Ruffled Feathers

Prologue

Truett

O tillie-James Baler. What a completely ridiculous moniker to be saddled with for life. The name was sweet and demure, like she should be a shy, quiet little Omega who’d just stepped off the prairie. The girl was anything but.

She was naive; that was true. She’d lived basically off the grid with her father for her entire life, but it hadn’t made her shy. If anything, I was pretty sure she’d punch a grizzly bear in the nose if it looked at her wrong.

She was still undesignated, and at nearly seventeen, that meant she’d probably end up a Beta or remain Unshown, the name for anyone who didn’t present with a designation before their seventeenth birthday.

She was wildly out of place here in Rock Hill, South Carolina, amongst the Southern belles and debutantes, the sweet little Omegas with soft smiles and fluttering eyelashes. It had been made glaringly obvious by the way she’d wobbled down the aisle in her three-inch, periwinkle-blue satin heels, and was further supported by the fact they were no longer periwinkle blue or attached to her feet. They were haphazardly strewn across the expansive grass lawns of the Chalmers Estate.

It had been the shoes that alerted me to the fact something might be wrong. I’d looked all around the reception for Otillie-James, but no matter how hard I looked, or what polite enquiries I made, no one had seen the runaway bridesmaid.

The idea that she had indeed run away crossed my mind. She’d been shipped down here from the wilds of Montana to the steaminess of a late Southern spring. She was always mumbling under her breath about the heat. Maybe she’d decided to hitchhike her way home.

If I had to hazard a guess, though, the weather would’ve been the easiest thing for Otillie-James to overcome. She stuck out like a fly in the soup here—at least according to Edison Chalmers, her new stepbrother and my best friend. She didn’t know the unspoken rules, the etiquette of Alphas and Omegas, and exactly where on the social ladder everyone stood.

It had just been her and her father in the wild for too long. Despite the fact that he was an Alpha, they’d basically spent their lives out there, like they were Unshown.

I was going to need help to find the girl.

Edison was easy enough to find in the crowd; you just had to look for the group of fawning mothers and their pretty, yet entirely vapid Omega daughters. Sonny was a society catch—a strong Alpha, with a bank balance that’d make grown women get an attack of the vapors. He hated it. He was also too polite to tell them all to fuck off.

I had no such qualms. Deciding to save him, I wandered over to the group, the scowl on my face telling them all that I had zero interest in listening to their pandering drivel. “Edison, your stepfather would like a word.”

Utter bullshit, but it wasn’t like the old biddies could protest a request from the groom of the wedding they were attending. Sonny did a great job of keeping the relief from his face, instead smiling at them all charmingly as he excused himself.

Sonny and his mother Citrine were rich-rich. Among Southern society, they were shiny diamonds in a sea of glass jewels. But it wasn’t just their fortune that made them stand out. No, it was the fact that all that money hadn’t corrupted them completely.

Citrine gave away a gross amount of money every year to various charities and foundations, and it barely dented her fortune. She was sweet and kind, the epitome of a Southern Omega, and had been utterly loyal to the memory of her former Alpha, Victor. However, Sonny had once told me that she kept up the mourning widow facade to keep the fortune hunters and unscrupulous Alphas at bay. She was savvy like that, and after a few years, the opportunistic Alphas had stopped sniffing around.

You only had to look at her to know she missed Victor, though; it was in the sadness around her eyes, the way she’d sometimes stare off into the distance. I noticed it, even back when I was barely a teen and didn’t know anything but rage and mischief.

Honestly, Citrine was the reason Sonny had become the man he was. Good-natured and gentle, despite the fact he was an Alpha, and a strong one at that. Citrine had bucked the expectations of her designation, and that trickled down to her son.

For instance, Citrine had continued to work after she was mated, which baffled the Rock Hill society scene, but I understood. Behind the rich, classically beautiful Omega image, there was a kind heart and a knife-sharp mind. She’d been in college to become a geophysicist when she first met Victor Chalmers, and had refused to quit just to become someone’s Omega.

Victor, by all accounts, had been a hundred percent enamored by her drive, and together, they’d been a powerhouse couple until his death when Sonny was six. Since then, it had just been Citrine and Sonny.

Until now.

I looked over at Sonny’s new stepfather. Like his daughter, Buck Baler stuck out in polite society like a sore thumb. However, unlike his daughter, his gruff manner was seen as admirable, rather than something to be ridiculed by tittering teens in overly ruffled pastel dresses.

