My head practically spun on my neck. When it stopped spinning, I was staring right at his profile. His moonlit, still paddling, hunka hunka gorgeous profile that seemed totally intent on moving his canoe to the shore.
Maybe he’d missed the fact that I was an omega?
Nah. Not a chance. No one – especially an alpha – misses the fact that someone’s an omega. I mean, that’s one of the hallmarks of omegas, we’re constantly leeching out pheromones. Sure, mine were sending out mixed messages at the moment, on account of my previously bonded state, but he’d still have known on first sniff what I was.
“Fine,” I said cautiously. “The kids were pretty ramped up, and the parents…”
He snorted, amused. “Yeah, we get that too. Every year, the parents are worried that their precious darlings are going to find a way to hurt themselves, or worse, make it across the lake unsupervised.”
“You guys too?” I said, surprised.
He shrugged. “It’s not any different growing up an alpha than it is for an omega.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“Okay, maybe some key differences. The expectations aren’t quite the same – but they still exist. Gotta be the strongest, the fastest, the bravest – it wears down on you, especially when you aren’t those things automatically.”
It sounded… familiar. Omegas weren’t expected to be strong or fast or brave, necessarily (even though a lot of them were). We were meant to be caring, nurturing, loving, have the patience of saints and the emotional stability to weather through any problem sent our way with grace and aplomb.
“Anyone ever manage to sneak across?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said grimly. “I’ve never caught them, anyway.”
“Apart from empty canoes.”
“Well, if one of yours snuck over to our camp in it, he or she is going to have a mighty long walk to get back,” said Zachary. “It’s a four-mile walk around the perimeter of the lake. Not the easiest ground, either.”
We were pulling up to the shore, but I stopped paddling for a moment. “Wait. Aren’t there bears? Or wolves? Oh, shit, have we just left a kid in the woods to be eaten?”
Zachary chuckled again as he stored his paddle, preparing to get out. “Jim, it’s fine. No one snuck over to the alpha camp. Not even lost campers named Brandon.”
“Oh, shut up,” I snapped. I must have forgotten I was so close to shore, because with one mighty push of my oar, I drove my canoe forward—
And slammed right into Zachary’s canoe, just as he was stepping out of it. The canoe rocked a little bit and tipped him into the water.
“Oh, shit!” I yelped. I jumped in after him, and promptly landed on my feet in waist-deep water, right next to Zachary, who was already standing up, wheezing and coughing and soaked from head to toe.
“Did… did you just jump into three feet of water to save my life?”
“Oh my God,” I groaned, about to march right up the shore and back to the camp.
“Hey,” he said, warm and amused. He reached out to take my arm.
His fingers brushed my skin and trailed down to my wrist, where they gently wrapped around to hold me fast.
Now, I know most ‘mega lit will talk about that moment when an alpha first touches an omega, and it’s all electric shocks and deep gazes and held breath and hearts thumping like mad. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always thought those moments were totally overwritten and ridiculous because seriously, it does not. Work. Like. That.
But. Um.
When Zachary touched my arm, his wet fingers against my wet skin, everything else in the world just dropped away. All I could feel was that slide of his fingers down to my wrist. His fingers were warm despite the cool water, and the trail they left on my skin tingled and tickled. I wanted my arm to go on forever, just so he’d never stop stroking me.
His hand was wrapped around my wrist – gently, with just the lightest pressure. I could have broken free from him so easily, especially as he kept moving his hand around my wrist, twisting until he held my hand.
It wasn’t electric, no – hell, we were both wet, electric would have zapped us both into hot dogs – but it completely consumed me. I couldn’t think of anything else, all I could think was:
!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, you get me.
I didn’t even realize I’d moved to face him until I felt our hands, palms pressed together, fingers slotted together briefly – because he still didn’t stop the motion of his hand, curling in to stroke my palm, and then back up again to slot his fingers in mine, then back down and around to the back of my hand. It was mesmerizing – and I could barely breathe, because I didn’t want anything to bring him back to remembering that he should probably stop.
