by Tanya Chris
When they were thoroughly cooled off, they heaved themselves onto the sandy shore and lay in the sun. Wet clothes were annoying—both for the way they cloyed and the way they covered.
“We have a lot of lakes around Hybernia,” Keesh said, as if he were thinking the same thing about how nice it would be to let their skin get sun-kissed all over.
“What’s it like living there?” Owen asked.
Fortis listened for the answer too. He and Keesh had never talked much about where Keesh came from, as if Keesh had shut a firm door on his memories when he decided to put down roots in North Leland. But the memories came tumbling out of him now.
He told Owen about learning to fish from his mother and about how he’d almost drowned when he waded deeper into a stream than his pup legs could manage. He talked about taruka—a deer-like animal native to the region—and how he and his friends had learned to hunt them in a pack, working together to take down a faster opponent. He described the variety of berries and other native edible flora. Northern Pack territory had a short growing season, so the wolves there got a larger percentage of their diet from meat, while Central Pack wolves cultivated their land and did less killing. For a moment, Fortis felt guilty, but then nah. He was a wolf. He hadn’t been born to eat vegetables, although Keesh did make them taste delicious.
“You said we were having fish tonight,” Fortis reminded him.
“Since we don’t have any gear, fishing’s going to be easier as wolves.”
“I never even knew wolves could fish,” Owen said.
“We’ve got claws and reflexes, don’t we? Come on, I’ll show you.”
Keesh took Owen into the water, but Fortis stayed where he was—on his back with his forearm over his eyes to cut the glare. He listened to his traveling companions thrash around so raucously it seemed unlikely they’d ever catch anything, but eventually there was a pleased squeal of accomplishment and he sat up to see Owen’s furry black wolf with a fish flapping in its jaws.
Owen’s teeth were bared around it in an obvious grin. He splashed out of the water to drop it at Fortis’s feet, and Fortis used his claws to give it a quick beheading while Owen bounced off to have another go. Twenty minutes later, they had a tidy pile of fish, which Fortis taught Owen how to gut while Keesh built a ridiculously big fire right near the edge of the water so they could watch the sun set over the lake while they ate.
Every day ought to be like this, Fortis thought as he tore into a perfectly cooked fish filet with Keesh on one side of him and Owen on the other. Living close to the land with two compatible companions. Frolicking in the water, sunning in the sand, eating meat for dinner and finishing the day with marshmallow-sweetened kisses and a pile of warm bodies. Why did it have to be any more complicated than that?
Owen
Every day he wasn’t living in a palace made Owen that much more certain that he didn’t ever want to live in a palace again. Sure, he was tired by the end of the day—worn out from running and chasing and experiencing—but he’d rather be tired than bored. And sometimes it was scary in the big, wide world where there were more things that could hurt him than he’d ever realized, but he was tougher than he’d ever realized too, and Keesh said the stories his father had told him were exaggerated—that there was a difference between caution and terror.
The humans at the lake yesterday hadn’t bothered them. The lake was huge anyway, way bigger than the duck pond in Pertha he’d sometimes been allowed to play in, where he had chased ducks without any hope of catching them. If he went there now, he’d catch one for sure, just like he could catch fish now. And squirrels. And Fortis. Although Fortis was probably just letting him.
Keesh could catch Fortis for real, and it made Fortis fight. Fortis always won in the end, but Owen thought Keesh probably liked it when Fortis won, was maybe letting him win the same as Fortis let Owen jump on his back as if he hadn’t heard him coming. It was all play, and a lot of it was foreplay, except that not enough of the foreplay led to sex.
After the night in the cabin, Owen had expected Fortis to fuck him again, or at least for Keesh to give him another one of those spectacular blowjobs, but last night he’d been cuddled between the two of them and kissed and petted to sleep without any real action no matter how much he squirmed. Maybe it was because of the humans in the area, but he was afraid it was because of how he’d reacted after the last time. He hadn’t meant to spoil their fun by having feelings. His insides were just so full of them.
