The Omega’s Nest (The Grim Reapers’ Omegaverse #1)

Prologue

Leo

Isit beyond the break, straddling my surfboard, the waves undulating softly beneath me. Addie paddles over, his smile lit up with the first cracks of sunshine heralding the dawn.

“Did you see the size of that?” he asks.

“Hard to miss it,” I reply. The answering grin is out of my control. He just caught a monster of a wave, though that’s hardly surprising—my Addie surfs like he’s part of the water. Always has. His lithe body is perfectly made for it.

He pushes his hands onto his board and sits up, flicking his hair back and showering me in seawater.

“The one after was just as big, but you sat it out.” He gives me a sly smile. “Weak, man.”

My stomach flutters. That’s nothing new around Addie—he’s made my insides feel funny since we started high school.

What is new is the urge to claim him. It roared through me when he presented as an omega a few weeks ago and hasn’t abated. I’ve never been tongue-tied around Addie, but lately I find myself trying to say the right thing all the time.

His scent dims. Perhaps he thinks I took the insult seriously, when in fact it’s my alpha brain scrambling to simply talk to him as the omega it wants to court.

“More for you,” I say inadequately.

He tilts his head and scrunches his face up. Probably because it was a fucking stupid thing to say. How was he supposed to catch a wave when he was paddling back from another one?

“Come on, Leonard,” he says, delivering my proper name with a wink. “You don’t want to let an omega beat you at surfing.”

He stumbles over it, the wink clumsy, his voice fading as he finishes. I get the feeling he’s not sure where we stand now that he’s an omega and I’m an alpha.

I presented a few weeks before he did, though it’s not like our designations were a huge surprise.

I’d been ordering teddy bears around in the playpen, according to my omega mother, whereas Addie was the type who gave his lunch to another kid who was getting picked on in preschool when we were four—which was actually how we became friends.

I saw this tiny kid watching another kid get shoved around, his lunch stolen, and when those bigger kids ran off, the smaller one gave the other one his sandwich and sliced apple. That was Addie.

That night, I told my omega I was hungry enough for two lunches. And the next day, after Addie gave his food away again, I found him on the swing and handed him the extra sandwich, crisps, and a juice box. His little eyes lit up, and his mouth formed a surprised “o” shape.

Then I sorted those other kids out, and we’ve been friends ever since. Addie didn’t need my lunch every day, but I brought extra for him anyway since his was a bit sporadic—sometimes he just had a box of crackers.

What Addie doesn’t get now, and I can’t get the connection between my brain and mouth working well enough to reassure him, is that I don’t give a fuck about him presenting as an omega in the ways he seems to think.

In fact, I’m fucking thrilled! I’ve been fantasising about this since I knew it was a possibility between us.

I’m just awkward as fuck because his scent makes me feel drugged, and his body, which I’ve been appreciating since I presented, is now all I can think about—getting my hands on his skin, my nose in his neck, my teeth in his mating gland.

No, I have no judgement for Addie being an omega. I just have a raging boner for my best friend, and I’m having trouble navigating it.

“I think I’d let this omega beat me at anything,” I say and try to smile like an alpha who knows what he’s doing.

Thankfully, Addie just drops his head and chuckles, a beautiful blush staining his cheeks.

The water dips and rises, moving us up and down with it, and the waves break in front of us, lightly showering us with spray.

A few other surfers are in the lineup, but not many.

It’s winter, wetsuit weather, and our little town of Hollow Point, which sits on the edge of Celo City, is more tourist town than the fishing village it once was, population barely one thousand in low season.

“Leo,” Addie says, and I meet his eyes, praying my face looks normal and is not broadcasting, “Can I please court you and take you on a date and maybe kiss you after?”

I raise an eyebrow instead of trying to speak again.

“Stop being a brooding alpha and catch a fucking wave.”

I crack up. My Addie might still be the kind of guy to give his lunch away, but he’s got attitude.

He looks shy delivering that line, as if he’s not sure whether it’s allowed now he’s an omega.

