Camp Lake Omega

by Penelope Peters

  But.

  Reba had been at Camp Lake Omega the same night Jim hadn’t shown up in my cabin. She hadn’t said anything about sick kids in the omega camp. Not that I thought she would, and maybe she didn’t even know, but…

  But.

  I tried to shake it off, anyway. I don’t think Jim noticed my unease. And if I was a little too focused on his pleasure after that… well. That was just a reward for taking care of sick kids, right? Definitely not because I was feeling competitive against any other alphas who might have wanted to spend some time with him.

  Possessiveness is an alpha trait.

  But I wasn’t possessive about Jim. At all.

  It was about two weeks later when Reba sat triumphantly on the bench across from me at breakfast.

  “So,” she said, so smug I’m surprised that the table didn’t snap in half, “how are all you lovely people this morning? Doing well? Feeling positive? Ready for our ten-mile-hike into the woods to explore what it really means to be an alpha? Gosh, I hope you all slept soundly last night.”

  I glared at Reba over my coffee cup. “Are you on drugs?”

  “Nope,” said Reba. “I’m just high on… Tracy.”

  Richard sat up in his seat. “Wait. Did you—”

  “Yup,” said Reba.

  “Is that—?”

  Reba grinned – and threw a thick manila envelope on the middle of the table. REBA’S BETS, it said, and it clanked as various bits of change rattled inside.

  The appearance of the envelope marked the conclusion of Reba’s attempt to seduce every counselor in Camp Lake Omega. She’d always held onto the bets, since she was the neutral party. It was sealed once everyone had put in their money and their dates, and not even Reba knew who had chosen which date.

  And by tradition, it wasn’t opened until the morning after Reba had seduced the last counselor, thereby deciding the winner, fair and square.

  Richard pumped his fists in the air. “BOO-YAH. Today was my day, people!” He turned to me. “Well?”

  And the person who opened the envelope… was me.

  “What?” shrieked Stephanie. “No way.”

  Richard slid the heavy envelope across the table so that it landed in front of my cereal bowl. “Read ‘em and weep. I bet on thirty-three days, and that’s today.”

  I never bet on Reba’s conquests. It had always seemed... distasteful to me, even if I did know that Reba never pushed anyone into sex.

  “If she had sex with Tracy last night,” said Cammy, tapping her oatmeal spoon against her lips, “doesn’t that mean whoever had yesterday won the bet?”

  But she also never lied about it – and on the few occasions when the sex in question might not have matched a textbook definition, she’d admitted it to the rest of the counselors. Full disclosure wasn’t necessary – and I never heard most of the stories, just because I didn’t really want to know.

  “Not if it was after midnight,” said Richard.

  I still didn’t want to know. Absolutely not.

  “It was after midnight,” Reba said to Cammy, almost an apology.

  Sick kid, Jim had said. Up all night with a sick kid. He’d been detained by a sick kid. Hell, not just a sick kid, a whole cabin of sick kids. Overkill, if you asked me.

  Cammy frowned. “Damn. I really wanted to buy Molly a necklace.”

  Reba had been over there that night. She hadn’t said anything about a whole cabin of sick kids.

  “Ah, Padawan,” Richard soothed her. “You’re young. You’ll learn confidence in Reba’s seductive charms eventually.”

  Reba never lied.

  But I knew of at least one time that Jim had.

  I didn’t want to hear another word of it. I stood up so fast, the chair I’d been sitting on fell over and skidded across the floor.

  Every single pair of eyes snapped right to me – but I didn’t really see them.

  I couldn’t stop staring at the envelope sitting on the table before me.

  “Boss?” asked Reba, worried. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said shortly.

  “You gonna open the envelope?” asked Richard.

  “Open it yourself,” I snarled. I left the cafeteria, slamming the door behind in my wake.

  The whole rest of the day, the images kept reinventing themselves.

  Reba, talking to Jim. Sidling up closer to Jim. Running a finger down the side of his arm, gasping a little at the feel.

