In the Desperation (Find You Book 1)

by Cait Forester

  I understood.

  “A few of us have set out signals,” Riley added, but even now, with them gone, her voice was a low whisper. Just in case. “Individual things, that they wouldn’t know about.”

  “Wouldn’t the rest of the pack get suspicious if they couldn’t get through on the phones, though?” I asked. I knew Dad wouldn’t be expecting much from me. I’d texted him at the last town while the signal was clear, and he knew that I hadn’t known whether or not I’d contact Uncle Harold until he got there. We’d done something similar before - one or two weeks as personal retreats, off grid, out in the boondocks alone. We were a close pack of two, but he was still my dad; we got sick of each other every once in a while. Not often, mind, but we’d gone off alone enough that he wouldn’t think it was strange when he couldn’t get in touch with me.

  Sara shook her head. “Keeping the territory secure has meant meddling a little bit with our modern amenities. Last time the snows took out some telephone lines, it took weeks to get them repaired.”

  “So we’re fucked,” I said bluntly.

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  There was silence as we each digested the events of the day. Then - “Are you really engaged?”

  I scrubbed a hand across my face. “No,” I said. “Not even a little bit.”

  “Well, shit.”

  I waited until they had settled me in. My bags were moved from near the entryway into the guest bedroom, with it’s comfortable mattress and abundance of colorful quilts. “But,” Sara said, “you’re welcome to puppy pile with us in my room, especially if they’ve been particular assholes during the day.”

  We fetched in more wood for the woodstove, enough to keep it going throughout the night and then some.

  They offered me some leftover lasagna for supper, which I took in eagerly. I hadn’t realized how starved I felt.

  And then, events and food well on their way to digestion, I couldn’t hold it back any longer.

  “Tell me about the Run?” I asked.

  The thing about omega runs was that they were archaic. I didn’t know a pack in the Americas that still practiced them in truth - although there were a few traditionalists who used them symbolically with couples who were already engaged or mated.

  Simply put, an omega run was just that - on a full moon, usually in January or February, but sometimes in October or November - omegas of a pack were made to run for their lives. Literally. The alpha who caught them was given mating rights over them and forcibly bonded them together. It was barbaric.

  Over the centuries, the ‘rules’ had relaxed. It became a part of courtship ritual rather than a subjugation. But there were still a few too many asshole alphas who took advantage of physically weaker omegas, and eventually the concept of having a run fell into obscurity.

  I sort of got the idea that ‘fun courtship ritual’ wasn’t exactly what Lenny had in mind.

  “I’m pretty sure that alpha that was fixated on you? Jessup? That he came up with the idea,” Sara said. “Our alphas are due back a couple days after the full moon; I think the idea is that by terrorizing our unmated omegas, they’ll have an advantage when the fighting begins.”

  I could see that. I’m sure they were counting on weak, beaten omegas who couldn’t fight back and whose humiliation would work our pack’s own alphas into a frenzy. I hoped they were just overlooking the other side of that tactical coin - omegas so enraged and wounded that they weren’t afraid to strike back and rip out the throats of any asshole that came near them.

  But - “The full moon is only ten days away!” I said.

  Riley nodded. “That means we’ve got ten days to get you in fighting shape, cuz. Welcome home.”

  Yeah, I thought glumly. Welcome home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We made a plan.

  Uncle Harold had been a strategist - he’d had to be, as ruler of the pack. But even if he hadn’t been so attuned to the pack’s welfare, he still would have immersed himself in his hobby - maps.

  Lenny hadn’t found them when he’d sacked their house after the fight because they’d been planning to do some remodelling, and all of Harold’s maps had been stored away in the attic until after his office was renovated.

  We pulled them down. He had the usual maps of the state, and the country, and the world. He’d been a bit obsessed with French history, so he had maps of France, too.

  But it was the local maps we were interested in. He had several, ranging from computer printouts to hand drawn works of art from the late 1700’s. Put together, we now had access to information on just about every bend in Bolderman’s Creek, every well-hidden cave in a twenty mile radius, and every topographical uprise which would slow us down as we ran uphill.

  These maps were what was going to keep us safe - and hopefully out of hands of sick fuckers like Ellis Jessup and Lenny.

  “I think you should go this way,” Riley told Sara, running her fingertip along a path. “You’re small enough to fit in through those brambles, the ones here.” She put her finger down to mark the spot. “You’ll have a rough time getting through them, but they’ll have a rougher time following you. They’ll expect you to come out over here -” she moved her finger just slightly, “but if you go this way, you can hide in the trees until the Run is over at dawn.”

  “That’s if they stick to the rules,” Sara reminded her. Omega runs typically lasted dusk to dawn, and any alphas who hadn’t found an omega by then were shit outta luck.