And I don’t know how to tell him that if we mated, I’d demand that sass all the time. I’d demand he never change.

“All right, all right, keep your panties on.” I lie down on my board and start paddling.

Addie’s laughter is like soft rain on my back as I move to the crest of the wave and drop in.

We’ve still got an hour before school when we walk up the beach.

I tell Addie to get the buttered bread out of my bag while I go buy us some hot chips from the food truck in the carpark.

I buy Addie a hot chocolate as well, and get myself a coffee.

I’m fourteen now, totally old enough to start drinking coffee.

Addie says it tastes like shit, so if he ever lets me kiss him, I’ll give it up so he doesn’t have to taste it.

Jesus, settle down. I need to court him before I kiss him. My father, my alpha, says I’m not allowed to court anyone until I’m eighteen, but four years without Addie is just not realistic—there are alphas who get bonded at my age!

I make my way over to where Addie’s stripping out of his wetsuit next to the picnic table with our bikes. The black neoprene rubber is loose on his hips, his skinny bare chest still slightly tanned from the summer.

I swallow hard and whisper to myself, “Be normal, Leonard. Be fucking normal.”

But geez, he’s not making it easy. He glances up as I place the haul on the table, his toothy grin wide in his face, big eyes delighted by the food.

“I’m starving,” he says and grabs a chip. “Want me to make the sandwiches?” he asks around his chewing.

“Yes,” I croak. And that’s just perfect—as if my alpha instincts weren’t embarrassing enough, now my voice has started to break.

I focus on getting out of my wetsuit, so I don’t just stand there staring at Addie shivering in his red jocks and appreciating the golden hair on his legs and arms. The jocks are new.

Before he presented, he’d go naked under his wetsuit.

We all do. Now that underwear keeps me up at night—does he not want me to see him naked because he knows I want him? Am I making him uncomfortable?

I turn back once I’ve got my sweats, shirt, and hoodie on, my skin buzzing from being cold and now warm under the dry clothes. Addie is sitting down, focused on stuffing chips between slices of bread and squishing them to make the butter melt, his cheeks and neck red.

His scent is warm and fond … familiar. So, I don’t get why he’s blushing. I glance around, suddenly on alert for some older, hotter alpha who might be making him feel uncomfortable—I’ll rip their fucking throat out—but there’s no one.

When I look back, Addie is looking up at me, eyes wide.

Right, I’ve got to get that under control, he can smell those spikes of anger.

“Uh, just thinking about my dad,” I lie quickly.

Addie nods in understanding, his scent dimming.

And damn it, why’d I bring him up? It’s no secret my father and I have a tense relationship, a tension that’s only escalated since I presented as an alpha.

And his dislike of Addie, even before he presented as an omega, was not something he tried to hide.

In a lot of ways, Addie has always been the source of that tension—even when I was little, I pushed back on my dad putting him down.

Just because Addie lived on the wrong side of Hollow Point and didn’t have money because his alpha father drank too much and his omega father took off …

who cares? Addie was the best friend anyone could have.

Who cares about all that shit when the guy’s loyal and funny and kind?

“Sorry,” Addie says now.

I frown. I hate it when he apologises for this. It’s not his fault.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” I say as firmly as I can and sit across from him. I nudge the hot chocolate over and he takes a sip. His scent shifts back to pleased-warm-happy.

I preen. Addie smiles and stuffs a large bite of his chip sandwich into his mouth.

He’s got his notebook out, probably getting ready to jot down whatever idea came to him for his surfboard design while we were out.

Addie’s got big plans—build surfboards, teach surfing.

He sucks at school because he’s always ditching if there’s a swell, but he doesn’t need good grades when he’s got all this talent.

And he really won’t need it if he gets an alpha who’ll make sure his dreams come true.

I’m planning to join the Air Force—good money in that, enough to make my omega happy anyway.

His cheeks bulge around the obscene mouthful he’s taken, and there’s laughter in his eyes as the rising sun catches in the sun-bleached strands of his hair, and I think, I’m going to mate the fuck out of you one day.