by Tanya Chris
“Of course, of course.” Devin waved his hand. “I frankly don’t care what’s on his paperwork, but Ryker, I think you ought to know what you’re missing before you get in too deep with this beta. Let me take you to the omega bar tonight. Have you ever had a real omega?”
“Gage is a real omega,” Ryker said between gritted teeth, not sure why he was still bothering. He wasn’t going to convince Devin of anything and he’d never let Gage within a mile of the prince anyway, not considering the asshole’s reputation. He just wanted to get away from Devin and home to Gage so he could sex up his omega, but Devin had thrown an arm around his shoulders and was attempting to lead him back in the direction he’d come from.
“Can I tell you about knotting?”
“I know about knotting.” He tried to wrest his head out from under Devin’s arm, but Devin was a big alpha, bigger even than Ryker, bigger than any of them, and he used it to his advantage.
“All right, sure,” Devin said. “I’ve knotted a beta before. The knot goes in, no question. Just a matter of forcing it hard enough, right?”
Ooh, ick. Ryker really, really liked forcing his knot into Gage. The harder he had to push to get it in, the better it felt when he did. The in-and-out and growing friction as his knot swelled was absolutely delicious, like no other sensation on earth, and last night, when he’d popped his fully-swollen knot through Gage in one go? Fuck, wow. It was a thorny dilemma because he’d only gotten that one pop last night, but that one pop had been all he’d needed to blow a gigantic load.
But Devin was making Ryker’s absolutely favorite act sound horrible, making it sound rapey and disrespectful and like something he was doing to Gage instead of with Gage. Ryker loved being the big bad alpha ramming his knot into the squealing omega, but he’d never do it if Gage wasn’t screaming in pleasure, if Gage didn’t come just as hard as he did when he finally sank that sucker in.
“But if you haven’t knotted an omega, you haven’t really knotted,” Devin went on. “And heat? Oh Great Moon, let me tell you about heat.”
“I actually really have to go,” Ryker said, pushing the words out as fast as he could. “I have a thing across the … so I’d better just ...” He managed to get his head out from under Devin’s arm and almost escaped, but Devin grabbed his hand as if to shake it and Ryker fell for the tactic.
“Look, if you’re happy, I’m happy, but I heard Angel talking to Marta about this caste-change thing for a possible mating license and what kind of prince would I be if I didn’t make sure you had all the facts?”
“Did Marta say it was OK?” Ryker asked breathlessly. He hadn’t seen Angel yet today.
“Oh, you know Marta. It’s all anything-goes with her these days. Females mating with females, omegas free to fuck around—and hey, that’s a good one, right? Does us all a lot of good, that change. So why not betas checking the omega box? She doesn’t care.”
“That’s great.”
Devin still had hold of his hand, so Ryker shook it hard. Devin was an ass, but that was really great news.
“Thank you, and thank your mother for me. OK, gotta go.” He made his escape, walking backwards and half-waving, half-bowing to the confused prince as he went until he was far enough away to turn his back on him and then—fuck skipping—he ran.
“Gage!” He burst through the door to his house like a typhoon, excited about Head Alpha Marta’s ruling and, well, just excited, but inside the house, something was wrong.
There were no yummy cooking smells coming from the kitchen, for one thing, and there was no naked omega kneeling by the door for another. He took a deep sniff and followed his nose to the far side of the room where half his bookcase now lay on the floor. In the midst of the piles of books and DVDs was Gage.
Gage was naked and kneeling, but that was where the resemblance to the homecoming scene Ryker had imagined ended.
“Gage?”
Gage hadn’t even looked up at him. He was more curled-up than kneeling, bent over himself with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head between his arms. The smell coming off him was just awful.
He went over and scooped Gage up and carried him to the couch, Gage a limp, unresisting weight in his arms. He wanted to find whoever had made Gage feel like this and kill him, except he knew who’d done it. It was him. He’d known all along that the porn was going to be a problem. Why hadn’t he gotten rid of it already?