  “They will,” Riley said confidently. “I’ve been watching Lenny. He’s an idiot and a bully, but for some reason, he’s actually into this tradition stuff. I’ve been thinking about when he cheated while he fought dad… I don’t think he views it as cheating.”

  “What?” Sara’s voice was pure ice.

  Riley took in a breath. Their father’s death was a sore spot for both of them, but she knew Sara wasn’t going to be happy with what she said next. “I think he was just... playing by a different rule book?” Riley looked around her, then went to grab a book off her father’s bookshelf.

  Playing by a different rule book.

  I bent to study the maps myself while Riley was explaining her theories to Sara, but something about the phrase lodged into my mind and niggled out a long-forgotten piece of lore.

  The Moon Mother looks after her children.

  While I’d been studying for my degree, there were times when we’d come across some information that the humans didn’t understand. It wasn’t always about shifters. Sometimes it was references to the fae - which humans knew about, but didn’t know about, if you get my meaning. Dragons. Et cetera.

  In this case, they’d ascribed the findings to rituals performed by a lunar cult, but I needed only a short look at the document to know that I was reading about the old ceremonies of my own people.

  If Lenny could play by a different rule book - reviving long forgotten traditions that needed to stay buried, couldn’t I do the same? Or hell, I didn’t have to do it alone. If all of us omegas across the territory refused to play ball with these invaders, and instead stood in our own power, calling out to the Moon Mother and asking her protection, what might be the result?

  Of course, that collectivism was the problem.

  I called out to my cousins, cutting across the argument they were having over the dusty tome that Riley had selected. “Maybe there’s another way!”

  I was excited. It was… a long shot, but the reports that I’d read had alluded to the rituals actually working. I explained my idea: instead of participating in the Run, we’d band together and call down the Moon Mother in ceremony, instead. We’d ask her for the protection of an alpha mate. She would send the protection. We might still have a battle on our hands before the rest of the pack made it back home, but we didn’t have to submit to a barbaric mating ritual, either - at least, not on Lenny’s terms.

  When I was finished talking, I looked at the girls. They looked at me.

  “You can’t be serious,�
�� Sara said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “You don’t even know if it will work!” she blew out, but beside her, Riley looked hopeful.

  “According to the sources - ” I started, but Sara interrupted me.

  “How do you know about that anyway?” she said. “Did you get tutoring with another pack’s elders?”

  I tried to explain that I’d gotten a degree in folklore and mythology, and I’d run across the ceremony in my studies.

  Riley’s face dropped. “I think I have to be with Sara,” she said softly. “Hearing about a ceremony like this from someone who experienced it, or whose family did… hearing about it from elders is one thing. But from human books?” She shook her head. “I just don’t think we can risk it. Who knows if the rite has been changed, or whose pack they killed to get the information.”

  I huffed out a sigh. “We’re making plans to run and hide,” I said. “And if we can’t run fast enough, or if they find our hiding place, we’re done for.”

  “And if we don’t run at all, and your idea doesn’t work, we don’t even have a chance,” Sara countered.

  The next few days were full of preparations. Sara and Riley were free to leave the property, and were allowed to check on the omegas and children at the pack house. But as soon as the ever-present patrols realized that I intended to go with them, all hell broke loose.

  I was frogmarched back into the house and told to stay put. Lenny came by himself to explain that he thought I was a flight risk and that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave my cousins’ house until the Run.

  I asked him if he would let me go back to my own house, instead.

  He fed me some bullshit line about it not being habitable for a ‘delicate omega’.

  I just took that to mean that he wasn’t willing to kick out his knothead supporters.

  It also made me angry. That was my dead mother’s house. They had no right to live there, in amongst our things. I showed him exactly what I thought of his bullshit when I shifted in Sara’s living room and came at his throat.

  I didn’t succeed, of course, but I made my displeasure known, and that’s what counted.

  Of course, Sara wasn’t particularly pleased that I broke a lamp when I knocked into an end table, either. Fortunately it wasn’t sentimental to them; I promised I’d replace it when all of this was over.

  It did make things awkward, though - my confinement, and their limited freedom. The bond between them as sisters and packmates was ten times stronger than any bond they shared with me. We were cousins, yes - but even though I’d moved away as a child in response to grief and loss, we were instinctual creatures. Logically, they knew I’d left for good reason. Emotionally, they felt like I turned my back on them and the pack.

  Still, they didn’t want to just leave me alone. We were in this together now, whether we willed it or not. It might not be safe to leave me in their house on my own, lest Ellis Jessup come back around - but I wasn’t the only one who had drawn unwelcome attention. Sara and Riley were both omega daughters of the former alpha, and sisters to the next true alpha. There were plenty in the band that Lenny had brought with him that wanted to take advantage of their position.

