Page 3 of Omega's Heart

Mom was busy putting the evening meal together, a mix of rice and vegetables and bits of meat leftover from other meals. Now that we were down to just the five of us in the house, she had a tendency to overestimate how much she had to cook, and we had leftovers at least twice a week. I’d offered to take over the cooking for her since I didn’t have any other jobs in the enclave, but the cooking was her thing and she refused every time.

I got the large pot down without any issue and handed it over. “Anything else you want me to do?”

She shook her head and began layering things into the pot. “No, I’m good. Oh, Francine asked if you were free full moon night to look after her pups, I said I’d ask.”

“I don’t have any plans.” I never had any plans. Yep, that was me, good for getting things down from high places and looking after other shifters’ pups. “I’m going through Grandpap’s old recipes. Do you think Dad could get his hands on a haunch of venison for Birth Moon?”

She paused with her hands full of sliced zucchini and looked at me over her shoulder. “You’ll have to ask him.”

“I can trade some gloves and hats for it,” I said and reached around her to steal a slice of tomato. “Thanks.”

She poked me with her elbow and smiled as she went back to layering the zucchini into the pot. “Saucy. I don’t think you need to trade for it, we can just get it with pack credits. Could you run some laundry down? We’re almost out of towels again.”

“Sure.” Truth be told, I was grateful for anything to do. I liked to be busy and with spring and its long list of chores still a month or more away, and without my own house to look after, I usually ran out of things to do before I ran out of boredom to cure. I’d already dug up the kitchen garden in its glass lean-to and mixed in the compost, fixed the broken slats on the fence—and gotten scolded for doing something that an omega was supposed to wait on an alpha for—and done a deep clean of all the rugs in the house. The house itself was going to need to be painted this year if Dad and Mom could agree on a color. I was looking forward to it because it was something I could stretch out, that would give me a task to accomplish for at least a couple of weeks. But until then, my life was a lot of sitting around memorizing recipes I’d never get to use, looking after pups that would never be mine, and praying for someone to need a chore done.

I found the laundry bags and began filling them, sheets and towels in one, dark clothes in another, lights in a third. It made for a heavy load, but not an impossible one, especially for someone my size. With my winter coat making me look even larger than I was, I strolled out into the enclave, determined to take my time on the way.

“Afternoon, Felix,” I heard someone call from my right. I paused and set the laundry down to greet my cousin Josh.

“How are you?” We didn’t hug, or touch, me being omega and him being an unmated alpha. Not that it was my time of the year anyway, but the rules held all year long because you never knew who was going to throw an early heat and get themselves in trouble. Although it had always struck me as being unfair that this rule only seemed to apply to omegas, and not to any other shifter in the pack.

At least I didn’t have to take a chaperone about in the enclave like the young ones did. Being over the hill had some advantages.

“You think you could do me a favor?” He turned beet red as he asked me, and my currently metaphysical wolf ears perked up. This looked like fun.

“What kind of favor?” I asked carefully, determined not to spoil the entertainment by scaring him off.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and scuffed a foot in the dust of the path we stood on. “If you’re talking to Clarissa between now and full moon, could you see if maybe she could save a dance for me? It doesn’t have to be one of the courting ones, I’m okay with a pack dance.”

I grinned. “What’s it worth to you?”

He threw his hands up in the air. “Really? You’re going to stand in the way of true love? I thought you omegas were all about that stuff.”

“Oh, it’s true love, is it? Well, for that...” I rubbed my chin and pretended to think about what I was going to ask him for. He practically danced with impatience in front of me, like a toddler waiting on a strawberry.

“Come on, Felix! It’ll only take you a couple of minutes. You’ve got the time.”

That put a damper on my amusement. Even if he was right. “If I see her,” I said, deliberately keeping my tone light. “But you’ll owe me a favor, delivery to be determined. Deal?”

He nodded and punched the air in excitement. “Thank you! And if you could get one of the courting dances…” He held his breath and watched me with hope shining from his eyes that would have rivaled a full moon bonfire.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said firmly. “Now, I have laundry to get washed.” I thought I’d drop in on my grandmother too while the clothes worked through their cycles, wash the taste of that unthinking comment out of my mouth. Some days in the pack it was like running through a swarm of wasps, a cloud of unintentional barbs, each one a pinprick of pain. There wasn’t any meanness behind them, but that didn’t make them hurt any less. And while one sting wouldn’t hurt a grown shifter, a whole swarm could.

I made myself say a polite goodbye and strode off in the direction of the laundry with steps maybe a little longer than they’d been before.

C H A P T E R 3

I didn’t sleep well that night. Nothing I could quite put a paw on, but I woke feeling unsettled and unhappy and thinking about Josh and Clarissa, who were indeed going to dance a courting dance this Full Moon.

While everyone else in the family got ready to head out to their jobs or, in Synthi’s and Aston’s cases, their last year of school, I did the usual clearing of the table and washing up and thought about my life. Really thought about it—not just about today, or tomorrow, but next year. And the one after that.

What if nothing ever changed?

I finished putting away the breakfast dishes automatically, my body so used to these everyday tasks that I could do them in my sleep. And that was, really, part of my problem. There was no point to it, just repetition. So before Dad left for his morning’s work and Mom got down to piecing together necklaces and earrings for sale, I asked them to sit and talk to me for a minute.

We gathered at the kitchen table, my sire wearing a look of confusion, my mother one of faint hope that broke my heart like I thought I was going to break hers. She’d never quite given up hope that I’d find an alpha that would overlook my inches and pounds and muscle, and I loved her for it.

“So,” Mom said brightly. “What did you want to talk about? Is it a boy? Or a girl?” She patted my forearm in excitement