Chapter 2
JAMIE
One month earlier
I think small-town life agrees with me.
I’m on my way home, windows cracked to let in a bit of crisp mid-spring air, with zero worry of accidentally scenting an alpha. There are some asshole drivers, of course, but regular assholes I can deal with.
It’s a nice day. Lingering snow piles melt along the side of the highway, and the trees have put out their leaf buds, on the cusp of bursting back to life.
The commute isn’t great—forty minutes each way—but I make the best of it.
Listen to podcasts. Audiobooks. I get a little crinkle of nostalgia remembering the books on tape Mom and I swapped out at each Biscuit Barrel restaurant when we road tripped our way across the country.
She did everything she could to make that trip less frightening.
I’d been quaking until Treehouse of Magic stories crackled over the van stereo.
Now, I’m listening to a pair of academics debate the finer points of small-molecule synthesis.
It’s my best way to keep up with my actual field of study these days.
My quality assurance job is science, but only on a technicality.
I mostly push buttons and fill out paperwork, but the job is the best I could get on short notice, and it’s close to Mom, which is what matters.
Mom says I ought to be careful, that this boring science chatter would put her to sleep at the wheel.
I got her hooked on podcasts when she was first recovering from her foot surgery and in too much pain to wear her glasses.
Now she sends me recommendations—all her favorites.
I add them to a playlist and sprinkle them in between the dry science episodes. It’s a nice change of pace.
Taking care of Mom in general has been a nice change of pace.
This commute is long but worth it. Mom lives in a small town basically in the middle of nowhere, population under two thousand.
The closest grocery chain is a twenty-minute drive, the halfway point on my commute, so I stock up twice a week.
Currently, my trunk is laden with milk and eggs and freezer pizza.
The town is called Pleasantwood, and it’s an unofficial omega haven. One of a handful across the country, and why we drove so far to move here.
There are no unbound alphas here. The mayor, the sheriff, and the fire chief are all mated with kids.
Some of those kids are omegas. Not everybody trusts or can afford the pharmaceuticals.
So those three keep a nose out, sniff out any intruding alphas, and make sure they stay outside of town limits.
But that doesn’t happen often. Like all the omega havens, we’re so far out in the boondocks that no alpha in their right mind would even want to be here.
Unmated alphas are drawn to cities, to the bustle, the opportunities.
Not quiet, semi-rural places where every other house has pet chickens, like Pleasantwood.
Omegas can live in peace here. Omegas like Mom.
And me.
I’m lucky that there are no alphas where I work, either. Well, maybe it’s not luck. I have a boring, tedious, dead-end job at a contract manufacturer with only two goals: cut costs, don’t get sued. Not exactly something alphas would be interested in.
As I pull into my neighborhood, fragrant lilacs cast their gentle scent into the air.
When I was upstate for college and my PhD, I could never keep the window open.
Too much alpha scent on the wind. I kept the window tightly closed and an air purifier constantly running on max.
I didn’t think much of it—it’s just what omegas do.
But now, a year into taking care of Mom, I’m getting used to it. I could live like this, I think. For a long time.
#
I left work early today, so when I get home, the house is sunny and quiet as I put away the groceries. I appreciated the chance to shop during off-hours, but that’s not the reason for my change in schedule.
Food poisoning, I told my boss, to explain the flush of my cheeks, the sheen of sweat on my skin. Hopefully, nobody’s keeping track of how I tend to get food poisoning or a cold once a month like clockwork.
If I spent more time outside, especially in the evenings, that cycle would align itself with the full moon, like it does for the communes of alphas and omegas that live in even more rural areas than Pleasantwood.
But, like most alphas and omegas nowadays, my cycle drifts. Twenty-seven days here, twenty-nine there.
It sneaks up on me sometimes. I start to think the AC broke, or I accidentally grabbed my warmest sweater. Today is one of those days. This morning, I commented on how the weather was finally warming up, and my coworkers looked at me like I had two heads. Oops.
I press a frozen pizza to my cheek for a moment before putting it away.
My cock is starting to tense behind the fly of my jeans. I ignore it, sorting boxes of cereal into the pantry. It doesn’t really feel good or bad—it’s just… a reflex.
It’s not that hard to ignore right now. Mom is still at work, and I have a precious few hours to myself.
I think I caught it early this time, so I might be able to take care of things before it gets too bad.
Sometimes I can calm myself down, even it out.
Stress makes it worse, and I actually haven’t been too stressed lately.
I have a few chores I want to catch up on, things Mom would tut at me for if she caught me doing them—cleaning the toilets, vacuuming the drapes. Guilt nags at her when I pick up those tasks, but she took care of them for years, so why shouldn’t I help now?
I strip off my shirt to ease my gathering sweat, grab the vacuum, and get to work.
#
Thirty minutes later, the heat is unbearable. I’m locked in the bathroom, just in case Mom comes home early, and I press as much of my body as I can against the cold enamel of the empty bathtub.
Fuck. There’s nothing more useless than a male in heat. A male omega.
