Beloved of the Pack, page 27
part #4 of Stars of the Pack Series
“So you didn’t know,” Ray said firmly. “And you hurt me, because you didn’t know. And one of the reasons you didn’t know is that I didn’t know how to tell you. I decided it was the way things were, because of the wolves. I—I was not in a good place. But I should have known. I should have talked to you.” He looked at his lap, swallowing down tears.
“No,” Sergi repeated, more quietly this time, pained instead of indignant. “I could have asked. I should have asked, and I didn’t. You are not blaming yourself.”
“Okay,” Ray agreed. “But you can’t blame yourself either. Because... you didn’t know. You didn’t mean to. And I... I forgive you.”
“Fuck, Ray,” his mate said with feeling. Ray glanced up to see he’d buried his face into his hands.
“I think I should drive,” Ray said after a moment. Sergi was breathing heavily, shoulders shaking a little. Ray was pretty sure he was trying not to cry. “We can pick up Iesu from his parents’ place.”
Sergi nodded, still into his hands, and Ray tentatively reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Or I could...” He tugged slightly, just enough for Sergi to feel it and Sergi collapsed forwards into his arms at once.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into Ray’s shoulder. He’d kept his hands against his own chest as Ray held him. Ray didn’t tell him it was okay to hold him back, just shushed his apologies and rubbed his back.
There was no point in telling Sergi once again that he forgave him; it wasn’t Ray’s forgiveness Sergi needed. It was his own. And for that, he’d needed Ray to admit to how badly Sergi had hurt him. It was all Ray could do for him—to tell him he knew it hadn’t been intentional and he trusted it wouldn’t happen again.
He remembered that he’d worried about Sergi the most, and how attentive the alpha had been from the get go anyway. And he remembered he’d chosen Sergi, when he’d needed someone and Josh had been too scared of hurting him to try to have sex with him. “You are okay,” he said instead. “You know now, and I know you will be careful.”
“I swear,” Sergi promised in a strangled whisper, and Ray held him a little longer—until Sergi’s phone went off with the Adam Lambert song Iesu had programmed as his ringtone.
Sergi straightened, face turning towards the sound. He looked calmer already—just with the song. “He makes you happy, doesn’t he?” he asked.
His alpha looked up from the phone where he’d just hung up on his boyfriend. “Yes,” he admitted. Ray had talked about this with Iesu several times, but not with Sergi. It surprised him to see him blush.
“Should you really hang up on him?”
“I’ll call him back, and he’ll... he’ll get it. That I was with you and it was important.”
“Well, I get it too,” Ray pointed out. “That you are with him and it’s important. Plus, Alec’s cooking tonight and I don’t want to be late,” he added sincerely.
Sergi laughed, still a little fragile but more confident. “Okay, let me get out of the car.”
Ray almost stopped him—but then again, why deny himself the pleasure? It was every boy’s dream to get a boyfriend with a cool car they could borrow, right?
&
Ray’s chest was a little sore from the milk pump, but other than that, he was back to normal. With the help of a hoodie, he’d only really needed to miss college the first week after giving birth—thankfully, he was only going twice a week for two hours at a time.
“She’s beautiful,” Ray told Marisa. His sister smiled from the second armchair they’d set up on the porch, rocking the baby in her arms until she made a happy gurgling noise.
“Yes, takes after her aunt,” she claimed proudly. Her eyes shone when she looked at Cali.
“You can... You can be her mum, you know,” Ray offered quietly. He had never dared offer before. He’d stayed in his wolf form for the first week, afraid he’d not be able to feed the baby if he had to see her human shape. Marisa had picked her up right before Ray transformed to go have his well-earned shower and Ray had looked at the tiny fingers and plump cheeks, scanning for a sign, for... But of course there wasn’t anything: he hadn’t even been able to tell apart the babies he’d had with men he’d known for months. Cali was just a baby girl.
Marisa looked up, familiar brown eyes wide and the thought crossed his mind that he hoped Cali had those eyes, not the intimidating blue of Nicholas’. “Do you think she will care?”
He didn’t know if she’d care about the words, but he did know she deserved to be loved, absolutely and without question. For who she was, not for where she came from.
He just wasn’t sure he was strong enough to do it himself.
“Won’t you care?” he asked his sister, because he had to remember Marisa too. Cali was his child, but he couldn’t put her before Marisa’s own needs either.
“I don’t know, do you?” she asked in turn. “Do I have to call you something else for you to know what you are to me?”
Ray’s breath stuttered and he gaped at her. He’d helped raise Marisa from the time she’d been eight and he’d been ten when his father had died, but he wasn’t her father. Except he was perhaps as close to a father as Marisa had really had—their own hadn’t been around that long. “No,” he admitted.
She smiled and nodded, she looked proud. Of him, this time. “I want... I want to talk to mum about it, and Irina thinks...” She stopped and Ray squinted at her. “Anyway, she’s only little. It’s too early for that. I’m happy right now, and she’s happy too. That’s what matters, right?”
