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With a groan, Fox gets off the living room couch, stretching his arms high before he comes to stand beside us. He kneels down to the board until his eyes are at the same height with the pieces, and frowns at the setup. “You know, chess is a lot like football.”
“You say that about everything,” I answer, throwing my hands up in the air. “You said that about going to Target last week. You said that while watching the Oscars!”
“I’m serious, man,” he says, pointing at the board, almost knocking over half my pieces. “I mean, yeah, I play mostly defense, and you’re going all offense right now, but still, it’s the same.” He points to my bishop. “Move that fullback over near the castle thingie.”
“It’s not football,” I repeat, although I do move my bishop in the opposite direction he suggested. “And the castle thing is called a rook.”
“Why?” he asks with a scowl, as if it’s my fault that somebody long ago gave it a strange name. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Because… because… Miles?” I glance over at our resident knower-of-all-things.
Miles barely looks up from his laptop. “Because a rook originated from the Persian wordrukh, which is what it was called in earlier iterations.” Miles is just as good a chess player as Thane and me, but, although I’ll never tell him to his face, I prefer to play with Thane. Miles views the board the way he views a computer, his moves based on the overall programming of his desired outcome rather than spur-of-the-moment defensive or offensive plays. I like the unpredictability of the way Thane works—except, of course, in the beginning, where he is always doing the exact same move, and I always have to go French Defense on his ass. It gets better after that.
“Fine,” Fox concedes, tossing a mini football up in the air and catching it with his great paw of a hand. “Move your fullback near the rookie.”
“Not football,” I say again, cocking my head to study the board and figure out whatever Thane is planning after his usual opening.
I’ve always liked playing chess. My grandfather taught me when I was six, and until his death, we met for weekly matches. I very rarely won, but it didn’t matter. I was spending time with Granddad. He died when I was fifteen. I was heartbroken. When I presented as an Alpha at sixteen, and my Beta parents kicked me out, I wished he were still alive so I had somewhere to run to. Instead, I went back to boarding school, where Miles and Fox were. At least my parents were kind enough to pay for my schooling long enough to graduate, but that was probably just to keep me far away from them without legally disowning me.
But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve found my real family, the people who’ll be there no matter what happens.
And speaking of being there… I glance around at the rest of the pack to gauge their moods before I focus on Thane. “So. Riley,” I begin, throwing her name out there like a bull into the arena. Thane instantly tenses, the stick back in his ass.
“What about her?” he says, accentuating each word as he takes one of my pawns, moving it off the board with a little more force than is needed.
“Gentle with the pieces there, Thane. This is a custom set.”
I look over at Miles and Fox. “What are we all thinking?”
Fox stops tossing the ball in his hand for a moment, a contemplative look on his face. “I like her.”
Miles snorts from his place on the armchair, and Fox throws the ball at his head. Miles ducks just in time, and the ball hits a frame on the wall, which falls to the floor, thankfully not breaking.
“I’ll be honest, my opinion kept changing on her,” Fox says. “That first night, I think we were all too drunk on her scent and her presence to think straight. And then after that, I was constantly worried she was going to change what we have, just the four of us.”
His gaze lands on each one of us, filled with rarely seen emotion, and he surprises me by continuing. Fox rarely has so much to say on any subject. “And in the past, we’ve never found an Omega that fit with us, that would respect that friendship and enhance it. I mean, not that we were looking, but we never even came upon anyone that all of us were drawn to. But I think Riley is different.”
Thane grimaces, so I take his bishop. “Well, historically and even today, many packs still treat their Omegas as little more than chattel, even if they are highly valued due to their rarity. It’s been like that for centuries, and there aren’t many countries that have advanced Omega rights. We certainly don’t. Remember that pack in Vegas? The one that had their Omega chained to a wall for over a year after she accepted their bond?”
Miles shifts in his seat, his face disturbed by the thought, as he should be. I remember the pictures of the Omega on the news. She was so thin, she looked like a skeleton, and she was covered with bruises. Her wrists were so banged up from the shackles, it looked like she was wearing bracelets, when really, it was festering wounds. My stomach turns at the memory. The pack of Alphas and one Beta that had her there like that got barely a slap on the wrist because she was their bonded. Once bonded, an Omega essentiallybelongedto your pack. And you could do whatever you liked with your belongings.
Unbonded Omegas were another story. Our laws strictly protected them, but only up until they could be bonded to a pack, able to make more little Omegas to keep our race from dying out. Then they weren’t the problem of the law anymore.
“When my dad was campaigning for Omega rights,” adds Miles, his gaze a million miles away, “he got a lead on an Omega trafficking ring. I was young, so he didn’t talk about it in front of me, but he accidentally left the file out on his desk. The things I saw in that file—let’s just say I’m glad I’m an Alpha, because I wouldn’t survive as an Omega.” He clenches his fist so tightly that his knuckles turn white, and then he stands abruptly.
“I’m going to check on Riley.” With that, he slips out of the room before any of us can protest.
I check the pack bonds to make sure he’s all right. His concern and worry for her travel through the emotional thread between us. Miles is such an empathetic person, and I often worry about his sensitivity. He’s kind, and gentle, and because of it, he could easily be taken advantage of. I don’t think Riley would do that, though. I think she is just as kind and gentle as he is. Maybe that’s what drew them together in the first place.
“Well, I think Miles has made his choice clear,” says Fox, but by the soft look on his face, I think his choice has been made too. He wants Riley just as much as Miles does.
Thane nods in agreement, his brow wrinkled with concern. “I’ll talk to Miles about finding more packs to consider for her. The other list he made was terrible and the longer she stays here the harder it will be for him to let her go.”
His gaze shifts to me. “What about you? You’re always asking us questions about how we feel, but you haven’t really said anything for yourself. How are you handling her being here?”
My gut instinct is to go with whatever the pack wants, but I know Thane doesn’t like it when I don’t think for myself. I try to separate out my own feelings versus the instinct to protect the other three Alphas. “I think I like her,” I say slowly, checking Fox’s and Thane’s expressions. “But I haven’t spent much time with her, not like Fox and Miles have. She feels comfortable, like she would fit in well here. But only if we all agree on it. We’ve got too much trust in each other to lose it over a decision that isn’t unanimous.”
Thane nods, his lips pursed in concentration. “You aren’t against it then, the idea of her staying?”
