Chapter 07
TOSCA
I couldn’t seem to get the scent of the mysterious helpful alpha out of my nose.
Or maybe traces of him still clung to my skin despite the dip I’d taken in the creek.
Whatever, his scent just seemed to follow me around everywhere I went, sometimes distractingly faint, other times surprisingly strong.
It was alluring, exciting, it made my skin flush and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Or maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe those days and nights we’d spent together so intimately had somehow imprinted him on my brain.
I wished I’d been brave enough to try and keep him, but he was too magnificent, and though he’d been kind to me and helped me through my heat, it probably wasn’t anything more than he would have done for any omega in distress.
I was too small, too thin, too nondescript to catch the eye of an alpha like that. He could have anyone he wanted.
But for now, I could hold my head up and be proud that I’d had such a fine alpha take me through my first heat. I couldn’t help the smile that danced across my lips at the memory.
As much as it sucked that I didn’t stand a chance with the handsome alpha, there were advantages to being quiet and insignificant, and one was that no-one noticed when I snuck back into the compound.
Of course they didn’t, because they wouldn’t have even noticed I’d been gone.
The betas barely noticed me at the best of times.
The one person who did pay attention, was Owen.
“Where’ve you been?” he whispered to me when we had a quiet moment together. “You were gone for three days!”
“I had my heat,” I said quietly.
“Oooh! That was your first, wasn’t it? Are you okay?” he asked anxiously. “Who took you through it? Was it one of the nicer guys?”
I realized then that he didn’t know I’d completely left the pack for the duration of my heat.
Now that I thought about it, it made sense that he wouldn’t know, because if I’d stayed in the pack I would have been kept in a cabin separately until it was over and he wouldn’t have seen me the entire time.
Though he might have heard my cries. Sometimes the wails of the omegas sequestered away in the sex cabins were pitiful, and we could hear them from the omega house.
On those occasions, I pulled the bedcovers over my head and plugged my ears with wax to keep out the frightening sounds. I wondered how much I should tell him.
I bit my lip. It was Owen, I could trust him. He was my best friend. And I was itching to tell someone.
“I snuck away and hid in a cave the whole time,” I told him. “After what you told me about the betas… I couldn’t bear the thought of… of doing that with them.”
“But… but… but you must have been in agony…” protested Owen. “You shouldn’t try handling a heat on your own… you might have died!”
“I wasn’t on my own!” I smirked, a silly grin taking possession of my face. I wasn’t going to give up the information easily though. No, he had to ask for it. I was holding onto my little secret for as long as I could resist the temptation to spill it.
Owen looked bewildered.
“Who? How?” his confusion was endearing.
Oh! I couldn’t stop myself. I had to share this.
“I had the most handsome alpha take me through it,” I said dreamily. “He was amazing.” A long sigh slipped out of me, as I stood there goofily smiling at the memory.
“An alpha?” Owen was skeptical. “I can’t believe you’re saying that about an alpha. They’re so violent. And you hate violence! You don’t even like rough!”
“I know. But he wasn’t like that at all,” I said softly, lost in remembering.
“He was kind and gentle. Goddess! Even when he was pounding into me, he was still kinda gentle. And he looked after me so well… he brought me water and food.” I stopped short of saying how tenderly he held me while we were knotted – that was a special memory I wanted to keep for myself. “Yeah, he was unreal.”
Owen blinked. It was a lot to take in. I’d just described an alpha that was the exact opposite of our pack Alpha and probably all the alphas he’d met so far.
“Are you sure you’re not just traumatized and making this all up?” he asked, tilting his head quizzically.
“No! I’m not. Honest. I was scared at first, because, well, alpha, but he wasn’t what I expected at all. He was… wonderful. If I had to describe my ideal alpha, it would be him.”
“And…” I stepped even closer and dropped my voice. The heat rushed into my cheeks as I admitted, “I liked it. My heat, I mean. It was… good. Better than good.”
“Really?” squeaked Owen, maybe starting to see the truth in my eyes. “Wow! You’re so lucky you had him for your first. But I don’t understand, why did you come back? If you found an alpha like that, why wouldn’t you stay with him?”
My shoulders sagged, my happiness disappearing like helium from a balloon.
“He’s not going to be interested in a nobody like me.
Honestly, he’s well out of my league. He’s so hot, he could have anyone.
He was just passing and saw I was in trouble,” I sighed.
I turned away, blinking, so Owen couldn’t see the moisture gathering in my eyes.
I felt his large hand on my shoulder, solid and encouraging.
“Hey, don’t talk about yourself like that,” he said, gently. “You’re an amazing guy. You just try to hide it because you don’t want to be noticed here. Not that I blame you. Anyone would be lucky to have you.”
He turned me around and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me in for a comforting hug. I rested my head on his chest. A few tears fell. It was nice to be in the arms of someone who cared about me, but it didn’t fill the hole in my heart that the mysterious alpha had left behind.
“Hey guys! Look!” Lucey, one of the other omegas was staring out the window of our hut.
There was a pounding of feet over the floorboards as the other omegas rushed over to see what was happening, piling up around each other and stretching to get a better view.
Owen and I disentangled ourselves. Keeping my head down, the long strands of my fringe hid my eyes as I surreptitiously wiped at them, and we went to join the omegas at the window, where one or two of the shorter ones were jumping up and down at the back, trying to see over the heads of the others.
The truck had just pulled up in the yard and two of the meanest betas in our pack were standing around a long object, about the size of a small person, which they’d dragged out of the vehicle and dumped on the ground.
