Chapter 1

Chapter

One

DANYAL

M y first heat was supposed to come at sixteen, when my eyes flashed orange for the first time, but it didn't. I think, up until then, my mother was still holding out hope she'd get another Alpha—or that I would remain a Beta in spite of the fact that I was small and timid. Both of my parents were Betas, and it was some sort of miracle that their two eldest children had presented with yellow eyes by puberty.

I was the latecomer, though. The miracle third baby that most Wolves never got the chance to have. She always called me her precious blessing, though she and my father were so caught up in the war, they hardly had a chance to parent me. My upbringing had come at the hands of Talia—my strict and immovable sister, and Zane—my brother, whose heart was so soft, I could never quite imagine him going to war and killing a single living thing.

Of course, a lot of what I believed about the world and our family early in my childhood became obvious was nothing more than fantasy. The glass shattered long before my eyes flared orange. I had long-since lost the desperate hope that we would be able to live our lives peacefully without staining our skin with the blood of others.

My parents didn't live long into the war, and my siblings fought in their own ways as I spent my days lost in books and lab experiments. No one expected much out of me though. I was a late bloomer—an Omega with no heat, which meant I had no hope for the love of another—especially not an Alpha.

Talia and Zane never allowed me to think I was damaged or defective, though. They told me to follow my heart, and the rest would come.

And in a way, it did, just on my own timeline.

It made sense that all of my professional accomplishments would come later in life. After all, I didn't sit up until I was nine months old. I didn't walk until well past my first birthday. I didn't shift with puberty—that came so much later that my parents had started to worry I wouldn't shift at all.

My first shift was also nothing like most Wolves. It was mostly pain and confusion, and I was too humiliated to tell anyone, so I sobbed into my pillow until it was over, and I had regained human arms and legs. I hadn't known that's when my eyes had changed either. Not until morning. The moment had seemed insignificant in all ways other than to tell me that yes, in spite of how wrong my body was, I was still a Wolf.

The orange eyes did nothing other than prove my quiet suspicions right. Of course, I had known for years, but every time I brought it up to either of my parents, they waved me off like it was nothing.

"It wouldn't make sense for us to have an Omega," my father said, giving my head a weak pat. "Your mother and I are both Betas."

I was too smart for that too. I knew better than to believe that bullshit old wives tale that status was determined by your parents. Zane and Talia were proof of that, but my parents didn't want the responsibility of what I was.

Of course, it became a non-issue soon enough when the bombs started dropping, and my siblings were shipped off to war. I went to a shelter for wolves too young to fight or too Omega to help out in any real way. And it was there I studied, obsessed with my genetics—with the nature of others. It was there I finally flourished in something I was good at. I spent every waking hour studying who we were—a society as a whole, our gender, our status, our bodies, our shifts.

I wanted to know why a male Omega was good at calming an Alpha—if you could get one to give a shit about more than popping a knot. We weren't breeders; we weren't fighters. And most of the time, people believed that our heats made us incapable of performing any job reliably.

Medical school was the only thing that made sense, and for me, it was soothing because I still hadn't gone into heat, and it was the path to answers.

I was half-certain I was broken—that my parents had given birth to a thing instead of a Wolf, and some day I'd look under a microscope at my own genes and find out that something was wrong with me.

It turns out, I was just created different.

I was twenty-two when it happened—still a med student, trying to get by day to day while ignoring the news of our people dying in droves at the hands of humans. It had been a long week, but my fatigue was worse than usual.

I didn't think twice about it. Logically, I understood the textbook symptoms of pre-heat, but at my age, I just assumed it would never happen to me. My exhaustion? I was just overworked. The strange itch under my skin and restless feeling in my bones? I had two siblings out there fighting. I was just scared for them.

Years down the road, I'll never really know why I walked into the bar that night or what drew me down that dark street. It would have been nice to know I had picked up on the scent of the one Alpha that could draw the heat out of me, or that fate just wanted me in his arms, but I was always a realist—born, bred, would die that way.

Maybe I just needed a break—maybe I just wanted a change.

There had been a momentary reprieve from the war—Wolves sent home from the front. Zane and Talia remained close to the capital, but they'd called twice that week, and it had settled something in me that I hadn't realized was so tense. I wasn't foolish enough to believe it was over, but it allowed me a second to breathe.

A second to step outside my little bubble and just let myself live.

The bar I found was dingy, the outside run down. Through the crack in the door, I could smell them all—Alphas and Betas with hints of human blood still clinging to their skin. It was raw and almost desperate, and I knew I should stay away. An Omega had no place there.

