The Vanguards might win in a dominance fight against the other young packs and come out supreme, but if they didn’t take an omega, they wouldn’t last long. Alphas were all about legacies—taking a territory and holding it, then caring for everyone in it and providing stability in the form of the next generation of alpha sons, who’d do the same. No omega? No babies, no future, no leadership. A community didn’t rise up against their alphas often, but that would definitely be grounds for it.
So for the three omegas, this should’ve been the most glorious time of their lives. All three packs should’ve been vying for each one of their hands, the three of them treated like queens or a king, but instead…
I pushed Fen’s arm away, his muscles tightening too slow for him to stop me as I clambered to my feet.
“Where are you going?” Fen asked in a low growl, he and his brothers beginning to rise to their feet.
“I need a piss,” I shot back. “Cheap wine and my bladder aren’t friends. Nik, you coming?”
She nodded belatedly, giving Paul a long kiss first before following behind me, both of us turning our backs on the disgruntled omegas, and that was a fucking mistake.
I thought I was doing the right thing by getting out of their way and letting the omegas spend some time with the alphas that were their birthright, removing the weird obstacle of obligation and habit that I’d turned out to be.
Of course, it couldn’t be that simple, could it?
“Hey!”
Both Nik and I stopped halfway across the carpark with the toilet cubicle just in sight. So damn close. The two of us turned around to see Cheryl and her omega buddies standing there, fairly spitting with rage, if their silvery eyes were anything to go by.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?”
“Going for a piss,” I drawled, Nik smothering a snort of laughter.
“Before that,” she insisted. “You know you have no future with them.”
“With them, with this town, with anything to do with Bordertown, including you, Cheryl,” I said. Nik let out a little gasp, which let me know that perhaps the wine was doing the talking, but I charged on. “This is your town, one of you will take those guys as mates. You’ll rule this place.”
I watched the three of them flutter their eyes at that. I fought the urge to laugh because it was just so damn easy to disarm them.
“You’re damn right we will,” she insisted, but her words sounded hollow, even to me.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m going to the city for university in a very short period of time. I’m done with this town. Nik is so in love with Paul, it makes me slightly nauseous.”
“Hey!” My friend punched me in the arm, but I didn’t really feel it. Damn, I was drunk.
“No one here is a threat to you,” I finished up, then turned to go, really needing to go to the loo now.
“As if you could be, beta bitch.”
I froze then, my muscles locking down, a completely un-beta-like impulse to grab this fucking bitch and pound my fist into her smug little face rising, rising, and then falling as I considered the consequences of that. Hurting an omega came with an automatic expulsion from the community, no questions asked, and I wasn’t going out like that. Of course, my self-restraint couldn’t be respected, could it?
“You need to keep the hell away from the Vanguards,” Cheryl spat out. “They’re not for you.”
“Riley…” Nik said, placing a placating hand on my shoulder as I spun around.
“I know that. I’ve always known that,” I ground out between clenched teeth. “I’ve told them that a million times, and I’ve tried to keep them the fuck away from me but…”
My words faded away as I peered over the tops of the omegas’ heads, to where a familiar group of guys began to emerge, eyeing the situation here with eyes that shone like the moon.
“Why don’t you tell them that?” I snapped, and then jerked my finger in the pack’s direction.
My tone, my message, they were enough to bring a shitstorm raining down on my head, but I’d picked my words well, because the three of them spun around, the lure of alphas much more important than putting down a mouthy beta. They turned towards the pack just like everyone did, like the guys were the sun and the rest of us were just little satellites, orbiting them endlessly.
But not this fucking planet. I stomped on over to the no doubt spider infested toilet block, shone my phone torch around the cubicle meticulously before doing what I needed to, then emerged to find a white-faced Nik waiting for me.
“Holy shit, Riley…” was all she could say.
“Message Paul to meet us at the bonfire,” I said. “I’m not going back there to watch Cheryl and her omegas play hide the sausage with the guys.”