(Okay, fine. I stopped breathing. Shut up.)
I didn’t want him to stop. And if I was moving closer to him – well, that was the water moving me. I am totally blaming the lake on this one.
“Jim,” he said, so softly I wouldn’t have been able to hear him, if I hadn’t been so close. I could feel the dampness of his shirt, the heat of his skin underneath.
“Yeah,” I said, looking up at him.
Oh, God, I wanted him to kiss me.
“I’m sorry, I—”
If there’d been a little more light, I might have been able to see his expression better. But like I said, there’s no such thing as nuance in the moonlight. Everything’s distilled to a basic emotion, and the only emotions I was reading from Zachary were regret (on his face) and a high level of interest (from every other part of his body). Not to mention, alphas throw out pheromones, too, and they get stronger when an alpha is interested in someone. The water was probably dulling the scent a little bit – but I could still tell, even without the visual cues.
Zachary was into me.
But given he was apologizing to me…
Well. Fuck that.
I went up on my toes – not exactly the easiest of maneuvers, when you’re standing on shifting ground, so I had to help myself by reaching up with my free hand to wrap around the back of his neck and give myself some leverage. That let me get high enough to kiss him.
That’s all I had to do, really, because the next moment, his hand had tightened around mine, and his free arm was wrapped around my waist, holding me securely against him. I could feel the entire length of him – all tall and warm and wet and wow, did that guy have muscles. If I’d thought about it, I probably could have felt his cock, too.
I wasn’t thinking about it. I was too busy concentrating on the kiss.
Zachary might have taken control of the exterior – keeping me close, keeping me up, helping me stay exactly where I wanted to be – but he was surprisingly lenient on the kiss. I don’t mean that he was entirely inert, but… he encouraged, rather than led. He ceded control, rather than commanded. I licked into his mouth, and he opened wider for me, giving me better access. He’d nip a few times at my tongue – but while I could feel the desire behind it, heard the half-stuttered moans in the back of his throat, he never let it take over.
I could have kissed him all night, standing in three feet of water on shifting sands in the moonlight. I mean, at the time, it felt about as romantic as it sounds. In reality…
“Ahhhh!” I shrieked, breaking the kiss. “When the fuck did the fish in this lake grow teeth?”
Yeah, I ruined it. Look, you try kissing the guy of your dreams, and then feel something start nibbling on your ankles and see if you don’t scream.
“Fish don’t have teeth,” said Zachary. But he was smiling and his hand was still curled around mine. He hadn’t let go of me, though I could feel the laughter bubbling in his chest.
“Don’t laugh at me!” I scolded him. I moved my hand from his neck so I could shove against his chest. “Fish freak me out, okay?”
“You’re at a summer camp by a lake,” said Zachary. “I think you’re gonna see a few fish before the end of the summer.”
“I survived sev
en summers here as a kid, I think I can handle one more,” I said.
His smile didn’t waver. Actually, it didn’t move. “You… went here as a kid?”
“Yeah, of course. It’s why they were willing to let me come back as a counselor, they knew me. I mean, special circumstances and all, but…”
My fingers were playing on his chest a little bit, but he slowly released his arm from around me and took both my hands in his. The water felt particularly cold now, without his arm around me to keep me warm, and I shivered a little.
“It’s late,” he said gently. “You’ve got a big day tomorrow – first real day of camp. All those kids are going to be up at the crack of dawn, ready to go.”
He was right. Didn’t make it any easier. Plus, there was every possibility that my fellow (traitorous) counselors were watching to see when/if I got back from my wild goose chase across the lake.
“Yeah.” I looked up at him. Maybe it was the shifting sands or a trick of the moonlight, but he seemed really tall just then – almost impenetrable. “But… I can see you again, right?”
The moments before he answered stretched into infinity. Or maybe it was just the beating of my heart (oh, god, maybe all the ‘mega lit clichés were true) that made me think he was hesitating a bit before answering.
