by Apollo Surge
“A Season of War”
M/M Wolf Shifter Mpreg Paranormal Romance
The Last Omega Book 3
Apollo Surge
© 2019
Apollo Surge
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if you are under the age of 18. Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-changing decisions about sex in real life.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images & are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.
Edition v1.00 (2019.06.10)
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Special thanks to the volunteer readers who helped with proofreading. Thank you so much for your support.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter One
The last cold wind of January was howling its final moments across the mountainside, tearing through the spruce and pine, sparkling with ice under the silver light of the heavy full moon. It raked its way through the fur of a black wolf as it ran, paws landing hard on icy stone and dead winter grass, carrying the fog of its frantic breath away to the heart of the mountain, where someone was listening for it.
Running had always been a comfort to Sawyer. To flee was always his first instinct when his troubled fate reared its thorny head. If he could run far enough, fast enough, he could escape the killing teeth of comfort and attachment and eventual, inevitable disappointment. But this time there was no outrunning the danger. He carried it with him, inside him, festering and growing like a cancer.
This time last year, he'd been running down some heavily forested back road in Virginia, like he'd been running for years before that, hungry and homeless and in a grim way happy for it. When all you can focus on is your next meal or finding a warm place to sleep tonight, your mind can't wander to your other, less easily solved problems.
And it was easy to make other people avoid you when you looked like you'd been sleeping rough for a while. That was the real point of the running. To keep himself away from other people as thoroughly as possible. He'd still thought he was human back then. He hadn't understood that it was the un-awakened shifter magic in him that made people react to him the way they did. They called it Influence. Half of the people Sawyer met would react with adoring, possessive obsession. The other half with violent territorial aggression. Neither had ever ended well for Sawyer.
And then, in September, the pack had found him and woken up the wolf already waiting inside him. They'd given him a home and a family, an explanation and a solution for the curse that had haunted his life, and asked for nothing in return.
Sawyer had fought it bitterly for a while, unwilling to accept the gift for the fear and expectation that it would be snatched away the moment he got attached. It was Elliot who had won him over in the end. Elliot, with eyes like warm honey and fur like summer sunlight. Patient, funny, endlessly thoughtful- he seemed tailor made to break down Sawyer's defenses. Sawyer, in spite of himself, got attached.
And, as he'd known it would, disaster followed.
A conflict with a local group of magic users escalated to violence that resulted in the deaths of half the pack, including one of the alphas. The other alpha, her mate, distraught by the deaths of his family, never recovered. Eventually he died as well, sacrificing himself to complete a ritual to seal the Erlking, the fae incarnation of death and inevitability, before he broke loose and wrought a path of bloody destruction across the world.
Amidst all that, Sawyer learned he was an omega, the third and rarest of the wolf shifter castes. A last chance for dying packs, omegas were hyper fertile, capable of carrying children regardless of gender, and attracted other shifters from great distances, even the un-awakened, without even trying. They were made to build families, and to be bonded to an alpha for life. Sawyer learned too late the reason for this. As alphas influence the betas in their pack, omegas influence their alphas. He'd refused to be bonded to anyone, even when heat rendered him nearly irresistible to the alphas around him and left him nearly desperate for them. He only realized later that, if he'd agreed to be bonded to Duncan, their grieving Alpha, the man's life might have been saved and the pack restored. Because of Sawyer, he'd continued to spiral into self-destruction. That was a guilt Sawyer would always carry.
And now Elliot was Alpha, new and unsure and trying to lead, and Sawyer still wouldn't bond with him. A problem made all the more dire by what Sawyer had just learned.
He could still feel the cold touch of Paul's nose against his stomach. Carrying the spirit of the Moon, the goddess of all shifters, Paul had found him to warn him that further danger was coming, and that it would be up to Sawyer to stop it. And that Sawyer would have no choice but to try, in order to protect the life growing inside of him.
A child. Elliot's child. His.
The thought sent him into such a frenzy that his feet flew out from under him. The black wolf crashed into a dirty snow bank in the shadow of an old fir, clawing and snapping at his own stomach in desperate, fearful hate for the thing growing inside him. He didn't want this. He'd never wanted this. Even before he'd found out he was an omega he'd never wanted children. The home he'd grown up in, the violence he'd seen, the violence that he knew ran within him, bone deep, was something he never wanted to inflict on a child, on anyone. L
earning that the supposed role of an omega was to 'replenish the pack' the old fashioned way had made him all the more adamant about never doing it.
