The night they accepted me, the whole house swelled with anticipation—an air of collective hunger barely concealed behind the rituals of dinner and drink.
I remember trembling against the brick of their fireplace, the taste of whisky burning my lips, and how Blake, first among equals, gathered me close like a thing he’d finally won at auction. "You saved us," he'd whispered, and even now, years later, I can feel the way his words branded my neck as surely as the heat of his mouth. "Our perfect Omega, smart and beautiful and everything we needed."
He’d made a show of saying it only to me, his hands possessive on the small of my back, but everyone was listening—even Jude, who lurked in the corner with his perpetual air of silent skepticism.
What I’d done was pragmatic, not heroic.
Iron Ridge was circling the drain: old debts, bad gambles, the usual family curse of living large and planning small. I’d offered my credentials at the first dinner—half a joke, half a plea for relevance—explaining in stuttering detail how my MBA might be worth more to the pack than my barely-there Omega status.
Blake hadn’t laughed. He watched my mouth move as I talked spreadsheets and LLCs, his eyes dark and wolf-hungry, and when I finished, he just tipped his head and said, "Then you'll be in charge."
The room went quiet.
It was the first time anyone had trusted me to lead.
The first time my ideas weren't met with a patronizing pat, or a dismissive smile, or a suggestion I stick to "soft skills" like smoothing feathers and making nice with the neighbors.
That night, we drank to new beginnings.
I felt lightheaded with relief, even as Blake’s arm never left my waist. He paraded me around the table as if I were both a trophy and a weapon—proof to his pack that he’d outmaneuvered fate and scored the wildcard that might keep them all afloat.
In the morning, he made sure I had the best room, the run of the house, access to any ledger or contract I needed. He even bought a fucking printer just for me—state of the art, which I suspect he chose less for the features and more for the status it conveyed.
No one had ever spent that much money on my potential before.
The others followed his lead, each staking their claim on my usefulness in different ways.
Hayden, seeing the mood, turned my achievement into a party—complete with shots and a hastily-thrown poker tournament where the stakes were secrets instead of dollars. Jude nodded approval, but I could tell he was already compiling a list of potential scenarios where I’d screw up, just so he’d be ready to mitigate the damage.
But it was Liam who truly left a mark.
His praise was sharper than Blake’s, less about what I’d done and more about what it cost me to do it. He watched me from across the kitchen, glass of scotch in hand, not smiling but also not looking away. I could feel his gaze prying into all the soft, self-doubting places inside me, and when the others finally peeled away for the night, he stood near the window, backlit by the porch light and waiting for me to make the first move.
I remember the way my hands shook as I approached, the push-pull of anxiety and anticipation. He didn’t say hello. Just nodded at the paperwork I’d already begun to organize on the counter. "Blake’s right—you’re exactly what we need," he murmured, his tone warm but edged. "Not just pretty, not just accommodating. You see the holes in the foundation."
He sipped his drink, considering, then added, "It’s rare, you know. For someone like you to be both ornamental and essential."
I wanted to tell him to fuck off. To say I'd never asked to be ornamental, that my usefulness wasn't a surprise to me and shouldn't be to anyone else. But instead I just flushed, hoping the anger masked the elation underneath. I’d been so starved for validation that even a backhanded compliment felt like a benediction.
Liam, the Iron Ridge Second, never wasted time with fluffy motivational speeches or empty praise.
His brand of validation cut straight to the vulnerable marrow, as if he delighted in finding the places you’d spent your whole life protecting and then lighting them up with a single, surgical compliment.
That first week, after I’d wrestled their fucked-up balance sheets into submission and mapped out bailout scenarios that didn’t involve mortgaging the whole ranch to special-interest packs, Liam stood in the kitchen at midnight waiting for me to finish tallying receipts.
He didn’t even bother with a greeting—just tossed back a swallow of bourbon, watched me from across the room, and said, “Your mind’s wasted on backwater outfits like this, you know. You could be running circles around the city packs. They wouldn’t see you coming until you had their assets by the throat.”
He left the words hanging there, as if they ought to shame me, but I just tucked them away with the rest of his offhand assessments—small, jagged tokens I carried like a gambler’s lucky chip.
I knew what he meant, and he wasn’t wrong: I could have done better.
But I’d chosen Iron Ridge.
Chosen this pack that was halfway to ruin, chose to tie my fate to theirs because I liked underdogs and because, if I was being honest, I was scared of what I might become if I ever went back to the city.
Here, incompetence at least had the decency to show its face. In the city, the masks were prettier and the knives sharper.
Still, Liam’s approval tasted sweet, even when laced with condescension.