Prince Devin had always knotted him. Every time they’d fucked, there’d been a knot. And it’d been glorious. For those fifteen minutes of being joined, Owen had felt complete. It was what he’d been promised all his life—that a mate would claim him, body and soul. That he’d belong, be safe and cherished. That he’d have every pleasure, every protection. And that all of it would come in the form of an alpha.
But as soon as Prince Devin’s knot deflated, he was gone. No claiming bite, no tender words. No stories or lessons or fun. When those fifteen minutes were over, Owen would be left more empty than he’d started. He’d thought it was only a matter of time—that soon they’d be mated and the crushing sense of having been used and discarded would be replaced by the permanence of belonging that he wanted more than an orgasm. But it’d all been lies. The knot had been a lie. The things Prince Devin had said before knotting him had been lies. The praise and promises—all lies.
Keesh said claims weren’t necessary, that it could just be sex. And Owen’s body said okay! Give him all the sex. But that empty space in his chest wanted to be filled as much as his hole did, and he hadn’t been able to lie about it.
So now Fortis and Keesh didn’t want to have sex with him, because he couldn’t be casual the way they could. He wished he could, because it was so nice—all of it. Fortis had praised him just like Prince Devin used to. Fucked him and made him feel good, even without the knot, and Fortis hadn’t promised to claim him so it hadn’t been a lie when he didn’t. Just a disappointment.
But Owen loved how Keesh and Fortis were good to him all the time, not just when they wanted to fuck him. Last night by the fire, Keesh had repaired the damaged capris, then he’d cuddled Owen in front of him and made him marshmallow after marshmallow, toasting them until they were perfectly brown and feeding them to him with his own fingers.
Fortis had been stretched off to the side, complaining the fire was too warm but watching them all the time with eyes as hot as the flames. There’d been owls hooting—Owen knew they were owls now—and the low notes of a guitar had floated across the lake. A perfect night. If only it’d ended with sex and was something that would be repeated, not just a temporary thing until he figured out what he was doing.
If Hybernia was like the lake, and the people who lived there were like Keesh and Fortis, then he wanted to live there. He just didn’t see how he could. Right now, his father thought he was safe in the palace in North Leland, mated to Prince Devin, cementing an alliance between their packs and making him proud. When he learned what’d really happened—
Owen dreaded having to face him. But if his father had to come fetch him and found him cavorting with other wolves, lolling naked under the stars and running through the woods…
He had no idea what his father would do then. Better to go straight back to Pertha and admit Prince Devin hadn’t wanted him. If he could manage to keep the rest of it a secret, his life might not be so awful. He wouldn’t be catching his own fish or eating marshmallows under a starlit sky, and whatever mate his father found for him probably wouldn’t be as handsome as Fortis or as sweet as Keesh, but he’d survive.
And he didn’t know what to do otherwise. Keesh and Fortis had been super kind to him, but they must be eager to return to their regular lives which involved each other and a town Owen never wanted to see again. He didn’t have any marketable skills or own any saleable possessions—just a bunch of fancy clothes and that engagement ring. And now that he knew more about Prince Devin, he doubted the ri
ng had much value. It was probably worth about as much as Devin thought Owen was.
So he was already sad about leaving Hybernia before he even got there. They reached Central Pack territory about midday, the border marked by a sign Owen couldn’t read with wolf eyes. He got the gist of it. They were safe from hunters now, from traps and stray gun shots—back to being the apex predators.
Keesh ran faster without traps to worry about, or maybe he was just excited about being home. Buildings started appearing. An occasional structure, low and small—the homesteads Keesh had talked about where small groups of wolves staked out a piece of land and lived close to the community without being enmeshed in it. The tidy boxes appealed to Owen, reminding him of the cabin they’d stayed in.
As they continued on, the houses got thicker and the spaces between them grew smaller. He saw fewer wolves in their fur and more in human skin, mostly naked but sometimes wearing a piece or two of clothing as if they’d needed to dress up. On the edge of what was now clearly a town, Keesh shifted into human form.