But before I turned, I could hear Zane's voice in my head. "You belong anywhere we do."

I don't know if it was bravery or stupidity that had me walking forward, but I took a breath and stepped in. For a second, nothing happened. For a single heartbeat, a few eyes fell on me, but I didn't matter.

And then the pain hit. I was halfway to the bar where a Beta was serving drinks when I nearly doubled over by the pain in my stomach. My skin erupted into heat, racing down to my fingertips—down to my toes. I felt my backside instantly go slick, and the few Alphas in the room immediately stared at me.

I was going to be mauled—and in the midst of the chaos taking over my body—I felt him. He was a stranger, but something about his scent instantly soothed me. I was only half-aware of his growl, of the way he postured at the room, blocking me from view. The few Alphas in there didn't consider his challenge, though I could feel their eyes on me as he turned and gripped me by the shoulders.

"What the fuck were you thinking, coming in here in heat? Do you know what an Alpha in a rut could do to you?"

I managed to look at him, some of the fog clearing as he touched me, and I bared my teeth. "My Alpha brother and sister would rip your throat out for assuming that just because an Omega's in heat"—and fuck, I was in heat—"that they'd instantly become rapists."

He let me go, and I moaned, the pain returning, only easing when he slid back into my space. After a second, he touched my chin, and I could feel the bare edge of his claw. "Do you want to come with me?"

I opened my mouth to tell him no. This was my first heat—the heat I wasn't supposed to have, because I was a fucking broken Wolf. But instead, I nodded. I licked my lips with an impossibly dry tongue, then allowed him to drag me outside and around the side of the building.

He backed me up against the cold brick, and I could see the flare of want in his eyes. They shone in the dark with a preternatural glow, and when his lips parted, I was suddenly desperate for him to lay his mouth to my skin and taste me.

"Please," I breathed out.

Logic told me to be terrified, instinct had me bearing my neck for him and feeling the absolutely perfect way he buried his face against me and gulped down breaths like he needed my scent to live.

The pain of heat was there, but touching him made it so much more bearable.

"I want you," he growled out.

I nodded. I wanted him too. I wanted him to fill me, to knot me. I needed it like I needed air to breathe. "Do you have somewhere we can…"

"I have a room. I'm on leave," he said through gritted teeth before grazing them against my pulse. My slick soaked through me, and I felt his hardness through his fatigues as he rocked himself against my thigh.

I wasn't brave enough to ask his name, but I had enough courage to take his hand when he offered it to me.

On the walk back to the shitty little motel he was staying in, I got the chance to study him. He was lanky unlike most Alphas, but he was tall. He had hair that sat in thick curls, cropped close to his head. His skin was olive—rich in the lamplight as we made our way through the city. He had a full mouth and aquiline nose, and his fingers trembled as they clung to mine.

I wanted to taste every inch of him, and each step was agony with him not being inside me.

By the time we got back to his place, I was dripping wet. I'd woken up after dreams sometimes a little sticky with slick, but it was never like this. It was never a desperate need vibrating under my skin.

I moaned when he dragged his hands along my arms, when he pushed me against the motel door and finally—after what felt like an eternity—kissed me.

"Are you mated?" he asked against my mouth.

I shook my head, knowing I should be insulted by the implication, but I had no room for it. Desire was consuming everything. "Not mate. I've…you're…" I wanted to tell him that this was my first heat, that he was my first Alpha, but it was impossible to form words.

Now that I knew what was coming—what he would do to me—I couldn't think. I could only mewl and beg with my body as he stripped me down. I stood there, the door the only thing keeping me upright, and I watched with burning need as he dragged his palms from my shoulders, to my knees, then back to my cock, which was aching for touch.

"Please," I whined.

He grinned—a little feral, and gods, I wanted him to lose control with me. "You beg so pretty. So needy. Fuck, if you're this desperate, your first heat must have been torture."

I wanted to laugh—to cry. To tell him that this was my first everything.

Instead, I opened my body to him, only centimeters away as he peeled off his own clothes. He was scarred—a lot like Zane, from taking hit after hit from human weapons. It was proof he was a survivor, that he was an Alpha worthy of his rank and his stars. He, like all those others willing to give their lives for this war, deserved moments of reprieve.

And I wondered if my heat would give it to him.

"Bed?" he asked, then took my mouth again before I could answer him. He led me by the hand to the mattress that squeaked under our weight. It was too hard and full of springs, but it didn't matter. It was heaven with him hovering over me. His hard cock thrust between my legs, nudging at my balls as he attacked my neck with sharp teeth.