  I don’t normally do omegas like this, she’d murmur. Jim was so green and innocent, he’d fall for it. Why wouldn’t he? He’d be all heady with the idea that he was attracting a second alpha. It wasn’t as if what we had meant anything.

  I really like the sex, he’d admitted to me.

  I’d take the opportunity if I were you, I’d said to him.

  It hadn’t meant anything, what we’d done together. Not to me, not to him, or I told myself. Sex with Reba – well, that was just another chance for him, wasn’t it? Expand his horizons. Grab what pleasure he could, before he lost the chance forever.

  I had to stop thinking about them together.

  The images changed shape. Reba and Jim, slowly pulling off each other’s clothes… touching each other’s skin… kissing each other, hesitatingly at first, and then with more enthusiasm and passion, falling backwards into a bed of pillows and blankets, white as clouds, the leaves softly falling around them in the silvery moonlight…

  “Zach?”

  “What?!?!” I nearly shouted, turning on Cammy, who was trailing behind me. She took a step back, her eyes widening in shock, and I swallowed hard. “Sorry. Thinking. What is it?”

  “Sorry, sorry, just… did you want me to come help you set the caches?”

  About halfway through every summer, we sent the kids on a geocache. It was sort of an old school Pokémon Go, except instead of phones – or even a GPS tracker – we sent them off with lists of coordinates, a map, and a compass. The counselors had GPSes to use in an emergency, but otherwise, they had to do it without the assistance of imaginary Japanese anime characters. Every single camper complained to high heaven about it – but it was one of the more popular activities and they were always excited to go again the following year.

  Plus, I’d always made sure the caches had good prizes inside. Sure, you can catch a Pikachu outside your grocery store, but when you’ve been hiking for five miles and it’s not even noon, you’re gonna want that name-brand chocolate-covered peanut butter granola bar instead.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said shortly.

  “But I thought the plan was that I’d at least have seen the places we’re going, so we’re less likely to get lost—”

  “I said, I can do it.” Cammy winced at the sharpness in my voice. I probably would have, too, but I was beyond caring. I wanted the time to myself. “It’s fine, you’re not getting too far away from camp with your kids anyway. Nowhere you haven’t been on previous hikes.”

  “Right, okay,” said Cammy, visibly deflated now. “Have fun. I guess.”

  Fuck.

  I stormed out of the camp. Luckily, no one else tried to stop me. Or maybe they’d seen me yell at Cammy and decided not to bother tangling with me.

  It took about six hours to set the caches, partially because I was still so wrapped up in my own head that I kept running into trees. By the time I made it back to camp, it was nearly dinnertime, and my initial fiery inferno of anger had fizzled down to a dull spark.

  I was still growly enough at dinnertime that the others ignored me, and afterwards, I headed straight to my cabin. The only thing I really wanted was a shower and my bed.

  The water hitting my skin, the soap lathering up – lust spiraled up from my gut, straight out every limb to my fingers and toes. My cock was hard and aching, and while I tried to beat off, thinking about Jim and Reba together – because at this point, I couldn’t not think about them – it didn’t do anything for me. My cock kept aching, and the orgasm that I couldn’t quite reach never got any
closer.

  I finally turned the water to cold in disgust and rinsed off. That helped a little bit, but I was still semi-erect when I dressed in boxers and a t-shirt. I spent another hour puttering around my cabin, cleaning up, doing the dishes, all the stupid things I never bothered with the rest of the time. I started some laundry, and was in the middle of trying to read a book when there was a knock on the door.

  “What?”

  It opened. “You’re awake,” said Jim, stepping in. His hair was tousled by the wind – I could hear it howling outside the windows. He had to struggle a bit to shut the door with its customary screech. “Everything okay?”

  I stared at him.

  “If something’s wrong, I can come back,” he said quickly.

  “Yeah, something’s wrong,” I said, dropping the book on the floor. It wasn’t that heavy, but the thump still make Jim jump a little bit. I wondered what was making him so nervous. I got to my feet. “You’ve been lying to me, that’s what’s wrong.”

  Jim’s giggle was nervous. “Lying?”

