hopefully this will all make sense. so if you don’t know yet, this is my main blog. i made this account back in 2014-2015 for Harry Potter Gext Gen and since then i have changed fandoms like 6 or 7 times. but we’ve made a full circle and we’re back where we started so its a post thats been long due I suppose. I never thought to separate the fandoms by side blogs because I am an occasional dumbass so everything is on one blog. so here are the fandoms I am interested in and write for. I don’t write for all of the fandoms I am in and I do write for specific ships. hopefully this will clear things up if you’re ever confused
I write for:
My writeblr @halie15x
Kdramas
- Descendants of the Sun
- While You Were Sleeping
- Dokgo Rewind
- (I’ll update the list if I decide to write for more.)
Kpop
- Exo x reader/x Y/N
- Exo x Collision Lane (my Virtual band I created for Exo)
Marvel
Avengers discord server!
Cap 3 Meta. || Hulk vs Thanos Meta. || Cap’s Ending ||
- Friends!Avengers
hole-y intros
- Bucky Barnes x Reader
Terms of Endearment. -> one shot
- Loki Laufeyson x Darcy Lewis
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D
~Ward and Johnson IF i got to write their story, not the stuff that the writers of AOS did
Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Zuko x Katara
discord server for Zutara!
Harry Potter Next Generation
discord server for next gen!
Fancast here ! (8/19/20)/ Draco Meta (9/13/20)
- Scoripius Malfoy x Rose Weasley
Storms of Red (updated: every month on 29th)
- Albus Potter x Alice Longbottom
- Teddy Lupin x Victoire Weasley
- Other ships in the fandom too but the ones above are the ones that I won’t budge on :) --> Masterlist *will make an actual masterlist when i have more stuff)
Gray’s B&C Shop
Lucy Weasley x Lysander Scamander
- Hockey Romances (OF-ish)
Fandoms I am in that I do NOT write for
- Chronicles of Narnia
- other K-dramas I have watched (ask if you want to know which ones ;). )
- Miraculous Ladybug (debatable)
- Vampire Academy
- Big Time Rush
- Friends
- Victorious
- The Umbrella Academy
- Criminal Minds
- NCIS
- Psych
- Bridgerton
- Elle Kennedy (Off-Campus and Briar U)
- Odette Stone (Vancouver Wolves)
- Monsters and Muses by Sav R. Miller
- Rina Kent
- Castlevania
- Vox Ex Machina
*i will be linking this on my bio so that you can find it easily!
Hi friends I’m not dead!!! I want to get back to writing, but for now here’s a list of my favorite fics that I’ve read in the last year. 99% of them are smut because I’m a depraved soul.
1. The Penance Series by Delectate
This is probably my favorite, no ifs, ands, or butts. I’ve read it 3 times because I’m always a slut for book 3 canon divergence smut.
2. A Week to Know You Again by Em Dixon
For those who prefer smut where Zuko and Katara are adults, this one’s for you! It’s well written and I enjoyed it very much.
3. When We Were Young by Em Dixon
More book 3 canon divergence!!!! Em Dixon’s writing is superb, any of her stuff is great.
4. Tremors by CuriosityRedux
This one takes place after ATLA canon and is actually quite sweet, developing into smut over time.
5. The Island That Cleanses by DamageCtrl
I’m not a huge fan of AUs as a rule, but this one stole my heart. It is very well characterized and the smut makes all the built-up worth it.
6. Piety and Trick Doors by Crushinator
I’m just now realizing this is a companion fic to something else by crushinator but, uh, its fine! I thoroughly enjoyed it even without the main story. One-shot!
7. Thirteen Nights by wargoddess
PLEASE NOTE there is a non-con warning on this one because it is an arranged marriage fic. I guess I’d classify this one as porn with plot and it is complete canon divergence.
8. Any smut fic by jennibare
I’m pretty sure I read all of her M-rated work in one sitting because it was completely captivating.
You could hear the workers bustling by your room before the sun was even up. The house has been a buzz of activity for days, weeks if you were honest, and the culmination was that night. The big presentation gala for your youngest sister, who was finally of age to be sent off. Other groups were attending the dinner, other alliances would be formed, but the main event was the pack from England coming to see your sister.
There had been letters and contracts sent back and forth for almost six months to get the 141 pack to consider even making an appearance. It wasn't unheard of, your lawyer father enjoyed the chase and making others wait. So many propositions have been made since your first sibling was born that there was probably a whole shelf of fallen through contracts collecting dust in the basement. Your mother's propositions could fill a bank vault, even after her marriage.
Your family is notorious for its bloodline on both sides, so marriages are strictly for breeding. Anyone looking for love was laughed at. Children were stock to be traded, to raise the lineage to new levels. It also didn't hurt that wealth, careers, and a life of luxury came with it. You could learn to love one another, or find a love on the side once your duties were done. There were no side dalliances until heirs were produced, too risky.
"Just getting lunch," you mutter as the chef looks up from his station at the stove. He doesn't give you a second glance. No one does anymore.
Your life these days is not to be seen or heard. Your family wants you out, and the staff have learned to not interact with you aside from the bare minimum. You are supposed to become a memory, one that would get forgotten if plans went your mother's way.
Taking the back stairs back to the family wing, you slip down the hall, stuffing a sandwich in your mouth. You have class in ten minutes, then the rest of your day will be spent working on your thesis. Then perhaps an early bed with a few sleeping pills to drown out the extravagant party that would fill the whole great hall and spill down the lawn.
The last presentation gala that had been arranged was for you. Your mother was so sure that you were just a late bloomer, she wouldn't let it go. Dragging you to look at flowers, sample foods, and dress shopping. Everything. Every detail was planned, down to the lilac colored napkin cuffs. She was sure you'd smell of lilacs like her.
But it never happened.
Your first bleed came and went without a hint of a shift. Not unheard of overall, but not normal in your family line. At sixteen, you started to develop some general shifter habits. Nesting, even if it was so subtle, could be written off as just an odd habit. Scenting others, so your nose had developed the sensitive wolf traits. Even a pack mentality had developed; for someone who had always been a loner, you wanted to be around your family more, but more importantly, you were interested in other Alphas. Although you're now fairly certain that was just normal teenage hormones.
So sure that when you hit eighteen you'd present, your mother invited all the prospects that had reached out to a small dinner. A test, sample, if you will.
All their sons, even some of the elders whose wives were no longer able to bear children, agreed to come. Eighteen was make or break. No Omega that hadn't shifted or presented at eighteen ever did after that. They were a failure, a broken link in the family chain. 'Unables' as they, you, were called, were the ultimate shame.
It wasn't a surprise, though a disappointment, to your family when nothing happened. You weren't drawn to a single Alpha there, least not in the way that it should be. Their scents were muted, and if you were honest, you were disgusted by them. Vague whiffs of oil and mud, burnt earth and rot. It was overwhelming and disheartening, especially when not a single male could scent you. Nothing but your perfume, which they turned their noses up at.
Your gala had been canceled.
Your father spent late hours into the night reworking contracts, trying to promise your younger sister to the ones that wanted you. But people were wary, if one Omega was a failure, what was to say the younger one wasn't. It was hard to guarantee she would be fit when you had fallen through.
But it was an unnecessary worry. Your sister's first bleed, she shifted without an issue. And with another option around, you were finally forgotten, and she was thrust into the spotlight. Fourteen, and she was being shopped around like a piece of meat, lauded above you like the jewel she was.
It had been a relief, really, to have the last dregs of hope finally die when you hit eighteen. No more tears, no more wondering if today was the day. Now you could start working out your plan for moving forward. To begin to figure out life with Unables and humans, and what you wanted that life to look like. College had been the best plan, and after expertly talking your parents into an agreement to let you get your master's, you set down that path. Hiding away in your room and family quarters, barely leaving unless absolutely necessary. There had been plenty of times in the past six years that you didn't see a single member of your family for months.
Just as you are about to log on for your class, adjusting the camera a few times, there is a soft knock on your door. You have five minutes.
"Yes?" You call out, wondering if a new staff member accidentally stopped at your room.
"Leas?" Comes a soft voice, and you shut your eyes, breathing in through your nose.