But he'd been a heat-struck horny idiot and spent the better part of a week rolling around a honeymoon cabin with his alpha boyfriend, like he hadn't known this could happen, like he shouldn't have expected it! Idiot! Brainless, useless, worthless-
He chewed himself bloody before he collapsed onto the snow, panting, and was still. Bloody, but not deep enough. Not enough to tear out the organs that made him an omega. Not enough to end the life he'd unwittingly begun. When he shifted again, even the little damage he'd managed to do would disappear. With a low, keening howl of despair, Sawyer dragged a paw up over his eyes.
"Whatcha got there, wolf?"
Sawyer's yellow eyes shot open at once, rolling halfway to his feet defensively. He found the source of the voice immediately. It wasn't hiding from him. It crouched on a rock in front of him, plain as day in the bright moonlight.
The creature's skin was nearly the same slate gray as the rock it was squatting on. It was about a foot tall, naked and presumably male. Its head was strangely squashed, its features weirdly exaggerated, like a caricature. Its fingers all had an extra joint, and it was clutching the loaf of bread Elliot had left in the sacred cave as part of Duncan's funeral rites. He'd said it was for the mountain spirits, so that they would help Duncan's spirit reach the hunting grounds beyond. Considering that Sawyer had watched him run physically into the hall of the mountain king to join the Wild Hunt, Sawyer didn't think Duncan needed the guidance. But it was tradition. The creature bit a chunk out of the bread as Sawyer watched, chewing noisily. Did that make this thing a mountain spirit, then?
"'s a baby?" the thing asked with its mouth full, gesturing with the bread toward Sawyer's stomach. "Got a baby in there?"
"What's it to you?" Sawyer thought, more aggressively than he meant too, annoyed and embarrassed that his private moment had been interrupted.
"Nothin' to me," the spirit said, holding its hands up and turning its head away. "Not a thing! Only, seems like you're not too keen on having it though. Seems like you don't want the little tadpole in there, do ya?"
It eyed Sawyer's bloody fur, waggling its wiry eyebrows, the only hair Sawyer could see on its wrinkled body. No, not wrinkled, he realized. Cracked. Like stone.
"It's none of your business," Sawyer said, getting to his paws and shaking off the wet, muddy snow. "Whatever you are."
"Sure, sure, none of mine, sure," the spirit nodded profusely and took another big bite of the bread. Its teeth were large and square as tombstones and it seemed to have too many for its wide, froglike mouth. "Except, you know, if you wanted, I could get rid of it for you."
Sawyer had been about to walk away, uncomfortable talking with this strange spirit after the recent nastiness with the Erlking. But at the spirit's words he paused, staring.
"Used to do it all the time," the creature went on, sensing it had Sawyer's attention. "Girls in trouble would come waddling up the mountain all the time beggin' for me to take the awful thing away. Before they started to show, if they were clever. Or before it was born and their husband saw that it weren't theirs. Or before their folks packed them off to the nunnery, or married them to some undiscerning widower. I never judged. I just whisk the little sprog away, quick as a blink. You'd never even feel it."
"You'd just do that?" Sawyer asked, suspicious. "For free?"
The spirit gave an elaborate, cartoonish shrug.
"Maybe not for free," it said. "Maybe for a little favor. Nothin' too troublesome. A little wine and the first spring lamb, perhaps. Or a little thimble of blood left on your windowsill every new moon. Or maybe you could just show me some of the tricks what got you into this predicament in the first place."
It made a crude gesture and Sawyer bared his teeth in a growl.
"Or maybe I could just eat you and see what happens," he snarled.
"I wouldn't do that, wolf," the creature said, suddenly grave. "You wouldn't like what you gave birth to if you did such a foolish thing as that. Don't the old folks teach the children their stories anymore? Nothin' good ever came from eatin' somethin' immortal."
The statement rang true enough that Sawyer backed down, looking away.
"No harm done," the spirit said, regaining its light hearted tone. "We can still deal, if you're willing."
Sawyer's ears folded back as he contemplated the offer. He could do wine and a lamb. He wasn't sure where he'd find one but he could figure it out. Would there be some kind of magical back fire if the lamb wasn't the first one of the spring? How could you even tell?
