The Hidden Omega

by Wilder, J. L.

  “You do,” she counters. “And I’m not an idiot. I can tell you don’t want me here anymore.”

  I’m so surprised by that that I look up, even though I’ve been focusing on keeping my head down. “That isn’t true at all.”

  “If it wasn’t, you’d have invited me to join the pack.” She draws a deep breath, and I realize this conversation is a struggle for her. This is costing her something. “I know you can do it. You invited Robbie and Zoe and Greg in immediately. But I’ve never been anything more than temporary to you. And I know that at first you were respecting my wishes, because I didn’t feel safe here. But why didn’t you say something when Clay imprinted? Or when Mike did? Even that doesn’t earn me an invitation?”

  “It’s not like that, Lane.”

  “It sure seems like that.”

  I shake my head. “Well, it isn’t.”

  “Tell me what it’s like, then,” she says.

  In this moment, I could stand up and walk away from her. I could go back to camp, where we’ll be surrounded with other people, and where she won’t want to ask these questions anymore. She won’t want the whole pack to hear about how she feels left out and unwanted. Maybe I should send her away, in fact —

  No. I could never send her away. Even if it wouldn’t mean losing Clay and Mike too, which it almost definitely will, I could never ask Lane to leave. I’ll never have that kind of strength.

  God, I’m not used to being this weak. I’ve never felt like this.

  And this isn’t imprinting? What must imprinting be, if even this isn’t it? Every day, my feelings for this girl escalate. What’s missing, what is there, that I haven’t felt yet?

  I could go back to camp and leave her here, but I won’t. Because all of a sudden, I realize how very tired I am. I’m tired of trying to get through each day acting normal, not letting Lane see these things that I can never ever put to the side. I know the two of us can’t belong together. I know nothing’s ever going to come of it. But keeping it to myself is too hard and too painful; I just need to let it go before I explode.

  “Lane, I might be in love with you,” I say.

  Whatever she was expecting it wasn’t that. “What?”

  “I’ve had feelings for you since...well, since the day I met you. I put them aside because we had just met each other, and because you were dealing with other things at the time and I didn’t want to make my crush your problem. But it’s more than a crush now. And it’s still not your problem, I get that, but...well, that’s why I avoid you. Because I have these feelings, and because I haven’t imprinted and the others have and I don’t understand why, and it’s just too hard to deal with that sometimes. And I’m very sorry for that. Truly.”

  “You’re in love with me?” There’s uncertainty in her voice. Hesitation. It’s as if she’s using the phrase for the first time.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve never really been in love before. But I think this must be it. If this isn’t love, I can’t even imagine what love is. And that’s honestly been driving me crazy, because apparently this isn’t...”

  “Isn’t what?”

  “Isn’t enough. To cause an imprint. And that’s maddening because it feels so big. But maybe it has to be reciprocal or something, and the fact that you don’t have these feelings —”

  “Who said I don’t have them?” she interrupts.

  “What?” I don’t understand.

  “I...” she takes a breath. “Clay imprinted. And Mike imprinted. and that’s different from anything I’ve ever...but it’s not...” she breathes in again, as if that simple sentence fragment has exhausted her. “I know who rescued me, Bruno.”

  “That...that doesn’t mean you owe me anything.”

  “No, but it means something about you,” she says. “I’m not just a bear, you know. I go where my body takes me, but that isn’t all I do.”

  “Meaning what?” I think I know what she means. It sounds so much like everything I’ve been saying to myself in my head for the past two weeks. But it can’t be. She can’t be saying what I think she’s saying. It would be too much. It would be too good. This isn’t how things work out in real life.

  But she’s scooting closer to me. Her hand is on top of mine. “Meaning I think about you,” she says. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “You think about me how?”

  “I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t know what love feels like either, really. I’ve never had a relationship that wasn’t, you know, based on a biological response to a breeding imperative.”

  I chuckle. “This is why I like you.”

  “What, my vocabulary?”