That fucking nickname would never leave. Your older brother had thought it funny to tease you for your inability. It started when you first bled and didn't shift, and eventually the whole family used it. Easier to call you by a name no one knew when referring to you in public.
You knew your sister didn't mean it. She was seven when it started, and that's all she knew to really call you, as the family used it all the time. It was an Old English word, shifters loved to fall back on their heritage and old traditions. It meant empty or false, which is apparently what you were. A fake, useless Omega.
"I have class in five minutes, Edith," you state as she sticks her perfectly coifed head in your door. You can tell she's nervous, gnawing on her lower lip as she watches you.
"I know, I just," she slips in and shuts the door behind her. There's no getting rid of her now.
"Mom is not going to like you in here," you warn as she pads over in her white robe to flop onto your bed. "Surprised you aren't on a leash." Literally and figuratively.
"She had to go make a call. Apparently, the florist sent the wrong arrangement for my table." Edith answers as she grabs one of the many pillows on your bed. You itch with irritation as she upsets your perfectly messy pile. It's a hodgepodge, but everything is, was, exactly where you wanted it.
"Three minutes," you warn as you log into the class and cut off your camera.
"What if they don't like me? Or I fail to present?" Your sister finally blurts out, sitting up and holding your pillow so tight to her stomach she looks like she's going to rip it.
"Don't start," you answer, trying to hide the bitterness. You know she's nervous, but she's looking for reassurance in the wrong place. She's just rubbing it in your face that she will succeed, you know she will. She only wants to come into your room to assure herself that she won't fail as badly as you.
"I mean it," she whines as she fists the pillow. "I mean, I know I shift, and I've had...urges," she does her best to not sound improper, but you know what she means. Particularly strong Alphas can pull on the presentation early and send Omegas into faux heats, nothing that a suppressant couldn't take care of. Which you know Edith has had to be suppressed twice. Those were two horrible weeks in the house.
"Then what are you worried about? You've got one of the strongest packs coming to meet you," you state as the class conversation starts. "The contract is written. They know more about you than you probably even know, down to your genes and blood type. They just need to sign on the dotted line after they see you. Then you're off to some castle or something in England to live out your princess fairytale. I bet you'll even get ballgowns," you add with a small eyeroll.
You know this is what she came for, for you to assure her she's the perfect little Omega and drag yourself through the mud to make her feel better. Easier to not be nervous when someone else has it worse than you, and you aren't at risk of falling as low as they do.
"But what if," she starts, and you have to fight back a snarl.
"I have class, Edith. Go whine about your worries about your perfect life to someone else. I'm sure the twins would love to fawn over you," you snap, which makes her whip her head back as if you had physically hit her.
"Fine," she quips and throws your pillow to the floor. "Enjoy your class," she sneers as she looks at your computer. "And your night with your pills and books."
You don't answer her as she stomps out of the room, slamming the door behind her. It doesn't hit you until you are about to wrap up your lesson that was probably the last time you'd see your sister in person. Ever. If the contract was accepted and signed, she would leave with her new pack that night, and you'd be out of the house and the family before she came for a visit.
A few hours later, you're hunched over your laptop, tired eyes going crossed, as you work on the third draft of your thesis. The sun has started to set, and the paper lanterns all over the lawn have been lit. The gala is beginning soon, early arrivals have already started rolling in.
With so many pheromones flying around the house, you shove a precautionary towel under your door and close the vent to your room. It'll get stuffy, but it's better than trying to literally inhale a room freshener to get the scents out of your nose. How shifters could stand those smells, and be attracted to them, you'd never know. Perhaps it was a small blessing you hadn't presented. What if you smelled like wilted lilacs and rotten apples like your mother?
After sending off your newest written section to a peer to review, you shut down your laptop. It's getting late, and if you don't take the sleeping pills now, you won't be able to drown out the party.
Peeking through your curtains as you swallow the two pills dry, you watch the partygoers mingling on the lawn. They are all dressed to the nines, gowns that cost a year's tuition at your college, and suits that aren't much cheaper.
Even in the growing crowd, you can see your mother. She's in a blood red dress that shimmers in the dying sun, and your sister Edith is at her side in an iridescent opal beaded gown. The picture of a perfect mother and well bred, pure daughter. If they only knew what Edith got up to with your Beta siblings.
As if on queue, your eldest brother steps into view with his brood trailing behind him. Last you knew he had five children, but it looks like his wife is pregnant again. Hopefully, for her sake, it wasn't another set of twins. Six or seven children five and under sounded like a personal hell.
"Fuck," you mutter as three sets of eyes snap up to your window.
You twitch the curtains closed, hoping no one noticed, but you know better. You know the twins had seen you and told your father immediately. Just a matter of time before someone on the staff comes up to 'check' on you. Which meant they would make sure you took your pills, hustle you to bed, and cut all the lights.
Out of sight, out of mind was your life mantra.
Curling up in your nest of pillows and blankets, you set the projector on the ceiling to watch the night sky. Your pills don't take long to set in, but to be safe, you tug the noise canceling headphones over your ears and watch the stars slide along above you, lulling you to a dreamless sleep.
Sometime later, you half wake to find you have burrowed deep under the pillows. It's stiffling hot, and your ears hurt from the pressure of the headphones. Surely it's late enough for the party to be over, so you yank them off and drop them on your nightstand. As you stretch out and whine, you catch a whiff of something. It's familiar, so familiar, yet somehow foreign. As if something in your body recognizes it, but your brain has no memory of it.
"Get out of my room," you mumble, sure that one of your mother's watchdogs had slipped in. It wouldn't be the first time you had a chaperone to make sure you kept to your room.
"Now, now, little wulf," comes a voice that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. "There's no need to be rude."
You don't know that voice. You don't know the scents that crash over you, almost suffocating as you try to catch a fresh breath of air out from under the blankets. A pillow slides to the floor as you scramble to sit up, legs kicking to back you up to the headboard to steady yourself.
Then you see them in the dim light. Four men are standing at the foot of your bed. They are perfectly still, silent, watching you with a predatory gaze as if they were assessing you. Everything screams for you to run, but some primal part of you says that they will only chase you. And they'd enjoy it.
That's when, in your sleepy haze, you put together that they aren't men.
They are Alphas. The 141 pack of Alphas.
And they are standing in your room looking at you like you were their next prize.
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Chapter 2 - Giefu
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Tag List: @ironicadventures, @hypertail, @/boldlyherdream, @/listen-to-navi, @/eyeswidecovered, @/haurasha
Any other followers that would like to be tagged just let me know 💙
You stare bewildered at them, blinking a few times as you yank your blanket up to cover yourself. Shorts and a t-shirt feel too revealing and flimsy with these strangers. And judging by the way one of them, Riley if you remember correctly, is looking at you it was a good call to cover up.
"I'm sorry?" You ask, trying to sound much braver than you feel as you look between all four of them. "You're the rude ones barging in here." Stupid move to talk down to an Alpha, you know it, yet it doesn't stop you.
"How could we not when we caught your scent?" Another asks, and you cut your eyes over to them. MacTavish, you think.
When you heard that your sister was being proposed to the 141 pack, you had done your research. It was mere curiosity, really, wondering what was so special about all of them, aside from the fact that four Alphas were still a pack together. Typically, Alphas would take on their Omega, or a few if they were powerful enough to warrant it, and split off from the bachelor life. But these four men stayed together, and rumor had it they shared Omegas.
Completely unheard of and dangerous.
Fully mature Alphas in a rut tear one another to pieces to get to an Omega in heat. It wouldn't matter if they were brothers, if there was competition for an Omega, instinct would take over, and they would kill one another to have her. There was a reason your sister's presentation gala had strict security and rules in place. All Alphas were required to suppress in fear that your sister, or any of the other Omegas there, would pull them into ruts. It could turn into a blood bath very quickly otherwise.
You had wondered to yourself as you scrolled through any and all media you could find on the 141 pack if they took turns with their shared Omega. Suppressing to give the others a turn. Or with multiple Omegas maybe they would go into heats around the same time, much like humans and their periods naturally syncing, and they'd share that way. The thought had made you squirm, but if you didn't lie to yourself, it wasn't out of disgust.
