Mating the Omega (MM Gay Shifter Mpreg Romance) (Mercy Hills Pack Book 1)

by Ann-Katrin Byrde

  Surprisingly, Abel took the bait. “It’s customary to offer your pack name as well.”

  “I told you, I don’t have a pack.”

  “You told me you ran away from one. What pack did you run away from?”

  The fear-scent grew stronger. “What does it matter?”

  “I need to know who to send the transfer request to.”

  “You need to know…” Jason’s eyes grew wide. “You’re him. The Alpha.” He leaped to his feet and half-lunged over the table, reaching for Abel. Mac took an instinctive step forward, but aborted it at the Alpha’s gesture.

  “Sit down,” Abel said, and the Alpha power rolled out of him, flattening Jason back into his chair. Tears started up in the young man’s eyes and he covered his face in his hands, then looked back up at the Alpha, his expression desperate.

  “I have a proposal for you.”

  “And what’s that?” Abel leaned back in his chair, arms folded. Mac wanted to slap him. It was obvious the young omega—Jason—was at the end of his rope.

  Jason took a deep breath and looked Abel in the eye. “I’m a True Omega. If you don’t mate me, someone will. I can only keep running so long. In exchange for letting you mate me, I want two things.” He stopped, and took another deep breath. “I want a home for my father, and medical care. A permanent home. He got beaten badly by members of a pack hunting me, and he’s still not well. And…” His voice got quiet, and his eyes focused everywhere except on Abel or Mac, flitting around the room like nervous mice. “I don’t care what happens to me, but I want a garden, and time to work in it. Enough time,” he added on a rush, as if he was afraid he’d be interrupted. “Enough time to make it a good garden. Not just a couple of hours a week.”

  Abel nodded, as if he was considering the proposal. “Why a garden?”

  Jason shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m good with them. Mom said it was the Omega Drive.” He squared his shoulders and looked Abel straight in the eye. “In exchange you get me, whenever you want. Children. I have spring and fall heats—you could have a large family if you wanted. I’ll look after them, you don’t need to worry about having to do any of that, I’ll keep your house, whatever. But those two things—I want a contract. A written one.”

  “A written contract.” Abel raised his eyebrows. “I’m not sure it would even be legal with an omega.”

  “With my dad. He can sign it.” Jason leaned forward, and Mac stifled a gasp at the vibrant intensity in his eyes. “What do you say? There must be some reason why they’re all chasing me. Do you want to let that slip away?”

  Abel glanced at Mac, then back at Jason. “You don’t know?”

  All the confidence that the young omega had been showing slipped away. “I…my dad didn’t know much, beyond what was in the history books. I think Mom knew more.” There was an implied but at the end of the sentence, one that Mac couldn’t help repeating.

  “But?”

  Jason shrugged, and a hard look came down over his face. “They killed her.” He turned back to Abel. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Tell me your pack name.”

  Jason looked mutinous and Abel’s power rolled out again, forcing the words out of the omega. “Montana Border.”

  Abel stood up. “I need to think about it.” He turned toward the door.

  Mac started to follow him, wondering what Abel was up to.

  Jason jumped to his feet. “What do you mean, you need to think about it? Isn’t it every alpha’s dream, to have someone at their beck and call, to wait on them hand and foot, and never have to worry they’ll leave, no matter how bad you treat them? You have a bad day at the office and you can come home and take it out on me, no questions asked. Hell, I’ll probably apologize. What’s there to think about?”

  “Is that what you think happens in an omega’s mating?”

  “I know it is.” Jason stared at them defiantly, but Mac could smell the fear and despair coming off of him, almost choking in its strength.

  Abel grimaced and opened the door. “I’ll be back in a while. Ask Mac for anything you need.” And he left.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Well, shit, fuck, shit, fuck. I didn’t have enough swear words to adequately express my frustration with the whole situation. Maybe it had been a stupid plan in the first place. Maybe we should have gone north. Canada. Alaska. The North Pole.

