Page 42 of Flight of the Omega

She turned back, eyes wide. Jack glanced at them, then grabbed JP in a bridal carry. JP squawked indignantly. “Let’s go,” Jack said.

“This way,” the vet said, waving them on, and they made a mad dash for the truck.

She reached it first, wrenching on the doors. Jack tossed a nervous glance over his shoulder. Mr. Crane and Burr were still talking near the grandstands. Then Mr. Crane turned, charging up the hill toward house.

“Shit,” Jack said, then dumped JP into the backseat.

“Stay down,” Dr. Vogel hissed to him, then slammed the door shut. JP dragged a bird blanket over himself. Jack tossed another look back, then scrambled into the front seat of the truck. Amanda tossed her bag and JP’s overnight bag at his feet. He slammed the door. She clambered into the driver’s seat, jamming the keys into the ignition.

The truck turned over and she’d barely closed her door before she peeled out of the parking space, down the driveway, plumes of dust rising behind them as the wheels churned over rutted gravel, bouncing and jolting them.

Jack barely heard what the vet said to the guards at the gate. He kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see Burr or Mr. Crane charging up behind them. He glanced at JP on the floor in the back of the cab, barely hidden under the bird blanket.

Nobody looked too close, and they passed the gates and turned onto the bumpy, rutted tar-and-chip road that led away from Midlothian.

Dr. Vogel rolled up her window. Jack did the same. She locked the doors, and JP tossed the blanket off himself, slowly sitting up, groaning as he hauled himself onto the bench.

Jack looked at the vet. She kept her eyes glued to the road. “JP can tell you,” she said.

Jack turned to the omega, who stared at him for a second, then looked down. “My father wanted to turn me into a brood dam,” he murmured.

Jack frowned. “You told me that before,” he said.

JP glanced up at him, then away again. “Before, we thought I couldn’t get pregnant.” He laid a hand on his belly. “I laid after a couple of weeks, and the eggs were too small and fragile. None of them had chicks.”

“Right,” Jack said.

JP drew a sharp breath. “So he sent me to the farm here, figured I could learn to run. Well, he wasn’t too pleased when he found out I wasn’t running, but he sure changed his tune when he found out why. He destroyed my nest, said I didn’t need it—said I wouldn’t mind it properly, so he’d just take the eggs and put them in an incubator for me.”

Dr. Vogel turned them sharply around a switchback. She glanced over at Jack. “That’sterriblefor an omega bird,” she said. “Almost nothing worse—puts them into lost-clutch depression.”

Jack furrowed his brow. “Why wouldn’t he just let you mind a nest then?” He didn’t see any harm in that.

JP wouldn’t look at him. “He figured he could just have me studded again. Take the eggs away, inject me with some drugs, put me in a pen with an alpha and let me get knocked up again.”

Amanda shook her head. “It’s so old school,” she grumbled. “So wrong-headed. Omegas get very distressed like that, so depressed. I’ve seen them kill themselves over it. Just stop eating until they starve to death.”

Jack glanced at JP. The omega still wouldn’t look at him. “My father said it was fine,” JP mumbled. “Said I’m too much of a bird, that I … that all I want is eggs, so I won’t mind if he takes them away from me, so long as I get studded again right quick.”

Jack stared. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. “So that’s it then,” he said. “You get studded, lay eggs, and then he takes them away and you get studded again.”

JP’s brow knitted. “Yeah,” he agreed at last.

Jack went on staring. Finally, he turned away and stared out the windshield. “That’s fucked up,” he spat. “How the hell does he figure that’s okay?” Jack wasn’t a bird breeder, but he didn’t think the girls would be all right if someone did that to them.

“It’s old-school thinking,” Dr. Vogel said. “They think the Alerians don’t have feelings. That they don’t get messed up emotionally, that all they want is to have babies—mate and have babies.”

JP shut his eyes. Amanda shook her head again. “It’s messed up,” she muttered. “The birds do have feelings—not just shifters like JP, but all the shapelocked ones.”

“I know,” Jack drawled. He was a shapelocked hybrid, and sure, he had the advantage of being shapelocked in humanoid form, but he didn’t think other Alerians lacked feelings. In fact, sometimes he thought they felt more than he did. Because they were so ruled by instinct, emotion came naturally to them. And they loved their chicks. For the most part, at least—unless they got into messy situations like JP, where their emotions were so messed up.

Dr. Vogel glanced at him a couple of times, before she said, “JP’s clinically depressed. You know that, right?”

Jack supposed he had known that. He nodded when the vet’s piercing blue gaze shifted from the road to him again.

“And you know he’s got anxiety and PTSD? He was mated too young, forced by the alphas, then abandoned, and he’s got compounding lost-clutch depression. It’s amazing he hasn’t ripped out all his tail feathers or something.”

“I’m right here,” JP complained.

She ignored him. “So you understand,” she said. “I couldn’t leave him there—not knowing what Mr. Crane had planned, right? He’s a sick bird, and nobody’s treating him.”

“I knew they weren’t treating him right,” Jack said. “And I’m ashamed to say, I haven’t been much better. But I know an abused bird when I see one, and Cerulean—I mean, JP—didn’t trust no one at all.”

He glanced down at his lap. “I reckon I should have done better, to show you that you could trust alpha birds, JP. I said I would, and then I did you dirty, acting like I didn’t care and leaving you to look after our eggs by your lonesome.”

JP sniffed loudly in the back of the cab. “Oh,” Amanda said, her eyes wide. “I didn’t realize you were—”

“JP’s mate, yeah.” Jack took off his hat and crushed it in his hand. “And I deserve a licking for it, doctor, which I’m willing to take, but first, let’s get my birdie somewhere safe.”