"You must have caught scent of Edith," you protest as you glance at Garrick. He's as lovely looking as his pictures. "She was in here earlier," you try to explain as his fingers dance over your projector, sending long shadows on the ceiling.
"The paperwork we have strongly suggests she smells of cherries and sugar," Price answers as he crosses his arms across his chest. His ice blue eyes are like daggers staring at you, even in the dim light. "Sickly sweet." He doesn't sound like that is appealing to him in the least.
"And that is not what we scented," Garrick answers as he stalks closer to the side of your bed, causing you to scoot the side. Only to stop as you see MacTavish already on the other side, smirking.
They have you flanked. Dangerous position to be in when you can't defend yourself.
"This is a gala, there are scents all over," you try again, doing your best not to outright whimper as MacTavish sits on your bed, causing it to creak and sink a few inches.
"Is that why you have towels everywhere?" Riley asks as he plucks the one over your vent off the wall. You had needed a chair to get up there, and he snatched it without even having to stretch.
"The scents give me a headache, and they smell awf-overpowering," you pivot mid word to keep yourself from saying awful to not offend them more. Though if you were honest, their scents were not bad. Weren’t that muted rottish smell that made you crinkle your nose. They were pleasant, light, even if they were all swirled together in the room.
"Unable that can scent," Price muses, which makes you stiffen.
They know exactly who you are.
Is this a tactic in their game? Toy with you, with your family, who have tried to hide you all these years, just to humiliate them. Or perhaps manipulate them into giving up more. Using you as a pawn, threatening to reveal you if your family doesn't do as they wish. You feel a flare of anger at the thought of them doing that to your family. Ruining your sister's big day, even if she drove you mad. All that to what end? Your sister is the only Omega available. Unless perhaps they wanted your mother as well. That was a sickening thought, your mother and sister having to share the same Alphas.
"I smelled you before I saw you," you shoot back as MacTavish adjusts and plops both of his legs on your bed, ruffling your blankets and dirtying them with his boots. Asshole. You resist shoving his legs back as you glare at him.
"Surprised you can even speak with these pills," Garrick muses as he rattles your pill bottle. "One of these should knock you out for at least half a day."
"Can you not touch," you start, shooting your arm to snatch the bottle away and missing horribly. Garrick moves faster than you can blink, and the medication is still coursing through your body, making you sluggish.
"There are lots of things I would like to touch," MacTavish teases as he leans toward you, making you skitter out of bed to get away from him.
The rest of the men laugh, and you feel yourself growing hot as you wobble where you stand. You feel utterly naked as they all watch you, dissecting you with their eyes. Weakness only entices Alphas, so you resist hugging yourself to try and hide even more.
"Get changed," Riley says as he opens your closet door, letting the door swing inwards.
"Why?" You ask, looking over at him.
"Unless you'd like to go to the party dressed like that," Price answers. "I don't care either way, but I figure you'd like a different option."
You can hear the gala is still going on, the music loud and idle chatter a buzz. The clock indicates it's barely ten in the evening, you had only slept for two hours. These four had pulled you from a blissful sleep to drag you out of your room and parade around the gala. This had to be a nightmare.
"And if I refuse to go?" You attempt as your head spins, eyes heavy. This was going to be a long trek.
"I wouldn't," MacTavish answers simply. "You'll only make it harder on yourself.”
“And what does that mean?” You ask, blinking hard to try and get your eyes to focus.
“He’ll just throw you over his shoulder and carry you there, pretty bare legs and all,” Garrick replies as he slips your pills into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Mummy will not be pleased.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
The closet light is harsh as you step into it, snapping the door shut quickly and twisting the lock. You know it'll do no good if they want to get in, and you swear you hear one of them chuckle as the mechanism twists into place.
How did you end up in this situation? You were all but forgotten by the world, and that was how you liked it. How did these men know who you were after all this time? And why did they even care?
You groan, digging the heels of your palms into your eyes before looking at your hanging clothes. What were you going to wear? You haven't had a dress worthy of a gala since your own. Your mother didn’t deign to take you shopping, and the little clothes you do have are either leftovers from before or the bits you snuck in when your sister went shopping. The fanciest thing you have is a cocktail dress that you splurged on with your allowance for your graduation. It's simply cut, the hem falling just above the knee and the neckline chaste, coming to your collarbone.
It's no ballgown, but it'll have to do.
You tug it on, fumbling a few times and having to catch yourself on the wall or hangers to keep from completely toppling. There is no way you can do heels, your balance so off center it feels like the room is spinning when you are standing still, so you slip on a pair of flats that don't go with the dress at all. You don't even dare look at your face in the mirror as you fight to get the zipper up before stumbling out of the closet again.
"I liked the pajamas better," Garrick quips as he looks you over.
You don't answer. Just fiddle with the hem of your dress, staring at the floor to fight back the embarrassment and indignity. There is only one way this is going to go, and you know if you don't crawl into a hole and die of shame on your own, your mother will kill you for you.
“Shall we?” Price asks as he crosses to your bedroom door and opens it.
You don’t move. Just continue to avoid their eyes as you try to prepare yourself for what is coming. They are going to make you look like a fool. They are going to parade you around the gala like a little pet and absolutely ruin you, your family. Everything. For a laugh.
“Still not above carrying you,” MacTavish offers as he comes around the bed and reaches for you, to which you twist away and stumble before Riley’s hand catches your bicep to steady you.
“I can walk,” you mutter before heading toward the door, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other.
“Lead the way,” Price states as he gestures for you to go past him.
You swear you hear him inhale deeply through his nose as you pass, but you don’t pause, don’t look. Just one foot in front of the other is what you tell yourself. All the way down the hall, down the back staircase that leads to the kitchen, and through the staff halls. The men are silent behind you, their steps inaudible. The only reason you know they are there is from the occasional hushed tones of talking or the waft of their scents. One of them smells of teakwood, you finally realize, like one of your favorite candles.
The whispers start as you happen upon caterers who are bustling in and out of the house with trays of full and empty glasses. You are out of place. Your dress is hardly fancy enough for the party workers. They don’t recognize you, but it doesn’t take long for the whispers to turn to gasps as they realize who you are being followed by. It’s an odd feeling to be leading an entourage right to your demise, but you don’t stop walking. You know MacTavish will be good on his word to carry you across the place if you don’t keep moving. You have some dignity left.
“My parents will be at the head table by the pond,” you murmur, pausing for just a second to look up at Riley, who is on your left side.
“I see them,” he replies with a crooked smirk, which matches his slightly cocked nose. “They look delighted.”
You dare to glance toward the table, the one covered in so many flowers and lights that it looks like a beacon, and see them. The smile on your mother’s face is murderous, and you swear you see her canines slightly elongated. Perfect for tearing out your throat. Your father looks no better, but he at least has the sense to sit calmly.
“Can you just kill me now? Bypass the threats and bargaining and get it done?” You ask as a hand catches your waist to gently push you forward. You don’t know who it is, but it’s like an electric shock that gets you moving again.
“No one here is going to die,” Garrick replies from behind you. “Unless we don’t get what we want.”
“I might,” you mutter before getting to the table, your steps feeling like you are trying to walk through molasses. You need to sit, to lie down. Sleep. You reach out to grasp the table to steady yourself as the garish scent of fermented sugar and expired marchiano cherries hits your nose.
Edith.
She looks astonished to see you standing there. Well swooning really as you grip the linen table cloth to remain upright. Her eyes dart to your escorts, taking all of them in with her perfected doe eyed look. You know she is seething underneath. Embarrassed by you being here. Mad you’re taking the spotlight.
“Gentlemen,” you father interjects, rising from his chair.
“Sorry, we’re late,” Price states, ignoring that the party has gone deathly silent. “Seems we got turned around in your house.”
Even the live music has paused. The tension in the air is thick enough you swear you can reach out and touch it. Or perhaps that is your swimming vision and the haze out of the corner of your eyes making everything look like you are seeing it through a foggy glass. These pills were making everything ten times harder. Taking two had been a mistake.
“No worries at all,” your father answers smoothly as your brother strolls over, cocky as ever. “Let my son Thorne get this out of our way,” he says with a grin on his face, though his eyes glare at you. You are the this, not even good enough to be addressed as a living person. “And we can get back to the party.”
