I shoved my phone in my pocket and then walked out.
“Riley…” Mum said, pushing herself away from the wall in the hallway, but as she looked me up and down, taking in my slapdash attire, something seemed to settle. She forced herself to smile, then walked down to the kitchen, grabbing her bag and finding some cash before handing it over. “Eat something before you drink, so you’ve at least got something to line your stomach. Might mean you don’t vomit later.”
I grinned, then bounced over, pulling her in a hug.
“Thanks, Mum. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Stay safe!”
Her voice rangin my ears as I walked out to the front of the house, the big black SUV the boys had been gifted idling on the side of the road.
“Hey, baby,” Fen said with a sharp grin. “Wanna ride?”
“I get shotgun?” I asked, opening the passenger side door and sliding in. “Who the fuck gets the bitch seat?”
This was one of a row of much smaller, foldable seats in the rear compartment of the car.
“We scissors, paper, rocked that shit, and Hazel lost!” Ryan replied with a cackle.
“Shut the fuck up,” Haze said. “You’re riding in here on the way home.”
That quickly devolved into the kind of raucous bickering they were all known for, only Fen keeping out of it.
“You ready?” he asked me, those green eyes shining as he stared at me.
“Let’s do this shit,” I said. “Time to get my goon on.”
Chapter 4
“Oh my god, food baby,” Nikki said, flopping backwards and into Paul’s arms as she nursed a small bump at her stomach. The beta wrapped his arms around her, nuzzling his face into her neck. Nik and Paul were intending to stay in Bordertown, get jobs, maybe move in together… Something sweetly domestic. The scene they painted right now kinda tugged at me, so I drank down a mouthful of wine.
If I stayed here, someone would be found for me, the alphas would make sure of it. Ensuring the happiness and harmony of the town was their highest priority, and if that entailed matchmaking betas, they’d do it. Or rather, their omega would. But I’d never had a chance to experience this, to be held, to be nuzzled. Well, almost never.
“C’mere,” Fen said, hooking his arm around my waist and pulling me onto his lap before retrieving my drink and filling it back up from the cardboard cask of shit wine we’d bought, then presenting it to me. “I’ve got the cure for what ails you.”
It wasn’t the overly sweet white wine I was sensing as I took another mouthful, but the guys’ eyes on me. Giving and taking food and drink from wolf shifters was a big, big deal, but not now, not here. I forced my muscles to relax, to settle back against Fen’s solid chest, to ignore the spicy, woody, masculine scent of him and just pretend like this was old times. When we were just kids, falling all over each other like a pile of puppies. When drawing me close, passing me around, holding me like this was all innocence.
Because right now, it wasn’t just his scent I was getting. His arm was loose around me, his voice strong and confident as he talked shit with his brothers, the stories and the crap becoming more and more convoluted the more wine was consumed. Well, all but Colt. He sat quietly at the edge of the group as he often did, watching all the bullshit go by, except this time, it appeared I was the bullshit. Those eyes of his slid over his brother and me, making me shift uncomfortably on Fen’s lap, which just made Fen’s hand slap down on my leg, holding me still, right where he wanted me.
It wasn’t just the warmth of Fen’s body or the sound of his voice or the feel of his breath riffling the little baby hairs on the back of my neck. Something hard rose beneath me, pressing into my bony arse, making clear exactly how the man of my dreams was responding to me.
I chanced a look over my shoulder, those green eyes meeting mine, his shit-eating grin only softening slightly, but his pupils? I caught the moment when they expanded, a slight silvery cast covering his iris as his wolf looked out at me. The grin faded, becoming something much lazier—the way a wolf looks when it opens its jaws to pant, catching its breath after the hunt. Or was it before? I jerked my eyes down belatedly, knowing how rude it was for a beta to stare at an alpha, although alphas weren’t constrained by the same rules. When I finally looked up, Colt stared without a hint of regret, his eyes shining bright, bright silver.
“Ugh, I should’ve known you were here, hanging out with these losers.” A sharp, feminine voice had all of us groaning, and me more than anyone. Whatever tension had been building dissipated, so my groan was more from relief than anything. Cheryl and her crew looked down at the lot of us, casting a censorious eye over the mess of pizza boxes and shitty wine. “We just came by to tell you the Williams boys are here tonight.”
Alpha packs were born at least a year or so apart, often in clusters, and the Vanguards and the Williams were two of the three packs in their cluster. This meant that they’d all been raised knowing one pack would rise through the ranks, taking over as the ruling pack in Bordertown when the boys’ dads stepped down. The others could either live under their rule, as the Williams boys’ dads did, or they could bugger off to some other town, challenge the existing alphas there, and hope they won. Until that was settled, their ability to coexist was a shaky one.
“What the fuck are they doing here?” Ryan snapped, his eyes flashing silver and the omegas simpered at that. “They graduated a few years ago.”
“Maybe they’re here for us,” Cyrus said with a sharp look at the alphas. “Did you think about that?”
“Then you better run along then,” Haze said with a dismissive wave. “Wouldn’t do to keep the mighty Williams boys waiting.”
This wasn’t going to the omegas’ plan at all, and I kind of felt sorry for them.
Omegas were raised a certain way—to expect to be pampered and fought over, to inspire unholy levels of lust in alphas, and to use what power they had over their bigger, stronger mates to ensure their needs were met.
It was actually an area of our biology that fascinated me. Theories abounded as to why things were this way. Firstly, it was assumed it was an evolutionary thing. Alphas were just so much stronger than the rest of us, particularly omegas, so what was to stop them from snatching them and raping them over and over? There was some prehistoric evidence that this was the case in the distant past. But since then, it had become a chase, the hunting instincts and natural competitiveness of alphas leading them to perform greater and greater gestures to try and win the unruly omega to their pack, because that was the other thing.