The Omega Awakened: A M/M Omegaverse Erotic Short Fiction (Omegan Tales Book 1)

by Elijah Stierne

  Micah loved to fucking hear it. Because despite everything, the slight frustrations and curiosities, he had to believe he was making the right choice. He wanted to give this a chance, and so it seemed like this was the case.

  Jackson wanted to call Micah his?

  Good. Because it seemed like even from the beginning, he really, really was.

  Also by Elijah Stierne

  The Omega Protected (The Omegan Tales: 2)

  The first words that Jace had ever said to Dean were a plea for safety.

  “Please don’t hurt me.”

  They’d fallen from his lips the second Dean had entered the clearing of the woods with his chest puffed out and his domineering scent cloying up the air.

  Running away from home had been a mistake, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Jace acknowledged that. But it became a much more visceral fear when he saw Dean for the first time. An alpha had finally found him and he had nowhere to hide.

  Jace had created a makeshift shelter out of sticks, leaves, and rocks. It was large enough to cover him from the heavy downpour, but it wasn’t nearly strong enough to protect him from a predator. An omega like Jace stuck out in the forest with nothing but the raindrops to hide his scent, and in hindsight, this should have been something he considered long before he threw a backpack over his shoulders and ran away from home.

  The nose of the Canidae were sharper than their human counterparts. It was well known that the alpha were particularly sensitive to the pheromones of a ripe omega.

  Jace hadn’t meant to put himself in this position. He was the prime target for a young a virile alpha wandering the woods at this time of night. Honestly, if he’d had any other choice, he wouldn’t have left the warmth of his little town house for the cold, damp woods that surrounded it - but there were things scarier and more damning than potential suitors, and what existed back in his home was every bit worth running away from.

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” Jace repeated, crouching down so that he could sit on the ground. His entire body was trembling, the adrenaline setting in his limbs as he tried to steady himself against the wet dirt.

  “I won’t hurt you,” Dean said. “But what the hell are you doing out here?”

  “Hiding,” Jace responded. He licked his lips nervously and tried to keep his voice even. “My family’s trying to mate me. I’m in heat.”

  “Right. I can smell that.”

  “It’s the end of it,” Jace carried on quickly, trying to defend himself against whatever assumptions the man might make about him. He was a responsible omega. He was just desperate, too. He wouldn’t have been here otherwise. “I should be okay in a few hours, I just need somewhere to sit until then.”

  Dean looked quizzical. Curious. He didn’t look particularly impressed, but Jace wasn’t looking for validation of his choices so it didn’t bother him much.

  It was strange to find an alpha traveling alone. Evening in the forest was often the perfect time for packs to bond. They needed to learn how to “hunt” together, though the Canidae had lost their shifting abilities long ago, and so were merely burning the excess energy that they’d inherited from their ancestors. Jace had never met a pack other than his own. He’d been the sole Omega in his household, kept under lock and key so that he could be married and mated, and then exchanged for a handful of coins. He’d read about the packs, though. The ones that lived out here in these open lands surrounded by thick woods. To see them up close was alarming. It was a pity that he’d never learned how to deal with them.

  Jace looked the alpha up and down fully for the first time. The man was tall, handsome, and had dark hair that was matted to his face from the rain. He had piercings that adorned his ears, top to bottom. His body was unmarked - no tattoos, no other tribal imprints - but the way he carried himself suggested that he was part of a strong, established pack. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and the rainwater was glistening off of his skin. As Jace’s eyes traveled southward, roaming the alpha’s body inch by inch, he paused on the bulge in the man’s pants. The tenting was evidence enough that the rain was doing very little to hide Jace’s pheromones.

  Dean scoffed and Jace flinched, averting his eyes to somewhere safer: the ground. Dean lowered his chest and stopped posturing for a moment.

  “So, uh… how’d you get on our land?”

  “I’m not on your land. I’m not on anyone’s land.”

  Dean rolled his eyes and stepped aside, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. There was a large tree trunk behind him engraved with a symbol that Jace didn’t recognize.

  “This tree is the first in the line of the boundary,” Dean said. He looked right and pointed out all of the trees in a similar row. “You’re a few steps outside, but that’s not much difference to a hungry alpha. According to my dad, you’re on pack land. That means I gotta take care of you.”

  “I’m sorry. I told you, I don’t want to be here. I just… for a few hours. That’s all I need.”

  “You gonna tell me what you’re doing out here?”

  “Not more than I already told you, no,” Jace said. As a reminder, he repeated, “My family’s trying to sell me off. I don’t wanna go.”

  “So you’re braving the big, bad outdoors and just hoping you won’t get snatched, huh?”

  “I thought the rain would hide the scent,” Jace admitted.

  “Didn’t do a thing, kitten.”

  Jace grumbled, scooting back and inch. He wasn’t a fan of pet names. He’d spent his entire young adulthood listening to alpha coo and purr over him with demeaning names like baby doll and sweet cheeks. He wasn’t a dog. He didn’t need to be branded.