“Oh no,” Garrick chimes in, and his fingers grip the back of your neck. A possessive gesture that has your knees buckling, and you feel your body shaking to stay upright, to not drop to a submissive position. Unable or no, your body knows how to respond to an Alpha it seems. Perhaps it was survival instinct. “We brought her out here with us on purpose.”
“Whatever for? Edith is here and more than willing to serve you,” your mother states, the sweetness on her face undermined by the venom in her voice. You are dead the second she gets you alone. A push down the stairs. Run over with a car. Torn to pieces by her wickedly sharp teeth.
“Come, Leas,” Thorne snaps, the authority in his voice making you quiver.
“I don’t think you heard us,” Riley states as he steps between you and your brother, his eyes narrowed, though the smirk on his face betrays his enjoyment. This was all going wrong. So very wrong. Even suppressed Alphas would still brawl, any hint at dominance being challenged or slighted would set them off. Suppression only worked on heats and ruts. “She stays with us.”
“Please, let’s sit shall we?” Your mother tries, as if hoping they’ll forget about you and you can be whisked away like some horrendous thing while they are distracted. You can see your twin siblings already waiting in the wings, ready to snatch you.
“We want to negotiate the contract,” Price states as MacTavish slips to stand next to Riley, consciously or not blocking your back from anyone sneaking up. Perhaps he saw your Beta siblings plotting as well.
“The contract is already finalized,” you father states as he looks between all of them before over to your sister. She is on the verge of tears. Angry, embarrassed tears. “Surely there isn’t anything else we need to sort?”
“One thing,” Garrick answers as his thumb and forefinger dig against the soft spot between your neck and skull that makes you audibly whimper. “We want her.”
“Her?” Edith snaps, unable to contain herself any longer. Her hands are fisted in the silk of her dress and you’re certain she’ll tear the fragile fabric if she doesn’t let go soon. “Over me?”
“Think of it as a signing bonus,” Price answers, grinning at the look of confusion on everyone’s face.
“Unables can be useful,” Garrick replies as he leans over, his face so close to your ear that his breath sends goosebumps down your neck and back. “Fun little toys when we’re bored,” he clacks his teeth together, softly snapping at your earlobe, making you flinch.
“You don’t need her, though,” your mother tries. “Edith can provide everything you could want and more.”
“She’ll be off your hands,” Price continues. “Is that not a gift enough? Do you really care what happens to her?”
“No,” your father says so simply that it cuts you to the core. You knew it, but to hear it so dismissively, it’s like a knife to the heart. “But if you want her, we will need to talk. I don’t give up assets that easily,” he smirks.
“Lead the way,” Price answers before turning to Riley and MacTavish. “Take her to the car.”
“We have not signed off on this yet,” your father starts, not hiding his annoyance this time.
“You’ll sign,” Price answers, leaving no room for debate.
Garrick finally lets go of you then, and you nearly topple forward onto the table, taking your first full breath in minutes. You can feel the daggers your sister and mother are throwing at you, but you don’t look up. Too busy trying to piece together everything that just happened in your sluggish brain. But you don’t have long to recover as new hands grab your arms, hauling you upward.
“I’m sorry,” you barely whisper as you catch eyes with your devastated sister before you’re being dragged away. You know what it feels like for your big day to be ruined, and here you are ruining hers. Why did it have to be you ruining yet another thing for your family?
“Edith, I’m sorry!” You try again over your shoulder, but Riley grabs your chin and twists your head forward as they lead you to the car. Edith doesn’t answer. No one says a single word. And as you are practically lifted and shoved into the back of a dark SUV, the sleeping pills finally take over, and you pass out.
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Chapter 3 - æðel
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Tag List: @ironicadventures, @hypertail, @boldlyherdream, @listen-to-navi, @eyeswidecovered, @haurasha
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One of those headaches that feel like your skull is in a vice and every movement sends a shockwave of pain through your eyes and temples. You try to sleep it off, burrowing deeper into the blankets to see if being unconscious for a few hours will help. But it doesn’t. Every time you come to it’s still there lingering. You groan, trying to think of what to do next. Try to think of anything but the pain before you are back under again.
When your fourth attempt at sleeping it off fails, you decide you need to get something to drink and find some pain pills. Taking two of those sleeping pills had been a mistake, even if you had done it before. Perhaps you shouldn’t have done it on an empty stomach.
When you start to dig yourself out from under your blankets, it clicks that something is different, and you hesitate. You open your eyes to see bright white sheets not even an inch from your face. This isn’t your bed. The sheets look different, hell, they feel different too. The pillows aren’t their usual worn in selves, and it doesn’t smell right. It’s sterile. As if the items were just recently pulled out of their packaging and thrown on the bed. Not your usual clean linen scent from being laundered, and lavender on the pillows to help drown out the scents in your house while you sleep.
You push up on your hands, fling back the blankets off yourself, and look at the room just as memories start to hit you. They are foggy, messy, blurred at the edges. You remember going to bed the night of your sister’s gala, remember setting up your projector and slipping your headphones on. Then you woke up to the 141 pack standing in your room, demanding you get dressed before they paraded you in front of everyone as they told your parents they were taking you as part of their deal. That is all crystal clear in your now awake mind. But the rest is patches, glimpses, of what happened.
“Oh shit,” you groan as you drop your head back down on the pillows, trying to piece everything else together. The more you think, the more it hurts.
You need water.
Pushing back up, you look to your left to see a pristine black nightstand with a silver lamp, and more importantly, a large bottle of water and pills. You don’t hesitate to crawl over and snatch up the two items, pouring four white pills into your hand and downing them with half the water. It doesn’t matter that you have no idea who left the water, or what exactly the pills are though they look like Tylenol, you need to kill this headache before you can do any sort of intense combing through your memory. So, as you lie on the bed waiting for everything to kick in, you glance around the room at what you can see.
It’s clean if bleak.
The walls are a light grey, almost white, with nothing on them. Not even a clock or a mirror. There aren’t even any nails or nail holes to indicate anything had ever been hung there. The only mounted fixture is a ceiling light. There’s a desk that matches the nightstand across the way, with just a phone on it and a simple office chair pushed in. A door to the left, you guess, is the bathroom, and another double door, you think, is the closet. All the windows are covered by heavy black curtains that nearly touch the ground. The light that filters through to the equally bland grey carpet tells you it’s at least daytime, but you have no idea what exact time that is. After a second, you hone in on the sound of rain. You can hear the patter of the drops hitting the glass, and vaguely, you think you catch the wind roaring, but it’s too muffled to tell.
When blinking stops sending a jolt of pain down your neck and through your skull, you sit up. The bed is deceivingly large. You have to scoot to the edge, wriggling a few times to get to the end of it before your feet hit the floor. Turning back to glance at it, you can see a line of five overstuffed large pillows cushioned between the bed and headboard. Where you had slept, right in the middle, barely made a dent in the monstrosity of a bed. Who needed a bed this large? It could fit a whole family in it and still have room.
Stepping onto the carpet, which is plush and thick under your feet, you stand and spot what you couldn’t see when you were lying on your back. By the door to leave the room are boxes. Piles and piles of them, each labeled neatly to indicate what is inside. Your clothes. Your linens. Your bath things. Books. Pictures. Everything. You peer at all of them and realize your whole room, your whole life, is tucked away in these boxes.
How long had you been out? You twist to look around the room for any sort of indication, like some calendar would magically appear to tell you. It had to have been at least a few days for all of this to be packed and shipped to, well, wherever you were. You knew the 141 were based in England, but surely you weren’t there. You wouldn’t have slept through all that. The two sleeping pills would have only knocked you out for another eight hours at most.
But then you remember Garrick had pocketed your bottle. And following that train of thought, you recall hands and someone coaxing you before another pill was placed on your tongue. You were in a car. No. This was after the car. You had been unceremoniously shoved in the backseat of their SUV at your house, and then you had passed out. Only barely coming to at an airfield before someone lifted you out of the backseat and carried you. They had been gentle, but you still feel a flash of embarrassment at the thought.