“Of course,” he said finally. “I’m sure there’ll be another loose canoe.”
It… sounded like a cop-out. Or a dismissal.
“Okay,” I said, ready for a solitary and cold walk back up to my cabin.
Or maybe Elizabeth’s. I could strip all my wet clothes off and dump them on her head in retaliation for her trick. You never expect the pretty, innocent ones to be so duplicitous, you know?
“Hey,” said Zachary. He cupped his hand on my cheek, instantly pulling me out of my funk. His hand was so warm – and it fit just right against my cheek. I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of him – well, him and the scent of the lake, but whatever. It was nice, nice enough that I could stop shivering for a little bit and just relax in his touch. “I’m just thinking about your welfare.”
Well. So much for being comforted.
“Thanks,” I said, backing away. “But I’m pretty good at looking after myself.”
Walking out of the lake, dragging a canoe behind me, was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
I mean, because of the water resistance. And dragging a canoe. And the fact that I was sure there were additional fish out to get me.
Not because I was walking away from Zachary. I mean, it was one kiss. Don’t be ridiculous.
Oh, and I totally dropped all my wet clothes on Elizabeth’s bed. That is, I waited until after she’d left for breakfast and then I shoved them under her covers, laying ‘em out all nice and flat so that she didn’t realize until that night that her mattress was soaked.
I am a mean fucker, aren’t I?
Chapter Four
Zachary
Christ. Jim was an omega.
Well, that sure as hell didn’t go as planned.
This is the way the world is supposed to work: alphas grow up, go to college, get jobs, enter the bonding pool, find a compatible omega, bond, and live happily ever after with a pack of kids and maybe a two-car garage if they’re into that sort of thing. That’s the way to happiness, that’s the story that is shoved down our throats from the time we’re kids and first learn the difference between omegas and alphas.
And when you do meet that omega of your dreams… well, I already explained about estrus, didn’t I? We become raving sex-crazed maniacs, incapable of rational thought.
The only way to prevent it… was to never put ourselves in a position where we were susceptible to it.
And in kissing Jim… in liking Jim… I’d spent most of my thirty years trying to avoid omegas. The idea of losing control didn’t sit well with me. I couldn’t help but feel that I’d just walked myself into the biggest trap of my life.
I walked back to Camp Alpha-by-the-Lake, all four miles of it. Took me about an hour, but in that hour, I had a chance to think hard about what had happened. It was clear to me that it wasn’t Jim’s fault. I would have liked to blame him – and okay, fine, maybe I did, for about ten minutes, especially after I stubbed my toe on a tree root and went sprawling on the mossy ground. After all… he was working in a job where no omega had the right to work, smelling like no omega I’d ever smelled, and he’d been the one to kiss me.
Never mind that I liked it. Or that I’d been thinking all night about kissing him before he made a move.
Or that I’d kissed back.
I was still incensed when I got back to camp – so much so that I couldn’t just go to bed. Instead, I went to fire up the computer in my office, figuring I’d do a little bit of research.
It didn’t take long to find what I wanted: a couple of websites talking about the different scent cues of omegas.
Back before civilization, the primary form of communication between omegas and alphas was scent. You know how birds use colorful feathers to attract a mate? Well, omegas use scent, and there’s easily a couple dozen nuanced versions of their primary scent, which of course is different for every person. Back in the Stone Age, I suppose we alphas learned to figure out how to tell the difference, but most of us don’t bother with it now, since we’ve managed to figure out how to talk to each other.
There’s one scent for when they’re about to go into estrus – another scent for when they’re in estrus. Another scent for when they’re pregnant, another scent for when they’re nursing. Scents for when omegas are stressed, or happy, or depressed, or just about any emotion you can name. I’ve heard tell that bonded alphas can tell the difference in their omega’s scents – but for those of us who are unbonded, it basically comes down to three scents: bonded omega, unbonded omega, and unbonded omega going into estrus. Every omega I’ve ever met has fit one of those criteria.
