by J. L. Wilder
It hurt Burton to think about it.
If they ever come back, he thought fervently, I’ll tear them apart. Nothing will stop me.
He was pulled from his thoughts by movement across the clearing. Marco emerged from among the trees, with Sophie close behind him.
Burton got to his feet. “You’re watching the fire?”
“Of course,” Cam said.
Burton jogged across the clearing, embraced Sophie, then pounded his fellow alpha on the shoulder. “Welcome back,” he said.
Sophie looked around. “What happens now?” she asked. “Do we pack up and go back to the cave?”
“No,” Burton said. “We’re staying out here for one more night.”
“We are?” Sophie asked.
“Bonfire party,” Marco explained.
She looked up at him. “You knew?”
“Of course I knew,” Marco said. “This was the plan all along. Now that the mating ceremony is done, we’re celebrating the growth of our family with a party. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Sophie bit her lip. “I suppose so,” she said.
What’s up with her? Burton frowned. She seemed anxious.
Marco rested a hand on her shoulder briefly. “Why don’t you go see if Cam needs any help with the fire?” he suggested. “You haven’t spent much time with the betas lately, and I know they’re eager to see you.”
A slight expression of relief crossed her face. “That sounds good,” she said and hurried over to where Cam squatted beside the flames.
Burton watched her go. “What’s her deal?” he asked. “She’s acting strange.”
“She’s worried,” Marco explained. “She thinks she’s going to disappoint us.”
“Disappoint us how?” Burton found the idea staggering. “She couldn’t disappoint us. There’s no way.”
“She’s worried she isn’t going to get pregnant,” Marco said.
“Is that all?” Burton laughed, relieved. “Of course she will. She’s an omega.”
“It’s probably hard for her to believe, though,” Marco said. “Think about it. The mating is over. She ought to be pregnant already.”
“I’m sure she is,” Burton said. “It’s not like we’d be able to tell by looking, for God’s sake.”
“I know that,” Marco said. “But she feels the same as she did a week ago. It must be hard to put your faith in the fact that something so monumental is happening in your body when you can’t even feel it.”
Burton nodded. “I guess that’s true,” he acknowledged. “But I don’t know why she’s worried about it. I mean, if she wasn’t pregnant for some reason, it’s not like it would be a problem. We’d just keep trying, and I’m sure it would happen soon enough.”
“Yeah, I know that and you know that,” Marco said. “She’s just having trouble with the idea. I mean, the last time she was pregnant, it took us all by surprise. There was never an interval of waiting and hoping. This is the first time she’s had to do that.”
Burton looked over at Sophie. She was sitting beside Cam now, staring into the flames of the bonfire. Burton could see that Cam was doing his best to talk to her, but Sophie was fairly nonresponsive, nodding or shaking her head at intervals but not bothering to speak.
“This is supposed to be a party,” he said unhappily. “She’s supposed to be celebrating. Enjoying herself. Not worrying about things outside our control.”
“I know, but I don’t want to put any pressure on her,” Marco said. “Stress is the worst thing for her right now. We just need to do our best to make her feel comfortable, even if that means all we do tonight is sit quietly by the fire. If it’s not a big party, that’s fine. We can have a party in a few days when we know for sure that the pregnancy has taken.”
Burton nodded. “You’re right,” he said. Even though all three of them were alphas together, all equal in rank and status, Burton often felt as though Marco and Ryker were wiser than he was. They were both a few years older, and he looked up to them and had gotten used to taking their advice. “What should I do?”
“She’s in good hands with Cam,” Marco said. “And I think we can count on him to come and let us know if she needs us. Why don’t you and I go fix some plates of food? We can bring plates to Cam and Sophie too, and then we’ll get an idea of whether or not they want us to join them.”
“Good idea,” Burton said, relieved to have something to do. “There’s still plenty of turkey left.”
Marco chuckled, breaking the tension a bit. “I still can’t believe Ryker rustled up a turkey,” he said. “What a strange, random thing to want.”
“Ryker comes from a pack that did human things, though,” Burton pointed out. “They probably had, you know, Thanksgiving dinner when he was a little kid.”
“Probably,” Marco agreed. “But it’s just so strange to think of Ryker living like that. He’s so wild now. Probably the wildest of all of us.”
“Hey,” Burton protested. “I thought I was the wildest.”
“You’re just a kid.” Marco wrapped an arm around the back of Burton’s neck and messed up his hair. Burton howled in protest and struggled his way free. When he stood upright, he saw that Marco was laughing.
“Dick,” he said, running his fingers through his hair.
“Don’t be so sensitive,” Marco said. “Besides, you made Sophie smile.”
“I did?” He started to turn toward her.
“Don’t look, idiot,” Marco said. “Come on, let’s get some of that turkey.”
The plates they had were made of river reeds that had been woven together to form a sort of mat. Burton picked one up and passed another to Marco. “Petra’s been experimenting with coating these in tree resin,” he said. “They were drying all day yesterday, so they should be good to go now. Her idea was that it would hold up better than the dried mud we use to make our water bowls, and it seems a little more sanitary too.”
