Page 99 of The Omega

But I did.

When you’d been around as many traumatized shifters as I had, you learned to read between the lines. Dorian had no right to challenge a Beta for Alpha of the pack. If he made him disappear, by all legal accounts, that was murder.

When I glanced up, he was watching me. “If you decide to call it in, it’ll be hard to find proof. But I’ll take the punishment as long as you let my pack stay where they are. We won’t bring the spotlight in. I promise. They deserve a place to finally rest. Let them have this.”

Spoken like a true Alpha.

I sighed and took another sip. “You know if I did, Opal would hate me. Plus, I don’t want to be Alpha of your crazy pack.”

Dorian smirked again. “They’d eat you alive.”

“They’d have to get through Volk Pack first.” I laughed, feeling something shift between us. It seemed like I owed him a truth for sharing one of his. “I wasn’t ready to take over Volk Pack when I did.”

Dorian snorted and I almost stopped talking, but a tug in my chest urged me not to.

“My dad was a good man. He was soft-spoken, but laughed loud. He saved my mom from an abusive relationship before I was born, taking her in as a chosen mate. Before she got sick, she had the great idea to help more female shifters like her. I was still a pup when the first new pack members came in. One of them had a few pups younger than me who couldn’t look me in the eye. They were afraid of me because of my size.”

Too big. Too scary. My wolf lowered his snout to his paws and whined.

I stopped talking as I stared at my hands.

“So…” Dorian blew out a heavy breath. “No one wanted to play with the Alpha.”

“Fuck you,” I growled.

“I’m kidding.” He sighed. “I know who Volk Pack is and what you are to them. Somehow, you convinced an entire pack of traumatized shifters that you were the safest Alpha to be with. That’s no small feat.”

“If you knew, then why?” I asked. My heart started to race and it wasn’t because of the caffeine.

“Calm down,” Dorian said. “It was after all your mysterious pack-secret hints that I did more digging. I just pieced together the whole puzzle today. Though you aren’t as stealthy as you think. Some of the underground systems mention Volk Pack by name.”

“We have to allow the rumors.” I rubbed my hand over my chest, willing my pulse to slow. “It’s the only way some of them will know that we exist. That there’s hope.”

And if you do anything to ruin that, I’ll rip your heart out with my teeth.

“I hear you loud and clear.” Dorian nodded. “And once we get our girl back, I have a proposition for you.”

Our girl…

“Fine. We’ll talk then,” I said, even though my voice hurt from talking this much as it was. “But I think we’re going to need a better plan than barging into an Omega sanctuary to steal our mate.”

36

Opal

In the past month, I’d ridden in not one, but two private planes, and it was going to be a sad day when I resumed my place in economy seats.

Might as well enjoy it now. My wolf yawned.

She was still exhausted from tossing and turning on the luxurious cloud-like bed I’d fallen into after we arrived. The blankets were too fuzzy. Too clean.

Nothing smelled like my mates.

I sighed as I stared out the window over the gardens below the high-rise office building, watching rain bead on the glass. The mountains in the Colorado horizon line were so much bigger and rockier than the Blue Ridge mountains back home.

Home. That wasn’t even the word I’d call it anymore, but I better get used to saying it again because I was already planning to go back.

“You have to eat something.” Penelope sat beside me on the small sofa closest to the windows. All the plush sofas in the meeting room were arranged in a circle at equal level and draped in soft blankets and throw pillows. Background music drifted from some hidden wall speakers, a soothing piano sound.