  “Reba,” I said flatly.

  Jim’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Um… Zach—”

  “You can’t even deny it,” I realized. “I know where we stand, but… I thought we were trying to be honest with each other. Were you just… not going to tell me about it?”

  “I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. I mean – she’s your assistant, it’s—”

  “It’s something I think I have the right to know!” I shouted at him.

  “I know that, but—”

  “But what? What else aren’t you telling me about, Jim? Are you sleeping with anyone else, too?”

  Jim looked confused. “What?”

  “Or maybe this whole thing about being bonded this fall is just a sham?”

  Jim’s breathing was coming faster and harder. “What do you think—?”

  “Fuck, Jim, don’t tell me you’re already bonded!”

  “That’s impossible, you of all people know I couldn’t be!”

  “I know you slept with Reba two weeks ago. You wanna admit that for starters?”

  Jim’s mouth dropped open. “I… what?”

  I let out a frustrated breath. “You. Slept. With. Reba.”

  Jim went pale. “That’s a lie!”

  “The lie is that you had a cabin full of sick kids two weeks ago,” I said, frosty, watching as he began to shake. Part of my brain was screaming at me to stop; I ignored it. “Reba was in your camp that night. She didn’t say a word about sick kids.”

  Jim’s expression darkened. “Hold on just a minute. You… you knew she was coming over to Camp Lake Omega? After all your weeks of saying how dangerous it would be for an alpha to sneak over to the omega camp – and you knew your second-in-command was coming over just about every night? And you had the audacity to lecture me about safety? Wow, Zachary – talk about the fuckin’ kettle.”

  “That is an entirely different situation!”

  “What, because she likes betas better?” Jim scoffed. “That’s a crap reason that wouldn’t stand up in the light of day and you know it. Besides, you thought she and I slept together – so maybe she doesn’t like betas as much as you and she both claim.”

  “I’ve known Reba a hell of a lot longer than I’ve known you,” I said coolly. “And a hell of a lot better. She’s never lied to me, not once. You, on the other hand—”

  I opened the door, roughly. The screech was particularly loud. “Get out. I don’t like liars in my camp.”

  Jim sucked in a breath. His chin trembled, but he stood firm, shoulders back. He took a step forward, breathing hard. Without any warning, he reached up on his toes and kissed me.

  I was so angry – still so angry – that for a moment, I didn’t move.

  And then the dam inside of me broke, and with it, the torrent of emotion I’d been feeling all day. I didn’t just kiss him – I devoured him. My arms were around him, clawing at his clothes, and my teeth bit at his lips. I wanted to kiss him, I wanted to kill him, I wanted to swallow him down and keep him with me forever. It was violent and desperate and god, I was so horny with it, I could barely think or breathe or anything. I could feel his skin under my nails, breathe in the deep strawberry scent of him, sweet summer warmth and the salty taste of his tongue.

  “Zach,” he gasped.

  I froze, my teeth bared over his throat.

  About to bite.

  About to mark him.

  My arms instantly went limp; he shoved me down on the floor. I let him. I fell on my ass and stayed there, shocked to my core. I didn’t even want to look at him.

  I did, though. I needed to see what I’d done.

  His lips were swollen and pink from kissing, but I didn’t see any marks, not really. There were some pink scratches along his face, his neck, his arms, and I could see where his shirt had raked up. Undoubtedly I’d left scratch marks there, too.

  He took a breath. “I didn’t lie about the important things. Not to you.”

  And then he was gone.

  Morning didn’t come soon enough. I didn’t get much sleep. Instead, I kept reliving the last few minutes with Jim.

  I didn’t lie about the important things.

  The sun came up, and the youngest campers set out on their geocache with Cammy leading the way. They were bright-eyed and excited, shifting from one foot to the other with energy that hopefully would last them the entire trek, which was intended to take most of the day. I saw them off, gruff and exhausted. I’m sure Cammy noticed the dark circles under my eyes, but didn’t say anything.

  I drank an entire pot of coffee before any of the others came into the mess hall. Reba flashed me a concerned look which I ignored. I didn’t follow their conversation, either; I couldn’t have cared less about any of it.