They had given you the pill on the plane when you started to come to. You remember that now. Remember barely waking up, feeling incredibly groggy, on a small lie-flat seat, the hum of the plane too loud, so you covered your ears. A face had appeared, too blurry to remember who, and they had told you to open up before they gave you the pill and a small paper cup of water to down it. You didn’t need it. The pill dissolved before you were coordinated enough to get a drink. You think you dropped the cup, spilled it on yourself before you were back under again, a vague worry that it would ruin your dress had chased you to sleep.
Your dress.
You look down, expecting to still be in it, as that was the last thing you had worn, but you aren’t. You’re in a pair of oversized sweats and a shirt. Someone had changed you. Now the embarrassment is tinged with anger, as well as a touch of fear. Who had pulled your clothes off, had seen you that vulnerable, and you didn’t even wake. What else had they possibly done to you? You pull at the shirt, look down the neck hole, to find you are still in your bra, and a quick shifting of your legs, you feel your underwear. At least they hadn’t touched that. Well. That you know of.
Fuming, you grab at the door handle, ready to march out to wherever you were and give them a piece of your mind before you stop. You have no idea where you are. Or who is there. What if this was some sort of holding place. You knew this pack took on multiple Omegas. Perhaps this is where they housed them, like some sort of fucked up breeding house. Or you could open the door and find other terrors waiting in the hall. Other Alphas or Betas waiting for a turn. You had heard of that before, the highest bidder could have their pick of prizes. Alphas selling their used up Omegas for extra cash or entertainment. It was frowned upon, forbidden really, but that didn’t stop the most powerful of houses.
You let go of the handle and go to the desk to see if you can call someone with the phone. Your mother would be of no help, your father was laughable, and Edith would probably encourage your torture at this point, but maybe one of the twins. Maybe they’d have a shred of sympathy in them since you hadn’t wronged them. Maybe they would listen if you pleaded your case and begged forgiveness.
But it’s not a phone like you thought. It’s a buzzer with different button options to select. Housekeeping. Kitchen. Garage. Nursery. Alpha Den. Boat Dock. Emergency.
You stare at it, contemplating hitting Emergency to see what would happen when you spot the yellow sticky. It’s a short note written in neat scribble.
Call the kitchen for food when you’re awake. They’ll make anything you’d like. I’m partial to the shepherd’s pie. -K
You read it again. Who the hell is K? And do you really want to hit that button to let them know you are awake? Would they show up and do whatever it is they want with you? No, you weren’t going to let them know you were up. Not yet. You needed to figure out where you were. Get a plan together to get out, or at least defend yourself. Maybe you could get to your phone in your boxes of things and get a call out that way.
As quietly as you can, you start ripping into boxes, shifting them around as you rifle through them for your phone. Your laptop would work. Even the iPad. But as you open each one and pull things out, your hopes keep sinking. None of your electronics are there. Not even your measly handheld game. They’ve provided you literally everything you own, even your little sleeping projector, but no way to reach the outside world.
Falling on your ass, you stare at the mess you’ve made as your stomach lets out yet another loud, angry grumble asking for food. You can’t fight it any longer. The headache you managed to dull with the pills is coming back, and you know it’s from lack of food and water, the bottle long empty.
Fine.
You stand up and hit the buzzer for the kitchen and wait before a voice comes back that you don’t recognize. A woman, older, if you had to guess.
“What would you like?” She asks simply.
“Ah,” you pause. You hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Coffee, water, and toast,” you decide on the fly.
“That’s it?” She asks, and when you don’t answer after a few seconds, she comes back again. “We’ll have it up to you shortly.”
You shove things back into their boxes, not willing to unpack everything yet, as you wait. You keep out a few blankets, one of your stuffies that used to be a bee but has long since lost its shape and proper colors, and your own comfortable clothes. The ones you are in are too big, and they also smell sterile and too new. The scent makes you wrinkle your nose as you swiftly change into familiar feeling items and toss the other clothes into the corner of the room.
Just as you dare to go inspect the closet, there is a soft knock on the door. It’s quiet, but it makes you jump before you wander over and brace yourself. You don’t know who, or what, is lurking on the other side, so you take a deep breath and wrench it open quickly. As if thinking if you moved fast enough you’d startle whatever was on the other side.
But the woman standing there doesn’t look the least bothered. She’s holding a tray with a spread of food that vastly outweighs what you requested. A carafe of coffee, milk, water, a small sugar bowl, a tray of fresh fruit, a bowl of yogurt, toast, a large pat of butter, a few small cinnamon buns, and even some sugared bacon. You glare at the food before looking up at her as she watches you carefully, as if afraid you may be the one on the attack and she needs to figure out how she’ll balance this silver platter and fight you off.
“I didn’t ask for all this,” you say swiftly as she continues to stand there.
“I thought you may be hungrier than you anticipated,” she answers calmly. “Wealdend indicated you have been asleep for three days. That’s a long while without food.”
Three days. You have been drugged, asleep, for three whole days.
“Well, you can tell the Wealdend to quit drugging me and that won’t be a problem,” you snap as you move to take the tray. Wealdend. They would fashion themselves to make the staff call them rulers.
She steps back at your gesture, and you look at her, before she indicates she would step into the room and set it down. With a huff, you step aside and let her enter the room. She sets the tray down on the desk before heading to the door once again.
“Let us know if you need anything else. You can leave the tray outside your door when you are done,” she states before you shut the door behind her and flip the lock.
Sitting down hard in the desk chair, you look everything over before pouring a large cup of coffee and gobbling down the toast. She, or they, weren’t wrong. Once you start to eat, you realize just how hungry you are. Before you can stop yourself, you’ve finished everything, using a stray strawberry to wipe up the last of the yogurt in the bowl. Even the carafe of coffee is almost empty by the time you sit back in your chair and stare at the carnage of the tray.
Hefting it up, you go back to the door, carefully flick the lock, and open it. You are fully prepared to slip the tray out into the hall, perhaps grab a quick glimpse of the area around you, before retreating back inside.
Except someone is waiting on the other side of the door.
“Morning, little wulf,” Price greets you as you look up at him from your crouched position.
“Is it?” You inquire, realizing it was he who had spoken to you that first night when you woke up.
“It is here,” he states, glancing at his watch, “though I suppose your body still thinks it’s the middle of the night.”
“Where am I?” You ask as you stand up before he pushes past you to get into the bedroom. He doesn’t even ask, and you bite back the snarl in your throat at the intrusion. Again.
“Your new home,” Price answers maddeningly. When he notices you glaring at him, still at the open door, he tacks on, “our home in the highlands,” and when no dawning comprehension hits you, he finishes. “Scotland.”
“Scot-Scotland?” You inquire, trying to rein in your indignant surprise. They were based in England. Everything you had read was England. Sure, MacTavish had family in Scotland, but there had never been any indication that any of them lived there.
“If you had opened up a window, it may have helped you figure that out sooner,” Price answers with a smirk as he goes over to one and rips the curtains open.
The view outside is breathtaking, and you can’t help but walk a few steps closer to get a better look. The house, or manor, you suppose, since they had on property staff, was situated close to the ocean, almost right on the cliffs. It hadn’t been the wind that was roaring earlier, it was the waves. The water is roiling. White caps crest and break apart everywhere you can see, and the rain lashes the windows with almost angry ferocity.
“Looks no different than England,” you scoff, trying to hide your awe at the view. “Rain is rain.”
“Don’t tell MacTavish that,” Price answers.
“Why am I here?” You ask, crossing your arms tightly over your chest as he walks around to open what you think is another window. Except it is French doors that lead to a small balcony with chairs. A place where you can sit outside and look at the ocean if you want.
“Part of our deal,” Price answers as he looks at your body language and mimics your stance.
“Edith wasn’t enough?” You ask, hoping to get a clue. Maybe she was here too.
“Edith wasn’t exactly what we were looking for,” Price offers, “she’s a pretty little Omega. The Alphas are already fiending for her first heat,” he smirks at the face you know you’ve made.
“Is she here? Can I see her?” You inquire, hoping you don’t sound too eager or desperate.
“She’s back in England,” Price answers simply, “we don’t bring many to the family estate anymore. Not until we’re sure they are a good fit.”
“But you bring me here and lock me in this room,” you snap, confused as to what he meant and disappointed Edith wasn’t there. She was at least a bit of home, even if you are certain she’d rather rip out your throat than be friendly. “Am I to be part of your staff?”