He was a tall, broad Alpha, with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and heart eyes that shone at Citrine every time he saw her. They’d met at some conference about rock formations in the Montana mountains, and by all accounts, it had been love at first sight. An instant scent match.

It helped that he hadn’t known or cared how much money Citrine had. It also helped that Citrine didn’t care he had a wild daughter in tow. Single parenthood had been something they’d bonded over, apparently.

Sonny threw me an appreciative look as we moved quickly across the lawn. “Does Buck really need to talk to me?”

I shook my head. “No, but you looked like you needed saving, and we might have a small problem.”

He raised his eyebrows, loosening his tie around his neck as we walked. “What kind of problem?”

I pointed to the shoes across the lawn. “I can’t find your new stepsister. Just her shoes. Very Cinderella.”

Sonny’s face scrunched as he stared at the shoes, before looking around, like the girl in question would just appear. “Maybe she’s eating cake, or with her dad or something?”

I shook my head. “I checked. She’s not anywhere in the gardens or in the house. Although, perhaps she’s just very good at hide and seek.”

Sonny was still frowning. “So we’re… worried?”

Was that what I was? I guess, maybe a little. I didn’t want Citrine’s day to be ruined, just because her new undesignated stepdaughter was a flaky little drama queen.

Not that she struck me as one of those—and trust me, I’d met many—but weddings were different. Also, I kind of felt sorry for the girl. Her whole life had been uprooted. In her position, maybe I’d run away too.

“I think so. Seems unusual that her shoes are here, but she’s nowhere to be found.”

His face smoothed into another expression I knew all too well: calm determination. It was why he’d been both valedictorian and prom king in our senior year. In fact, it was why he’d been everything from hall monitor to class marshall all throughout our school years. Because when there was a crisis, Edison Chalmers was an unflappable leader everyone could get behind.

He chewed his lip as he thought. “I don’t think we should disturb Mom and Buck with this yet. Not until we’ve searched at least once more. I’ll check with the staff under the guise that the photographer wants some family photos, and they can search the house and grounds.” He continued laying out a plan that involved everyone short of the National Guard, but I’d kind of tuned him out. Sonny would get it done. I’d played my part as dutiful almost-son to Citrine.

A flash of blue in the treeline suddenly caught my eye. A soft blue amidst the verdant green of the spring growth in the sycamore tree.

It couldn’t be, right?

Grabbing Sonny and the shoes, I towed him along to the tree, kind of hoping it was a bird and not his new stepsibling up the fucking tree. Though he’d been very adamant not to refer to her as his sister. As he liked to point out, he’d known her for only two months and had spent a total of six hours in her presence before the wedding.

I snorted at his insistence. It had nothing to do with how long he’d known her, and far more to do with the fact that while Otillie-James Baler was wild, she was also beautiful. Or maybe she was beautiful because she was wild. Either way, Sonny had probably had a few impure thoughts about the girl, and no one wanted to think like that about someone who’s meant to be their sibling. Talk about awkward as fuck.

Any hope I had about the flash of blue in the tree being a bird disappeared, though, because from the base of the trunk, there was no doubting that it was indeed Otillie-James up the damn tree.

“Uh, what the fuck?” I called up to her, looking around to make sure no one else was watching. I dragged Sonny to the other side of the trunk, so we were at least a little obscured by the tree.

Silence.

“Otillie?” Sonny yelled. “Are you okay?”

The aggravated huff answered that question more than words ever could. “I’m stuck. This stupid frou-frou dress is caught, and I can’t get it out without dropping them.”

So many questions. I raised an eyebrow at Sonny, who looked as confused as I did.

“Dropping what?” he called, a little more quietly.

More huffing, followed by the unmistakable sound of fabric ripping. She gave a tiny screech of rage. “The squirrels.”

I glanced at Sonny. “Maybe someone spiked the punch?” I looked back up the tree. I really couldn’t see much of her, just her stockinged feet and swaths of fabric. “What color are the squirrels, and are they talking to you?”

“Shut up, dickcheese.”

A laugh burst from my lips, unbidden. Fucking hell, this was how she spoke to an Alpha? She really was going to be eaten alive by society.

Completely ignoring me, she continued to tug, her grunting getting more pronounced. “They’re babies. They fell out of their nest, and I wanted to put them back. They’re too young to climb back up themselves, but they’ll die if they’re down there for too long.” The branches bounced, and now I was a little worried she’d fall out and break her stupid little neck. “But this fucking dress isn’t made for climbing. Now I’m stuck.”