  Reba caught up to me afterward.

  “I get that you’re in a mood, and that’s fine,” she started off saying. “I just need to know if it’s the kind of mood where you need a few hours to blow off steam in town, because I’ll need to run over the notes before taking over the oldest kids’ training today.”

  “What the hell – aw, shit, I forgot,” I groaned. Today was one of the lessons with the oldest alphas, about how to keep themselves safe from unbonded omegas. Which was a terrible way of putting it, as if the unbonded omegas intended to rope random alphas into having sex with them.

  But in my frame of mind, that was where I went.

  “Just let me know,” said Reba.

  I shook my head. “Rebe, you are the last person who should be teaching that class, seriously.”

  Reba shrugged. “Hey, just because I like the betas doesn’t mean I’m not impervious to an adorable omega now and then.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” I snapped.

  Reba gave me a look. “Okay, then you lost me. What are you talking abou—ow, let go, that’s my arm!”

  I had grabbed her by the upper arm and dragged her to my office. I waited until the door slammed behind us before I started, though it was a near thing.

  “What the fuck, Reba?” I roared. “I trusted you, this whole time I knew you were sneaking over to the omega camp. I should have said something, because an alpha in a camp of omegas is dangerous, but nooo, you said it was fine, you said you weren’t interested in omegas—”

  “I’m not!” shouted Reba, struggling and shoving against me. I just changed my grip and held her tighter.

  “—and then you go and seduce Jim, and what the fuck, Reba? Have you been lying this whole time about who you actually screw over there—”

  Alphas are strong. That’s one of the things that makes us alphas: we’re bigger, we’re faster, we’re stronger. It doesn’t much matter if we’re female or male – and I’ve known some female alphas who are much stronger than I am.

  Reba was one of them. In the heat of the moment, and the fire of the anger in my gut, I’d forgotten that. Luckily, Reba reminded me by shoving me right back, so har
d that my desk slid back half a foot when I rammed into it. She might have cracked my tailbone with the force of it.

  “You fucking idiot,” she grit out. She gave me another shove for good measure. “I didn’t sleep with Jim. Okay? I didn’t sleep with Jim. Hell, I didn’t even come close enough to touch him. And if you’d pull your head out of your ass, you’d know that!”

  “Only betas, that’s what you told me! You said you aren’t even attracted to omegas!”

  “And I’m not, okay?” Reba groaned, frustrated. “I didn’t sleep with Jim. I’ve never slept with Jim.”

  “Then how did Richard win the bet, Reba?” I shouted back. “I was there when you showed up with the envelope – you don’t do that until you’ve slept with all the counselors.”

  “Jim wasn’t part of the bet,” snapped Reba. “He was disqualified the minute I saw him leaving your cabin in the middle of the night two weeks ago.”

  The knot in my throat was threatening to choke me; I couldn’t breathe. Reba would have probably gotten a kick out of watching me gasp like a fish for a couple of minutes, but then she let out an aggravated sigh and sat down with a thump next to me on the desk.

  “Oh, work it out,” she said, grumpily. “Let me know when you’re done.”

  “I don’t know what you saw—”

  “Pretty easy, Boss. The path I take from Camp Lake Omega lets out right near your cabin. I was coming back and I heard your door creak. I looked over – and there’s Jim, who I’d met just the night before, sneaking out of your cabin. He might have even heard me move. I saw him pause before he scampered to his canoe.”

  She’d met Jim two weeks before – and suddenly Jim’s story started to make sense.

  He’d lied, yeah – because he’d met Reba in his own camp. He must have been too nervous to leave her alone in the omega camp – and too nervous to tell me the truth about why he’d stayed there. He’d lied to protect Reba. And Reba had just confirmed that what Jim had eventually admitted was true.

  He hadn’t slept with Reba. He’d lied – but not about the important things.

  “Oh, fuck,” I groaned. I slumped down, every bone in my body turning into pudding.

  Some friends might have let me wallow in self-pity for a moment.