  Fuck you, hindsight.

  I sat back down and tried to ignore Red, whose name appeared to be Mac. I was hungry, and worried about Dad. If I asked nicely enough, would he give me my phone back and let me call him? I looked over to where he was brooding against the wall. Maybe not.

  Fuck.

  I slumped back in the chair and closed my eyes.

  Red spoke. “You hungry?”

  Was I? I checked my stomach, wondering how long it would be before it started making noise. Not long enough. “Yeah.”

  “You going to freak out if I lock you in here while I get some food?”

  Fucker. “I’m omega. I’m used to being chained in the yard.” No I wasn’t, but only because we’d been running for what felt like half my life. The memory of all those tiny apartments came back to me, being trapped in the house during my heats.

  Okay, maybe I was used to it.

  I felt more than heard him move and when I opened my eyes, he was crouched beside me, a hurt look in his eyes. “I’m trying to help. I don’t like the way people act around omegas any more than you do.” One side of his mouth twisted up in a crooked smile. “But I’ve never seen one like you either.”

  “Yeah, I’m just a treat,” I snarled, the words dripping with sarcasm.

  He stood up and backed off a step. “Fine. Be an ass. But if you’re determined to mate Abel, you should know—he’s a better man than you deserve, if this is how you treat your suitors.”

  That stung, and I was going to say something, but then he was gone, and I was left with my aching limbs and my sense of looming doom. My imagination was already painting pictures of what my future would be like. I looked around the room, checking out the neat workmanship, the square corners, the smooth paint on the walls. The land seemed well cared for, lots of trees and open space. This was a rich pack. If I had to belly up, maybe this was the place to do it. I didn’t think I was asking for much, considering what I was giving up—my life, my independence, my very personality.

  And seeing that I was going to be at the mercy of these people for the rest of my life, maybe I’d better smarten up and play nice. No one cared how much I resented my lot in life, except Dad. It was time I accepted that.

  The thought made me want to cry, and then I was, the tears rolling down my face as the fear and exhaustion and hopelessness, years of it, finally broke through the walls I’d built around them. I didn’t want to run anymore and, while I suspected I might regret this decision later when I was rested and fed, I was too tired, too scared, too lacking in hope to make any other. I buried my head in my arms and just let it come. I didn’t even care if Red came back and caught me—after all, I was just an omega right? Emotional, dependent, needs an alpha to tell them how to get out of bed in the morning.

  I was about cried out, though, by the time Red came back. Instead of the sandwich I’d expected, he brought me a real, hot meal. Nothing fancy, spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread on the side, and a bargain cola so cold that water had condensed on its sides. I wiped my face quickly while he set everything down on the table and hoped that the pleasantly neutral expression on his face meant he hadn’t noticed.

  “Thank you,” I said, remembering my decision to play nice. “You didn’t need to go to this much trouble.” I reached toward the cutlery, rolled up nicely in a napkin like it had come from a restaurant, but then I hesitated, uncertain of the rules here. He nodded, then I dug in. My stomach gurgled and made some embarrassing noises, but I didn’t care. It was real food, good food, and I hadn’t eaten anything more than cheap cold cuts and stuff that could be microwaved in weeks.

&n
bsp; He pulled the other chair back up to the table and sat. “You looked like you could use a treat. I’m pretty sure you haven’t told us everything that’s happened to you.” He frowned and tapped absently on the table. “Abel’s looking into your story. I think—” He paused, and the tapping changed rhythm. “I think I can talk him into letting you stay. The worst case scenario is that I get you fake papers and he hacks the system to make it look like you’ve been here a while.”

  I froze, a strand of spaghetti hanging from my mouth. Red waited for me to speak, then nodded at the pasta hanging from my mouth. “You going to eat that?” There was a hint of that hungry look in his eyes, but oddly enough, it didn’t worry me. Of course, I’d just offered myself to his Alpha, so I was probably safe.