“The only person locking doors around here is you,” Price answers as he leans against the wall and watches you. “You’re free to go where you please.”
“Free? I’ve been drugged. For three whole days. I hardly call any of this free or my choice.”
“We had our reasons,” Price replies, keeping his tone even despite your raised temper at him. “But you’re here now, and you can come and go as you wish. I would offer the seaside veranda, but I would wait until this storm passes.”
“So I can go home then? Since I can come and go as I please?” You try, raising your eyebrow a bit. Foolish challenge, but what did you have to lose.
“This is your home now,” Price answers as he pushes up off the wall and takes a few steps closer to you. His movements are slow, careful, and you feel the charge of dominance coming off of him even at a distance. “You can go anywhere you’d like here. The whole estate is yours to wander and enjoy,” he stops moving when he’s only a few inches away and bends down so he’s speaking right into your ear. “But if you take a single step off the property line, we will know. And we will hunt you down and drag you back here…by any means.”
The hair on the back of your neck stands up at that, the goosebumps going down your shoulders and arms. His words are a lethal threat and promise. You know he is not bluffing. You were the pack's property now. They owned you in every sense of the word. And Alphas were territorial, possessive creatures that wouldn’t stand to lose anything.
“Understood?” Price asks after a second, his breath hot on your neck. You catch a whiff of his scent then, like the sky right before lightning rips it open. It’s subtle, but it’s there, and it’s intoxicating, not the usual rottish smell you’ve grown accustomed to.
“Y-yes,” you stammer, breaking yourself out of the instinctual frozen stance. Around Alphas, you were prey, and when they were giving orders or threats, you knew to just hold still to avoid their own hunting instincts.
“I see you’ve found your things,” Price says after a second, his tone sliding back to casual. He rises to his full height and steps away to observe the torn open boxes.
You sway after him instinctively, catching yourself on the wall before you fully stumble. The pull to be near him is maddening. Broken as you are, the deep ingrained Omega wiring won’t let you be. The draw to be near this Alpha, which had never been this strong before, tugs on your chest like an invisible leash, wanting to yank you toward him with every step he takes away. Omegas needed to be wanted, cared for, and protected by Alphas. No matter if they claimed you or not. Once claimed, the tug to any Alpha that wasn’t yours would die down, but there was always a lingering need to be around one. Which was why most Omegas were never left alone long with an Alpha that wasn’t theirs. To avoid temptation from both parties.
“I’m assuming you have my phone and laptop?” You ask as you smooth out your shirt to hide your shaking hands.
Too late. He’s already clocked your sway of your body to him. The anxious way you bite your cheek and drop your eyes in a submissive gesture for just a brief second. When you look back up at him, that damn smirk spreads across his face, cocky and knowing. As if he is fully aware you are reacting to him without even realizing it, and it’s pissing you off more than his presence is. You barely contain the snarl in your throat, which only seems to amuse him more.
“Riley has those,” Price answers, and you raise your eyebrow. “He’s making a few enhancements before you get them back.”
“You mean locking them down so I can’t do anything with them,” you reply, and Price only smiles as he watches you resist the urge to stamp your foot out of frustration. “I have classes to finish. Or is that no longer allowed either?”
His lack of response is deliberate. He’s watching you, waiting for you to do or ask something else. But when you do neither, he moves to the door, toeing a box out of his way.
“I’ll let you finish unpacking,” he says smoothly, ignoring your inquiry as he moves toward the door. “We’ll be gone for a few days. But when we get back, we’ll all have dinner and talk.”
“Am I the meal at this dinner?” You throw out before you can stop yourself.
He stills in the way only a predator can, hand motionless on the doorhandle. The silence stretches on between you and you try to ignore your heartbeat in your ears as you stare at the back of his head. Waiting. Perhaps something deep in you hoping, for what you aren’t sure. Then he glances at you over his shoulder, eye flashing with something dangerous. Hungry. The wolf just under the skin.
“Only if you want to be,” Price says. His voice is a low grumble that makes your toes curl and stomach drop at the same time. Need and fear are a strange combination.
Then he’s gone, leaving only his scent and unspoken words behind.
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Chapter 4 - Wrecca
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Tag List: @ironicadventures, @hypertail, @boldlyherdream, @listen-to-navi, @eyeswidecovered, @haurasha
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Noun
Masculine
Meaning: Wanderer, an exile, an outcast
It’s another three days before you decide to fully unpack. Perhaps it was the hope that you weren’t going to be stuck here. Or the fear that you would be ripped away to yet another place and have to leave everything behind. But after realizing you aren’t going anywhere, at least for a while, you decide you may as well make the place comfortable.
Whoever had packed the boxes had started out strong, keeping things organized and together, but the further along you get, the more you find they had started to give up. Labels were no longer matching, and a few of your more fragile things had been dinged up. The worst, though, is when you reach into a box and instantly yelp, pulling your hand back to find a jagged sliver of glass has wedged itself in the side of your hand.
After you pry it out and wrap your hand in the closest bandage, a clean sock, you take a look inside to find what caused the injury. You lift an old notebook and give it a little shake, hearing a few pieces of glass tinkle out onto the broken picture frame it came from. The glass is completely shattered and scattered around the bottom of the box, and the frame itself is snapped in half at the corner.
“If this isn’t poetic,” you mumble as you wiggle the picture out carefully and look at it.
It’s an old family picture at the beach, back before you became the family shame and your eldest brother married. One last candid shot of your life when things weren’t nearly as complicated and you were happy. If only you could tell younger you what hell was waiting in just a few months.
Sliding the picture onto the desk, you scoop up the box and stare at it for a few moments, unsure of what to do with it. You can’t break it down like the others, and some of the glass is so broken it’s almost a powder. Writing a quick note on the side with a marker to let whoever picks up the garbage know, you set it out in the hall with the rest of your garbage before continuing on.
It’s another few hours before the last box is broken down and everything that has a home is put away. The lack of furniture in the room makes it difficult to house everything. The books alone are stacked in piles, artwork is leaned against the walls, and trinkets are grouped together. You’ll have to figure that one out in the morning…well, later in the morning. It’s almost three am, and as if realizing the time is the key, your body instantly feels exhausted.
It's nice, you think begrudgingly, to have all your blankets and stuffed items back. The bed doesn’t smell nearly as sterile, and as you burrow down, looking at the projector on the ceiling, you instantly feel a bit calmer, even in this completely foreign place.
When you wake a few hours later, you stare at your handiwork, and the tray of food someone had slipped in that’s sitting on the ottoman at the end of the bed. Apparently, the kitchen memorized your breakfast menu. Without getting out of bed, you drag the food to yourself to eat when you spot what is with it. Your laptop.
Instantly sliding the tray to the side, you pull it toward you, unraveling the power cord as fast as possible. Throughout all the unpacking and wallowing, the weight of your schoolwork has loomed over you. Luckily, you’ve been able to stay ahead, for lack of anything else to do, but you know that would only last so long, and you’ve been out of it for almost a week now.
Once the power is in, you flip open the top of the laptop only to find a note stuck to the screen. What was it with these people and leaving notes?
There have been a few modifications and you’ll be monitored. Behave.
“Fuck off,” you grumble, crumpling up the note and throwing it off the bed.
The first place you check is your schoolwork. The red button notification on the discussions section is so high that it doesn’t even show a number, just a plus symbol. Your inbox is flooded with peer requests for review and literature copies you requested. But the thing that catches your eye the most is an email from your professor flagged as high importance.
You open it and scan through it, finding yourself growing hot with anger. Apparently, a lie had been laid out by your family or the pack about you. That you had an unexpected medical emergency and would be going overseas for treatment. The professor had sent copies of the lessons you missed and would be sending recordings of each lecture, as he was aware you wouldn’t be able to attend them live. And any discussion points you can send directly to him when you have time, rather than trying to catch your peers with your busy treatment schedule.
Well, they certainly figured out a way to make sure you don’t act out or scream for help on a live discussion. And based on the note, they would probably review every email or correspondence before allowing it to go through. Thoroughly trapping you from potentially the only people who would care about you, or maybe even try to help.
Still, you try. You go to the discussion boards and find you can read them, but the post button is greyed out. You send an innocuous email to a peer answering a simple question, and it sits in your outbox no matter how many times you refresh.