  “I’ll leave by tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Dean laughed. “But I doubt it’s gonna be because you got up and walked. I could smell you a couple miles away. It’s not safe for you to be out here like this. If you think you’re gonna make it to tomorrow without another issue, you don’t know where you’re at.”

  Jace opened his mouth to complain, freezing when a pulse of arousal wound through him. The scent of his own need was wafting from between his legs, right into the humid air. It was suffocating. Jace’s eyes fluttered closed and he clenched his fists in the dead leaves and sticks, looking for something to hold on to as he waited for it to pass. It didn’t hurt, it was just uncomfortable. To know that someone was watching him as he went through a wave made him feel more vulnerable than he cared to admit.

  “You don’t have any pills? Suppressants?”

  “No. I didn’t take any when I left.”

  Dean groaned and covered his face with his hands. The sound of him hit Jace like a brick to the face. The alpha sounded so good, the noises just a low baritone from the back of his throat.

  “You smell so fucking good,” Dean said. “Yeesh. Sorry. That wasn’t appropriate. But - fuck - you can’t be out here alone like this. They’re gonna tear you to shreds if they get a whiff of that.”

  Jace wished he had some response. He had nowhere to go, and so nothing to say. He’d chosen his cold, wet bed. He had no choice but to lie in it.

  “Hey,” Dean said then, tenderly. “What’s your name?”

  Jace looked up, squinting against the onslaught of rain. His name? The alpha wanted a name. It was such a silly thing to hesitate over - there wasn’t much that an alpha could do with a name - but the word still felt private. Dean didn’t look like a dangerous alpha. He didn’t smell aggressive, and he’d stopped posturing as soon as he’d realized that Jace wasn’t much of a threat. Jace didn’t think he’d get in trouble for not answering. Still, something compelled him to talk. His heat, his self-preservation, or maybe just his budding interest in the well-behaved alpha in front of him.

  “I’m Jace.”

  The alpha smiled and then bent forward, hands on his knees. “I’m Dean. I’m the second alpha around here.”

  “Second alpha?”

  “Our pack’s four. My dad’s in charge.”

  “And that’
s why you’re here.”

  “Yeah,” Dean said. “He told me to come run you off before you attracted a bunch of ferals.”

  Jace had never heard of that before. Feral was a term used to describe and animal, not a man. If an alpha as big as this was using it casually to describe the lawless men that lived out here, Jace should consider it another warning. He had no intention of searching them out. He meant to stay hidden here in his bundle of sticks, hoping that the rain, the nightfall, and the small shelter would camouflage him enough to keep him alive.

  “This area’s the border between our pack land and the Morrow tribe. They’re an all-alpha bunch, so they’re kinda-” Dean raised one hand to his head and spun the finger at his temple, “Psychotic, really. They don’t play fair with unprotected omega.”

  “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “I don’t need to try, sweetheart,” Dean scoffed. “I can smell that it’s freaking you out.”

  “Stop telling me these things,” Jace wiped the rain from his eyes irritably. “What do you want me to do with that information? I told you. I can’t leave. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “I can take you back into town-”

  “I won’t go back in town,” Jace said clearly.

  “Somehow you’re not getting it. You’re an omega in heat. I’m telling you, if the other packs find you out here smelling like that, they’ll rip you apart. Next time I bump into them, they’ll be picking pieces of you from between their teeth.”

  Jace huffed. These were things that he understood, things that Dean had made quite clear. He was in danger and he shouldn’t have been out there. Back in the city, though, there was a family of Canidae who probably already had his face printed out on a million small posters. In the morning, they’d be stapling his face to the telephone poles, looking for clues and searching him out. Omega were too rare to be lucky. They were worth money, worth pounds and dollars and euros because there were so few of them.

  A male omega was all the more rare. That meant that Jace was a target.

  Freedom was dangerous. Jace had no misunderstanding about it. But the alternative, the entrapment and stripping of his autonomy, was a much more terrifying threat.

  If he had to sit here all day and be ripped to shreds for a taste of the outside, so be it.

  “Let them kill me, then,” Jace hissed. His instincts flared. He couldn’t talk to an alpha this way. Dean seemed equally stumped by the display of aggression, straightening up with his eyebrows raised. When his lip pulled up at the side, a soft smirk spreading across his face, Jace gripped a handful of the sediment beneath his hand. How frustrating. Alpha were always so coy and so senseless. Nothing about this situation was worth smiling over.

  To keep from doing something reckless, Jace stared down at his lap. There were small puddles gathering on the denim.

  “Fuck it,” Dean grumbled. “I’ll stay with you tonight, then.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll stay. Make sure you live ‘till the morning.”

  “N-no, no, no,” Jace sputtered. He moved onto his knees, ready to crawl back into his small hut. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Well aware, sweetcheeks,”

  “Could you stop with the pet names?”

  “I’m not gonna have your blood on my hands,” Dean continued, astutely ignoring him. “And my dad’ll beat my ass if I go back and you’re still here. Might as well make the beating worth it.”

