Jax breathes out heavily, then breathes in through his mouth, resisting the urge to hold his nose.
The heat pheromones don’t smell bad, but they do fog up his head and stop his brain from functioning the way he prefers it to.
He needs to check on the omega but the door to the examination room is closed, and Dr Barnes’ beta scent is just discernable beneath it.
Whoever the omega is, he’s in good hands or at least competent ones.
Jax heads to his office first, heading straight to the second drawer in his desk where he finds a small bottle filled with white tablets.
He pours a couple into his palm and stares at them. Heat blockers. One a day is supposed to do the trick, and he takes them as regular as clockwork. They’ve worked just fine so far.
But with Gray now staying in the packhouse and the reaction his body has been having to him…
Jax swallows two without water, grimacing as they go down, then leaves his office for the examination room.
He knocks twice and hears ‘Come in,’ almost immediately.
He enters a fog of hormones, and has to concentrate to clear his head, something that would be far less of a problem for the two betas standing by the bed.
Dr Barnes has his back to him, and is bent over the examination bed, his shoulders moving as he attends to the patient. An agency nurse stands beside him, as intent on the patient as Barnes.
Michael Barnes is a short, thin beta with a fondness for puns that come out at inappropriate times. This is his third year on the Winterstoke mating run.
In two steps, Jax is beside the bed and wishing he wasn’t.
The omega is barely conscious, although how much is down to his injuries and how much to the heat is debatable.
He’s familiar. He was at registration: a tall dark-haired man with a sharp nose and a curved mouth that turned up at one corner when he smiled. Jax remembered him because, at twenty-eight, he seemed old for a mating run.
He’d come in with a pair of alphas who had authorised his forms with the reported permission of their pack leader. His neck had been smooth on both sides and Jax had wondered how the man had managed to last so long in a traditional pack without being officially mated.
His neck is no longer smooth at all. It’s a red, fleshy mess on both sides.
It’s this that Barnes is dabbing with antiseptic before he sews up the worst of it.
The nurse is holding the omega’s hand. She makes soft soothing noises at every deep breath and soft moan.
“Damn mess,” Barnes says without looking up. “I don’t know what that fool alpha thought he was doing.”
Jax suppresses a rush of annoyance. Barnes is a good doctor. He’s efficient and he’s a beta making him a safer bet than the glut of alpha medics out there, but he can be a judgey ass in Jax’s opinion. Most of his knowledge of alpha/omega behavior comes from bad movies and ridiculous stereotypes.
He’s right about it being a damn mess, though.
It’s also an odd mess. Someone has ripped into the man’s neck with sharp wolf teeth, the pattern of the damage makes that clear, but the omega’s scent glands haven’t been penetrated. Whoever did it, wasn’t attempting to claim him.
They weren’t attempting to kill him either. Instead, the wound is carefully shallow as if the attacker had scraped along the skin over and over again while trying to avoid deep bites.
And it was an attacker. No matter what Barnes or anyone else might think, no omega would sign up for this. No matter how strong their heat was.
The thought makes Jax’s gaze slip down from the injury at the man’s neck.
A tell-tale rash of tiny red spots over the omega’s chest confirm Jax’s suspicions.
His heat has been artificially induced. It’s not uncommon on a run, but it’s rarely a good idea and even more rarely the idea of the omega themselves.
As if reading his mind, Barnes says “I just gave him 10cc of pherocretamol. The heat should die down in a few hours.”
“Good,” Jax says. “Has his pack been notified?”
Barnes shakes his head without looking up. “No idea who he even is yet. Want to take care of that?” He nods towards the yellow band on the man’s left wrist.
“Sure,” Jax says. He gets a pair of scissors from the supply cabinet. He can feel the heat rising from the man’s skin as he slides the scissors underneath the band and snips it off. “Is Gregor around? His truck’s still outside.”
“Probably still in the showers. I believe he carried this fellow for over half an hour. He was as flushed as our boy here by the time he made it into the clinic. Raced off like a dog with his tail between his legs as soon as he put him down. Probably still washing now.” Barnes snorts louder than he needs to.
Sometimes Jax wishes that betas could swap places with omegas or alphas just for one day during a heat. Then there’d be a lot less sniggering and a lot more sympathy, but Jax has always known when to pick his battles. This is not one of those times.
“Let me know if you need me,” he says, meaning it but not expecting Barnes to need it.
For all his faults, Barnes knows what’s he’s doing when it comes to the human body, even if he treats people like machines that simply need to have their parts serviced or subject to a change of oil.
“Will do,” the beta murmurs. He hasn’t looked Jax in the eye once in the entire exchange, but it’s not personal. Jax knows how it goes.
He heads back to his office, grateful to leave the hormone-heavy room. He passes the showers on the way, the sound of water still running even though Gregor must have been in there at least half an hour already.
Jax closes the door to keep the pheromones out, takes a seat at his desk and logs into his PC.
Three minutes later, he’s jotting down the contact number for the next of kin for Cole Bennett, aged twenty-eight of Fort Gosford, of the Fort Gosford pack. His records confirm he’s never been mated, although this is his fourth run.