“Little one? Come on, talk to me. Don’t be mad. I’m sorry I’m such a horndog. I’ll throw it out—every last piece of it. Please don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.” Gage’s voice was heartbreakingly small.
“Well, you’d be right to hate me. That stuff is disrespectful to omegas and … and to you.”
“But it’s what you want.”
“Well, it’s—” He shifted Gage in his lap. This was the problem. It was what he wanted. And it was what they’d been doing. They’d been acting out his porn playlist. “A wolf gets lonely alone,” he hedged. “Before you, I didn’t have an omega, so I made do.”
“Why not?”
“Huh?”
“Why didn’t you have an omega? If that—” Gage raised a dispirited hand to wave at the pile behind him “—was what you wanted, why didn’t you go get it?”
“I never thought— I mean, I wanted some pretty specific things and I didn’t think I could get them, because you’re right. That is what I wanted—what you and I have. That’s what I want. And maybe you just want to do this for a couple of weeks while your sister gets settled in, but it’s what I want all the time. Before I met you, I never thought I’d find an omega who wanted that too.”
Even in the Western Pack where he’d grown up, very few couples lived like that, and the few who did weren’t doing it because the omega wanted it that way. That was the trick. He could’ve claimed an omega and forced him into any lifestyle he wanted, but that was horrible. That was Devin. It made Ryker sick inside that it was him too. He should never have taken advantage of Gage. He should’ve stuck with his porn.
“I’m messed up,” he told Gage.
“What do you mean you’re messed up?”
“The things I want—the things I want to do to you—they’re messed up.”
“But I like those things.”
“Then why are you upset about the porn?”
“Because I’m not that wolf. I see now who you want and I can never be that for you. I’m not mad at you. I’m just tired. Just so tired of not being enough.”
“Gage.” Ryker stood Gage up on his feet in front of the couch and tilted up his chin so there was no way Gage could avoid looking at him and seeing how much he meant what he was going to say. “You’re more than enough. You’re more than I ever dreamed of. Stay with me and I’ll never look at another piece of omega porn again. I promise.”
Gage’s face registered doubtful hope. “Dr. Petra says it’ll be a year before we know how the shots will work, so I guess I’ll be around for a while. If you don’t mind me staying.”
“Gods, yes.” A year wasn’t forever, but it was better than a couple of weeks. “You’re not mad about the porn?” He still felt embarrassed by just how large and dirty his collection was.
“No, you can keep it. I don’t care.”
“I’m getting rid of it anyway.”
Gage shrugged.
“Are you disgusted by me? Now that you know I’m a hyper-traditional alpha brute?”
Gage smiled, the first smile he’d given Ryker since he got home. “I like that you’re a hyper-traditional alpha brute, and it’s not like that’s new information. I agreed to your rules, didn’t I?”
“So we could do this forever, right?”
“I said I’m staying a year, not forever. We don’t know if Dr. Petra can change my scent or not.”
And if she couldn’t, Gage wouldn’t stay. Ryker saw how it was. But if Gage didn’t mind Ryker being the pervert that he was, didn’t that mean they could be together wherever the
y ended up? He wasn’t excited about the prospect of living in human territory, but Gage was it for him. He wanted Gage to be his mate.
“I got some good news today.” He pulled Gage back onto his lap and sniffed at his neck to verify that his anxiety was dissipating. “Head Alpha Marta says the pack will recognize you as an omega.”
“Recognize how?”
“Like on your citizenship papers if you move here permanently, or if we got, you know, mated.”
“Mated?” Gage shifted off his lap. Ryker’s hands reluctantly let him go free. “Is that something you’d want to do?”
“Well, yes.” He felt very unsure about saying it. Gage had been mad at him a moment ago, and even though he didn’t seem mad now, he’d just said a year, not forever. Mating was forever. “I thought maybe we could go down to Town Hall on Monday, fill out the forms.”
Gage frowned.