  I slurped the spaghetti in and wiped my mouth with the napkin. “You’d do that?”

  He shrugged. “We wouldn’t want to. If we can work this through official channels, it’s better for everyone. Let’s call the other one our last ditch effort.”

  I flushed, though I don’t know why. “Thank you.” It had been a while since anyone had gone this far out of their way for me. Us. I wasn’t sure what to do with the offer. “I hope whatever a True Omega is good for is worth the trouble.” There. That sounded appropriately submissive.

  Red grunted, whether it was in agreement, or denial, I couldn’t tell. Rather than risk putting my foot in my mouth again, I turned back to the food.

  We didn’t talk again until a couple of minutes after I’d finished eating. I was sitting back, relishing the sleepy relaxation of a slightly overfilled belly and sipping at my drink, when the door opened. It was the Alpha.

  “Where’s your father? I’ll send someone to get him.”

  I sat up, all sleepiness gone. “He won’t come.”

  The Alpha frowned. “Why not?”

  “He’ll think it’s a trick.” It had been tried before.

  “Then how do you suggest we get him to come here?”

  “You’re accepting my proposal?”

  “Perhaps. I certainly accept to bring you both here and provide a home.”

  I frowned. “I want assurances.”

  He laughed. “You’re sitting in my security building, on my side of the wall, with nowhere to go and no way to get there. What assurances are there?”

  A cold bolt of fear shot through me, but I didn’t mind. This, I knew. This was what I’d expected and as disappointing as it was, there was a certain comfort in knowing exactly where I stood.

  Red stood up. “Stop it, Abel. He wants assurances, he should get them. He’s got no reason to trust us.”

  To my surprise, the Alpha backed down. That was…different.

  Red turned to me and said, “Close your mouth before the flies get in. This isn’t your old pack.”

  I closed my mouth and secretly crossed my fingers that it was true.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In the end, Mac decided that the simplest solution, and also the most complicated, was to bring Jason with them. Mac and Abel left the omega in the interview room while they organized the outing, though Mac had argued that he could be left in the break room, where there was a TV and comfortable chairs. Abel had vetoed that, though.

  “He doesn’t trust us enough.” He thrust some papers at Mac. “Here, sign these.” Travel documents, official declarations of where they were going, how long they planned to stay there, the purpose of their visit. Mac signed, and Abel ran them through the fax, sending them down to the gate and to the Bureau of Preternatural Beings. “If what I’ve been able to piece together is true, he’ll run.”

  “I’m not sure about that. He seems to be settling down. He just needs a little hope.” He grabbed his jacket and tossed Abel’s to him.

  Abel sighed and thrust his arms into the sleeves. “Can we use your other car?”

  “You plan to smuggle him out in the seat?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  Mac shook his head. “I don’t have any ideas. You called his pack?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  Abel shook his head. “There’s something fucked up there. I did some unofficial digging through their servers—” He frowned at Mac’s grin. “I didn’t think I’d get the truth if I asked. And there was a boy born there nineteen years ago who was named Jason. And there is an omega notation next to his name. The records stop about eight months after he would have turned thirteen.” Abel led him out the door and they walked out to the truck before he spoke again. “If he ran, his family went with him. There’s no record of the parents applying for pack transfer, no record of them applying to live outside walls. Who’d take their omega child out into the world to live as a feral unless whatever they were running from was worse?”

  “What did the pack say when you asked?” Mac got in on the driver’s side and started the engine.

  Abel waited until he’d closed the door behind him before replying. “Not much. Mostly dodged the question. One of them tried to tell me he’d died.”

  Mac snorted. “Looks pretty lively to me.”

  A laugh escaped from Abel’s mouth before his usual serious expression could take over and squash it. “Yeah. Duke told me he gave you a good run.”