  “But the ferals,” Jace argued, grasping at what few excuses he had to make the alpha leave. The opportunity to be protected was something he should have been jumping to take - but the thought of being in heat and sleeping in the woods with an unmated, alpha Canidae seemed like a recipe for disaster. “If another pack comes through, you might get caught up.”

  “In what?” Dean scoffed. “Little secret - very few people could challenge me on my own land and win. That’s not how things happen around here. If I’m with you, you’ll be safe.”

  Jace didn’t want to admit it. Admission meant submission. Dean seemed to be a good person, and yet there were so few reasons to trust him. Jace considered that the man was bulky, thick with the evidence of physical strength. He looked the part of the brute but had so far acted the part of the saint. He seemed to be the pinnacle of the alpha. The type that buff men worked to become. And yet the pet names, the dominance, the lack of courtesy, it was all reminiscent of every other alpha.

  There was no difference.

  Dean felt genuine. Still, Jace only trusted him as far as he could throw him.

  “Don’t need to answer. I’ve made up my mind,” Dean huffed.

  Jace’s eyes went wide as the alpha crossed the rest of the clearing, slowly closing the gap between them. No amount of sputtering could stop the alpha from plopping onto the wet ground beside him.

  The alpha’s scent wafted around them, intermingling with the sweet, honeyed smell of Jace’s heat. Jace scooted away to maintain some semblance of space between them. He wasn’t shocked when Dean followed. He only continued to scoot until he found himself too far away from his hut to be comfortable, needing his domicile to calm his omega. Jace growled in frustration.

  “What? Too close?”

  “A bit.”

  “You don’t want me next to you?” Dean asked. The alpha tilted his head curiously, water droplets running across his cheeks, dripping from the sharp angles of his jaw. “That’s a first. Usually, omega are all over me.”

  “You get a lot around here?” Jace asked.

  “No. But those I do are usually all over me.”

  Jace licked his lips and shrewdly turned his entire body, putting his back to the alpha and hiking his legs up to his chest. He wound his arms around his knees, trying not to think about how small and how defenseless the position made him feel.

  “I don’t mind you being here,” Jace whispered. “But you’re not my mate.”

  “That makes you uncomfortable? Sitting to close to an alpha who’s not your alpha?”

  Jace had learned long ago not to do that. His family had told him that his scent was alluring. It was soft and it was sweet, two signs that he was a robust heat, and that his body was prepared for a mating. Male omega couldn’t get pregnant, but they exhibited all of the signs of a female omega without the possibility of a child. They were often sold, kept around for richer, more powerful alpha who didn’t want to waste a rut, but who weren’t ready for a child. Jace’s family would have sold him for riches.

  Dean couldn’t have him for free.

  “Hey. Look at me.”

  “Why would I look at you?”

  “Because I want you to,” Dean said.

  “And should I do what you want?” Jace snapped.

  “You know, you’re a lot feistier now than ten minutes ago. Maybe getting comfortable because I promised to protect you? Is this what an alpha does for an omega?”

  The chirping of the crickets in the aftermath of the alpha’s statement was comical. Jace looked over his shoulder with what he hoped was his most incredulous expression. The alpha was regarding Jace playfully, lips still turned up in a smirk that Jace hated to call cute. Dean was a good looking man - Jace wasn’t going to lie about that - but his thoughts were so much less attractive.

  “You know, babe, if you could have ‘em, we’d make some damn cute kids.”

  “What? No,” Jace choked, voice strangled. It was as if the alpha had struck gold with his pick axe. Jace squeezed his legs closed when an embarrassing wave of pheromones struck, the heady scent of it cloying up the air. He was shivering, trying to manage the heat of his body against the chilled rain water that was pattering against his skin. “If you have to talk, talk about something else.”

  Dean huffed and then went quiet.

  The white noise of an incoming thunderstorm was ringing through the trees. There was no lightening, but a soft rumble was somewhere in the distance, looming. Jace stared at the foliage around him, eyes bouncing from one bushel to the othe
r, one dead leaf to the next. As hard to acknowledge as it was, just having Dean behind him made him feel so much safer. His heat ebbed and flowed, each crest just a series of shivers that lead to another burst of scent from between his legs. In response, the occasional chuffing or sounds of the alpha scenting the air cut through the quiet noises of the evening woods.

  “You know,” Dean mumbled after a fashion. “I’ve lived out here since I was a kid.”

  “Yeah?”

  “These woods aren’t a joke. There are a lot of bad people who come through here, and they don’t care if it’s wrong to hurt you. They’ll do it anyway,” Dean continued. The alpha’s voice was low and gruff. “I don’t know you from your mama, but… I don’t want you to get hurt. You get that, right? I’m not here to offend you or anything.”

  “I know,” Jace said. He looked over his shoulder again, the position craning his neck oddly. Dean was staring up at the treetops. They seemed to be the same age, fairly young adults with a curiosity that made their eyes shine like stars. From the side, Dean was handsome. “I don’t want to be here, Dean. I just don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was lucky to run into you.”

  Monthly Series Release: 04-25-2020.

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