It was wrapped in old sacks and rope, and seemed to be sort of softish from the way it moved when one of the betas kicked it.
The betas stood around laughing for a bit, and then one of them picked up the object, slung it over his shoulder and carried it to the shed furthest from our building.
It was the most isolated of the sheds, and it was the shed where they locked us up if they wanted to punish us.
Sometimes the punishment was being in solitary with no food or water; sometimes it was a lot worse than that.
“What do you think?” asked someone.
“Another omega?”
“Could be.”
“Why didn’t they bring them here then?”
No-one answered, because we knew.
The two betas locked up the shed and went away, without us learning anything more.
I felt sad for the poor omega, if that’s what it was.
This was a terrible pack to belong to, and the fact they’d left them in the isolation shed suggested they were going to get ‘special’ treatment.
Around here, you didn’t want to be special, you wanted to be inconspicuous, just like me.
The betas left us alone that night, which was unusual.
There were usually a few that wanted an omega for the night, and in fact, there had been a couple who had come to the door of the omega-house earlier but then they’d been distracted and didn’t come back except to give orders to take food and supplies to an alpha who was staying the night in our camp, waiting for Zarbius’ return the next day.
We assumed the alpha was one of Zarbius’ friends and as they were almost as unsavory as he was, the omegas drew straws to see who would have the misfortune of delivering things to the alpha’s cabin.
I breathed a sigh of when I drew a long straw, even though I knew Owen would step in and take my turn if it had fallen to me.
Owen was the best friend ever. He knew how scared I was of our betas and how terrified I was of our cruel pack Alpha and his cronies, and he did his best to protect me.
I didn’t understand why he wasn’t scared, but he generally just shrugged everything off.
And because he wasn’t scared, they didn’t treat him quite so badly as they did some of the other omegas.
I knew they taunted him a lot over his size which was unusual for an omega, but he didn’t let that get to him - too much – but they weren’t usually too rough with him.
On this occasion, one of the female omegas drew one of the short straws.
She was to take clothes and towels to the cabin.
Owen drew the other. He was to take dinner.
His was the riskier assignment because it would be getting dark by the time he delivered dinner and there was always the risk that the alpha would make him stay.
He sucked in a deep breath, chest expanding and standing taller.
I knew he was simply bracing himself for the ordeal, pretending like it didn’t matter.
I wasn’t brave enough to offer to take his turn, and I felt a little guilty about that.
Rata delivered the clothes and came back running to the omega-house, scared but unharmed. Everyone gathered around her, hugging her and asking her questions.
“What was he like?”
“He was big,” she said, “And scary. Though he had a nice voice.”
“Was it one of Zarbius’ friends?” It didn’t sound like it could be. His friends never spoke nicely to us, they treated us with the same disdain as our Alpha did.
“What did he say to you?”
“Um. I don’t know. I didn’t recognize him. And he asked me if I was treated badly here.”
There were hisses of surprise and no-one spoke for a few minutes, digesting this news.
“I don’t think it’s one of Zarbius’ friends then,” said someone. “They couldn’t care less how we get treated. By the Moon, they’re as bad as Zarbius and the betas.”
“Well, as long as it’s not one of Zarbius’ friends, then maybe it’ll be okay? Perhaps they’re just here on alpha business and they’ll leave us alone.”
We all looked around at each other. Wishful thinking.
But the next omega in the firing line would be Owen when he took dinner across later.
“Aren’t you scared?” I asked him, thinking of the unknown alpha in the cabin under the trees. The cabins where Zarbius and visitors were accommodated were set well away from the main cluster of buildings. If Owen was in trouble, there was no-one to hear. “Those cabins are so isolated.”
Owen shrugged. “Can’t be any worse than my last heat,” he said, grimacing, “and I survived that. And if anything bad happens, I’d rather you guys didn’t have to hear. It’s not like you could do anything.”
I shuddered, but Owen looked unperturbed.
He was a fairly unflappable character, the perfect offset to my own flighty nature.
Maybe that’s why we were such close friends.
That was typical Owen thinking too, always putting others before himself.
Possibly because he was bigger than the rest of us, he felt he could handle more.
I knew inside that implacable shell there was a sensitive soul, but whatever he had to do to survive this place…
“Tell me when you go,” I instructed him. “I want to know. And when you get back.”
“Okay, but I’m sure it’ll be fine. He wasn’t mean to Rata.”
“Yeah, still.”
The betas didn’t come back to bother us and the next hour or so was spent preparing the evening’s meal.
True to his word, Owen let me know when he was taking dinner to the unknown alpha’s cabin. When he came back, he sought me out.
“I’m back,” he announced, but his voice was a bit wobbly. He didn’t look upset, so much as unsettled.
“What happened?” I asked him, worried because nothing rattled Owen.
“Nothing. He was polite, but he asked a lot of questions… mainly about the omegas – where we were living, mated pairs…”
“But no-one here gets mated, except the Alpha’s mate… well, when there is one, that is.”
“Yeah, I told him that.”
“Why do you think he’s asking all these questions?”
“I dunno.”
“Owen, what aren’t you telling me? You look… upset. What’s going on? Did he do something?”
Owen sighed. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that it… it was almost like he actually cared what happened to us. It made me think that maybe what we think is normal, actually isn’t. Maybe all alphas aren’t assholes. Tosca… he asked me if we were happy here.”
The look that crossed Owen’s face was almost one of distress. “Why the fuck would he do that?”