  “You’re funny. You make me laugh.” So, few things even make me smile anymore. But Lane always can.

  “My point is that I don’t know what it feels like to fall in love with someone the normal way. As a human. Not because my body is trying to breed with them, but just because I really like them. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I say.

  “But,” she adds, “I know that I really like you, Bruno.”

  “I really like you too,” I tell her. “But I guess we covered that already.”

  “Why didn’t you want me?” she asks.

  “What?” Haven’t I just been expounding on the fact that I very much do want her?

  “In the pack,” she clarifies. “You haven’t included me in the pack.”

  “I can’t just put you in the pack,” I say. “It’s not like inviting you to a party. It has to go both ways. You have to accept me as your alpha, and I have to accept you as one of my pack, and if it’s not happening —”

  “It isn’t me,” she says. “I’ve accepted you. I’m sure of it. I want to be one of the Hell’s Bears. I wasn’t sure at first, I admit that, but for the last few days I’ve been longing to be part of this pack. Why hasn’t anything changed?”

  I shake my head. If what she’s saying is true, if she’s really driven to join the pack, then she isn’t the one keeping herself out of it. It’s me. But why would I be doing that, when all I want is for her to stay if she wants to stay?

  Stay if she wants to stay.

  That’s not the mentality of an alpha at all.

  And that’s the problem. That’s what’s keeping Lane out of the pack. Because from the moment I met her, I’ve never behaved like her alpha. I’ve been reluctant to give commands to all of them, it’s true, but with Lane I’ve put up a barrier in my mind about it. After what she’s been through, the last thing she needs is someone giving her orders she’ll be forced to obey. I don’t want to be that person to her. I love her. I don’t want to hurt her.

  But I am hurting her through excluding her. Because she needs an alpha. She needs belonging. And every day I don’t let her in, I take it away.

  “It’s me,” I tell her. “I haven’t wanted to give you orders, Lane. I haven’t wanted to force you to comply. I can’t do it. It feels wrong.”

  “Bruno, I want you to,” she says.

  A raindrop lands on my arm. I glance up. The clouds above us are about to break open. “I don’t know if you know what you’re asking,” I say.

  “I’ve seen you with the others,” she says. “You aren’t cruel to them. You don’t control. You lead.” She moves her hand to my arm. “You could lead me, Bruno. I want you to. Really, I do.”

  “Lane...”

  “I need you to,” she says. “I need to be a part of a pack. Yours is the only one I want.”

  And it falls together. She’s never going to be safe from the outside world unless she belongs somewhere. She has to have an alpha. And if that alpha is me, at least it’s someone I trust not to hurt her.

  “I will never, ever hurt you,” I say. There’s a husk in my voice.

  She smiles slightly. “I know you won’t.”

  “I have to test the bond,” I say. “I have to give you an order, to see if you’re truly a part of the pack.”

  She looks
up at me. Her eyes meet mine. “Order me to kiss you.”

  I pull back. “I can’t do that.”

  “Bruno.” She rests her hand on my cheek. “Order me to kiss you.”

  I swallow. “Kiss me,” I whisper.

  She rises up on her knees, her arms wrapping around me, her mouth meeting mine, and for a moment I forget everything. I hold her, finally, feeling her pressed against me, and it’s too good to be true. There’s something here, and it might be love, and even if there’s no imprint driving it, it can be good between us. We can belong to each other in our own way that we’ll figure out as we go.

  And then...

  Something shifts.

  We fall to the ground as one, tugging at each other’s clothes, undoing buttons and zippers and tugging at fabric. My shirt is gone. Her pants are gone. Something rips, I don’t see what. We’re naked, now, on a bed of fallen leaves, and I feel a few more raindrops on my skin. I must be so hot. They feel so cold. And Lane —

  She’s wide eyed. She’s staring at me. Her hips are still hitching against my leg. “Bruno,” she gasps. “Bruno.”

