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“What do you do there?”
“I fix vehicles. I was interested in them when I was in high school, and my dad is mechanically inclined, so he helped me rebuild an engine for my car and I was hooked. I started working for the former owner. He retired a few years ago, when a truck fell off a jack and crushed his foot. Even with shifting, it didn’t heal right and he couldn’t be on his feet for more than an hour at a time.”
“I thought shifters could heal anything.”
“For the most part, but there are injuries that are too severe. Depending on how an injury heals, wolves can have trouble shifting. He had to retire not only from the shop but also from being a ranked member of the pack. He moved back to his family’s pack in Montana.”
Her eyes widened. “He had to retire from the pack?”
He pulled to a stop in a parking space and turned off the truck. As he got out and opened her door, he said, “Unfortunately, yes. The pack he was from had looser rules about members shifting, so he wasn’t an omega like he would have been here.”
“You’ve mentioned the word omega a few times. What is it?”
He opened the door into the restaurant and she stepped inside. He took her hand and led her to the hostess stand where a middle-aged woman stood behind the podium.
“Hi, Ren. Who’s your friend?” she asked, smiling brightly.
“Hi, Paula, this is my mate, Kismet.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Paula said. “I take it you’re not from around here?”
“I’m from the fae realm.”
“Really? Oh! You’re the fae who helped with Mia and Lucian’s ceremony. Congratulations on your mating.”
She took menus from the stand and led them to a booth against a bank of windows. She set the menus on the table and said, “Breakfast special today is Belgian waffles with fresh strawberries.”
“Oh, that sounds good to me,” Kismet said. “Do you have herbal tea?”
“Just black tea, honey, sorry,” Paula said, collecting Kismet’s menu.
“Um, then just orange juice.”
“I’ll have the hash brown skillet with ham,” Ren said, “and coffee.”
Paula took his menu and left, returning a moment later with Kismet’s juice and a carafe of coffee for Ren.
“I don’t know if Wilde Creek is all that up on herbal tea. You might need to bring your own if we eat out for breakfast again.”
“I don’t mind juice,” she said, taking a sip. “So, we were talking about omegas outside.”
“Right,” he said as he took one of her hands and linked their fingers. “All males start out as omegas. Once they’re able to shift, and get a few moons under their belts, they can work their way up from the lowest ranked male up as high as they’re able to go.”
“How do they work up a rank?”
“With a sanctioned fight. When I was sixteen, I waited a few months and petitioned the then-alpha to let me fight for rank. He said I wasn’t ready, so I trained for a few more months, and then he let me fight on a full moon. I beat the lowest ranked male. Pretty much every moon after that, I fought and won my way higher. Sometimes I would fight twice in the same moon.
“An omega is a non-ranked male. Omegas can be wolves who don’t want to be part of pack life anymore, because of age or injury. We call the older wolves ‘retirees.’ Unless a male chooses to fight for rank, he’ll always be an omega.”
“What does that mean for their place in the pack?”
“They are caretakers. Omegas help out the ranked pack members in whatever way they need, everything from running errands to housecleaning to yard work.”
“That sounds like it wouldn’t be a good thing to be an omega.”
He shrugged. “Some wolves don’t like rank fights, or don’t care. Doc, your sort-of brother-in-law isn’t ranked. He doesn’t work for anyone but himself though, because he’s the pack healer. There’s a group of omegas called ‘stewards,’ and they specifically help the retirees. But, generally speaking, omegas have jobs of their own, maybe for one of the pack-owned businesses, and in their spare time, they work for the alphas and the other ranked members. It’s a necessary position in the pack. Without the omegas, everyone would be too busy doing their own thing to take care of the pack.”
Their food arrived, and her mouth watered at the sight of the dinner-plate-sized waffle, topped with strawberries and whipped cream. Two strips of crispy bacon sat atop a pile of fried, shredded potatoes.
