Page 13 of Witchblood
I took a bite of my sandwich as everyone else filled their plates. Liam sat on the other side of me. The bread was fantastic. Sourdough. Crispy on the outside and heavenly soft on the inside. The bacon was salty and crunchy with none of those annoying undercooked bits that got too chewy. The mustard was a pop of fresh herbs. I couldn’t help the little happy noises I made. How long had it been since I’d had something this good? Probably since before I left home.
Texas was hog country. Farms and wild hogs abound. We’d always had bacon, though I didn’t often cook it myself. MyApahad liked to cook, but rarely did so. Not that I’d been allowed to come to his home on the rare occasion he cooked. It was easier for him to come to my home than me to his. His family hated me. Hated that he’d taken me in. I guess they thought he should have just killed the child who’d been left on his doorstep, never mind the fact that the child had only been a few months old and unable to stay in one shape for long. By six months old I could shift to a fox and back with breathless ease. There was no pain, not like wolves.
I didn’t die to become what I was. Just born that way. A lot of wolves hated me for that fact alone. The food was a reminder of home, though the fixings were a sight better than they had been back then. The bread alone was worth moaning over.
“I’m glad you like my cooking,” Liam said.
“Liam is an amazing cook,” Dylan said. “We all take turns now, but everyone comes over when he cooks.”
“So you’re all here for the food, not me, right?” I asked, knowing the truth.
None of them would look at me or Liam. Liam ate his own sandwich as if he didn’t care.
“It’s different,” one of the women said. There were two female werewolves at the table. A lot for a small pack like Liam’s if this were all his wolves. “The whole pack feels different…”
“He’s a witch. Not a wolf,” Carl said.
“And yet my wolf is calm as a lamb while I sit two feet from a stranger,” said an older male wolf with a well-trimmed white beard. He looked a little like a thirty-something, healthy Santa Claus. I got the feeling he was a dominant wolf. “They never said thewitchchildwas an omega. None of the stories. No one speaks of it.”
I gripped my sandwich tighter. Most wolves thought omega meant weak. Submissive. Bottom of the pack. Only omegas weren’t submissive at all. They were other. Neither dominant nor submissive. They could meet alpha eyes and disobey orders, but longed to please, serve, and care for others. Omegas also settled a pack. All the aggression inherent to werewolves escalated until fights ensued unless there was an omega to balance the pack. There were only a handful of omegas in the world. Only two were wolves, though I’d heard it was fairly common for an alpha to marry a human omega to help keep his pack in check.
I hadn’t known what it meant at all for most of my years. UntilApahad told me the real reason he’d let me stay with Felix as long as he had. I kept Felix calm. The older the wolf, the more unsettled it became, the more violence it craved. The human half battled the wolf for control. I could understand as many lived centuries, learning to love family, children, and friends only to watch them all die weakened by the human side. It wasn’t only a disease of the wolves. It happened to vampires, which made them such lethal, heartless bastards, and of course the fae who thought humans were little more than toys. Omegas could calm wolves, but I was pretty sure it didn’t work on vampires or fae.
The Volkov was an old wolf. He’d had hundreds of children, with only a handful surviving the change, and even less still alive today. Female werewolves couldn’t have kids. The change was too violent, but males mated just fine with humans. The Volkov had his share of wives and probably mistresses over the years.
I knew Felix was old. Not as old as the Volkov, but centuries past most wolves’ expiration date. Felix never spoke of his past wives, though I’d heard from around the pack that there had been many. But he could recite the names of every child he’d ever lost. Dozens. I could see now how those had built up to bring the madness on him.
Only an insane wolf would attack an omega, and in the end, Felix had, more than once. Felix’ sanity had been flipping for years. Xander Volkov had thrown me at his son to try to save his son’s life. It would have been noble if I had not been the one to suffer. It had been a dream in the beginning. Felix had doted on me, romanced me and taught me lust. For a while I truly believed he loved me, and I returned his love. We spent three years together before that first night when Felix had accused me of flirting with another wolf.
The wolf had come to my trailer for tea and something to help his human mate sleep as she was pregnant. There had been no flirting. Felix had simply smelled another wolf in my house, the home he insisted I keep separate from his own, and attacked me. He’d beaten me with his fists until I blacked out, and it was the beginning of the end. But Felix’s unraveling was not my fault. I’d spent a year convincing myself it was not my fault.
Being an omega wasn’t a magical cure-all for crazy. It wasn’t even a real power. More a presence, like an alpha had presence. I couldn’t command a person to be calm, though sometimes just being in the room with them would ease their nerves. An alpha could force their will on another. I could only suggest a change in thought. It wasn’t enough to stop Felix, and maybe that was why I felt he was a little more than justified in the attack that had driven me to run. He’d needed my help and I’d failed him. A tiny voice inside my head whispered that I deserved what had happened.
“And no one will continue to speak of it,” Liam said tightly.
“Other packs will try to take him from us. Maybe that’s why the other wolves attacked him,” Santa Claus said again. “Should have killed them all. Wolves who attack an omega are all mad. I couldn’t imagine fighting through this calm to chase him down and bleed him. I haven’t felt this calm since long before I was changed.”
“Me neither,” Dylan agreed. “Not in over two hundred years. And I’m across the room.” He didn’t look that old. He looked like an early twenty-something cowboy. But maybe that was just when he’d been changed. Most wolves stopped aging when they changed. Some of the powerful wolves could reverse aging, which was why the Volkov looked twenty-five when he was probably a thousand or something. If Dylan was over two hundred, how old did that make Liam?
I glared at Santa Claus and Dylan. Talking about me like I wasn’t there. I wasn’t weak. I didn’t need protection. I wasn’t just a tool to be used to control their wolves. “I’ll be leaving soon,” I told them. “There is no need to put your pack in danger.” Maybe appealing to Liam’s need to protect his pack would gain me easier freedom. I didn’t want to be fighting my way out of his territory, and somehow I figured he’d be watching me closely, waiting for me to run. It made me mad. “I don’tbelongto anyone.”
Liam nodded like he agreed, but he said, “I have offered you sanctuary. I ask nothing except that you heal, and that you tell me before you go.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“If you decide to stay,” he continued, like he couldn’t feel my glare. “There is work for you. I have a number of businesses for you to choose from. And you don’t have to stay in the pack house.”
That comment brought an uproar of protest from the wolves.
“You can’t let him just wander around the territory. It’s asking to be attacked.”
“He’s safest at the pack house.”
“It’s better if he returns to the Volkov.”
“An omega would help the pack grow, but only if he’s near you, Alpha.”
“Enough,” Liam said, his voice quiet but firm and echoing with power over the room that silenced everyone. His eyes had gone yellow. They weren’t truly different in color; it was more a fluorescent glow that said his wolf was just below the surface. He didn’t seem to be having trouble holding his wolf back. More likely it was a display of his power since normal wolves couldn’t change just one part of themselves at a time, and once triggered, most couldn’t stop a change. “I am Alpha. Do any of you seek to challenge me?”