Ray nodded, eyes travelling away from the baby and towards the wide field behind their house. He’d been sketching from memory—even taking photos would have been hard when the football match was played by werewolves. None of them were bothering keeping their speed to human limits. Irina had already taken out the net from mid-court once and the only reason their windows were whole was that Marisa had made them set up the goalposts a good hundred yards away. He could go and join them, but he didn’t want to leave Marisa on her own, and he was fine, really. This early in the morning, the light was good for drawing, he was full of good food, and his children and his mates were safe and happy. He could play football tomorrow if he wanted—Monday was Irina’s day off and she was always up for it, which meant Iesu could probably be riled into joining too. Josh would complete the team if Ray asked.
Alec blocked a shot and Ray huffed in disappointment, then shook his head at himself—it’d been an impressive catch, too, and Sergi was already running after Gabriel to try again. He had no idea which team was winning, and it didn’t really matter.
“You look pretty happy yourself,” Marisa said, sounding a little smug.
Ray shrugged, not looking away from Josh’s blond head as he threw it back and laughed loud enough to be heard all the way across the open space of their backyard. “Yeah, I’m pretty lucky, aren’t I?”
[The end]
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The Mating Habits of Werewolves
(Werewolves of Windermere, Book I)
Sample Excerpt
I HADN’T PAID ANY ATTENTION to the Alphas before, but it was hard to miss their joyous excitement. Now that I cared to look, it wasn’t hard to see that some of my cousins were missing from the celebration, and Alphas I didn’t know were there instead.
“Where’s Kenneth?” I asked Clara in a furious whisper.
She exhaled slowly. “He went to the Blackson Pack down in Liverpool. They sent Tonio in exchange.” She licked her lips. “There’s been a lot of socializing with other packs the last year and a half and now it makes sense. New blood.”
“Oh, God,” Kirby murmured, leaning in. “He’s been planning this.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment and missed whatever they were whispering over my head. I couldn’t stop thinking of my flat in St. Andrew’s, of my boyfriend Dan, of my thesis, of my friends, of my goddamn life! It was all there, but it wasn’t mine anymore. Just like that, Brennan had taken it all away.
“...too many Alphas,” Clara was saying when I zoned back in.
“What?”
She looked pityingly at me. “There’s too many Alphas and he can’t get more Omegas...”
She was right. Omegas only left their birth pack to follow an Alpha - either a close relative or a partner they had met and been courted by at a Summit. An Omega couldn’t walk out of their pack any more than a child could because they would be, as far as Alphas were concerned, just as vulnerable.
“Maybe he’ll let us choose,” Kirby suggested, sounding like she found the thought comforting. Like she thought that if we could decide which of the men in this room got to fuck and breed us, then it wouldn’t be so bad.
Ω
I cornered Brennan as soon as the room started emptying and Clara and Kirby followed me to his study. They were both wary, but confident that I could speak freely with our Dominant.
“What the fuck is this?” I spat the moment the door closed.
He turned to me, looking genuinely surprised. “I just told you.”
“You just told us?” I repeated. “Like that? In front of everybody? Like we are just animals to be fucking bred?”
He frowned at me, like I was being ridiculous. Like I was being hysterical just like Omegas were said to be. “You are not animals, not any more than I am. You are Omegas.”
“We are people, Brennan!” I shouted. “We deserve to be fucking asked.”
“Oh,” he nodded, “but I am going to ask you. You can choose.”
“We can choose?” Kirby squealed from behind me. I turned on her, almost as angry with her as with my brother. But she seemed perfectly happy to ignore me in favour of the Alpha who held her fate in his hands. Surprising, isn’t it?
“Yes,” Brennan nodded enthusiastically, like he was finally being understood properly. I could tell he thought he was being kind, but I was too furious to care about his delusions of magnanimity. “I have done some research for you, but within reason it’s your decision who you mate with.”
Kirby relaxed at this concession. I was about to snap that I didn’t care to choose who got to use me as a fucking incubator when Clara volunteered, “I don’t think I’m ready.”
She said it quietly but not timidly.
Brennan nodded at her and put a hand on her arm, even though he had to sidestep me to get close enough. “I know how you’re feeling. When Adora told me...” He smiled nervously, “well, I was not feeling ready, believe me, Clar. But that’s life for you. It turns out we are a lot stronger than we think.”
The message was clear: we were not getting out of it.
I wasn’t going to take it lying down, though. “I don’t want to do it,” I said, enunciating clearly.
Brennan turned to me in surprise, and the edge of anger in his expression sent my wolf cowering. I locked my muscles to keep myself from backing away. “I have made plans for the pack, Dev. I can’t change them just because of you.”
“I have made plans for my life, Bren,” I said, using a diminutive like the Alphas always did to us. But Brennan didn’t care. He was an Alpha and he was my Dominant. He didn’t need posturing, he had me by the balls and he knew it.
He sighed. “You are going to have to adjust,” he told me gently. “We will all do our best to help you.”
