Page 7 of Broken Bonds

“Oh, but isn’t that a bit DRAMATIC, Mal?” you’re probably thinking.

Nope. It’s not.

He literally laid it out to me. He wouldn’t have a gay son. He couldn’t be seen by our pack or others as being “weak.” And even though there’s nothing wrong with being gay, gay marriage, any of that—it’s a whole thing with him and other old-fashioned shifters who share his beliefs.

With us publicly “out” now as a species, the most vocal faction wants our kind to breed as quickly as possible to improve our numbers. The public story is they no longer fear being hunted and killed.

The secret story is that packs like ours and men like my father want to take over governments and put our kind in place and start exacting retribution for eons of being hunted nearly to extinction.

Not all shifters feel that way, obviously. Most don’t. But I guess during the millennia our kind—shifters in general, not just wolf shifters—spent in the shadows did a number on some of their minds.

And since I’m an omega male, I have a better than decent shot of getting pregnant if I’m claimed and mated by an Alpha male. I mean, it’s supposedly not unheard of for a beta or gamma male to knock up an omega male, but it’s pretty rare.

Unfortunately, Dad wants hetero matings, not gay ones. Thinks pups by gay couples are a weakness. While he doesn’t banish omega males, he’s stated in no uncertain terms that if any omega male in “his” pack catches, they’d better run before he finds out, and keep running. He feels omega females are only good for breeding.

And that the only way to expand is to breed respectable little shifters with “traditional” families.

Definitely doesn’t want pics of his pregnant son being splashed across tabloid websites.

Which, duh, another reason I wasn’t stupid enough to hook up with a shifter. Biologically impossible for a human male to impregnate an omega male, helloooo.

Did I get credit for that?

No.

I got an ultimatum.

That’s why I’m sitting here in a shitty hotel room. I holed up here to give myself a chance to plan and not get caught out in the open.

I also turned off the cell phone Mom bought me, and my old one—it would’ve looked more suspicious had I left either behind in the car—and I have the burner phone I paid cash for a few weeks back. I felt a mental tingle one day while buying gas. The pump receipt function wasn’t working, and when I went in to get the receipt, they had a display of burner phones. I walked over and grabbed one, paying cash.

Didn’t know why, at the time.

Didn’t even activate it until a few hours ago.

I get up to pace the room again and nearly trip over my bike. Because, duh, I wasn’t stupid enough to take the car.

I mean, I did take the car to drive to a heavily wooded nature preserve about an hour in the opposite direction, where it’s not uncommon for shifters to go run, and I biked out of there via climbing a fence far from the entrance in case Dad started looking for me with whatever video cameras local businesses have by the main park entrance.

No way I’d drive the car for my escape because I’d be willing to bet what little money I have that he can track it.

Everything I own now fits in the large hiking backpack I bought the day before and in the waterproof panniers strapped to my bike.

Most everything I have are things I can’t replace easily—laptop, tablet.

Passport. Birth certificate. Pictures.

Two bottles of Tully. One of which I crack open and take a swallow from. I’m rationing it like crazy because I can’t afford to get drunk, much less spend money on booze when my funds are so limited. This is a luxury now, and I won’t waste a drop of it.

I know damned well I won’t get another chance with my father after this. If I can’t run far and fast enough and find a safe place to hide, he will kill me.

That’s not an exaggeration.

Because I know damned well he’s killed or ordered the killing of others in the past.

There’s a good reason why Randolph Sterling’s remained the pack Alpha for so long—he’s ruthless, vicious, and cold.

In the past, I heard whispered rumors of small found-family packs scattered throughout the world, but I never had a reason to follow up on that.