Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Mal
Escape
Well, long story short, Paul dragged me to Dad’s office that night (cockblocking sonofabitch) and, honestly? I thought I was about to die right there.
Not metaphorically die from embarrassment or shame or any of that bullshit—I literally thought I was dead.
I won’t bore you with the details, but I was told if I ever pulled a stunt like that again that he would literally kill me. That now I had to announce a public engagement to Lana and actually go through with marrying her within the next few weeks, or…
Well, or.
“Oh, but isn’t that a bit DRAMATIC, Mal?” you’re probably thinking.
Nope. It’s not.
He literally laid it out to me. He wouldn’t have a gay son. He couldn’t be seen by our pack or others as being “weak.” And even though there’s nothing wrong with being gay, gay marriage, any of that—it’s a whole thing with him and other old-fashioned shifters who share his beliefs.
With us publicly “out” now as a species, the most vocal faction wants our kind to breed as quickly as possible to improve our numbers. The public story is they no longer fear being hunted and killed.
The secret story is that packs like ours and men like my father want to take over governments and put our kind in place and start exacting retribution for eons of being hunted nearly to extinction.
Not all shifters feel that way, obviously. Most don’t. But I guess during the millennia our kind—shifters in general, not just wolf shifters—spent in the shadows did a number on some of their minds.
And since I’m an omega male, I have a better than decent shot of getting pregnant if I’m claimed and mated by an Alpha male. I mean, it’s supposedly not unheard of for a beta or gamma male to knock up an omega male, but it’s pretty rare.
Unfortunately, Dad wants hetero matings, not gay ones.
Thinks pups by gay couples are a weakness.
While he doesn’t banish omega males, he’s stated in no uncertain terms that if any omega male in “his” pack catches, they’d better run before he finds out, and keep running.
He feels omega females are only good for breeding.
And that the only way to expand is to breed respectable little shifters with “traditional” families.
Definitely doesn’t want pics of his pregnant son being splashed across tabloid websites.
Which, duh, another reason I wasn’t stupid enough to hook up with a shifter. Biologically impossible for a human male to impregnate an omega male, helloooo.
Did I get credit for that?
No.
I got an ultimatum.
That’s why I’m sitting here in a shitty hotel room. I holed up here to give myself a chance to plan and not get caught out in the open.
I also turned off the cell phone Mom bought me, and my old one—it would’ve looked more suspicious had I left either behind in the car—and I have the burner phone I paid cash for a few weeks back.
I felt a mental tingle one day while buying gas.
The pump receipt function wasn’t working, and when I went in to get the receipt, they had a display of burner phones.
I walked over and grabbed one, paying cash.
Didn’t know why, at the time.
Didn’t even activate it until a few hours ago.
I get up to pace the room again and nearly trip over my bike. Because, duh, I wasn’t stupid enough to take the car.
I mean, I did take the car to drive to a heavily wooded nature preserve about an hour in the opposite direction, where it’s not uncommon for shifters to go run, and I biked out of there via climbing a fence far from the entrance in case Dad started looking for me with whatever video cameras local businesses have by the main park entrance.
No way I’d drive the car for my escape because I’d be willing to bet what little money I have that he can track it.
Everything I own now fits in the large hiking backpack I bought the day before and in the waterproof panniers strapped to my bike.
Most everything I have are things I can’t replace easily—laptop, tablet.
Passport. Birth certificate. Pictures.
Two bottles of Tully. One of which I crack open and take a swallow from. I’m rationing it like crazy because I can’t afford to get drunk, much less spend money on booze when my funds are so limited. This is a luxury now, and I won’t waste a drop of it.
I know damned well I won’t get another chance with my father after this. If I can’t run far and fast enough and find a safe place to hide, he will kill me.
That’s not an exaggeration.
Because I know damned well he’s killed or ordered the killing of others in the past.
There’s a good reason why Randolph Sterling’s remained the pack Alpha for so long—he’s ruthless, vicious, and cold.
In the past, I heard whispered rumors of small found-family packs scattered throughout the world, but I never had a reason to follow up on that.
