Page 132 of Omega's Flight
The urge to run, not even to change, just to get out of there, overwhelmed me. I stood abruptly up from the bench and strode blindly away, not even sure where I was going. Just... I needed to not be there. To not be... something. What? I didn't know.
"Raleigh?" One of the women I'd met called out to me. She had a little boy Henry's age. "Something wrong?"
"Could you do me a favor?" I asked, just barely keeping it from a demand. "Could you watch the pups for a while? I have something I need to do."
"Of course. I'm only here for an hour, though. You'll be back by then?"
"Sure." I nodded and left.
My stride lengthened as I got farther from the park, until I was running, like if I could go fast enough I could leave all my failures and my faults behind and become the shifter that Mercy Hills deserved. It wasn't until I'd arrived in the little grove with its beautiful pond that I even knew where I was running to, but then it all made sense.
Oh. Of course this is where I'd end up. I slumped to the ground beside the little hollow where he'd been buried. Hey, little boy. I hope the Moonlands are being good to you. I spread my hand out on the little patch of grass and laid down beside it, not really thinking, just being there. I'm sorry, baby.
Where had I gone wrong? Aside from being born omega, that is. If that one thing had been different, all the rest of this would be too.
My mating too. Maybe I should have stayed in Nevada Ashes, worked the public houses. I wasn't unattractive—I could probably have done well there. I would have had credits and an easy life and never have to be mated if I didn't want to. Not, at least, until I got too old for it.
But I hadn't wanted that. I'd thought I was being practical when Degan came calling. He was an alpha, good-looking in the way alphas always were. He'd seemed romantic at the time, singing to me as we'd walk around the enclave, my chaperon following a little ways behind to at least give us the illusion of privacy.
Except it was all an illusion. Or maybe it was one branch of possibility, and my pregnancy that fall had sent us down another path. Maybe it was my choice not to insist we wait before pups that had led us here.
All the bad choices.
I let my head rest on my bent arm and stared at my hand, pressed against the cool earth. It had been cold when we'd buried him. I pressed it harder against the soil, trying to will my own body's warmth to him, in case he wasn't warm enough in the Moonlands. "I love you," I whispered as all the mistakes I'd ever made played through my mind and I wondered... How could Cas ever love someone as defective as I was? Surely he was only with me out of pity, or for the mystique of a Nevada Ashes omega. All his kindness was just the natural kindness of his immediate family, which was in itself, I thought, an extension of Mercy Hills own way of dealing with its fellows.
Except I wasn't Mercy Hills, despite Holland’s protests. No agreement had been made about where I belonged, so my name was still Jackson-Jellystone. And I didn't really belong there either, because I wasn't born there and my mate only wanted me because he didn't want someone else to have me. I really didn't belong anywhere.
Minutes blurred together as I followed my thoughts down into that dark place. My body grew heavy and it occurred to me that maybe it would just be better if I wasn't here. Degan would take the pups back and find a beta or another alpha, and there would be two incomes in the family. The pups would have more. Mercy Hills wouldn't have to deal with the anger and the revenge of the other packs for stealing their omegas and trying to tell the other packs what to do. Bax—sweet, lovely, kind Bax, already so busy with his pups, his mate, his life—he wouldn't have to take time away from his other responsibilities to fix me and my problems. Holland and Quin would have one less problem to solve.
And I could meet my little boy, watch him grow fat and healthy on the prey of the Moonlands.
I'm not sure how long I stayed there, but I wasn't happy when the hands came, shaking me out of my dream world, and the voices demanding I speak to them. I didn't want to—I could almost see the path to the Moonlands. It was wonderful, with soft grass beneath my paws as it wound over the country side and along a beautiful, peaceful forest. Just the path would have been a lovely place to stay, but something told me I would find better hunting and long lost family further on.
But the voices grew louder and the more I listened, the more familiar they became. "Go away," I muttered and turned toward the pathway again.
"Raleigh!"
Shit, it was Cas, and the path began to fade again. I felt myself float into the air and then my cheek came to rest on a warm, muscled shoulder.
"Get Holland. And Bram," Cas ordered someone, and then we were moving.
"Don't," I said, and lifted a hand toward him. I couldn't find the energy to open my eyes, but I could find him. "Please."
"Shh, I've got you. It's okay. Jason took the pups."
"Degan..."
"Yeah. Degan." There was a growl in his voice that warmed me. I hadn't realized how cold I'd gotten, way deep inside. "Let us worry about you for a while."
It was exhausting, so I did, and drifted into the rocking motion of his step until it all simply faded away.
C H A P T E R 9 2
E dmond took off running for the new section of the enclave, his phone to his ear. Cas started for the main pack building and Adelaide's clinic, weaving through the trees as fast as he could go without tripping over roots or unexpected hollows. It would have been faster to just cut back to the cleared areas and straight across the park, but it would have started the gossip mill grinding and he didn't want any of this reaching Degan's ears until they knew what was going on and had decided how they wanted to handle it. Lysoon, he hoped it wasn't a stroke or a heart attack. Raleigh was too young to have that happen, but he'd been under a lot of stress recently...
Cas hadn't been able to settle to his work, staring at pages until they blurred, only to discover that minutes had passed without his knowing it. Until finally he went looking for Raleigh, knowing in his heart that something was wrong but not knowing what it was.
It came to him in a blinding flash and he could have smacked himself for his idiocy. Raleigh had grown up in Nevada Ashes. If the rumors were right—and he kind of suspected that there was more than a single grain of truth in them, now that he'd gotten to know Raleigh—there'd been pressure right from Raleigh's birth to work in the public houses, to bring in that precious human money that likely meant the difference between the pack surviving, or turning back into Rogue's Hollow again. Because omegas were special, their heats were special. Exotic. And so Raleigh had run to the first alpha that could take him away from that expectation. Only to discover that his rescuer had not just feet of clay, but maybe an entire body. And he'd coped with that by pushing everything down, ignoring what he couldn't, and pretending so hard it was all okay that he'd even convinced himself.