All the mewing and moaning and dripping, all the desperation to be bred, and for what? For nothing.
Apparently, a lot of male omegas fantasize about pregnancy, but that’s never been my thing.
I haven’t figured out yet whether porn helps me get over it faster or makes it ten times worse. Still, I can’t help myself, clumsily mashing my phone screen until the video starts.
Alpha jerk-off-instructions. It doesn’t matter which one—I’m too delirious to have a preference. At least I remembered to bring my dildo into the bathroom today, and my cock’s already dripping with enough pre-cum that forgetting the lube in my nightstand isn’t a total disaster.
The alpha’s voice barks from my phone and sends a jolt down my spine.
Sometimes, betas try to record these videos to cash in.
But I can always tell. There’s nothing like a bona fide alpha to make my blood turn to pure lava.
I can’t stand the idea of alphas most of the time, and I try not to think about them.
But when I’m in heat, there’s no way to get them out of my head.
God, this one’s making me gush. It’ll only be a couple minutes before I have enough pre to slick the dildo.
But still too long. Way too long.
The alpha in the video tells me to suck his cock, so I jam the silicone length down my throat, drooling around it, my gag reflex conspicuously missing, just like every heat.
Only the voice of the alpha commanding me to keep sucking, telling me that I won’t get that knot in my ass until I earn it, keeps me from trying something as stupid as cramming the dildo in under-lubricated.
Life-sized, the sex shop had promised. It’s big enough to be convincing.
I’ve never seen a real alpha cock before.
Don’t plan to. The heats aren’t so bad out here without any unbound alpha pheromones to whip me into a frenzy.
Getting through them by myself is bearable.
I’ve never actually been with an alpha before, and I have no intention to change that.
I suck the dildo so hard I choke, and since omegas are nothing but predictable, the video praises my commitment.
My brain can no longer parse the alpha’s voice into words—I just feel a sense of relief and desperation as the alpha permits me to take what I need most.
As I pull the dildo out of my throat, it remains coated with viscous, slippery spit, one of an omega’s many adaptations to stand up to the kind of fucking alphas prefer. Female omegas produce a similar substance vaginally. Male omegas make do with spit and alpha pre.
I plunge the fist-thick cock into my ass, muscles tight since this is the start of my heat. I’ll be a stretched out mess by the end.
But for the moment, the resistance sends tingles of warmth and pleasure-laced pain up my spine.
I need it—I need the knot. I fuck myself hard, alpha’s voice growing distant beyond my panting.
Fuck, I’m close already. I don’t even know if I can hold out until I can get the knot inside of me.
With one last desperate thrust, the knot snaps in. There’s a moment of excruciating burn followed by a sense of complete and utter fullness and rightness.
I’m not even touching my cock, but I climax anyway, ass clenching around the knot, cum pulsing onto my stomach.
It’s more of a ruined orgasm than anything, and my heat is still just as bright, balls still aching like I’m on the edge.
I am on the edge.
As soon as my hand hits my slick cock, I let out a moan, stifling it with my other hand before remembering that I’m alone for the moment.
Fuck fuck fu—
I cum so hard that I hit my cheek, body convulsing around the knotted dildo, balls tense and throbbing.
It’s only the beginning. I lose track of how many times I climax. I try to count—I’m supposed to count. Omegas are supposed to track, to understand their cycles.
But you try remembering which number comes next when you’re cumming your brains out, over and over.
I get loud. So loud. Howling and whimpering. Calling for an alpha, I’m sure. Like my body knows there isn’t one here. When I have to stay quiet, my heats last longer—days, almost a week once.
When I can be loud like this, I cum fast and hard. It’s like my body accepts that there’s really, truly nothing I can do to summon an alpha, and it relents, letting my cycle restart. Better luck next time.
“Oh god, oh god,” I beg, clenching so hard around the knot I see stars. My stomach and chest are slick with cum, and I can’t tell anymore where one climax ends and the next begins. Fuck, it feels good, so unbearably good.
I just know, as sure as the alpha in the video says it, that I’m going to keep cumming until my balls are empty.
Well, testicles and other glands. Namely the skeins gland, currently being crushed by the knot, just below my prostate. I whimper as another wave of ecstatic pleasure ripples from that point, adding a gush of cum to the mess on my stomach.
When I finally slump down in the tub, spent and empty, I float on the cloud of euphoria that comes with finally satisfying the needs of my heat.
In these moments, being an omega isn’t so bad.
It’s the come-down that’s miserable.
An ice-cold shower dims the last of my heat as I scrub away the sweat and cum.
Wrapped in a towel, I slink back to my room, collapsing on my bed.
I sink into a chaotic pile of pillows and blankets, soft textures soothing my hyperactive senses.
My arm emerges from under green fleece, rummaging through the nightstand for the stash of snacks kept there for this exact purpose.
The come-down pulls over me slowly, like a shadow across the sun. Oxytocin’s evil twin. Abandonment trauma on fucking steroids.
The utter, soul-crushing loneliness of being an unmated omega.