes wild things! Her alpha shifters are gruff and tough, with a pinch of tenderness. Curl up with these bad boy book boyfriends, and they will have you howling at the moon!
When not writing shifter smut, J.L. spends as much time as possible exploring the outdoors. She loves getting into trouble with Ace, her Siberian Husky.
You can grab a free shifter romance and join her email here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/mvci9dryz6