Bennett must be quick, Jax thinks with some respect. Not many omegas manage to outrun the run alphas that many times in a row. Cole Bennett must be motivated. It’s probably also the reason for the artificial heat. Jax guesses his pack weren’t planning on him coming home for a fourth season in a row.
For the millionth time, he thanks his lucky stars that it would never occur to his brothers to force him to go on a run because they couldn’t be bothered to feed an omega they couldn’t mate with.
However Cole Bennett had managed to evade alphas so far might have been a mystery but it was also at an end.
Jax sighs and picks up the phone to call Adam. Sometimes mating runs go wrong, and it looks like it’s going to be one of those years.
GRAY
flowers and dinner
Gray paces the tiny room. Back and forth, back and forth. There aren’t too many steps you can take either way. Two to the bed. Three strides to the door.
He has two feet, not four and the floor is hard and smooth underneath bare human toes.
And then another three strides back.
Is he supposed to stay here? Adam didn’t make it clear. He is allowed downstairs, but he can scent the other omega from here. He’s downstairs somewhere, in the kitchen perhaps.
Ben, Adam called him. Whoever he is, he’s scared of Gray or maybe just scared of other alphas. His scent is streaked with fear.
Gray doesn’t want to risk upsetting him. That would upset Adam, and it would upset Jax. There’s been enough fear.
Somewhere in the back of his head, he recognizes the thought as a human one.
Gray decides to stay where he is until the scent of omega disappears.
His arm feels heavy and hot in the white plastic cast, and pain jolts up it with every step on the wooden floorboards.
Two steps across, two back. Three to the door. Three back to the window.
No wonder humans are all insane. How else could anyone cope with being stuck in such a tiny box for a prolonged period of time?
&n
bsp; Another two steps forward, another two back.
Gray doesn’t have the medicine that Jax gave him either. The ones that are supposed to dull the pain. They’re still in the room at the clinic.
The box at the clinic. Jax wanted him to stay in a box too.
There are too many thoughts swirling around Gray’s brain. He’s not used to having do this much thinking. Life as a wolf is much simpler.
It’s brighter too: the world is made up of a wonderment of scents and sounds, now dulled and superseded by endless thinking.
Thinking is just another human box, he thinks, but this time made up of his own head.
As soon as the arm is healed, he wants to shift and never have to be a human again. Except for Jax.
Gray wants Jax to shift with him and be a wolf with him the way wolves are supposed to be.
He’s not sure Jax will agree to that. Scratch that, he knows Jax won’t.
The scent of freedom drifts in from the open window: forest and trees, and the wind rushing down from the mountain, carrying the scents of hunting alphas and running heat-driven omegas.
Gray doesn’t like having them so close. Usually, his father took them higher up the mountains during the mating run season.
Humans are all insane, his father used to say. Keep away from them.
Gray’s father is never far from his mind. When Isaiah was alive, he was always just there: the biggest wolf that Gray ever saw.
He saw him rarely in human form, but as a wolf, he was enormous, standing easily head-and-shoulders over anyone else in the pack.
The only person who ever came close in size was his father’s own litter mate, a gray-eyed wolf like himself. Unlike Gray, his uncle had pale silver fur and a dark muzzle that he used to snap at any cubs who used to venture too close.
Gray has been thinking about his uncle a lot recently too.
Before the night in the den, Gray hadn’t thought about the silver wolf in years. There had been no reason to.
But now, he remembers the challenge, and the snarling and the blood. His father had won, of course. The silver wolf had been banished, and the gray-eyed cub grew into a gray-eyed wolf who never gave him another second’s thought.
The gray-eyed man, on the other hand, is thinking about him a lot.
The silver wolf hung around the pack for months after he lost his challenge, always at the peripherals, getting thinner and more haggard until one day he disappeared completely.
Gray can’t help wondering what happened to him. Did he die? Did he give up? Was he out there somewhere living among the humans?
The thought is stuck in his head, impossible to shake loose.
He’ll have to ask Jax. If Gray came down the mountain once to the Winterstokes, perhaps his uncle did too. They might know what happened to him. If Gray is never going to return to his pack, then his uncle is the only family he has left.
Hanging around humans is rubbing off on him, he thinks. In the pack, the world just seemed to happen, one thing at a time, without making any effort to try to direct it one way or the other.
Now, he needs to make decisions and try work out what other people are thinking. It’s exhausting.
Had the ash-scented wolf been thinking about the silver one? Did he realized that when he challenged his father and then the gray-eyed wolf, that it would mean that the two brothers would be separated forever?
Did he think it was worth the risk? Did he ever even consider that it might have been him who ended up running down the mountains to the humans instead of Gray?
Gray doesn’t think the ash-scented wolf was thinking at all, not any more than the gray-eyed wolf did. Gray thinks he just reacted.
Gray wants to ask him, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever have the chance.
The thought hits him in the pit of his stomach and he feels his mind reeling, making his vision blur and his blood turn to ice.