“It doesn’t have to be Monday,” Ryker tried. “I know that’s not much time to plan. If, you know, you wanted to make a thing of it. Have a party or whatever. We could set a date.”
Gage frowned harder. Ryker sniffed in a fresh whiff of distress. This wasn’t going well.
“Or we could wait, I guess. No hurry since you’re sticking around for a year. I realize we haven’t known each other very long.”
“How long does it take?” Gage asked grumpily.
“See, that’s what I was saying. I’m ready now. If you are.”
Gage didn’t look ready. Or smell ready.
“Or just forget I said anything,” Ryker said. “It’s not important. Look, I want you to be happy, whatever makes you happy. So you’ll stay for a year and work with Dr. Petra and you’ll live here with me. I’ll get rid of the porn.”
“The porn’s fine.”
“Then you’ll stay? And we can keep doing like we’ve been doing?”
Gage shrugged. “I should make dinner. I haven’t even started anything yet and you must be hungry.” He went over to the kitchen and banged around in the cupboards, his body droopy and his scent ugly.
Ryker had no idea how to fix it.
~~~
Ryker stirred the trash barrel, trying to get a good flame going. DVDs didn’t burn, as it turned out. They made a noxious, black smoke and curled into shriveled cones, but they didn’t burn. Even paperbacks, which were made of paper so you’d think they’d burn, didn’t exactly go up in flames. They became sooty bricks that smoldered instead.
He’d carted the contents of his porn bookcase outside where it sat in piles waiting a turn in the trash barrel, but he’d been at it for hours without having made much progress and the skies were threatening snow. Maybe if he left the porn outside it would freeze to death.
Burning things ought to be fun—one of those things wolves loved to do even though it required a human form—but he was hardly in the mood for it, not after last night, not with everything still unresolved between him and Gage.
“What are you polluting our skies with?”
Ryker jumped. He looked over to find Angel pawing through his porn collection. Angel shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him like that, but the toxic fumes must have disguised the scent of another alpha approaching.
“Sorry.”
“What happened? The new boyfriend find the porn collection?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Wow, Ryker. This is some good stuff. You mind if I grab a few of these?”
“What would you want them for?” He would be embarrassed that Angel was seeing his taste in porn, but Gage had already seen it, so what difference did it make? Gage’s opinion was the only one that mattered to him and he’d royally fucked that up.
“What would I want them for?” Angel repeated. “What do you think? To watch, of course. Leo and I could have some fun with these.”
“You and Leo don’t do shit like that.”
“You don’t think so?” Angel straightened up. He had Captured Omega I, II and III in his hands. Each cover featured a terrified omega, clothes in tatters, a chain trailing from his ankle, barely ahead of the claws of the big, bad alpha wolf chasing him. “Catch-the-omega is one of our favorite games. Maybe we can get a few ideas. If nothing else, I guarantee these’ll get me laid, so thanks for the action.” The prince winked.
Ryker didn’t know how to process this piece of information. Leo was all about omega rights. He wouldn’t even accept a claim, for Moon’s sake. Angel had left the pack because he was so pissed about how omegas were being treated. There was no way the two of them played catch-the-omega.
“You look like I just blew your mind,” Angel said.
“You did. I’m having a hard time picturing the two of you in those roles.”
“Because if I tried to pull that shit in public, Leo would deck me. He could do it, too. I’ve seen him take down a full-grown alpha. But in the bedroom?” Angel grinned. “We know how to have fun.” Then his grin fell. “Maybe don’t tell him I told you that.”
“Yeah, sure.” Ryker went back to stirring the trash barrel. Maybe if he collected some of the fallen leaves? Those would burn, but would they burn long enough to set a DVD on fire? He wished he had some accelerant.
“So Gage is pissed, huh? He doesn’t approve of those kind of fantasies?”
“No, it’s not that exactly. He said it was OK. He just—” Ryker shrugged.
Gage had said it was OK, but then he’d been off all night. They hadn’t fucked. It was the first night since they’d met—excepting that night they’d been returning from human territory with Carmen in tow—that they hadn’t fucked. Hell, it was the first time they’d gone more than a couple of hours together without fucking.
