27. Cas
CAS
Two months later
To say that taking up residence in a place that once held the darkest of my memories is strange would be an understatement. But so would saying that I have never been happier in my short, turbulent life.
Life has a new rhythm, though it echoes of what I knew before in my pre-omega life: rising early, often with Nathan, and leaving our lazy, chaotic alpha in the tangle of bedsheets as we dress for coffee and chores.
The feeding and turning out of horses, the mucking of stalls and sweeping of aisles.
Eventually we’re joined by Kato some hours later, yawning and tearing up into a thermos of something hot.
We’re getting our bond senses back, too. Kato first, then me, and contentment is probably the emotion that flows most frequently between the three of us. Feeding into each other, elevating our domestic bliss, as it were.
We have the beta hands who stayed on after Nathan took over Bash’s pack, too. Well, now it’s his pack. I mean, ours.
I know enough from my work and study that I can mostly carry on the current operations; that is, the care and keeping of racehorses.
Bash’s was a breeding operation, selling the offspring of prized broodmares to prospective racing homes, and much of that I would delegate to the beta breeding manager.
The rest I could learn in time, I thought.
And I am—with plenty of help. In fact, the vast majority of Bash’s old compatriots had no interest in uprooting their lives when Nathan deposed their old tyrant.
They simply wanted a peaceable life caring for the animals they already knew, and they’d take the knee for a new alpha in order to do just that.
A handful of mated couples, a few alphas and a fair number of betas now round out the new roster, in addition to some familiar faces from Declan’s pack, including Adrian.
Along with Bash’s destruction came the demolition of the old barn on the corner of the property.
Nathan and Kato saw to it themselves, armed with nothing but sledgehammers and grim determination.
Nothing’s left of it but a dusty patch amongst the grass.
Scrappers have already hauled away all the stone and wood.
In the edge of my memory, of course, lingers the ghost of it. But even that fades a little every day.
I like it, my new life. Might even say I love it.
I think my mates do too. They’re both thriving compared to when I first met them.
Without the heel of an oppressive pack leader on his neck, Nathan’s blossomed into a fair and kind alpha in his own right.
The other wolves seem to respect him for more than just his raw strength.
His inner quiet, perhaps. His humility. The way he will toil in the mud with the rest of us without hesitation.
Our Kato is flourishing too. No more drinking, no more cigarettes. He’ll never be a morning person but he comes and works till long past sunset with the rest of the pack. With purpose and a schedule he’s almost a different person. The kind who has a reason to see the sun rise the next day.
How I adore them both.
It’s not all rainbows and sunshine, though.
There’s still a good deal of uncertainty.
Declan’s still somewhat of a threat, albeit smaller now that his pack’s lost a fair number to us, including one of its omegas.
Both of my alphas think he’ll have to be dealt with, and both Kato and Adrian are concerned for Eden’s welfare.
What can be done about any of it, though, I’m uncertain. Only time will tell.
And then there’s me.
Rather, my body. What’s inside of it. What’s happening to it and what’s going to happen. It’s the subject of contention, overt and unspoken. I know my mates think and wonder. Even in the afterglow of our lovemaking, I know they wonder.
There’s also the problem of my heat and the way it sends every alpha in a mile radius into a rutting frenzy.
As the clock ticks towards my next cycle I fret about what we’re going to do about it.
I’ve got the feeling it’s not exactly the best way to get personal with Bash’s alphas, and while they have a vague idea of what happened to me, I am—to their knowledge and for all intents and purposes—an omega.
This, though, Kato has a solution for. “Do you have your passport?” he asks me one day.
“Of course I do,” I say. “How else could I visit my uni mates in Perpignan?”
“Per-huh?”
“In France.”
“You’ve been to France already? Wait—you had friends?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I say mildly. “They were humans.” I give him a smile. “Why, were you planning a romantic getaway to Paris for the three of us?”
He makes a face. “Well, not to Paris. But Alaska, yeah.”
I know my eyes light up when he says that. “To see your family?”
“Sure. Might as well, right?” He touches the tip of my nose. “But also…well, your heat’s coming up. Outside of Anchorage is pretty wild, and I figured it might be a good place to ride it out. What do you say?”
“Oh, Kato.” My throat tightens at the thoughtfulness of it. “That sounds…lovely.”
A couple weeks later, all three of us fly the eighteen-plus hours from Edinburgh to Anchorage, via Dublin and Seattle.
