Page 1 of Ruffled Feathers

Prologue

Truett

Otillie-James Baler. What a completely ridiculous moniker to be saddled with for life. The name was sweet and demure, like she should be a shy, quiet little Omega who’d just stepped off the prairie. The girl was anything but.

She was naive; that was true. She’d lived basically off the grid with her father for her entire life, but it hadn’t made her shy. If anything, I was pretty sure she’d punch a grizzly bear in the nose if it looked at her wrong.

She was still undesignated, and at nearly seventeen, that meant she’d probably end up a Beta or remain Unshown, the name for anyone who didn’t present with a designation before their seventeenth birthday.

She was wildly out of place here in Rock Hill, South Carolina, amongst the Southern belles and debutantes, the sweet little Omegas with soft smiles and fluttering eyelashes. It had been made glaringly obvious by the way she’d wobbled down the aisle in her three-inch, periwinkle-blue satin heels, and was further supported by the fact they were no longer periwinkle blue or attached to her feet. They were haphazardly strewn across the expansive grass lawns of the Chalmers Estate.

It had been the shoes that alerted me to the fact something might be wrong. I’d looked all around the reception for Otillie-James, but no matter how hard I looked, or what polite enquiries I made, no one had seen the runaway bridesmaid.

The idea that she had indeed run away crossed my mind. She’d been shipped down here from the wilds of Montana to the steaminess of a late Southern spring. She was always mumbling under her breath about the heat. Maybe she’d decided to hitchhike her way home.

If I had to hazard a guess, though, the weather would’ve been the easiest thing for Otillie-James to overcome. She stuck out like a fly in the soup here—at least according to Edison Chalmers, her new stepbrother and my best friend. She didn’t know the unspoken rules, the etiquette of Alphas and Omegas, and exactly where on the social ladder everyone stood.

It had just been her and her father in the wild for too long. Despite the fact that he was an Alpha, they’d basically spent their lives out there, like they were Unshown.

I was going to need help to find the girl.

Edison was easy enough to find in the crowd; you just had to look for the group of fawning mothers and their pretty, yet entirely vapid Omega daughters. Sonny was a society catch—a strong Alpha, with a bank balance that’d make grown women get an attack of the vapors. He hated it. He was also too polite to tell them all to fuck off.

I had no such qualms. Deciding to save him, I wandered over to the group, the scowl on my face telling them all that I had zero interest in listening to their pandering drivel. “Edison, your stepfather would like a word.”

Utter bullshit, but it wasn’t like the old biddies could protest a request from the groom of the wedding they were attending. Sonny did a great job of keeping the relief from his face, instead smiling at them all charmingly as he excused himself.

Sonny and his mother Citrine were rich-rich. Among Southern society, they were shiny diamonds in a sea of glass jewels. But it wasn’t just their fortune that made them stand out. No, it was the fact that all that money hadn’t corrupted them completely.

Citrine gave away a gross amount of money every year to various charities and foundations, and it barely dented her fortune. She was sweet and kind, the epitome of a Southern Omega, and had been utterly loyal to the memory of her former Alpha, Victor. However, Sonny had once told me that she kept up the mourning widow facade to keep the fortune hunters and unscrupulous Alphas at bay. She was savvy like that, and after a few years, the opportunistic Alphas had stopped sniffing around.

You only had to look at her to know she missed Victor, though; it was in the sadness around her eyes, the way she’d sometimes stare off into the distance. I noticed it, even back when I was barely a teen and didn’t know anything but rage and mischief.

Honestly, Citrine was the reason Sonny had become the man he was. Good-natured and gentle, despite the fact he was an Alpha, and a strong one at that. Citrine had bucked the expectations of her designation, and that trickled down to her son.

For instance, Citrine had continued to work after she was mated, which baffled the Rock Hill society scene, but I understood. Behind the rich, classically beautiful Omega image, there was a kind heart and a knife-sharp mind. She’d been in college to become a geophysicist when she first met Victor Chalmers, and had refused to quit just to become someone’s Omega.

Victor, by all accounts, had been a hundred percent enamored by her drive, and together, they’d been a powerhousecouple until his death when Sonny was six. Since then, it had just been Citrine and Sonny.

Until now.

I looked over at Sonny’s new stepfather. Like his daughter, Buck Baler stuck out in polite society like a sore thumb. However, unlike his daughter, his gruff manner was seen as admirable, rather than something to be ridiculed by tittering teens in overly ruffled pastel dresses.

He was a tall, broad Alpha, with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and heart eyes that shone at Citrine every time he saw her. They’d met at some conference about rock formations in the Montana mountains, and by all accounts, it had been love at first sight. An instant scent match.

It helped that he hadn’t known or cared how much money Citrine had. It also helped that Citrine didn’t care he had a wild daughter in tow. Single parenthood had been something they’d bonded over, apparently.

Sonny threw me an appreciative look as we moved quickly across the lawn. “Does Buck really need to talk to me?”

I shook my head. “No, but you looked like you needed saving, and we might have a small problem.”

He raised his eyebrows, loosening his tie around his neck as we walked. “What kind of problem?”

I pointed to the shoes across the lawn. “I can’t find your new stepsister. Just her shoes. Very Cinderella.”

Sonny’s face scrunched as he stared at the shoes, before looking around, like the girl in question would just appear. “Maybe she’s eating cake, or with her dad or something?”

I shook my head. “I checked. She’s not anywhere in the gardens or in the house. Although, perhaps she’s just very good at hide and seek.”

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