Not that I thought I’d be able to. I mean, I’m the youngest son of Randolph Sterling. What pack in their right mind would want someone like me settling down amongst them to potentially draw his deadly attention?
But… I have to start somewhere. And I was an idiot and spent my own money, nearly everything I had, over the past couple of months because I refused to take money from him.
Including a new laptop and tablet. Because while I love Mom I wasn’t sure if her buying them was a deeper trick by my father. My pride and principles bit me in the ass, all right.
I’d been pocketing extra cash but I wiped out that precious reserve with the supplies I bought right before I left.
There’s still a couple of hundred in my account, but I left it there when Mom gave me the money, because I hoped it’d slow my father down if he saw it still there.
No sudden cash withdrawals or crazy purchases showing up on my bank statement to clue him in that I was prepping to bolt.
Yes, I’m paranoid that he has a way to access my account. I wouldn’t put it past him.
I manage to wait three hours before I can’t take it anymore.
I grab the tablet and head out into the night with my sweatshirt hood pulled up.
I keep my head down and don’t walk like I’m in a hurry or being pursued.
Casual, like a local. There’s a fast-food restaurant six blocks away with free wi-fi.
I head there, on alert for any signs of shifters.
I walk into the restaurant, order a meal to go, and note the wi-fi password from the sign posted on the counter. Once I have my food, I head to the far back of the restaurant, take the last table, and start to eat with the tablet propped in my lap and hidden by the table.
I use incognito mode on the browser and log in to the e-mail account.
Relief fills me when I see a response.
Bushville City, Florida.
I immediately delete the e-mail, clear the trash, and delete the account. For good measure, I run a factory reset on the tablet to completely wipe it. I never registered it with my regular e-mail or app account, and never used it with our home wi-fi, so hopefully Dad can’t track it.
The person I e-mailed was a contact I discovered not long after I graduated from high school. I’d heard about them from someone else.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure if they were a real person or if it’d turn out to be a false lead.
I guess even then I had it in the back of my mind I might need to escape one day.
I’d hoped to avoid completely disappearing for a reason such as this.
I’d foolishly believed back then that if I proved I could make it on my own without my father’s help, or “embarrassing him,” he would let me live my life, let me earn an honest living, and relegate me to an ignored non-entity he could easily pretend didn’t exist.
Guess that’s too much for a malignant narcissist to bear.
Once the tablet is wiped and I finish eating I use the burner phone to tap into the wi-fi and look up a map of Florida.
I don’t find the place at first, and start to panic until I find out it’s not an incorporated town.
Hell, it’s barely a four-way stop sign in a rural area not far north of Brooksville, a couple of hours north of Tampa and closer to the coast than to the middle of the state.
That’s a damned long bike ride.
I throw away my trash and head out again, this time to a bar five blocks from the restaurant.
There aren’t any shifters here as far as I can tell.
I order a soda so they don’t card me, pay the bartender with a five and tell her to keep the change, and note their wi-fi password.
I take a seat in the back and pull up a larger map on the tablet.
In a straight line it’s nearly 400 miles. By car, only a few hours south on I-75.
Except I can’t do that. I can’t even risk hitchhiking along the interstate. It’s too open, too exposed.
The first place my father or his men will likely try to track me.
I spend twenty minutes planning my route.
Back roads south to the state line and, if I run across the opportunity to catch a ride with someone, like a farmer, I’ll take it.
Otherwise, I’ll bike it. Another of my purchases, along with the backpack, was a small one-person tent and a lightweight sleeping bag.
It’s not cold right now so I’ll be fine.
I also bought a quality set of rain gear, and the backpack is waterproof.
For insurance, I bought waterproof bags in which my clothes and other belongings are packed.
My hope is Dad wastes time thinking I’m camping for a few days, sulking. Because I played terrified—not difficult because I was terrified—and told him I would comply.
It took me four days to prepare for my departure, doing my best to avoid my father at home. Even buying and “accidentally” leaving a couple of wedding magazines on the coffee table with a few pages notated with sticky notes, and brochures from three upscale bakeries.
Like I’m silently giving in.