Page 1 of Mating the Omega
CHAPTER ONE
My Dad woke me up in the middle of the night, his voice tight with fear. “Jason, wake up. Quick, grab your bag and get downstairs!”
“They found us?” I asked as I struggled out of the tangled sheets.
He nodded. “They’re not far. No!” I’d started emptying my dresser drawer, but his hand on my arm stopped me. “There’s no time.”
I dropped the stack of shirts in my hand. “Okay.” While he thundered down the stairs to get the car packed with our emergency supplies, I threw on yesterday’s clothes, still crumpled at the foot of my bed, and fished some clean socks out of the dresser, because there was no way I was going to put on dirty ones, no matter what the risk. And as a True Omega wolf, the risk was massive. Then I grabbed the already-packed backpack in the corner of the room and ran downstairs.
The front door stood open, the air swirling in through it sharp and cold with the first frost of the year. It was October, and we’d only been here since the last time they’d found us in mid-summer; our stops were getting shorter all the time. I grabbed my laptop off the kitchen table, picked up my phone and both our chargers, and shoved them into my regular backpack.
Dad came in the door. “Come on.”
“Ready.” I jammed my feet into my sneakers and took one last look at the place I’d hoped might be a home at last. I’d been happy to have a yard, and the neighbors had seemed nice, though they were human, which made real friendships problematic. But there’d been introductions and greetings, and the occasional invitation to a barbecue and stuff. All over now, though.
At least I wasn’t leaving behind a garden this time. That had hurt at the last place; I love my gardens.
We tossed our stuff into the car. Dad locked the front door of the house behind us, and then we were off.
“How did they find us?” I asked as we rocketed out of the driveway and squealed around the turn onto the road.
“I don’t know, but I got a head’s up from your uncle Andy back home that they were headed here. He figured they be on us by dawn.”
“Damn.”
“Language, please. Just because we’re being hounded all across the country doesn’t mean you can forget your manners.” Dad said it in a prim, school-marmy kind of tone, or what I’d always imagined one would sound like. He did it to make me laugh, and it worked, despite my frustration and anger and the tears that hovered at the back of my throat and made my eyes sting. It was so unfair—I didn’t ask to be born omega. I sure as hell didn’t ask to be born a True Omega, with their supposed powers—whatever the fuck those were—and every Alpha on the planet suddenly slavering for my ass. I’d gladly hand them over to someone else. The only thing these omega powers had ever done for me was make it easy for me to grow vegetables. I had a sudden image of myself dressed in the iconic farmer’s overalls, with a pitchfork and a straw hat, scratching Old Bessie’s head while she chewed her cud, and I had to suppress a laugh. There was no way I’d ever get to live that life.
Not if the Alphas had anything to do with it.
Dad turned onto the highway and the car started to speed up. “Why don’t you crawl into the back seat and go to sleep again. We’ll be on the road for a while.”
“What about you? You haven’t had any more sleep than I have.”
He shook his head, and a passing street lamp glinted silver off the gray at his temples. “I’ll wake you around dawn, and you can take over. We want to put as much space between us and them as possible.”
“All right.” I undid my seatbelt, did a quick check for cops, then squirmed into the back seat.
“I threw in your napping blanket,” Dad said, and he was smiling when I met his gaze in the rear view mirror.
“Thank, Dad.” He never forgot it, no matter how quick an exit we had to make. It was the last thing I had from Mom—they’d killed her when I was fifteen.
No, she’d sacrificed herself, to give us time to get away.
I think, if I’d realized what she’d been planning, I would have let them have me, underage as I was, knowing what would happen. But I didn’t, and she died, and the only thing I had left was this heavy gray blanket, its edges beginning to fray with use and washing. That and my hair, which was like hers, thick, with ends that curled into loose ringlets if I let it grow too long, and still unable to make up its mind about whether it wanted to be blond or brown.
I dug the blanket out from under Dad’s bag, wrapped it around me, then pillowed my head on my backpack and began the meditation exercises I’d started using four years ago, right after Mom had been killed and my body had suddenly forgotten how to sleep. It was harder to get into them tonight for some reason, and it took me a few minutes to figure out what the problem was.
Damn.I was coming into Season.
Well, fuck my life.
CHAPTER TWO
I finished hanging our cheap Christmas decorations, stuff I’d picked up during a clandestine excursion to the used-everything store, and stood back to admire my handiwork. Okay, maybe admire wasn’t the word I was going for. This stuff was ugly, butt ugly. But I refused to go through Christmas without some sort of decoration—they weren’t going to take that from me too. Our Christmas tree—a scraggly thing that we’d ‘liberated’ from a local park one night—stood propped up in the corner, already shedding needles onto the threadbare carpet. There were only two gifts underneath it—one for Dad, and one for me. We moved around too much for the lavish celebrations we’d had when I was a pup. And, realistically, we’d only end up leaving it all behind the next time they caught up to us. We’d learned to live light.
And the last reason for our tiny Christmas? We didn’t actually have all that much money. Dad was working here and there, but nothing steady. Electricians could always get jobs, but it took a while to get established. Dad was afraid to let me work out side the house anymore, not since I’d been tracked down at my job two years ago by a Texan Alpha who just couldn’t believe the rumors were true. We lived off what he brought in, and whatever both of us could scrounge out of dumpsters. So double the reason for a small Christmas.
We were going to have a turkey, though, with all the trimmings. I’d scraped, and pinched pennies, and managed to get a small one on sale. I’d had to borrow a roaster from the neighbors, but since they thought I was disabled, they were all too eager to take pity on me. I’d told them I had epilepsy, to cover for any weird noises they might hear. Sometimes living in a one bedroom apartment in the middle of a city got to be too much for two shifter boys out on their own. And it helped explain why I never went out anywhere.