Unsurprisingly, Sonny was already slipping off his jacket and loosening his tie. For fuck’s sake.

“Look, maybe you should just leave them up there and hope their parents come back?” I suggested. “You know, the circle of life? Besides, I thought if they smelled humans on the babies, they’d reject them anyway?”

“That’s not true ,” she yelled down, as if I was the idiot, rather than the person who was currently stuck fifteen feet in the air. “It’s a lie parents tell stupid kids to stop them plucking baby birds out of their nests.”

Sonny jumped and dragged himself up onto the lowest branch, while I ran a hand down my face. I was going to have to tell both Buck and Citrine that their children had ended up with broken spines on their wedding day.

Though, Sonny and I had spent our fair share of time in these trees as kids. He was already scaling it like a damn monkey. “Otillie, I’m going to come up and untangle you, and then I’ll put the babies back in their nest,” he called up to her, ever the shining Alpha hero.

“I don’t need your help, Light Bulb!” Her strangled tone suggested otherwise.

“Light Bulb?” I asked him.

“I made the mistake of calling her Juice. You know, because her initials are OJ,” Sonny called down. “I know you don’t need my help, Juice, but I’m still going to come and give you a hand, because a dead child is the last thing Buck needs on his wedding day,” he responded to her. His words were sharp, but his tone was cajoling, like he was trying to corral a pitbull into a tutu.

Rolling my eyes, I watched him nimbly climb the tree, like he was born to it. Maybe he was; he’d never had much fear, so he was pretty well equipped for highwire rescues.

Not me. I’d provide ground support.

I strained to see what was going on, and the soft sound of them bickering echoed back down, too quietly for me to hear the words, but the tone was enough. He was trying to herd her somewhere, and she was being stubborn. It would’ve been amusing, if it wasn’t so dangerous.

“Stop tugging on your dress before you overbalance!” Sonny snapped, and I could hear his calming inhale from here. “At least give me the basket so you can unhook the fabric, Otillie-James.”

“Don’t bark at me, asshole. That shit doesn’t work on me yet. I’m not designated.” But I could see the flash of a baby-blue and white wicker basket being passed over. “Don’t drop them,” she warned, and I had no doubt she’d exact revenge for the lives of those tiny little rodents from my friend’s very flesh if anything happened to them. Hell, maybe she’d designate as an Alpha. She had the balls for it.

She didn’t need to worry about their furry little lives, though. Sonny was a textbook sufferer of white knight syndrome. If he dropped that basket, he’d probably dive out of the tree after it, irrespective of his own personal safety. It was one of his more annoying traits, if I was honest.

There was more huffing and puffing, which I hoped meant that she was about to climb down and I could go back to the open bar.

“Be careful,” Sonny warned.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snapped back.

The rest happened in slow motion. The cracking of a branch, a scream, the sound of tearing fabric.

“Otillie!” Sonny shouted down, and then she was hurtling toward the ground, hitting branch after branch as gravity dragged her back to earth.

I watched, moving like I was in quicksand, as her dress caught on a branch and tore, suspending her ten feet in the air by the barest scrap of fabric. Racing around, I stood under her.

“OJ, are you okay?” I shouted up, catching a glimpse of Sonny’s pale face above her. Her eyes were wild, and her face was white as a ghost, contorted with fear. “I’ll catch you,” I told her calmly. “We’re family now. I’ll always catch you. You can trust us, Otillie-James.”

She shook her head, then screamed as the fabric continued to tear slowly.

My heart was pounding in my chest as I stood beneath her, grabbing her gaze and holding it. “Just watch my face. I won’t drop you. I’ve got you. You have nothing to worry about—do you hear me?” I put every ounce of my budding Alpha power into that promise. Another tearing sound, and another squeak of fear. “Look at me, OJ. I’ve got you.”

With that, the thin chiffon gave way completely, and she fell the rest of the way, her shoulder hitting a branch before she landed in my arms. Her weight crashed against me, knocking me onto my ass, but she was safely in my grip.

Whimpering and crying, she clung tightly to my shirt, like she wasn’t convinced she was done falling. I wasn’t sure why the sounds of her tears made my heart hurt. Maybe because her bravery was something I admired so much?

“See? Told you I’ve got you.”

That seemed to snap her out of her terror. She scowled at me and tried to wiggle out of my arms, then hissed with pain. Fuck. She was hurt. Of course she was goddamn hurt—she’d just fallen out of a damn tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Shifting her in my arms, I moved her to my lap so I could get a better look at her. “What hurts? Is it your head?” I searched for blood and bumps in her honey-blonde hair, but couldn’t find anything, and breathed a sigh of relief.

