“We said we were going to take it slow,” Blake told his brother.
“Why? It’s her. I can fucking feel it,” Colt ground out. “I feel alive for the first time in—”
I scrambled to my feet then, scooping up my drink and climbing on top of the table, the pool players checking me out as I walked across the top and then jumped down onto the ground.
“That’s what this is about?” I asked and took a great big gulp of my drink, then thought fuck it and swallowed the rest. “Some teenage crush?”
“Now, Riley…” Fen said, getting to his feet and holding his hands out in surrender. “We haven’t handled this well.”
“Y’think?” I snapped.
“We had this all planned out,” Ryan said between gritted teeth. “How we could reconnect first, get to know each other again, then see how you felt about us and vice versa.”
“I don’t need to take it slow!” Colt snarled. “She’s the one! I’ve always said it and I’ll say it a-fucking-gain—Riley’s our fated mate.”
Was I feeling light-headed because I’d just skulled a double shot of gin on an empty stomach, or was it that finally someone had spoken the words we were never supposed to say? One of them saw me wavering obviously, so I was scooped up and placed on a chair, facing down the rest of them, and that was when I felt the gut punch.
I’d spent the five years at university working out what the half whispered conversation meant in our kitchen before Mum and I left Bordertown for good, but these guys hadn’t had that heads-up. If I knew the old alphas, they probably had never even spoken about it. Being a latent was a shameful thing in small towns, where insular perspectives still reigned. They thought it a sign of bad breeding or lack of strength in their lines, whereas I knew exactly what it was.
Omegas came from us betas. Alphas produced more alphas, not omegas, and for good reason, otherwise the breeding pools would get smaller and smaller. Packs tended to have vague ideas about what produced an omega. From the gods deeming it so, to Mother Nature having a hand in the continuation of the species, but what modern science had found was much more concrete.
Omegas were like recessive betas, the product of tricksy little latent genes, like the ones for blue eyes. Those omega genes were lurking out there in the beta population, only to come together randomly when betas had kids, producing omegas every now and then. The fact there always seemed to be just enough omegas for alpha packs was obviously seen to have mystical import, but we theorised that those genes may have a switch that turned on when needed. So a girl or boy growing up as a beta in the city might actually reveal as an omega if she or he were in the presence of an alpha pack. That was still to be proven, but…
I raked my fingers across my cheeks, then scraped my hair back from my face, winding it up into a messy bun, and the guys followed my every move.
“I’m sorry your parents never spoke to you about this,” I said. “If it makes you feel any better, mine didn’t either. I just…” I straightened up, sitting back in my chair. “I overheard Malcolm, Eloise, and Mum talking before we left.” A little growl at that. “I’m a latent.” I smiled as I said the words, though I felt no joy in that. “That’s what’s got you all…” —I waved my hand around— “whatever this is. Part of you can sense her…”
Their focus picked up then, each one stiffening, their eyes hot on my skin.
“Part of you can sense the omega I might have been, but I’m not.” I threw my hands in the air. “My omega genes didn’t switch on. Studies suggest it might be because the three omegas in town were stronger candidates and mine remained repressed as a result. Or I had enough omega mojo to pique your interest, but not enough to become what you need in a mate. I don’t know. But what I can tell you is your parents did the right thing keeping you away from me.”
“Riley—” Fen started to say, but I shook my head. I was going to get this out and then go home, maybe via an Uber.
“I didn’t become a doctor, I became a medical researcher. I study exactly what happens when people are latent, when they can’t shift, when they’ve got one foot in the beta world and one in the omega or alpha world. They didn’t want that for you, because it’s an ugly thing. Patients sometimes committed suicide from the strain of it, feeling these instincts but not being able to act on them. Some get frozen half shift, trapped in this half wolf, half human form until enough muscle relaxers force them to come back into human form, only for them to try again as soon as they come to. Some people have gone into a form of low-grade heat, experiencing all the increased sexual receptivity and low inhibitions, but with no alphas to claim them or help them through it…”
Their eyes went very wide at that.
“I’m really sorry this is the way you found out. You’re adults now, you should’ve been told, to save the drive up to the city.”
I shook my head and then dropped my hands down on my knees, ready to leave, but of course, it was never going to be that easy.
“They did,” Haze replied, peeling the sticker of his beer bottle off with single-minded attention. “They tried to redirect our attention not long after you left, burying us in work until we were too fucking exhausted to keep asking questions. That’s why we fought the Williams and the Mitchells and then our dads for control.” His eyes slid my way. “We were the youngest fucking alphas in the district, so they couldn’t keep secrets from us then. Then it all came out. Jim knew what you were and was pretty sure it didn’t matter, but we already knew that.”
“Jim told us you were a latent omega on his deathbed,” Ryan said, his eyes shining stark in his face. “He told us so we could make sure you were kept safe, and he told us to…”
“Give us hope,” Blake finished. He chanced a sidelong look at me. “He knew we weren’t compatible with the omegas in town, and none we’d met on visits to other towns had any effect on us either. He seemed to think if we looked after you, spent time with you, then maybe whatever was there inside you would come forth.”
“Jesus Christ…” I hissed, feeling like my stomach had dropped through the floor.
“We tried things Jim’s way,” Fen said. “Then we tried things our dads’ way. We’ve attended so many bloody omegas’ heats that the whole damn world knows what our situation is, and that’s why we’re facing a challenge.”
“What?” I asked.
“We come back to town in a month with our omega, mated, or the town gets turned over to whomever the strongest mated pack proves to be,” he finished.
And now I knew why they were here.
Chapter 9