Page 35 of Omega Chattel
Animals didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about it all, fretting, suffering. Plants especially took their natural courses with elegance and grace and not too much fighting among themselves unless the weeds took over to choke them, and even then, the weeds themselves were only doing as they were willed to do to thrive.
For a long time I sat, listening to the night sounds, the peace of it all, the unending course and throb of life.
In my bones, young and needy and unsatisfied, a virgin man on the cusp of new adulthood, ready and wanting but with no experience, and with confines and dictates of being farm-raised influencing my every move, I could feel the call of my kind—the Alpha I wanted. The first Alpha I had ever met.
It might have been foolish, but the feelings were real. I knew they were. The strength of them cut to my core. How could this pain not reflect a real, honest desire? Deep in my bones, I couldn’t deny the truth.
I wanted Tarin. I wanted it all. Omega-brat, that I was. Shaped by a sheltered life and a scary, pervert house-dad.
I wanted what I wanted and that couldn’t be helped.
But if Tarin didn’t want me back--
I fisted the wet ground, my fingernails digging into soft soil and cool, silken blades of grass.
If I could have grabbed all my blankets from the bedroom and made my bed outside in the yard, I would have. Then I wouldn’t have to hear Tarin one wall away and imagine his dark sleeping locks on his white pillow, his breaths coming through the plaster and wood and entering me. His essence lingering in my dreams. Opening me. Destroying me.
Chapter Ten
Tarin
The kid could move fast.
I heard the scamper of his footfalls and, even back here to the side of the house in my office, the slamming open of the French doors, the thump of hard shoes on the wood veranda flooring.
Alli’d gone out back. Like a flash of wind. A breeze.
I felt old and set in my ways and out of date, like someone from a dusty book you haven’t picked up since you were a kid.
Like that old clock on the mantle you barely look at anymore but it still ticks.
I wasn’t old, but Alli made me feel old. Here I sat at my desk denying my desires, thinking that made me moral and right, trying to teach him. Talking about Omega guardianships. Thinking of him like a step-son who needed to be taught to hunt, then firmly nudged out of the nest to fly even in a world that defied him and put up stop-gaps at every turn.
I was adamant about my Omegas. They could succeed while the world took its time in doing the right thing and granted them the equal rights they should have had all along.
The ancient times were in our Alpha blood. The times when Alphas fought to the death to mate Omegas, to bind them to them, to own them body and mind. Our world still obeyed some of the ancient laws, and Omegas suffered for it.
I wouldn’t have it. Not in my home.
It was never my goal to sleep with my Omega guests, my students, my wards. I stood by that as it made me a better Alpha, more pure than the rest of them.
I went to one of my two office windows and drew back the curtain, peering out. Through the paned glass, the view showed me the back of the side yard and, if I craned my neck just right, part of the backyard that wasn’t blocked by the veranda itself.
I waved my hand behind me to lower my office light so I could see better.
The shapes in the yard coalesced to familiar bushes, plants, a birdbath, some tiki torches beside three stone benches. And one other object. A boy kneeling. The grass and gardens surrounding him.
In daylight he would be encased in emerald this time of year. Now the shadows overtook him but couldn’t quite obscure his clean white shirt, and the bends of his elbows leading to where he had planted his hands, palms down, in the green grassy carpet.
He looked to be part of the gardens themselves. A boy-shaped bush. A sculpture of young, Omega perfection.
And he was, at that. I couldn’t deny it. How my pulse thrummed when he was around. How my skin tightened every time he walked into a room where I was present.
I’d been taking my temperature every night now since he came. Convincing myself it was the early onset of the Burn that had me overcome. Or maybe it was my anxiety of the Burn oncoming, and me unable to find Kee for the last six months. Unable to make any other plans for the fevers and arousals other than packing up a bunch of lube and sex toys and renting a hotel by myself for three days.
Alli couldn’t know that every time he offered himself to me, my resolve diminished a little more. My own stupid rules about my wards flew right out the window.
Alli was upset and that upset me.