“This is Hybernia,” he said, gesturing around him. Most of the buildings were made of rocks stacked on top of each other and daubed with mud to seal out the wind. Small signs staked into the grass in front of them proclaimed their use. Here a post office and there a school. One of the signs said Museum of the Indigenous Wolves of the Central Pack. Owen tried to sneak a peek in the windows as they walked past it, but Keesh caught him by the neck and hauled him forward.
“You can sightsee later. I want to get you registered.”
“Registered for what?”
“Registered as an unclaimed omega. It’ll grant you the rights of Central Pack citizenship as long as you’re in our territory, which means you can’t be extradited without due process.”
“Extradited,” Owen repeated, his tongue tangling on the word. He wasn’t sure what due process meant either.
“Like if Prince Devin turned up, he wouldn’t be allowed to bring you back to North Leland unless you wanted to go.”
“What about my father?”
“Same thing. He’s not allowed to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Then who’s my alpha?” Owen asked, trying not to look hopefully in Fortis’s direction.
“You don’t need an alpha. Not here.”
It wasn’t the answer Owen wanted. It wasn’t an answer he was even sure he understood. But he followed Keesh into a building made from dark granite slabs that’d been shined to a high gloss. The sign next to the door said Town Hall, and inside was a long room with a wood floor, painted walls, and electric lights, which Owen had almost forgotten existed. A beta sat behind a giant desk covered in papers. She made Owen fill out a form and then pounded on it with a big stamp and that was it.
“I’m a citizen?”
“You have the protection of a citizen,” Keesh clarified as they stepped back into the warm brightness of the sun. “But if you ever decide you want to become a citizen, that’s easy enough to do.”
“And I get to decide that?”
“You do.” Keesh stopped walking to turn on him. His expression was so fierce Owen took a step back and bumped into Fortis. “I can’t emphasize this enough, Owen. You get to make your own decisions. Where you live. Who you have sex with. Who you mate with, or even if you don’t want to mate with anyone.”
“I’m not the only one who gets to decide who I mate with.”
“You are,” Keesh insisted, but Owen shook his head.
“I can only mate someone who wants to mate me.”
Keesh
Keesh kicked back on the composite stone bench as he watched Owen frolic with the alpacas in the pen across the street. Alpacas were probably the cutest animals the Great Mother had ever created, with expressive ears, anime eyes, and those fluffy bodies that really ought to have arms, but Owen was even cuter. Owen plus alpacas was cuteness overload.
Keesh had always expected to have his own herd of alpacas someday—when he finished his Circling and was ready to settle down with another beta on a homestead far enough out of town that he wouldn’t feel it closing in on him. He’d been distracted by Fortis and the plight of the omegas they’d helped, but sitting on this bench in Hybernia with the fuzzy smell of alpacas tickling his nostrils, the sun warm in a way it never seemed to get up north, those early dreams came back to him. He could still have them. He just had to give up Fortis.
Right now, Fortis was leaning over the fence watching Owen wrestle with the alpacas and copping an occasional head rub himself—furtively, because an alpha couldn’t admit to wanting a live stuffed animal to play with. But Fortis tired of the alpacas before Owen did. He dropped onto the bench next to Keesh in a relaxed sprawl—his legs splayed and his arms draped across the back so that one hand tickled at Keesh’s neck. He toyed with a curl, dragging a claw through it to untangle it, then twisting it around his finger to shape it into a spiral. A lazy, unconscious motion akin to doodling.
“Think he’ll want to stay in Hybernia?” Fortis asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence.
“I hope so.” The more Keesh heard about how Head Alpha Harrod treated his omega children, the less he wanted to deliver Owen to him. “Is Angel going to be pissed at us if he does?”