  My blood is moving so fast, it’s as if I can actually feel it under my skin. “Lane.”

  “You imprinted.”

  I can’t question that. What’s happening right now, it feels supernatural. It feels like I’ll die if I don’t have her soon.

  Was my own hesitance to dominate her the only thing standing between us all this time? It kept her from joining the pack. It only makes sense that it would keep me from imprinting as well. How could I have imprinted on a woman that I couldn’t stand to control? But now it’s happening, and it’s okay because I know she wants it, and God, I’ve never wanted anything like I want this.

  I lean down to kiss her as I enter her, and she moans, and the sky breaks open and drenches us with rain as we make love.

  Chapter Twenty

  LANE

  “There,” Mike says. “You’re an official Hell’s Bear now.”

  A week has gone by and I’ve almost gotten used to thinking of myself in those terms. It’s still strange, though, belonging to something, knowing I’m a full-fledged member and that there isn’t anyone here who wishes I would go away. It’s not a feeling I’ve ever had before. I look down at the tattoo he’s inked on my shoulder —a bear paw with devil horns where two of the claws ought to be. “How do you know how to do this?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “All Hell’s Bears have this tattoo. We don’t have it done professionally, because we don’t want anyone outside the shifter community to know about our organization, and tattoo artists might talk. So, someone in every pack always knows how to do it, and the information gets passed down.”

  “When do I get mine?” Zoe asks.

  “I can do it tonight,” Mike says. “Let me take a break.”

  I think this is more than fair—Mike spent two hours straight working on my tattoo—but Zoe sighs like she’s suffering the most unfair treatment in the world. Behind her back, Mike rolls his eyes at me.

  “Zoe,” I say, wanting to give him a break. “Let’s go down to the river.”

  She perks up a bit. “Fishing?”

  Fishing appeals to Zoe. I’m not sure why. Bruno thinks it has something to do with her feeling more comfortable when she’s in her bear form, and it could be that, but I think there’s more to it. We all enjoy our animal forms, and we all have different reasons for it. Bruno has told me how he uses his bear form to escape stress and anxiety and the pressures of leadership. For me, it’s a way of coping with anger. What emotion is Zoe trying to escape when she reaches for her baser self?

  In any case, I don’t want to fish. I’ve been given the green light to start shifting again, but I haven’t felt like it yet. “Not fishing,” I say. “I just thought I’d go for a swim.”

  Bruno glances over. “You shouldn’t go alone.”

  “Which is why I’m inviting Zoe,” I say. He can be awfully overprotective. I feel like it should be annoying, but it’s kind of nice to have someone feeling protective of me, actually. “What do you say?” I ask Zoe. “Want to come?”

  She sighs like I’ve asked her if she wants to go to the dentist. “I guess.”

  I ignore the attitude and pull on my shoes. Zoe drags after me. I’m not looking forward to hanging out with her all morning, exactly, but I know that she and I do have a connection just based on the fact that we’re the only women here. She hasn’t really bonded with anyone else. I kind of feel bad about that, given how close we all are as a pack. And besides, this will get her out of the guys’ hair for a few hours.

  The river, at least, is refreshing. I shed my clothes and dive in from the shore, and Zoe wades in after me. The current is gentle, lapping at us, allowing us to swim without worrying about being swept away. Zoe hooks her ankle around a low root to keep her in one place while she floats on her back and stares up at the clear sky above us, and I tread water.

  “Zoe?” I ask after a while.

  “Mmm?”

  “Do you like it here?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Diving right into it, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Come on. I know you’re all fed up with me. Robbie’s my brother, remember? He tells me the truth, even if no one else does. He’s told me a dozen times I need to shape up or you’ll kick us out.”

  “Bruno wouldn’t kick anyone out,” I say.

  “You mean he wouldn’t kick his omega out.” She rolls her eyes. “You might as well be covered in diamonds, girl. No one’s going to get rid of a rare and valuable omega. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t ditch a beta girl who has nothing to offer but a constant bad mood.”