We’re met by his older brother, Kai, who…
well, he looks like Kato if he were Daddy-fied, I suppose.
He’s definitely sexy, even as he crushes Kato into a hug that looks like it snaps his spine nearly in half.
Nathan gets that manly forearm clasp, but I get a gentle squeeze of the hand like he thinks my bones will break.
“Come on, brother-in-law,” I say wryly as I grip his fingers. “I won’t shatter.”
He blinks, brown eyes startled. “Oh. Uh—sorry.” He matches my grip. “Didn’t mean to insult you.”
“Cas likes it rough.” Kato winks at me. “Yeah?”
“Don’t be gross,” Kai groans. “Please.”
Their parents are surprisingly lovely, too.
His a-dad, the pack alpha, must be where Kato got his beautiful hazel eyes, but otherwise both sons take after their o-dad.
He’s dark and tall just like them, a fan of thick lashes fringing his dark brown eyes.
Both of them treat me like I’m not an abomination and they don’t seem to mind Nathan, either.
Not all packs allow alpha pairings, but Kato’s old pack doesn’t have such qualms.
It does feel like I’m being embraced by a family once more. I didn’t realise how much I missed the feeling.
In the days before my heat hits—and I know it, just from how strong the desire to nest is—I visit their pack doctor.
To have my condition assessed by someone Kato trusts, and therefore I do too.
He runs a battery of tests and scans that take hours, and a couple days later when my bloodwork comes back, he summons me back to his office.
“You could take it out,” he tells me.
I blink at him. “The womb?”
“You know the human hormonal IUD? It’s similar to that. It’s releasing omega hormones into your body from its reservoirs and inducing the changes in you. If you remove it, you’ll revert back to your previous designation.”
Kato and Nathan squeeze my hands. My heart lifts for a split second before it plummets rapidly back to earth. “But my bonds—”
“Would dissolve,” he affirms. “Most likely, yes.”
“And kill my mates.”
He pauses. “Possibly.”
“It’s not worth the risk,” I say.
“Cas—” Kato, of course. “If that’s what you really wanted—”
I whip around. “No. Absolutely not. Don’t you dare suggest I murder you again.” I hear Nathan rumbling a reluctant chuckle at my back.
“The good news is,” the doctor goes on, flipping through his file, “you can’t get pregnant.”
“I mean, I know I shouldn’t—”
“No, you literally can’t. You’ve got no ovaries.”
“Oh.” I falter. “But…”
“You were lied to,” the doctor says gently.
“You’re absolutely sure he can’t get pregnant?” Nathan wants to know.
“If he gets pregnant without ovaries, it would be a medical miracle,” the doctor returns dryly. “But let me know if he does. I want to be the one to write the first paper on that.”
And well, isn’t that good news for me? Just in time for my heat.
“Are we almost there?” I ask, not for the first time.
Kato laughs, shoulders shaking. I can feel the vibration of it right down my front where I’m pressed to him in a piggyback hold. “You know asking that doesn’t make the walk any quicker, right?” He pinches my bum, right where he’s holding me up.
“Ow!”
He does it again. “I can smell your slick in the air, Cas. Your pretence doesn’t work on me.”
“That’s from my heat, not from you touching my arse.”
“Ass,” Kato corrects. “You have to assimilate. If I had to learn to refer to chips as crisps and pants as trousers, while you’re here you better use ass.”
“You’re an ass,” I tell him.
“See? You’re getting the hang of it.”
We chatter as we walk through the forest on the trail that snakes east from the centre of Kato’s dads’ pack lands.
It’s close enough to the period of midnight sun in Alaska that, even though it’s late, the sun can still be seen peeking through the trees, casting dancing shadows on the ground in front of us.
It’s breathtaking. Akin to the Highlands in that way. Nature is in charge, not humanity. Swathes of land left untouched. Areas unexplored for decades.
I love it here. It already feels like a home away from home.
We round a bend in the trail and I gasp. Nathan’s standing waiting for us, leaning against a tree, the picture of relaxation. But it’s not him that has me speechless—it’s what he’s standing in front of.
“Is that…” I can barely get my words out, I’m so in awe.
“A treehouse,” Kato says as he lowers me to the ground. “Pretty cool, isn’t it?”
“Kato! This isn’t a mere treehouse. This is”—I flap a hand in its direction—“a house! In the trees!”
He cocks his head, hazel eyes dancing with humour. “That’s the definition of a treehouse.”