Then Gage had slunk away right after breakfast that morning claiming he needed to see the doctor to get his shot. But how long could it take to get a shot? He’d been gone all day. It was the weekend and they could’ve spent the whole day in bed together if Ryker hadn’t fucked up somehow.
“I asked him to be my mate,” he blurted out.
“And based on this joyous mood you’re in, I take it that didn’t go well.”
“I think it made it worse somehow, but I don’t understand how.”
He told Angel what had happened when he’d gotten home the night before, about finding Gage in the puddle of porn on the floor all the way through to his proposal.
“You treated him like a beta,” Angel said.
“What?”
“How does an alpha mate with an omega?”
“Well, you just … claim them, I guess.”
“Exactly. You don’t ask an omega to take a trip down to Town Hall with you to fill out forms. That’s how you mate with a beta.”
“But you and Leo—”
Angel waved his hand. “Never mind me and Leo. You remember I said we like to play traditional roles in the bedroom but not outside of the bedroom?”
Ryker nodded.
“So for us a claim wasn’t the way to go, but Gage is a traditional omega and he wants to be treated like one.”
Damn. Ryker hadn’t thought of that. And then, when Gage had balked at going down to Town Hall, he’d suggested they take time to plan a reception, which was even worse. That was so beta. No wonder Gage had gotten upset.
“I just thought I should talk to him first,” he explained to Angel.
“Is that what you wanted to do?”
“No!” What he wanted to do was to tear a claiming bite into Gage’s neck, to let his drooling incisors drop into Gage’s tender skin and rip through it while his knot pulsed against Gage’s sweet spot and Gage whimpered beneath him.
“Is it what Gage would want?” Angel asked, his voice softer.
No. Gage would want to be claimed.
“But if I claim him, it’s irrevocable. I can’t just take away his agency like that. What about all those laws you and Leo are fighting to have passed? It’s not right.”
“Ryker.” Angel came over and pulled him away from the trash barrel. He pried the stick
Ryker had been using to stir with from his white-knuckled hands, then led him over to a log and sat down on it with him.
“The laws Leo and I are fighting for are designed to ensure that omegas aren’t forced into traditional roles that they don’t want to be in, and to make sure alphas aren’t deciding what omegas want on their behalf. The laws don’t prohibit omegas from assuming those roles if they want to assume them. That would go against the whole point of what we’re doing.”
He patted Ryker on the thigh.
“You and Gage can act out every story in your porn collection. It doesn’t break any laws here in North Leland.”
“What if it’s not acting though?”
“Is that what you want? To live like that?”
Ryker nodded, holding his breath as he waited to see if Angel was going to walk away and stop being his friend.
“I gotta tell you, it seems like a lot of fucking work to me. I mean, I’m glad Leo is Leo. I wouldn’t trade him in for a more traditional omega, but I’m not going to judge you for wanting one. As long as you’re sure Gage is on board with it, too.”
“I think so.” The more he thought about it, the more Angel’s theory about why Gage had been upset the night before made sense. Proposing had been the wrong way to go. He just wished he felt more certain that claiming was the right way to go.
“Let me ask you something,” Angel said. “If Gage told you he didn’t like something, would you stop?”
“Of course.”
Gage wouldn’t even have to tell him. He’d smell it the second something went wrong, which, now that he thought about it, he hadn’t smelled those times his teeth had nibbled warningly along Gage’s neck while they were knotted. Gage hadn’t flinched or emitted distress pheromones. No, he’d cocked his head, baring his neck to Ryker’s teeth. He wanted Ryker to claim him, had wanted it since that very first time.
Great Moon, he was such an idiot.
“I’m too stupid to even deserve Gage,” he said.
“The alpha who deserves Gage is the one who claims him like the omega he is,” Angel told him.
So that was that. The next time he got his hands on Gage, there was going to be a claim.
