“And you always will,” he says.
“And now that we have our babies, I finally understand who I’m meant to be,” I say. “Having a pack was more than I ever dreamed of, but now on top of that I have a purpose. Just like your role is to be the alpha and to protect and provide for us, my role is to be these babies’ mother. It’s the most important thing I’ll ever do in my life.”
He places two fingers under my chin, tips my face up to meet his, and kisses me deeply. Even now, exhausted from childbirth, I can still lose myself in his kisses. There’s no sweeter wine on Earth.
He smiles down at me. “I can’t think of any better woman for the job.”
Preview of The White Omega
Blind River, Ontario is a tiny town outside Toronto. It’s poised on the North Channel of Lake Huron and on the Blind River itself, and as such, it’s a great place for fishing, boating, and other water sports. Which means there’s plenty here to keep our less than four thousand residents occupied, even when the town isn’t drawing in tourists. Which it really doesn’t do that much of, despite the local government’s best efforts to put us on the map. Most towns in Ontario have a fall festival. Ours isn’t anything special.
I know all of this from the internet, not from having actually explored the town. Because I’m not allowed outside the house.
It took me years to have a problem with the way I’m treated. It took me until I was sixteen to fully understand that it wasn’t right, or normal, to keep me inside all the time. And when I figured it out, of course, I did the dumbest thing I could possibly have done—I went to the alpha of our pack, Sinclair. He was old then, probably in his seventies, and I didn’t like talking to him if I could help it. But going to the alpha was the quickest way to get a question answered.
He scoffed at me, though, when I asked him if I could attend public school. “Certainly not, Jacie,” he said. “An omega in a public school! Disgusting idea.”
“Would it matter?” I asked, trying not to let the images I was sure he was visualizing—images of every boy in school drooling after me, images of me laid out like a meal for the taking on a cafeteria table—into my own mind. “No one would be shifters at the public school. Would they even know the difference?”
He eyed me beadily. “Believe me, girl,” he said, “you go out that door and you’ll be set upon in minutes, and then we’ll be stuck with some filthy half breed baby taking the food from our table. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay inside this house.”
I knew a threat when I heard one. If I left the house, my status in the pack would somehow become even lower than it was already. I didn’t know how that could be—I was already at the absolute bottom of the totem pole—but I wasn’t exactly curious to find out. So, when the time came to register the others in the pack for the new school term, I was quiet. I downloaded the homeschooling materials from the Canadian Board of Education website the way I did every year and resolved to leave well enough alone.
But I did make one change that year. That was the year I downloaded not only the eleventh-grade study materials, but the twelfth-grade ones too. I was determined to finish my high school degree as quickly as possible; by the end of that school year, if I could. I didn’t know what good such a thing might do me, but any means of securing additional power had to be a good thing. By that spring, I was ready. I took the test, got my certification, and registered for classes with the local community college for the summer.
I told nobody what I’d done. Nobody else in my pack ever knew.
Now, nine years later, I have to admit that the plan doesn’t seem as clever as it did when I came up with it. I’m twenty-five years old and I’ve achieved college degrees in several fields, and that’s especially impressive when one considers that I’m only allowed internet access for two hours every day. But what good is it, really? It doesn’t get me any closer to being able to leave the house.
God, I’d love to get out of here.
The one redeeming feature of this house, after all these years, is that I have my own room with an adjoining bathroom. Of course, I’m locked in it when I’m in heat, and that’s not ideal. But they don’t take it away from me the rest of the time, which means I have somewhere to go that’s mine, somewhere I can be alone.
Not that I can trust other people not to come in.
I’m lying on my bed and flipping through a magazine when the door bursts open. It’s Sheldon, Sinclair’s youngest son. He’s thirty-three, but I swear, he acts like he’s about fourteen.
Sheldon flops down on my bed as if he owns it. “What are you doing?”
I indicate the magazine. “Reading.”
