REN DELANO
Ren Delano
This was the second dumbest thing I’d ever done.
I flexed my fists, joints creaking in protest. What a fucking cliche I was living right now. An alpha, clenching their fists as a way of dealing with their emotions. If my hands ached already, this was going to be a long two weeks. I was not developing a pathological fear of the deep. The ocean was just creepy. No one really knew what was under the water. Maybe I’d watched one too many Titanic documentaries.
This whole idea was fucking dumb. I watched my fingers curl, the ring on my thumb looking dull and lifeless under the setting sun.
Tommy handed me a pink-colored drink in a plastic cup. Pretty sure it was his attempt to get into the spirit. Or maybe look the part. The drink was just icy enough to feel good on my sore finger joints. He bounced on the balls of his feet with kid-in-a-candy-store energy. I could feel his aura prickling against mine. Thank fuck, we weren’t actually a pack… yet. I didn’t know if I could stand feeling his pinball energy all the damn time.
“Don’t even think about it, my man,” I mumbled into my first sip.
It was sweet and sour and made my mouth water.
“Talk about a target-rich environment,” Tommy said.
I scanned the deck with practiced eyes. The sun had just set, painting the sky in dangerous shades of gold. The music was loud, and the drinks were already flowing. Cameras, phones, and purses were just casually left on tables and draped over the arms of chairs. Thousands of dollars of merchandise sat there, easy pickings that would snag good value on the resale market. We wouldn’t even need to go to a fence. Just pop it up on PackSpace Marketplace, and no one would be the wiser.
But to get away with petty theft, you actually had to get away. No sense in lifting a $500 camera if you couldn’t offload it right away and had to sleep next to the evidence for two weeks.
We both knew lifting a camera wouldn’t solve the problem.
I let my eyes roam over the Port Haven skyline bathed in pinks and golds. The Floating District glittered like a mirage, its series of artificial islands seeming to hover above the water. The Mired District was where I belonged. Its dark presence faded into the horizon as we sailed away.
I forced my attention back to the swarms of people on the deck. All happy and bubbly, full of vacation potential.
My crowd-reading skills were honed at the Hermes Centre Mall. Years of misspent youth watching from the sidelines as alphas prowled and omegas strutted. Until I became one of those alphas.
The people were the real target-rich environment.
One of those glittering omegas floated across the deck. She was tiny, wearing an even tinier dress, little more than a sequined handkerchief tied around her neck. She already had a swarm around her, alphas, betas, men, women, even omegas.
Her name was Aria. A paragon. An omega who couldn’t bond, which of course made her the most desirable thing walking this earth. A lucky few paragons ruled Port Haven’s upper crust from the Floating District. She was the host of this cursed boat and all the desperate souls seeking salvation in packs.
She was tempting. And that wasn’t about her biology. Metaphysics? Whatever the fuck we called that which made us alpha, beta, or omega. She had money and connections, but she was a favored pet of the Knightbridges, the pack that founded Port Haven and owned both the Floating and Mired Districts. Which basically put her off limits. Pity. Saved me from throwing myself at her like the fools in front of me.
I had spent the better part of last week scouring social media for every scrap of information I could find. They made it too easy. There were multiple PackSpace groups. People saved all year for Bond Voyage, apparently.
A table crashed to the ground on our right. Tommy jumped. Two alphas were being cajoled and placated to back away and have another drink. The staff started a conga line to diffuse the tension. Alphas were unpredictable, especially when not part of a pack. There were pages and pages in the boat FAQ about state-of-the-art pheromone dampening technology and containment protocols for alphas who got too out of hand.
It was going to be a long two weeks.
The packs were obvious to pick out of the crowd. They formed little circles in the center of the deck. The economic status was more mixed than I expected. This was a travel day for most, so no one was dressed in their finest. It was a lot of cargo shorts and defunct band t-shirts on the bottom end of the economic scale, and polo shirts and board shorts as you went up the food chain.
The women were more interesting. Every omega had seemed to find time to change and do their makeup. They stood out like maraschino cherries in the fruit salad, all bright and juicy. I cringed inwardly, fighting a wave of nausea, feeling the boat rock under me.
Aria swept by again, her fans clearing space and dragging half the crowd in her wake. She was being called to the mic for some welcome speech nonsense that I completely tuned out. Love on the high seas was not in my future.
I could see the bar across the deck now. There was quite a bit of jockeying for position to get the bartenders’ attention. Amateurs.
Hanging on to the literal corner of the bar were two omegas, obviously pack mates by how they leaned into each other, sharing space, close enough for their auras to mingle. They shared a frozen drink with two straws. Her brown hair cascaded over one shoulder, catching the golden sunset. She twirled the ends in her fingers. His fist was balled and jammed into his pocket, maybe to stop himself from running his fingers nervously through his mussed blond hair. They made their own private island in a sea of chaos around them. Obviously waiting for their alphas.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
Tommy perked up beside me and pointed with his chin. Gaston and Catherine caught his eye from the other side of the deck with that pack mojo they shared.
I downed the rest of my drink and knew immediately it was a bad idea. The booze just turned my stomach further. I looked back at the pair of omegas. He had an arm protectively around her, keeping her safe from the mob at the bar, while she teetered on tiptoes to whisper into his ear. I looked down into my empty cup and grimaced. It had been too sweet and did not at all complement the waves of seasickness that were rolling in. That was preferable to acid burning a hole in my stomach from the constant threat of death and worse, infecting my life right now. Being blackmailed was not good for your health.
“Let’s get to work,” I said to Tommy, using all my alpha strength to not make a b-line for those two omegas at the bar.