Not Jim, though – which was why I’d thought he was a beta. Turns out there’s a fourth basic scent, one I didn’t know: widowed omega still young enough to reproduce, but never had for whatever reason. They were given the rather unimaginative name of “inert omegas.”
I’d smelled widowed omegas before, sure. But most of the time, they were older and had several children by the time their mates had died. To me and the rest of the world, they still smelled bonded because their children kept the bond active. But an inert omega – they were in limbo, so their scent was in limbo, too. If Jim really was an omega – and I instinctively knew he wasn’t lying – then his lack of scent meant he was inert.
Jim hadn’t smelled bonded. Because technically – he wasn’t.
He didn’t smell unbonded. Because technically – he wasn’t.
And he didn’t smell like he was going into heat. Because technically….
My train of thought sort of derailed there, and I had to spend another fifteen minutes of frantic research before determining that one kiss wasn’t going to send Jim into estrus. I didn’t think so, anyway – there wasn’t a lot of research on inert omegas, mostly because they were so rare. When 99% of omegas get pregnant with only a single heat, you don’t get a lot of omegas who don’t have at least one kid.
Jim was absolutely a class of his own.
I wasn’t tired, but I turned off the computer and went to bed anyway. It was probably close to 4am, and I’d have to be up in a few hours. The camp was quiet. All I could hear was the gentle lapping of the lake water, the chirping of the crickets and owls surrounding us. I lay in my cot, hands folded on my chest, and thought.
I liked Jim. I had to admit that. Even before I’d known he was an omega, I’d been attracted to him. And if he’d been a beta… well, then maybe we could have had something together.
But I couldn’t let it go any further. He was a time bomb for me: set to go off into estrus at any given moment, given the right set of circumstances. Most omegas, I could at least gauge when they’d go into estrus and arrange my contact according
ly. But not Jim. It wasn’t about being careful – it was about being nowhere near him at all.
I couldn’t take the chance of losing myself, and in the process of becoming the man I’d always tried not to be, end up dooming him to a future he wouldn’t want.
So that was it. Jim was off limits. I’d just have to stay away from him for the rest of the summer.
Piece of cake, I told myself, and closed my eyes to sleep.
I caught up with Cammy the next morning for our little chat. She listened with wide eyes as I talked about respecting boundaries, and respecting ourselves enough to not fall in with what our hormones told us to do when good sense told us to do the opposite.
“We’re stronger than our emotions,” I told her, “stronger than what we want. You don’t have to give in to them.”
Cammy wasn’t stupid. “Is this about Molly being over at the omega camp, sir?” she asked politely.
“Yes, it is, actually.”
“Because I’m kind of glad you mentioned it, I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. She and I discussed it already – if she goes into heat, I shouldn’t really be able to tell from here, but if there’s any chance of it, I’m supposed to ask you to lock me up. Don’t let me go over there.”
Okay, that took me by surprise. I knew Cammy was a smart kid, but voluntarily locking herself up?
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Cammy.”
Cammy grinned at me. “I really like Molly, Mr. Ito. Sometimes I feel like I can smell her, all the time, even when she’s not close. I’m pretty sure if I get an actual whiff of her, locking me up won’t be as easy as you think.”
Part of me envied Cammy – she seemed very certain of herself, for being so young.
“To tell the truth, Mr. Ito, I’m kind of looking forward to it,” said Cammy, a mischievous grin on her face.
I couldn’t be hearing her correctly. “To being locked up?”
Cammy laughed. “No, to estrus! I mean – that’s got to be such a rush, to be out of control but in control at the same time. My brother, he bonded last year, and he said it was the most incredible feeling, knowing exactly what he had to do, totally instinctual. He said it was this huge release of tension and anxiety and all that stuff we keep bottled up the rest of the time. Out of control – but safe, at the same time, you know? I can’t wait, it’s going to be awesome.”
Camp Lake Omega Page 4