“Aiden says you should come down for dinner.” Aiden, Sinclair’s oldest son and the alpha of our pack since his father died, takes far too much pleasure in the authority afforded him by his rank. As alpha, he knows if he gives a command, I’ll have to obey it. Sending Sheldon is his way of toying with me, letting me know that he could make me come down if he wanted to. It doesn’t really have the desired effect on me, though, because as much as he’s screwing with me, he’s screwing with Sheldon even more by using him this way.
“I’ll come in a bit,” I say.
“We’re going running,” Sheldon informs me.
“You go every weekend.”
“Yeah. Well, you can’t come.”
“Shel, I have literally never been.” Sometimes, I think he’s not right in the head. Sometimes, I could almost feel sorry for him. “I’m not allowed out of the house, remember?”
“You’d get knocked up.”
“Sure.” I flip a page in my magazine, doing my best to ignore him. He wants me to get upset, but he’s going about it all wrong. Being told he would have to stay behind on the run would be heartbreaking for Sheldon, probably, but it’s every day of my life for me. He might as well be telling me I can’t fly to the moon.
Seeing that I’m not going to have a tantrum, Sheldon leaves. After a moment, little as I want to, I put the magazine aside and follow. The truth is, I am hungry. If I go down when the others are eating, I’ll get a hot meal, but if I wait, I’ll have to forage for leftovers.
Sheldon and Aiden’s sister, Nori, has made lasagna tonight. Robotically, she scoops some onto a plate and shoves it at me. Nori is never especially unkind to me, but she treats me like one of her dozen cubs—as if I’m immature and a bit irritating, without an identity that she has any time to worry about distinguishing from all the others. Her lasagna is delicious. I grab a fork and lean up against a wall in the corner of the packed room to eat.
Aiden is seated at the head of the table, already shirtless, clearly ready to begin the night’s fun. He’s shoveling massive forkfuls of lasagna into his mouth and washing them down with beer straight from the can. His eyes rake over me and, as always, a little shudder crawls down my spine. Aiden is in his early forties and muscular. By day, he works as a mechanic and he often returns home covered in grease. Rather than showering, his practice is generally to strip off his day clothes and roam the house in his boxers, which I find skeevy. He’s also not shy about touching people with his greasy hands. Aiden’s attitude seems to be that, as the alpha, he owns all of us anyway.
He swallows the dregs of his beer can and pushes his plate away. “Jacie,” he says, not bothering to look at me, “clean up the kitchen by the time we get back home.”
“When will that be?” I ask, my voice flawlessly polite. I’ve had years of practice.
“Sunrise, I’d think,” Aiden says. “There’s a group of tourists camping by the river. I think we should play with them. Give them something to tell their friends back home about.”
Sheldon chuckles appreciatively at this. Nori rolls her eyes, as if the idea of her brothers scaring the daylights out of some tourists is just boys being boys or something. All around me, the others in the room start to peel their clothes off until they’re standing around in nothing but undergarments.
“Are the kids all asleep?
” Leigh asks the group at large as she makes her way out onto the porch.
“All the little ones are,” says her husband, Connor. “I checked on them before I came to dinner. And the older ones are in their rooms. If anyone wakes up, Jacie will be here to look after them.” This is perfectly true, of course—I’d never let anything bad happen to any of the kids—but he could ask. It would be polite.
I go back inside when they’re all on the porch. I know what’s going to happen next, and I don’t like to watch it. I suppose there’s a part of me that is jealous. I suppose there’s a part of me that does want to go on the run, and it hurts to know that I never will. But I’m an omega. That’s not going to be part of my life.
Even though I don’t intend to look, I glance through the window over the sink, and it’s impossible to miss them. Their white coats gleam in the night. A long line of powerfully built, beautiful polar bears, running into the forest, running from my front door. My family. And I’ll never be one of them.
About The Author
Retired man eater, I’ve dated them all! Now I get to weave the former men in my life into shifters and vampires.
And I did once have a thing with three brothers!!!
Check out my freebie here: Brother’s Wolf
The Hidden Omega Page 19
