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“Listen.” Matteo leaned forward, delighted to have stumbled into his favorite thing: a pointless argument with someone new. “We’ve been on the road for over a week, and he’s been eye-fucking her—”
“And regular fucking her,” Simon added under his breath. Cal cringed recalling the long nights pretending he wasn’t half-hard from hearing some other Alpha’s Omega come.
“—the entire trip. Ain’t no fucking way we’re gonna see him tomorrow.” Matteo’s voice boomed louder with each offensive sentence. “He’s gonna be crawled so far up her—”
“All right, brother, that’s enough,” Cal warned and knocked his shoulder into Matteo’s, sloshing alcohol from Matteo’s cup and onto his pants. Cal didn’t usually rush to exert dominance over his friends, but he didn’t want Matteo speaking disrespectfully about the Alpha of Alphas on their first night in their new home. He wasn’t a paranoid type, and, for the most part, he liked the Morris Hill Alphas he’d traveled with, but Pack dynamics and loyalties could be a tricky thing.
“Oh hell, man.” Matteo wiped at his damp pants and looked mournfully into his cup.
Cal flashed a glance at Simon, a silent inquiry of “how drunk is he?” Simon responded with a subtle, sideways head bob, which Cal took to mean “not great but not as bad as it could be,”and Cal trusted the assessment. Simon and Matteo grew up in the same Pack until, as often happened, they’d left their home when their full Alpha natures emerged. Cal had met up with the pair when he’d been traveling through the plains country as part of his self-imposed purgatory of transience. Their work ethic and sense of honor mirrored his own, and the three banded together. By that point in time, Cal’d been Pack-less for twenty-five years, and while he’d hoped to eventually shake off the longing for the safety and security of a Pack, he’d craved it with a desperation both pathetic and inescapable. Eventually, the three of them made their way across what was once the Western US and came to Old Tacoma to look for Omegas and work, in that order of priority. They found little of each, but it was there Cal met Hunter during a frenzied search for a kidnapped Kess.
He’d liked the crusty Alpha immediately, identifying him as one of the Old Ones, like his Pa, and someone Cal wouldn’t hate himself for bending the neck to. His acceptance in Hunter’s Pack was more than he deserved after what he’d done, but no one knew that but him.
Simon and Matteo, without any other prospects, simply followed his lead and came along, although sometimes Cal suspected the two of them only stuck around so he could break up their bickering and frequent fights. Younger than Cal, thirties to his fifties, they deferred to his judgment and dominance without him ever making a point to demand it. But if there was a leader to their little trio, it was him.
Rolling with Cal’s correction, Matteo righted himself, sighing wistfully. “That’s what I’d do if I had an Omega of my own.” He raised a toast to his fictional Omega. “You wouldn’t see my ass for a fuckingmonth.”
“Got no problem with that,” Simon drawled. “I’ve seen enough of your ass to last me a lifetime.”
Riddick snickered into his drink, Cal hid a smile behind his fist, and Matteo blew Simon a sarcastic kiss. “Don’t pretend you don’t love it, brother.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Simon groused.
“It’s a shame, though”—Matteo swirled his cup, apparently having drunk enough to be unfazed by Simon’s ribbing—“that there are only two unmated Omegas here. I’d thought there might be more in a place like this.”
Riddick shot Matteo a regretful glance, his curls waving at the slight movement. “We had none before Zorah and Rue, and I’d count Rue off limits, unless you’d like to get your head bashed in by Sloan.”
Matteo visibly deflated. “Well, shit.”
Someone tossed a fresh log on the bonfire, and a flurry of sparks exploded into the night sky, as numerous as the questions Riddick’s comment sparked in Cal’s mind. The embers flamed out, one by one, as he waded through the confusing and conflicting information. Riddick didn’t include Della among the unmated Omegas; Della herself denied her Omega status, yet every ounce of his Alpha nature had come to the exact opposite conclusion. None of it made a lick of sense.
Most infuriatingly, if Cal wanted to know more about her, he had to ask, even if it meant disclosing his interest in the prickly woman. An interest that could be used against him, or even worse, might be used againstherin some unknown way. Sure, Hunter had accepted him into the Pack, and he’d fought his way in fair and square, but did that mean he could trust every Alpha here, especially when it came to something as important as his newly discovered Omega? Absolutely not.
Then again, he needed to clear up the mystery of this Omega. If he could take their conversation thus far as any indication, Riddick seemed as affable and lacking in deceit as Matteo. Taking a deep breath, Cal shifted his wary attention to Riddick and strove for a casual, disaffected tone. “What about Della?”
“Who?” Simon asked.
Riddick scoffed and flashed a single gold tooth that glinted in the firelight. “Sorry, brother, but Della ain’t no Omega.”
“Who’s this?” Matteo pressed, leaning in and refusing to be left behind in a conversation about a woman no matter who she turned out to be.
Riddick sipped from his cup. “Old lady Del.”
Cal angled his chin down in consternation. Old lady? Granted, even in the dark, he could tell she wasn’t a fresh-faced youngster, but tucked against his chest, she felt alive, spirited, and soft in all the right places. She feltperfect.
“She’s at least as old as Hunter,” Riddick continued, “maybe more. She tries to impose some civilization on this place. Hunt said once that she was someone important in the before times, so I guess that’s why.” He lifted a shoulder and dropped it. “Usually, she looks out for the Omegas. A lot of them are too shy to bring stuff up, so Del does it for them. Rubs some Alphas the wrong way, but I don’t mind her.”
Cal scraped a palm over his stubbled chin, carefully stowing the information away. “And she’s not Omega? I could’ve sworn she scented like one…”
Planting his palms behind him, Riddick leaned back, looking Cal over with a new, appraising shine in his eyes. “Is that right? You sure you weren’t picking up on Zorah? She’s been all over this party tonight, meeting and greeting all the new potentials.”
“Gonna be a fucking throw down over that one,” Matteo grumbled.
Riddick’s expression stilled. “Remember, though: no one claims an unwilling Omega. You try any shit like that, and you’ll be lucky to leave with your precious ass still attached to your body.”
“He knows,” Simon said, gaze narrowed on Matteo.
The insistence on Omega consent was a unique innovation in the Morris Hill Pack. Cal wished he knew the origin of it, but didn’t anticipate it being a problem for him or his friends. It wasn’t in him to take an unwilling woman, Omega or not, and Della was no different. Besides, she had no idea how persuasive he could be or how enjoyable said persuasion could be.