“Yeah, they look good,” Marco agreed. He began piling meat onto his plate. “Put stuff for Cam and Sophie on that one, okay? This one is for you and me.”
Burton nodded. He picked up one of the turkey legs—they had deliberately saved it for Sophie, as a part of her celebration—and added a few more strips of turkey meat with Cam in mind. He gave them a few small fish, cooked but still on the bone—it would be easy enough to pick off the meat. “Too bad we don’t have any crawdads,” he said.
Marco nodded. “Sophie likes crawdads. But she probably shouldn’t eat shellfish right now anyway.”
“You don’t think?”
“I don’t know. I feel like it’s best for her to stick to the most basic diet possible,” Marco said. “Meat and berries. Throw some nuts on there too. You can’t have too much protein, right?”
“I don’t know,” Burton said. “You probably can. I’m not a nutritionist.” He shook his head. “We didn’t worry at all about this kind of stuff the last time she was pregnant, and everything turned out just fine.”
“I know,” Marco said. “But I can’t help feeling that we got lucky. I suppose it’s the same as the way Sophie feels like we got lucky by getting pregnant at all.”
“Yeah, it is,” Burton said. “There’s no reason for anyone to be worried. This is what her body was made to do. Nothing’s going to go wrong, and in nine months, we’re going to have our second group of children.”
“You’re right,” Marco said. “I know you’re right.”
“You worry too much,” Burton said. “Everybody except me worries too much.”
“Where is Ryker, incidentally?”
“God only knows. Maybe off hunting down another turkey.” Burton shrugged. “To tell you the truth, he’s probably asleep. He’s been taking the majority of the watches since we all came out here, even though I told him not to do that. Didn’t you notice?”
“I did,” Marco admitted. “But there’s rarely any point in arguing with Ryker. He’ll do what he wants.”
“Yeah, he will,�
� Burton agreed. “Check his tent. See if he’s in there.”
Marco set down his plate and jogged over to Ryker’s tent. He peered in and then looked back and gave Burton the thumbs up.
Burton nodded. He picked up the plate he had loaded with food and carried it over to the fire, where Sophie and Cam sat.
“Here you go,” he said, setting the plate in front of them. “Chow down, you two.”
“Hey, thanks,” Cam said with a grin. He picked up one of the pieces of turkey and took a bite. “The leg’s for you, Soph. We saved it.”
“I’m not very hungry,” she said quietly.
Burton wanted to say something, to tell her that she needed to eat for the sake of their children, but he remembered what Marco had said. What she needed most of all right now was to avoid stress and anxiety.
It seemed he had caused her more of that by bringing the food.
Burton prided himself on not being a worrier, but right now, he couldn’t seem to shake the nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right.
Chapter Seven
SOPHIE
A week passed, and Sophie still hadn’t detected any signs of pregnancy in her body.
Every morning she woke up and lay very still, trying to convince herself that she was feeling some nausea, some morning sickness. But there was nothing. She felt in perfect health.
She raked through her memories, trying to remember what had happened last time. What it had felt like. How she had known for sure.
But it had been such a complicated time in her life. Her family had been fending off the bears. The betas had just come to stay with them. Sophie had been kidnapped.
Not to mention the fact that I wasn’t trying to get pregnant back then, so I wasn’t watching for it. Maybe there were dozens of early signs that I just missed because I wasn’t paying attention.
It was torture. And the whole thing was made worse by the fact that none of her alphas had touched her since the mating ceremony.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Ryker had assured her. “We just want to know if the ceremony was effective. If we were able to get you pregnant in three days, the way we planned.”
“If it didn’t work, it’s not a problem,” Marco had added quickly. “That’ll just mean that we know, for next time, that we need to plan a longer ceremony.”
“Which wouldn’t be a hardship or anything,” Burton had agreed. “Oh, no, more days spent having sex with my hot omega, how will I survive?”
Ryker had smacked Burton in the back of the head, and all three of the alphas had laughed. Sophie had forced herself to laugh along with them, knowing that they were trying to cheer her up, but in truth, she’d felt awful, and knowing that they were working so hard to help her just made her feel worse.
They wouldn’t have to do that if I could just get pregnant like I’m supposed to.
Now, a week after the night of the bonfire party, she sat alone by the river, feeling utterly useless.
She’d been spending a lot of time alone lately. She knew it made the others worried about her state of mind, but it helped her to get away from them. When she was with her family, she felt as if she had to put on a smile and act as if she felt happy about the babies she was allegedly carrying instead of anxious that there might be no babies at all.
Everyone was in a celebratory mood these days. Sophie was the only one who felt like crying.
She dangled her feet into the river, letting the current tug them to one side, and pondered her situation. What would she do if she turned out not to be pregnant? How would she break the news to her alphas?
They’ll understand. Hadn’t they told her, over and over again, that it wouldn’t be a big deal? Hadn’t they gone to great lengths to reassure her that it didn’t really matter?