She dragged her head away from my probing fingers, her jaw gritted. “My arm.” Still so fierce, like a little hissing feral cat.

Pulling back to look, I winced. Yep, that was broken, or at least dislocated, because it was sitting at an unnatural angle. Fuck.

“Is she okay?” Sonny sounded frantic. “I’m coming down.”

“No!” she shouted. “Put the babies back first.”

I couldn’t believe this girl. “For fuck’s sakes, Otillie-James. Forget the fucking squirrels. You’re hurt.”

She pulled away from me, her hiss turning into a moan of pain, and I wasn’t prepared for the clenching in my gut at the sound. Fucking fuck. Fine.

“Put the damn squirrels back in their nest so we can get the princess to a damn hospital,” I yelled up to Sonny. She glared at me, and I glared back, but I was all too aware of the fact that she was basically naked in my arms, with a pinch of pain around her eyes.

Grunting a noise of annoyance, I stood with her still cradled against my chest. Honestly, I used every core muscle I had to make it seem effortless. “Did you hurt your legs? Ankles?”

When she shook her head, I put her gently on her feet, holding her steady as I grabbed Sonny’s jacket from the ground at our feet and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was such a slight little thing, like a strong wind would blow her over; I probably could’ve wrapped Sonny’s jacket around her twice. She winced as it hit her shoulder, and I wanted to beat myself up for causing her pain. I didn’t let it show, though.

“Leave the nuts in the nest for the mama too,” she called up, though her voice was strained. “To tempt her back, despite the fact you’ve been there.”

This girl…

But Sonny didn’t complain, following her orders quickly until he was climbing back down, wicker basket in hand. I realized it was one of the flower girl’s baskets. Damn, the girl was resourceful.

“What nuts?” I asked her, trying to distract her from the pain.

“The bombo-things that Citrine picked as wedding favors.”

I snorted. “You’re feeding them the sugared almonds from the bomboniere? They’re going to start life with diabetes.” She just glared, and then Sonny landed in front of us like a fucking superhero, and I saw her eyes go wide.

Yeah, yeah, he’s impressive.

“She’s got a broken arm, maybe a dislocated shoulder. You need to get Buck, and she needs to go to a hospital.”

She began to protest, but a stern look from Sonny made her quit. Hell, maybe I needed to cultivate that look. Sonny ran off to find Buck and Citrine, while I gently led Otillie-James around the back of the buildings toward the estate’s garages. It was a little farther, but if I dragged her through the reception with only Sonny’s suit jacket on and not much else, this accident would follow her for years, with the rumors getting further and further from the truth, and far more salacious.

Leading her into the garage and over to Citrine’s Range Rover, I propped her gently against the car. Her face was now even more pale, and her teeth were gritted through the pain.

I slipped off my dress shirt, my undershirt still covering my torso. “Here. This will cover more than Sonny’s jacket.” Holding it out, I gently maneuvered it over her good arm, then buttoned it up. My fingers were shaky, and I could feel the warmth of her skin against my knuckles. I gave myself a stern talking-to about the fact she was my best friend’s stepsister as I fastened the buttons over her chest, then right up to her neck. The shirt went down to her knees, and while she was seventy percent covered, there was something… appealing about her in my shirt.

Fuck. I’m going to hell.

As if he could sense the fact that I was lusting inappropriately over his daughter, Buck burst into the garage, Citrine and Sonny behind him. As they took in the scene, it took everything in me to not leap away from Otillie-James like I’d been doing something wrong.

But like the father I’d never have, Buck only had eyes for his child. I doubted her outfit even registered in his brain.

Citrine, however, looked the girl over, then looked between Sonny and I, the question—and the disapproval—silently evident on her face.

“Mom, don’t even. We found her up that damn tree. The dress is still there, if you need proof. We were perfect gentlemen,” Sonny whisper-yelled as Buck gently helped his daughter into the back of his SUV.

Citrine gave us the stink-eye. “And it better stay that way.” Or else.

“I promise,” I said, crossing my heart. It would be an easy promise to keep, because in a few months, we’d be off to college. Otillie-James would be a funny anecdote we’d tell at frat parties, and nothing more.

But as I met her eyes in the back of the car and watched her lips mouth the words thank you, I wondered if I’d already fallen a little in love with the wildcard that was Otillie-James Baler.