He shook his head, realizing the logistics of the sacrifice were unimportant if he hadn't decided whether he actually wanted to do it yet. He'd never thought about his opinion on abortion before. If this even counted as an abortion. He'd had too much experience with lack of control over his body to ever try and force his opinions on someone else, so he supposed that made him pro-choice. But for himself? Could he do it? Get rid of his own baby? Not that it really was a baby at this point. It was too early to be anything but a loose clump of cells right now, smaller than a poppy seed. And if he could just get rid of it now, erase it like it had never been-
The Moon was whispering in the back of his head, indistinct but very present, and worried. Though he couldn't hear her words, he could feel her urging caution. Curiously, there was a distinction. It was not caution about ending the pregnancy. It was about ending it this way.
Sawyer's ears flicked as he reconsidered the situation.
"What would you do with it?" he asked the spirit. "The baby?"
"What does it matter to you what's done with it?" the spirit said too quickly. "It'd be gone! That's all that matters to you."
Sawyer stared silently at the spirit until it huffed in irritable capitulation.
"Raise it for my own," it said. "Or eat it. Or give it to some other, nastier thing than me in return for somethin' I want."
"It's only four weeks old," Sawyer said, tilting his head. "It's not like it's a viable infant."
"Like such things matter to a thing like me," the creature scoffed, flapping a bony, long fingered hand at Sawyer.
"Well then why do you want it?" Sawyer asked. "I could just get a human doctor to get rid of it. And I wouldn't have to pay him in blood or fancy lambs."
"No, don't do that!" the creature did a distressed little jig. "What a waste, what a waste!"
"Wasting what?" Sawyer played dumb, tilting his head like a confused puppy. "You just wanted to erase it, right?"
"Nincompoop!" the creature hissed. "A babe, even the first whisper of a babe, the idea of one, is packed full of potential. An infinity of unrealized futures! Universes of possibility! And from one like you, already ripe with magic, it's all the stronger! Would you waste all that magic on some human's doctor's trash heap?! Or worse, let it grow into some dull living child, all that potential boiled down to nothing?!"
"So, really, I'd be the one doing you the favor," Sawyer said, sitting down in the snow. "Giving you something so valuable. Doesn't really seem like I should be paying you for that."
The creature paused, realizing it had been tricked, then cursed in a language Sawyer didn't recognize and stomped so hard the rock it was standing on split in two.
"Fine," the creature snapped, steely-eyed now. "What do you want for it?"
"What could you give me?" Sawyer asked, curious.
"Anythin'," the spirit said at once. "Literally anythin'. Any wish you could possibly conceive, you're carrying more than enough power to grant. Want to be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams? Want true love to find you and never leave? Want to see the future, change the past? You could fly like a bird, see into the hearts of men, speak every language, even raise the dead!"
Sawyer listened, wide eyed, but inwardly doubtful. The spirit was clearly desperate, staring at Sawyer's belly with hunger in its eyes. It was giving him the full used car salesm
an. Sawyer might not have been an expert on fairy tales, but he was smart enough to know raising the dead never worked out well.
"What about immortality?" Sawyer asked. "Isn't that one of the big ones?"
"We don't do that anymore," the spirit said with a quick, warding off motion of its spindly arms. "That's more trouble than even your magic babe is worth. Don't bother askin' me or anyone else. No more immortals! Your Council saw to that, thank you very much."
"Well, if you can't make me immortal, I don't think I'm interested," Sawyer said, which was only a half lie. He wasn't interested in immortality either. "Nice talking to you."
"Wait!" the spirit said quickly, scrambling to the edge of its rock to wave Sawyer down as the wolf started to turn away. "Not immortality, but I can give you something else you want. Something worth that baby and then some!"
"I doubt it," Sawyer said, shaking his head and turning away again.
“It’s a secret,” the spirit said. “The secret even the Moon is keeping from you.”
Sawyer stopped, one paw raised, but didn’t turn back, though his ears swiveled to catch the spirit’s words.
“You’re not all wolf, you know,” the spirit said, teasing. “There’s somethin’ else in you.”
“Yeah, I’m also human, I know,” Sawyer said, rolling his eyes.
“Pfft, you were never human, wolf,” the spirit scoffed. “You just care to look like one sometimes. Even I can do that. But you’re no wolf neither. I can tell you what you are. What the King in the Mountain saw in you.”
Sawyer’s heart skipped a beat. Flickers of memory like falling shards of glass flickered before his eyes. He could barely remember the night they’d sealed the Erlking. As soon as he’d laid eyes on the lord of the wild fae the Erlking had possessed his thoughts. He’d been able to think of nothing else. And once it was over, the memories had quickly faded into dreamlike fragments. Sometimes, in the night, he could remember the King’s touch, the agony of his affections. And whispered words, something stolen, something returned…