I turned into it, gave him everything, let the swirling heat-madness take me. I existed for nothing more than pleasure, for his hands on me, for his cock buried in my hole. I whined and spread my legs, and then came untouched as he buried his face against me and dragged his tongue through my slick.

"Please," I all-but shouted. I didn't know how else to beg for more.

This man—this perfect Alpha—he understood. Pulling me up with gentle hands, he kissed me one more time—sharing the taste of my slick. It was heady and filthy, and I was boneless as he turned me around and pressed my torso to the bed.

His claws were out again, digging into my hips as he lifted my ass, and I had only a moment to realize that everything was about to change before he slid inside me. I felt split in half, but in the best way, and I found myself rocking back against him, desperate to be filled more.

It wasn't enough. It wasn't…

"Shh," he said, and I realized I was whimpering and begging. He ran a soothing hand up my spine, then gripped me by the back of the neck tight before he began to pound into my ass with a rhythm impossible to follow. I simply let myself be taken, let him possess me, and when I felt his knot start to grow, my world narrowed down the points we were connected, and everything else ceased to exist.

I rocked myself on it to orgasm after orgasm until my entire body went limp. He licked over my shoulder where a mate would bite—where I desperately wanted him to bite. I didn't know his name, or where he lived, or where he was fighting, but it didn't matter

All I knew was that he was right for me, and there was no way he didn't feel the same. The ghost of a bond appeared between us, wrapping around us as I drifted and let him hold me. I was certain by morning, I would have time to know him.

"I…" The word, more like a noise, slipped from me, and he kissed my shoulder again. I could feel the bond humming, feel his emotions pulsing against my own. He was as overwhelmed as I was.

His grip on me went tighter, and I decided that anything else I wanted to ask, anything else that could possibly matter, could wait.

I woke up alone, covered in his scent, deliciously sore, with a lingering feeling that it had all been a mistake. It took me half an hour to realize the feeling wasn't coming from me, either. It was coming from the echo that tied us together.

I allowed myself a single moment of devastation before I picked myself up off the bed and put my clothes on. I glanced around for some desperate hope like maybe he'd just gone out for breakfast, but the room was cleaned out. The only trace of him left was his seed, trickling out of my abused, puffy, aching hole.

And nothing else.

I pushed against the bond, desperate to feel him, but I felt it shudder—then close. He wouldn't be able to keep that up, not until the bond faded, but the nothing I felt when I reached out was almost enough to send me to my knees.

I wasn't weak though. I hadn't been raised weak.

I trudged back to my rooms and made the decision then and there to take back what he'd stolen.

No amount of showering erased the fact that I could feel him in his weaker moments, though. I could feel the distance between us growing, feel how much he wished he had gone to any other city that night.

The news broadcast said that Wolves were being recalled to the front again, and it was two nights after my heat that Zane called.

"I won't get the chance to see you," he said, his voice full of regret.

I sighed into my pillow and squeezed my eyes shut. "It's fine."

He grunted. "It isn't. I can tell something happened. Talia called me and asked. Did you…"

The heat automatically shielded the pack bond, but it was a tell for all family members of an Omega—which was humiliating enough. I wanted to lie, but I also knew Zane wouldn't let me get away with it.

"It's not a big deal," I told him.

In any other world, he might have celebrated that I finally had my heat, but instead, he sighed quietly. "Were you alone?"

"No," I told him. My throat went tight as I felt a sudden surge from the Alpha's side of the bond. It was gone as quickly as it had come, but it made me feel worse. "I met someone. He got me through it."

"Who?" Zane demanded, and I couldn't help but laugh.

"I never got his name, and you can take your judgment," I said when I felt it under my skin, "and shove it up your ass."

After a beat, I felt a flicker of apology. "I worry about you," he said. "I'm sorry. I just…I don't want you to suffer."

"I don't think either of us has a choice in the matter," I confessed. Rolling onto my back, I stared at the ceiling. "It doesn't matter. It's over, this shitty feeling will pass, I'll move on with my life."

"And do amazing things," he said, like he always did. "When I get back from this fucking war, things will be better."

I desperately wanted to believe him, but hearing the list of the daily dead, all I could do was lie there and wonder when I would hear his name next. "Please be safe. Please come home," I begged.

I felt a pulse of grief for a situation neither of us could change. "You know I'll do my best."

That's how we always ended the call, so I cradled the phone, curled up on myself, and tried to forget what the Alpha's mouth felt like against mine.