  “It does mean that,” I counter. “I wasn’t always Bruno’s omega, you know. I wasn’t even a member of the pack when you first got here. This is all pretty new for us. But even when he thought I wasn’t going to be a full-fledged member of the pack, he still welcomed me. He still wanted me around. And even if you’re kind of...you know...”

  “A bitch?”

  “No. I was going to say closed off. Why are you so hard on yourself?”

  She sighs. It’s not her usual exasperated sigh. It’s more resigned. She slips beneath the surface of the water and comes up with her hair slicked back, bobbing and treading. “You ask big questions, Lane.”

  “You just don’t seem happy,” I say. “And I’d like you to be.”

  “Why do you care?” She’s not being snarky. She’s actually curious.

  “Because,” I say, “you’re a member of my pack. You’re like my sister.” I pause. “I used to have a sister, kind of. I was adopted. So, we didn’t share the same parents.”

  “That still counts as a sister,” Zoe says.

  “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” I say, and she smirks. “But no, in our case it really didn’t. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. But I’d like to have that with you. I’d like it if we could get there. And I know you’re already someone’s sister, and it’s not the same, but...well, I’ve never been a part of a pack before.”

  Zoe disappears below the water again.

  She came up and pushed the hair out of her eyes. “My old pack lived in a cabin in the woods,” she says. “My mother died when I was a baby, so it was just me, Robbie, Dad, and my uncle. He was the alpha. Mom was an omega. When I was little, everyone thought she’d probably passed the gene on to me, so our pack would be able to survive if we brought in a couple of breeding partners when I was old enough. But then...well, it turned out I was just another beta.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “Why is that so bad? Clay told me that omegas are really rare. It must be unusual for packs to have them, but they don’t all die out, do they?”

  “No,” Zoe says. “But in our pack, I was the only female. I wouldn’t have been able to have enough babies quickly enough to create a new generation, even if we brought in lots of breeding partners. We’d have had to find women, and every pack gua
rds its women pretty carefully even if they are betas. It’s a lot harder to find a rogue female shifter than it is to find a male.”

  “Wow.” I didn’t know any of that.

  “They must have thought they’d won the lottery when they found you,” Zoe says. “An unaffiliated omega’s unheard of. Packs have gone to war over the rights to an omega.”

  I shiver a little, thinking about it. “I guess I’m lucky it was Bruno who found me.”

  Zoe nods. “Anyway, I don’t know. I guess I always felt sort of worthless.”

  “Because you’re a beta?” I shake my head. “Come on, there’s lots more the pack needs than just a breeder. You’re great at fishing.”

  “I can fight, too.” She makes a little bear claw at me. “Dad trained Robbie and me together.”

  “So, there you go,” I say with a grin. “You’re good for lots of things. I’m glad you’re one of us, Zoe, really.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Maybe just don’t yell at the guys so much.”

  She grins back at me. “No promises.”

  It’s not until we’re walking home that the meat of my conversation with Zoe really sinks in. We said a lot and I’m feeling proud of myself. I was able to get through to her more than anyone else has so far. I let her know she was welcome as a part of the pack, and that I wanted to befriend her. Maybe now she’ll relax a little. And maybe she’ll even be able to let go of some of her baggage about not being an omega.

  An omega like me.

  My purpose here is as a breeder. That’s my skill. That’s the thing I can contribute to this pack. And that makes me feel strangely awesome—needed and powerful and important—but it does also kind of make me wonder if there’s some time-of-the-month kind of reason that Clay and I, and Mike and I, and Bruno and I, have been having so much sex lately. Because it’s been three or four times a day all combined.

  And then I start doing the math. The time-of-the-month math.

  Even as I’m counting the weeks, I know what the answer’s going to be. It’s like I can feel it, somehow, like the infinitesimal change in my body is registering with me physically. And I know that’s not possible, and that there’s no way I could actually be feeling the things I think I’m feeling. But I stop in my tracks.