He may not ever see his brother again. He almost certainly will never see the rest of the pack. Not his little brother. Not his sister. Not the twins with their pale fur and silver eyes. None of them.
And definitely not his father.
He is completely on his own.
Two paces forward and…
No.
He’s not going to stay in the box, stuck in his own head.
He carefully sniffs the air. The scared omega is still down there somewhere, but he’s in the direction of the rooms where Gray found Jax.
Gray crosses the room again, three paces, but this time with determination. He reaches for the handle on the door with his free hand and turns.
He sniffs again on the landing. Adam is still here, in one of the bathrooms by the scent of him, but the other alpha scents that saturate the place are old and stale.
Gray is free to get out of the box.
He moves slowly, focusing on one steep step then the next until he is at the bottom of the tower with its landing, and the single room leading off of it.
The room is empty, but the window is closed and it doesn’t open when Gray pushes on it.
Gray studies it. There is a handle. No, that didn’t work.
There is another lever at the bottom, stuck in on another. There is something sticking out of it. Gray touches it one way, then the next.
It turns and the window comes loose.
Gray shakes his head. Humans always have to make things so complicated.
It’s not an easy climb, not with one arm throbbing and stuck by his chest, but he manages.
His human feet hit cool grass, and the mountain air sweeps over him, washing away the stink of humanity.
There it is: the scents he has been missing. Fir, pine, and composting needles, fresh river water and sun-warmed stone. This is what the world is supposed to smell like, he thinks, even as he’s aware of the press of the scents from the packhouse behind him.
The human clothes make it worse. They scratch and hang against his skin, like weird flat and peculiarly itchy fur.
He strips them off, struggling with the shirt, but when he does fling it to the ground, it’s with an enormous sense of satisfaction.
He wants to shift with a physical longing that he can feel from his head to his feet but he can’t. Jax made that clear. Trying to force his arm to become a leg while it’s still in the cast will rip it to pieces.
Out in the open air, everything feels more manageable. His head feels clearer.
The problems still remain. He has no idea how he is going to become a suitable mate for Jax, broken and without a pack, or how he could ever understand enough to live among the humans, but the problems feel surmountable.
If you try catch two rabbits at the exact same time, you will lose them both. Catch one first, then then other. Not advice from his father this time, but his mother.
It was good advice. First, he will heal, then he will find out how to be human.
Most importantly, he needs to find out how to be a good mate so that Jax will accept him.
You need to court him. Dinner and flowers. That kind of thing. That’s what Adam said. It feels like a good start to learn how to be human.
Gray starts walking, feeling the breeze against his skin, and luxuriating in it. The meadow behind the packhouse is filled with flowers: there are small white ones, tiny blue bells, and the bright yellow ones that turn to white puffs when summer is at its end.
Does it matter which flowers he gets? He wishes he’d thought to ask. Perhaps he should get as many kinds as he can.
He sniffs the air trying to scent out the flowers.
His nose leads him to the right to another building: an odd one. Its walls are made of glass and it smells of soil, decaying plant matter, and flowers.
The glass door opens easily. There are rows and rows of flowers: big ones and small ones in dozens of colors and sizes.
This must be what Adam was talking about. Gray sets about collecting as many as he can.
JAX
shivers and rabbits
A knock sou
nds at the door. Jax looks up. Gregor’s tousled head appears around the doorframe.
“Is this a good time?” his brother asks.
“As good as any,” Jax replies.
Gregor sinks into the armchair opposite with a deep sigh as if he’s forgotten what sitting down is like.
With two attacks in twenty-four hours, he probably has. By the look of him, he’s been on his feet for a long time, and a good part of that was struggling to carry an omega-in-heat down a mountain.
Jax is surprised his brother is capable of standing at all and hadn’t just fallen asleep in the shower. Perhaps he had. He was in there a long while.
Gregor rubs at his beard and looks up with tired eyes. “That beta doctor whatisname—”
“Barnes,” Jax supplies.
“Right, him,” Gregor says and Jax knows that name went in one ear and out the other. “He said you were looking up the name of the omega who just came in.”
Jax rechecks the screen to make sure he’s got the name right, then says “His name is Cole Bennett, Fort Gosford pack.”
In the chair in front of him, Gregor sits up straight. “What?”
“You know him?”
There’s a short silence, then “Not him.” Gregor uncrosses his legs, frowns, recrosses them. “I know of the pack. Shit.”
He stares at Jax, but Jax gets the impression he’s not really looking at him at all, and that there are wheels turning in his brother’s head.
“Are they going to be a problem?” Jax asks. It didn’t occur to him that a pack might get too possessive over an omega they were trying to get rid of.
“What?”
Jax repeats his question.
“I don’t know. Maybe. They’re not bad,” Gregor replies, pinching the bridge of his nose, “but they are ruthless and they’re sneaky. Their leader’s a fellow named Aidan Ronmin.
He’s one of those wolves who came out of nowhere and fought their way to the top. He’s got an instinct for weakness. It might not be a good idea for him to want to take a closer look at us right now. You got a number for them?”
Winterstoke Wolves Collection : An MM Mpreg Shifter Romance Bundle Page 27