And then he turned his back on us, so secure in his invincibility that I wanted to rip his spine out. I couldn’t have, of course. My wolf wouldn’t have attacked its Alpha any more than it would have allowed me to jump off a cliff. Brennan shuffled some papers. I thought, it was a gesture to put us in our place, but it turned out he was looking for something. When he found it, he turned back to face us.
He handed a piece of paper to each of us. It was some sort of diagram, and I couldn’t help but look. I was used to diagrams. I loved diagrams. Not this one, though. Clara’s breath hitched a second before it hit me what they were: family lines and breeding characteristics. He had made a study of each of us and each of the Alphas he thought would be suitable to breed us, rating them according to the dominant and recessive characteristics he wanted in the next generation of the pack.
“I’m willing to let you choose between the top three,” he explained, then hesitated and snatched the paper I was holding loosely in my hand. “No, top two for you. It’s too much of a difference.” He tried to give me the paper back, but I backed away, swallowing hard and breathing shallowly. I needed to get out of there. “Devlin...” he started, but I was gone before he could add anything else. He had said more than enough for me to know I didn’t want to hear it.
Ω
Transforming was the only thing I could do not to go crazy right then. I dropped my clothes behind the porch and shifted faster than I could ever remember doing, before or since. I would be a terrible parent, I thought. As a human I would have cried, but wolves don’t really cry and, as the animal mind took over, I felt better. Wolves don’t really care about the future either. All that mattered to the wolf was that we were in pack territory again. We were home and there was no danger anywhere in the vicinity - not even if we decided to run for days. The human part of me liked that too, so we took off, faster and faster. Soon I was panting but I didn’t care and neither did the wolf; it understood my need to get away even if it didn’t understand what I was running from.
Brennan had to come and get me himself. It had been at least a day, perhaps more, but I didn’t care. When you are a wolf for long enough, time becomes immaterial. Pretty much everything but food, water and mating does. As long as I stayed away from other wolves, only the first two mattered. But when Brennan howled, my feet moved without conscious thought on my part - I went because my Alpha was calling. He waited until I had shown him my belly before he caught me by the neck and dragged me into the house. He shifted first and I followed instinctively. We were both naked, and I was smudged with mud and covered in loose bits of grass.
“Have you had enough of an angsty fit?” he asked, sounding annoyed. I tried to speak, but found myself coughing instead. Hair - it always got in my mouth when I shifted back. My brother knelt and rubbed my back, then stayed there next to me. He wasn’t that much larger than me, physically speaking, but it didn’t matter. I felt dwarfed. His hand on me was like a steel buckle I could never shake. I couldn’t even think to shake it. He started carding his fingers through my hair and I tilted my head back. I didn’t mean to - I just did. “You are a man grown, Dev, you can’t let your emotions get the better of you.”
I swallowed in lieu of nodding, and he rubbed my ear in what he must have thought a consoling manner and got to his feet. “Go up to your room and get cleaned up. It’s time you met Rami and Naveen.”
And that was the first time I heard their names. Not the way one hears new names and nods, mostly assuming one will forget them until reminded a couple of times or until the person does something exceptionally good or bad. Their names were an announcement. One of those names, I knew, I would never forget. I would never be allowed to forget.
Read more...
The Stars of the Pack
OMEGA FOR THE PACK - When Ray presents as an omega instead of an alpha, his life changes forever. As a male omega, he's expected to mate with a select group of alphas and start a pack of his own.
Simpler than Most (an interlude): Sergi has stopped lying to himself: he’s had a crush on a guy for a while. But it turns out telling yourself the truth is just the first step of a long journey.
Alpha for the Pack - Ray wasn’t ready to become an omega, but he’s come to accept his fate... until it seems the pack might need even more of him than he can give.
Protectors of the Pack – Alec and Gabriel are Ray’s alphas first and foremost and nothing to each other. But three years ago... things were very different. Get the free short prequel here!
Beloved of the Pack - An omega is essential to his pack. But an omega is just a man. And a man needs to be loved. Can you share your body and not share your heart?
Werewolves of Windermere:
The Mating Habits of Werewolves - Devlin is an omega with ambitions that have nothing to do with alphas, but when destiny comes calling, he may not have that much of a choice. A/B/O.
Alphas Alone - An alpha werewolf has some responsibilities he can’t ignore: finding an omega, protecting his pack, not falling for another alpha.
Standalones:
Omega Under The Moon – School is over and Cole is ready to take a break before adult life starts, but when a camping trip with his two best mates turns into something much wilder, it’ll change his life forever. A/B/O. M/M/M.
Soldier On - When a humble young man is captured by the enemy lord during battle, he is expected to offer defeat to his captor by allowing him to bed him. But he is young enough that the act might unintentionally activate a hormonal process that will irreversibly feminize him.
Omega On A Mission - Omegas are carers, not fighters, and Gabi is happy looking after his alpha. But when he comes across an animal in danger, his protective instincts flare up, and nobody wants to get in the way of an omega on a mission. A/B/O.
N.J. Lysk spends the day in an office with the heavy burden of a wandering mind. Nights are spent more enjoyably as that mind is let to wander free and darker desires to take hold in the form of these steamy forbidden tales.