  “Little shit.” But in a weird sort of way, Mac was almost proud of the little omega. He was smart, and feisty. “I almost missed him, up there in the tree. If he’d been a branch higher, I might never have seen him.” Maybe it would be good for Abel to have an omega. He was as adamant as Mac that he didn’t want that kind of relationship, but this didn’t seem like an ordinary omega. If Jason was living somewhere he felt secure, maybe he’d come down a bit less on the alpha side. He might even be nice. Maybe the mating would be different from an ordinary omega mating.

  Mac ignored the hollow feeling the thought left in his chest. It would be selfish to deny his friend, who gave everything he had and was for the good of the pack. And the omega, when he wasn’t snarling and digging his heels in, was attractive.

  But Mac sure wanted something like that too.

  They drove a few minutes, each locked into their own thoughts. Mac pulled up at the garage where he kept his second car, the special one for when they needed to move something they didn’t want the humans to know about. It was beautiful, a luxury vehicle they often used when Abel had to leave the enclave for meetings or other business.

  Mac locked the truck and gestured at Abel. “You sit in the back, like I’m driving you somewhere.”

  “I have to run up to my office. The permit to go pick them up should be ready now.”

  “You got official permission from their pack to take them?”

  Abel snarled. “I bought permission for them to visit. We’ll have to work on permanent.”

  Here was his chance. “If he was mated, his residency automatically transfers to here.”

  “Don’t you start too. You’re beginning to sound like my mother. ‘When are you going to give me grandpups?’” he mimicked. “I don’t have the energy to deal with that kind of trauma, even if an omega mating was what I wanted.”

  “He doesn’t seem much like a regular omega, except for us not wanting to hurt him. And what the fuck was that, anyway?”

  “I don’t know.” Abel stared off in the distance. “Once we get him back, I’m going to do some more research into this True Omega thing.” He glanced over at Mac. “I know you hate digging through books, but I don’t want to spread this around until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “No, I get it. It’s going to be hard enough having a new omega around. At least we won’t have to worry about his heats until fall.”

  “He said he has them twice. Why would he lie about that?”

  “Have you ever heard of an omega that had spring and fall heats?”

  “No, but again, why would he lie? And it’s not like heats are something people talk about.” Abel shook his head and raised a hand to stop the argument. “We can talk about this after. I’m going up to the
office to pick up what we need. You get the car ready and bring it around to the front entrance.” His words hinted at his Alpha’s power, and Mac backed down, resolving to bring this up again later, when Abel was more relaxed. The aggression the omega was showing now was most likely from the stress and uncertainty. No one should be as scared of their pack as that omega was, and if hooking his friend up with the omega also gave his friend someone easy to come home to, so much the better.

  While Abel fetched the paperwork they’d need to go pick up Jason’s father, Mac filled the car with gas, checked the fluids and the tires, looked in the trunk to be certain they had a spare and a working jack, and made sure the signal booster built into the car’s antenna was working properly in case they had to make a phone call. If they broke down on the road outside the enclave, it was long odds that they’d find a human to help them, so he tried to be prepared.

  Abel was waiting at the door when Mac pulled up. He jumped in almost before the car came to a halt. “Do you have your tags?”

  “We’ll have to run past the house to pick them up.”

  “All right.”

  Mac made a U-turn and headed out of the enclave’s downtown. “You know where you’re putting them yet?”

  Abel shook his head. “They might have to go into bachelor housing. It’s that, or I can put them up in my spare room, but I don’t want to give him any ideas.”

  “You’ve agreed to it, haven’t you?”

  “No, I haven’t.” Abel half-turned in his seat, leaning his shoulder against the door. “I know you think I’ve got too much on my plate, and you’re right. Adding a mate and pups to that isn’t going to make things easier, it’s going to make them harder. I have enough decisions to make every day, without adding making decisions for my mate into the mix. And that one—” He shook his head and then leaned it back against the glass, staring up at the cloth ceiling of the car. “He’s no ordinary omega.”

  Mac glanced over at him. “Wouldn’t that make it better?”