Giving up on that, you click over to open a new browser to see what else may be restricted. You can still get to Google, still check the news, and even poke around on social media. None of that is blocked for you, but you figure they know you can’t do anything with it anyway. What are you going to do that would help? Post a comment on a message board screaming into the ether? No one would listen, and if your monitors found it, they’d just delete it anyway.
Pulling your breakfast over, you start to eat while going through the usual suspects of websites for any news. You know you won’t be in it, but there is bound to be something about your sister out there. It would appear to humans as typical tabloid fodder, but to other shifters, it would be the silent signal that yet another member of your family has strengthened their ties to other powerful packs. Especially since they were able to link Edith to the notoriously picky 141.
It doesn’t take long. Splashed across all the major tabloids are blurry, grainy pictures and big, bold headlines about your sister. Heiress, to what many would consider American royalty, spotted across the pond having dinner with a mysterious man. Then another one, a few days later, of her out at a gala with yet another man. Speculations run wild in the stories, some saying she’s just visiting a friend. Others commenting on how the men look like they may be too old for her. Or wondering if these are perhaps bodyguards, given their size and intimidating looks. Then, of course, disgusting comments about how they’d like to show her a good time and everything in between.
You zoom in on the pictures to see who she is with, curious which pack member may be laying down their claim first. It doesn’t shock you that Garrick is who she went to dinner with, he is the youngest of the pack, the best way to introduce her new potential love life with someone not so scandalous. But at the Gala, she is with Riley. He’s imposing, looming large over everyone around him as he glares about the room, your tiny sister on his arm. The age difference is evident, she’s fresh faced compared to his marred one, though it is mostly hidden behind a mask.
The sight of seeing Edith with them sets your teeth on edge, and it’s not because you’re worried about your sister. You're pissed to see her with them. To see the simpering smile she gives as Garrick holds the door open for her. The arm touch as Riley pulls her chair out for her. The doe eyes for MacTavish, who hasn’t been linked to her yet, as everyone believes he is a bodyguard. And the cheek kiss from Price as he greets her at the gala with a different date on his arm.
The anger is bubbling up with every click and zoom, and before long, you slam the laptop shut, shoving it away. You aren’t sure why you are so mad to see these men with other women. It doesn’t matter, you don’t matter to them, and they shouldn’t matter to you. Yet, you know if you were there, you would have likely tried to rip those women’s eyes out with your bare hands.
It has to be the trauma and shock from the past few days. Your brain isn’t thinking clearly, and the anger you feel toward your situation is just being channeled at your sister. Your perfect, pretty, everything you aren’t, Omega sister.
You need to stop.
Climbing out of bed, you fling open the curtains, and for the first time since you’ve arrived, you can see sunlight. It’s watery and weak, with the threat of rain looming in the distance, but for now, it’s clear. Maybe a walk would help ease the anger and trapped feeling. Perhaps touching grass would actually ground you.
The house is just as quiet as your room when you step out. There is no movement as you trudge down the hallway of seemingly endless closed doors and old artwork. In comparison to your stark room, the manor feels like an old, stuffy museum. Dark, moody colors are the theme, and you can smell the old dust, despite there not being a speck of it in sight. Even with all the old grandeur, the place had clearly been renovated and updated throughout the years. The small red lights of the cameras in the corner, where the walls meet the ceiling, are evidence enough.
You make note of what turns you make to remember how to get back to your room before you come across the main entrance. The area is bright, windows lining the main door with shoots of ivy poking around the edges. Two sets of stairs wrap around the huge foyer, sweeping along the walls of either side of the room. Dark tile replaces the hardwood floors, but the same rug that lines the steps also makes up the large area rug in the center.
Even though you’re allowed outside, Price had said you had free roam of the property, you still feel yourself creeping down the stairs and looking over your shoulder. As if you were worried someone might grab you and drag you back to your room. But no one appears. Not even the sound of a door closing across the house or a running vacuum meets your ears as you slip out the front door.
It’s chilly as you walk down the gravel drive, taking in the perfectly landscaped centerpiece of the circular area. The driveway seems to go on for ages, disappearing into the dark shadows of the trees that line it. You know you aren’t supposed to leave, so testing them by walking down to the road would be idiotic. But nothing stops you from slipping into the woods to see if you can find the road that way.
Your adventure is driven more by curiosity than anything else. You know there is no escape, not really. But you do wonder just how big the property is, and how serious Price was about knowing when you stepped out of the boundary. Maybe they could have a taste of some of the bitter anger that lingered on your tongue.
The woods are more alive than the inside of the manor. Birds chirping as they swoop about, and bugs buzzing. You even find a small creek that bubbles along, running in the opposite direction of where you're headed and toward the ocean. You decide to follow that, a good enough path as any to trace back, since there are no markers out here. The forest is obviously old, with moss covering a majority of the rocks and tree bark, and weeds growing thick due to a lack of disturbance. The perfect place for wolves to wander without being seen.
You follow all the creek's twists and turns, noticing how it’s nearly dry in parts before widening to deep pools in others. You’re so engrossed in watching a few birds splash around in the deeper part that you hardly notice the sound of a car until it’s almost upon you, before disappearing again as it continues down the road. The road. The whole reason you had come out this far.
Snapping your head up, you abandon the creek and head straight to what you think will be your escape plan, should you need it, and a cocky one up you can have on the 141 pack. They think they know everything and can intimidate you into behaving. Well, you've come this far, and not a single person has even seen you. So much for knowing if you took a step out of bounds.
“Controlling asshole alphas who act like they run the universe,” you mutter to yourself as you break free of the forest line to slip into the ditch by the road. The paved road is small, only wide enough for one car at a time, and dilapidated, judging by all the cracks and potholes. You twist your head to the right to see what is that way, and when you twist it to the left, you nearly jump out of your skin.
Standing there, jowls pulled back off their upper teeth, is a wolf. It’s small, in comparison to an alpha, but no less lethal looking as it licks its gums. A warning. Turn back or those teeth would be in your arm, dragging you back.
“Where did you come from?” You ask, taking a step back as it growls, the light brown fur on its back standing up. “Do I have a chip in me or something?”
It can’t answer you, not in this form anyway, and you sigh. Price had not been lying. There must be trail cameras in the woods, or maybe you did have a chip. You’d need to examine yourself closely when you shower to see if you could find any marks or feel any lumps. If they chipped you, you were going to rip it out, out of principle. Even though you know they’d just put another one in.
You don’t move, and the wolf snaps its teeth, taking a step toward you as if giving you one last warning. You aren’t as scared as you should be, having grown so used to your parents and siblings in this form, and you roll your eyes instead. Sure, this wolf could tear you apart without even thinking twice, but something in you tells you it won’t hurt you…at least not lethally.
“Fine,” you mutter as you turn around and head back toward the creek.
You glance over your shoulder every once in a while as you walk to find the wolf trailing you. It’s not on your heels, but keeping you within eyesight and perhaps jumping distance should you make a break for it. But by the time you are halfway back to the manor and you look again, it’s gone.
Not wanting to push your luck any further, knowing that wolf was going to tell the 141 what you had done, you head toward the ocean. Taking your time to walk down the slippery steps to the veranda. There are chairs and tables, and surprisingly, a bottle of water with ice and a few snacks waiting for you. As if they knew you were coming. The whole place had to be lined with cameras then.
You sit for about an hour, just watching the waves, when the rain moves in. You try to sit it out, but when it starts coming down in buckets, you head back to the house, pulling the hood up on your jacket to keep yourself as dry as possible. You don’t bother going around to the front. Instead, you slip in a back door that leads to a mudroom, and by the smell, you aren’t far from the kitchen. Good to know where that was. Not that the staff ever let you go hungry, but sometimes raiding the fridge yourself was a bit of therapy.
“Dinner is in an hour,” comes a voice, making you jump and turn as you wipe your feet on the rug.
“I’ll take it in my room,” you reply, a bit confused as you look at the woman who always brought your meals. They had never set a dinner time for you, you always called down for it.
“Not tonight,” she answers, scrunching up her nose a bit as you shake water off your hoodie. “The Wealdend request your presence at dinner.”