“I don’t care if he is, but why would he be? Owen’s got a right to live where he wants to live, and I figure our job ends when Owen tells us it ends. Might keep the peace better this way anyway. When Harrod hears what Devin did, he’s going to come gunning for him.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that.” It was frustrating how Head Alpha Marta seemed willing to do anything to advance omega rights except corral her own son. Supposedly Devin was subject to the same laws any of them were, but he never paid any real price for breaking them.
“If Harrod knew Devin had knotted Owen without claiming him, he’d probably challenge him over it,” Fortis observed. “It’s almost worth telling him.”
“Except what would happen is that Owen would spend the rest of his life mated to a dickweed, because you know Devin would buckle.” Keesh had watched Devin back away from Angel’s attempts to goad him into a fight more than once. No way he would take his chances against Head Alpha Harrod. Harrod had won his title, not inherited it, and Western Pack alphas ran big.
“Yeah, I wasn’t really going to squeal on Owen,” Fortis said, “as much as I’d like to see Devin get his.” He gave Keesh’s curls a yank, using them to drag him sideways until Keesh slid up against him. “But you know we can’t make Owen stay here if he doesn’t want to. You’d tell me that yourself.”
Fortis’s words were spoken low into his ear, sending flutters down his spine. Keesh willed his cock to keep it under control. They were naked now, back in wolf territory with it all hanging out there in the breeze. Fortis’s cock was certainly on display, plump between his splayed legs as if he were enjoying more about watching Owen with the alpacas than how cute they were together.
Keesh moved his neck away from the wash of Fortis’s breath. “I care what happens to him.”
“You think I don’t?”
“Why didn’t you knot him?”
“I thought you didn’t want me to knot him unless I was going to claim him.”
“I want him to be happy, and he wants a mate.”
“Which should be me?”
Keesh turned to look at his best friend and not-so-secret crush. “Why shouldn’t it be you? You’ve always wanted an omega.” He held his breath, hoping against hope that Fortis would deny it, but Fortis only shrugged.
“Maybe I don’t want just any old omega.”
“Owen isn’t just any old omega. He’s precious and hopeful and adventurous and sweet. And horny.” Keesh couldn’t bear the thought of all the sex Fortis and Owen were going to have, but Fortis would appreciate how horny Owen was. Of course he would. “He’s perfect.”
“He’s perfect,” Fortis agreed, dashing Keesh’s pitiful hopes once again. “And I’m still not ready to claim him. I
always thought I wanted an omega, but what if I was wrong?”
“Were you?” Keesh checked on Owen. Wolf ears were so sensitive. Even at this distance, their voices would carry if Owen was bothering to listen, but Owen was busy frolicking with the clouds-on-legs. Keesh didn’t want to crush Owen’s dreams of being claimed by an alpha, but Fortis was his alpha. If there was any chance at all—
“I adore Owen,” Fortis said, and Keesh’s stomach gave another lurch. First up, then down, like he was on one of those thrill rides humans built to make their mundane lives more interesting. “But I want you in my life too. If I claimed him, where would you be in that scenario?”
Keesh shook his head. He’d be far, far away. Happy for Owen, who’d be getting the best alpha ever. And happy for Fortis, who’d be getting what he’d always wanted. But he wouldn’t be able to stick around and watch the two people he cared most about in the world live a perfect life without him while he played the role of Keesh, the trusted friend. Keesh, the helpful beta. Keesh, the permanently alone and unhappy.
“That’s what I figured,” Fortis said. “Which is why I’m not going to claim him.”
“You have to,” Keesh insisted contrarily. Owen was a sensual wolf with a melancholy moral streak. He had a body raring to go and a mind that regretted what his body got up to. In order to fully enjoy himself, he needed a mate. “If you won’t claim him, I will.”
“You’ll claim him?” Fortis asked. His voice teased, but his body tensed.
“Mate him, whatever. You know what I mean. You think I can’t keep him satisfied?” Keesh doubted he could. Knot, knot, knot. That was all Owen talked about. But he would try. He’d be loyal and committed. He wouldn’t toy with Owen the way Fortis was doing.
“Owen’s made it pretty clear you have skills.”