  In the end, we settled on their going together whenever they left the immediate vicinity of the house, but not staying away too long. While they were gone - and even while they were home - I trained.

  Have you ever tried to train for a harsh, four paws run over rough terrain when you were confined to two legs inside a mid-size house?

  It wasn’t easy.

  The first day of the full moon dawned bright and cheerful. There was some snow on the ground, but it wasn’t fresh. Birds dipped in and out of the trees, warbling as they searched for food; when I stood by the window I could see the bright red fur of a fox slink through the brush.

  The Run would be held that night. It was traditional to hold runs on the first night of the full moon, and to feast during the other two nights of the moon’s abundance before she began to wane again.

  I wondered whether or not Lenny was daft enough to hold a feast when it would be so very easy to poison the food, and then winced at how bloodthirsty I was becoming.

  We were all on edge. I knew that I should reserve my strength for later, but it was difficult to not give in to the impulse to pace. In the end, Sara and Riley and I each took turns walking the length of the hall corridor.

  They came for us in the afternoon. Lenny himself knocked on the door, ushering us out and herding us into an old van. I snorted at the cliche of a creeper abducting their victims in a rusted old claptrap, but I didn’t dare speak. My bravado wasn’t lacking, I told myself. It was merely… resting.

  We were gathered on the pack grounds - a communal piece of land meant to be used for festivals and rituals that would bring joy or abundance or protection to the pack. The pack was fairly large; there were seven unmated omegas present, including myself. Three of us men, the rest women. I didn’t recognize any of the women. The men looked familiar, but I wasn’t able to confirm; there wasn’t any room for idle chatter. We were all silent, though Riley had grabbed my hand with her left and Sara’s with her right.

  “It’s almost time to begin,” Lenny announced, and I gave Riley’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

  “I’m sure you all are familiar with how a mating run works,” he continued, but there was a hint of warning in his voice. To my surprise, it was directed at the group of alphas that stood a few feet away from us. Sara’d said that Lenny had invaded with a group of thirty; only ten seemed prepared to bring down a mate like they were hunting prey. “In five minutes, I’ll give the omegas the signal that they are to begin. Five minutes after that, I will shoot this pistol,” he brandished his gun so that all of us could see it, “to signal that the alphas here are welcome to begin making their advances. Alphas, you have until dawn to catch and mate an omega. When the sun is over the horizon, this Run is over and any unmated omegas will be free to return to their homes unmolested.”

  “Like that’s going to happen!” one of the alphas jeered, and turned to us. “I expect all of you will be caught within an hour or two.”

  “Be that as it may,” Lenny said, his voice carrying. “We are claiming this territory on the traditional practices of our ancestors. Omegas, if you aren’t caught by dawn, you will be free to go; you have my word as your alpha.”

  “Not my alpha,” Sara muttered. I worried that her remark would be punished, but Lenny appeared to be deliberately ignoring her, and a fraction of the tension in my chest eased.

  I was primed to take off, but Lenny checked his watch and shook his head. We stood silent, waiting, but the alphas in their cloister started to whoop and heckle us, until a few broke off from the bunch.

  One of them was Jessup.

  Of course it was.

  I felt my skin crawl under his gaze, and as he stepped right up to me, I wrinkled my nose at the stink of his breath. I tried to take a step back, but he reached out and grabbed my shoulder, and then laughed when I growled at him.

  “I just want you to know,” he said, and licked his lips slowly. “I’m coming for you. Get ready for the ride of your life, sweet thing.”

  Riley jerked me backwards, out of his grip. “Get ready to eat dirt, fuckface,” she snarled, and I thought he was going to come at her, except that then Lenny was calling out again.

  “Omegas, you’ve got two minutes to go!”

  We all knew what that meant. You could enter a mating run on two legs… but a wolf was far more efficient on four. And if you didn’t want to get caught? You’d make that shift. Each of us had a choice to shift with our clothes on - they might rip, or they might tangle - or start off as a human and shift once we had gained some distance on the alphas. The trade off was that it would take up valuable time.

  Or we could strip down in front of these hungry alphas and shift before the run started.

  There was no way in hell I was going to do that in front of Jessup.

>   Luckily, we’d come prepared. Sara and Riley and I shrugged off our outer clothes - our coats, boots, and what have you - and then shifted still wearing our inner clothes in defiance of any alphas who wanted to take a peek. When the fabric wrapped around our legs like a hobble, we took turns helping each other get cleaned off.

  All at once we were out of time. Lenny gave the signal, and we were off.