It does matter, though. She was no fool. She had seen how much effort everyone had put into the mating ceremony. It had been a three-day affair, for God’s sake. Ryker had hunted a turkey for them. Even Chrissy had gotten involved in the planning, doing what she could to make the event a celebration for Sophie. Everyone had tried so hard. Everyone had put their all into it.
Now they were telling Sophie that if it hadn’t worked, they wouldn’t blame her. That it wouldn’t be her fault.
But who else is there to blame?
She had only one job to do. She had one role in this pack, one thing that made her relevant and important. What if she hadn’t managed to do it?
She lay back on the ground, letting the earth support her. Sometimes this helped when she was feeling anxious, but not today. She felt no more anchored to her place in the world.
I’m going to fail them, she thought miserably. I just know it.
A rustling sound in the leaves made her sit up. She didn’t want company, and she thought her packmates probably knew that, but she had always figured it was only a matter of time before they decided not to let her be on her own anymore. Maybe today was the day her solitude would be disturbed.
A figure stepped out of the bushes on the other side of the river.
Sophie froze.
She didn’t know him.
It wasn’t one of her packmates. It was a stranger.
Doing her best not to move, she inhaled. Wolf.
Okay. That was okay. The best thing would have been a pure human—humans weren’t likely to go attacking other humans in the woods, and if this one did for some reason, it would be easy enough for Sophie to shift and fight him off, if she had to.
But a wolf didn’t have to be an enemy. After all, Ryker had been talking about expanding the pack, and if this man was a beta, maybe he would be interested in joining the family.
At least he’s not a bear. She would have been completely fucked if he had been.
But all the bears were gone. There was nothing to worry about.
Sophie got slowly to her feet, not wanting to spook the newcomer by moving too quickly. “Hi,” she called out.
“Hi,” the man said, raising a hand in greeting.
Sophie smiled. “Can I come over there?” she asked him.
He frowned, gazing down at the river. “It’s a little wide.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “The current isn’t bad. And I can swim.”
He nodded. “All right,” he said. “If you’re sure.”
Sophie slipped into the water and submerged herself beneath it, kicking hard to ensure a straight path across to the other side. When she broke the surface, she saw to her satisfaction that she had only been carried a few yards downstream. She pulled herself up onto the bank and walked back over to where the man stood waiting.
“You’re a wolf,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “You could tell?”
“Sure,” she said. “The smell’s familiar. You couldn’t smell it on me?”
“You’ve been in the water,” he pointed out.
“But before,” she said. “Before I went in.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You should,” she said. “This all used to be bear territory. I guess you’re new to the north.”
“Yeah, I am,” the man said. “There were bears up here?”
“Yeah, and they were dangerous,” Sophie said. “We ran them out, though. My pack, that is.”
“Your pack?”
“They’ll want to meet you,” Sophie said. “They’re very welcoming, don’t worry.” At least, they will be once I convince them that he’s harmless. “Why don’t you come on back to the cave with me?” she said. “You can join us for dinner. We’ve got plenty to share.”
The man hesitated. “I suppose I could do that,” he said.
“Great.” Sophie held out her hand. “I’m Sophie, by the way.”
He shook. “Brett.”
“Nice to meet you, Brett.”
“Likewise,” he said with a strange smile. “Lead the way.”
Sophie turned and began to pick her way down the steep bank toward the riv
er, but she never reached the water.
She felt a burst of blunt pain at the back of her head, and then she was falling, and as the ground rushed up to meet her, she had a moment of terrible awareness that this was all her fault and that her alphas would never forgive her for putting herself in the hands of a stranger like this. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have trusted.
Then the world faded to black around her, and she knew no more.
THE FIRST THING SOPHIE was aware of when she regained consciousness was movement. Speed. And not the kind of speed that came with running through the woods. It was too even, too steady, to be travel on foot.
She was in a vehicle.
The thought sent a stab of panic through her. If she was in a vehicle, that meant she was being driven away from her home. Away from her family. They wouldn’t be able to track her. They wouldn’t know where she had gone.
And who knows how far away I am already?
She opened her eyes.
She was lying in what looked like the back of a van. The rear windows had been painted over. She couldn’t see out.
Sophie struggled to her hands and knees, feeling dizzy, her head aching, and crawled over to the van doors. She reached for the handle.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
She whirled, falling onto her side as she did so. Brett was sitting against the forward wall of the van, a pistol held loosely in his hand, his eyes fixed upon her.
“We’re supposed to bring you back alive,” he said. “But it’s not a requirement.”
“Bring me back where?” she asked hoarsely.
He laughed. “That would be telling,” he said.
“Maybe I’d rather die than go wherever it is,” she said.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Brett said. “You’re pregnant.”
She stared at him.
“I’ve been watching your pack for a while,” he said. “I know that was a mating ceremony. I wanted to make my move before they could knock you up, but then I thought I might be able to use it as leverage. If you’re carrying, that means I can count on you placing as much value on your own life as I do.” He showed his teeth. “No omega would allow the death of her own children.”