Fuck. Dinner with the pack was tonight. No warning. No time to prepare. Was it always going to be tonight? Or were they there to dole out your punishment for your teenage style rebellion.
“I would suggest a shower and perhaps…something a bit nicer than that,” she continues as she looks you over. You must look a wreck after wandering the woods and sitting at the windy seaside.
“I’ll ah,” you mutter, feeling your hands shake, “yeah, I’ll do that. I don’t know where the dining-“
“Someone will fetch you. Take these stairs to the second level,” she points to a door, “then turn left, follow that hallway, and then take the second right. You’ll come out by your room.”
You follow the instructions and dart into your room. It’s pleasantly warm compared to the cold rain outside, but you don’t have time to bask in it as you peel off your sopping wet clothes. A quick shower, then you stand in your closet to find something ‘nice’ to wear.
It was like the night back at home all over again. Except you weren’t drugged and didn’t have an audience waiting just outside the door. No, they were downstairs waiting with another round of fresh hell. Shit. What if Edith were there? Did they have enough time to figure out if she was a ‘good fit’ after those dates? Dread and anger sluice through you as you tear at your hangers for something decent. Maybe being high on sleeping pills for this dinner wasn’t that bad an idea.
Settling on a pencil skirt and a fitted top, you touch up your face with a bit of makeup when there’s a knock on the door. Your escort. You continue to work on your lipstick when there is another tap, this time a bit more impatient. You give it one more knock before finally answering the door. They could wait a few moments, you weren’t a dog that came when called.
“This way,” a younger man states as he steps aside to lead you out.
He’s taller than you, lean, though you can see the muscles of his back as they strain his suit jacket. Definitely a Beta. And judging by the earpiece in his ear, he is a security guard. They sent security to escort you to dinner, as if you were a prisoner.
“How many people are there?” You ask quietly, waving away his proffered hand as he opens a door to a hidden staircase.
“Just the Alphas,” he answers, keeping his eyes downcast as you slip out the door on the first floor and he shuts it behind you.
“Nice and cozy then,” you mutter as your heels click on the dark tile.
You don’t need him to show you the rest of the way. You scent the pack long before you get to the dining room. Thick, warm, and melding together perfectly. It’s pleasant, and worst of all, it’s welcoming, like a beacon drawing you home. Something low and treacherous coils in your gut at that thought, and you shove it down quickly, pausing in your steps to take a steadying breath through your mouth to avoid inhaling the alluring scent.
Your escort senses your hesitation and turns to look at you, but you compose yourself, acting as if your heel caught a decorative rug. He doesn’t say a word as he stops outside the dining room and opens the door, letting you walk inside with your head held high before he shuts it behind you. He doesn’t lock the door, but he may as well have, with how trapped you feel with four Alphas staring at you.
The room is grand, just like the rest of the house, but it’s not the formal guest dining room. It couldn’t be. The table is only large enough to sit eight people, though with the size of the men sitting there, any more than six would be uncomfortable.
“Evening,” you say haltingly as you dare to glance at them all, briefly catching each of their eyes before you look at the floor a few feet in front of you. You can’t sense the mood of the room yet, not with them all seated, so you don’t want to push it.
“Have a seat,” someone rumbles, Riley, you believe. “Dinner will be ready shortly.”
You head to the table and pull out the seat closest to you, and conveniently closest to the door. They notice it, and you hear someone chuckle quietly, knowing you wouldn’t stand a chance if you ran for it.
“Wine?” Garrick asks as you set your linen napkin in your lap.
“Red,” you reply simply before forcing yourself to look up at them properly.
They are dressed nicely, in button down shirts and slacks, which you assume, since the white tablecloth covers their legs. You find your eyes are drawn to Garrick, perhaps because he’s right across the table from you, or because he’s the one watching you back just as intently. The other three are engaged in a quiet conversation. MacTavish twisted so his back is half to you as he gestures with his whiskey glass.
“Red it is,” Garrick answers as he grabs the neck of a carafe and pushes out from his chair.
Shit. You were expecting the staff to come pour it. Twisting your fingers in your skirt, you try to hold as still as possible as he walks over, like a scared rabbit trying to avoid the sight of a predator.
“We weren’t sure what you’d want,” he states as he grabs your tall stemmed glass and slowly pours the wine. “So we had them bring out a selection,” he grins as he swirls the drink around before brazenly taking a sip, eyes locked on yours as electricity skitters down your spine.
“Red was a good choice,” he murmurs, offering you the glass instead of setting it down on the table. He’s toying with you, waiting to see what you will do. And judging by the drop off in conversation from the other three, they are watching as well.
“Is it standard to share drinks here?” You ask as you move to snatch your glass from him.
“Not standard,” Garrick answers as he catches your wrist, fingers curling around your quickening pulse, “but we find sharing is so rewarding.” He smirks, enough that you catch a glint of his sharp canines, and you curl your toes despite yourself.
“Like my sister?” You inquire before tugging your hand away, nearly sloshing the wine out of the glass, before taking a large sip of the drink. It is good. Damnit.
Garrick only grins wider, casually crossing his arms over his chest.
“Who wouldn’t share such a lovely prize? She didn’t seem to mind.” Garrick replies.
“Yes, she looked very comfortable parading around for the paparazzi,” you snap, “along with that other woman,” you cut your eyes to Price, whose face is impassive.
“Curious little wulf,” Price finally states. “Couldn’t resist keeping tabs on us?”
You resist chugging the wine and grabbing the carafe to drink directly from that as well. You don’t understand why you are so upset just thinking about these men with other women, other Omegas. Just the mere thought of one of them touching someone else makes you feel like you want to burst out of your skin with anger. Jealousy.
“Not you,” you reply as coolly as possible, trying to tame your feelings. “I’m more worried about my little sister with the likes of you.”
“You should place your worries elsewhere,” Riley answers, his tone just as cool as yours as he adjusts in his seat to sit forward. “She handled herself just fine.”
“Mmm, I’m sure she did,” you mutter, trying to not sound bitter. “The twins prepared her well. I’m sure she was spectacular at performing her…duties.”
The last word hangs heavy in the air.
Edith had turned eighteen a few months before her gala. Your mother still had fears after what happened to you, so she set the date a few weeks later, and Edith took full advantage of it. She had gone out on the town with the twins any moment she could, getting a small taste of freedom before she was shackled.
Betas didn’t have the same strict rules for the life they needed to lead, the consummate overlooked middle child, so to speak, so they got away with more. The moment they turned of age, they were at clubs full of alcohol, drugs, and sex. The nightlife scene was one of the worst kept secrets in the shifter world. Alphas going to find their fill when their Omegas were pregnant, lonely Omegas looking for love outside of their marriage, and Betas fulfilling their fantasies of repressed feelings of needing to dominate or be dominated. And everything in between.
Maybe you shouldn’t have said anything, let that family secret stay just that. But the angry, jealous side of you was screaming to keep going. Tell them that their pretty little prize had learned all her bedroom tricks on dirty floors with coke up her nose and her dress around her ankles. What harm would it do to you for saying it? Nothing. And likely nothing would come of it for Edith. She was already locked in her contract and probably already fucked all four of them with their penchant for sharing. Probably her and that other unknown woman.
You tighten your grip hard enough on the stem of your wine glass, you hear the warning crunch of the glass splintering. Shocked at your own strength, you set it down and clear your throat, realizing that the room has stayed completely silent after your last words. They let you sit there warring with yourself for what to say, probably saw every emotion on your face as you worked through it.
“Edith is not a concern of yours anymore,” Price says at last, right as the staff walks in with trays of food.
“Right. Well. I am still trying to figure out what I should be concerned about,” you reply as an assortment of plates is set in front of you. It’s a multicourse meal, but they are laying it all out at once.
“Following the rules should probably be one,” MacTavish finally says, his voice flat. It’s the first time he’s talked to you since the night in your room, and he doesn’t sound like he wants to talk to you at all. He doesn’t even look at you while he cuts into his steak, as if you aren’t worth the effort or time.
“I’m not sure-” you start, but when his blue eyes, cold as ice, cut to you the words die in your throat.
“Your hyrde said you went to the road,” Riley says as MacTavish continues to glare at you for a moment before occupying himself with his food.
“My what?” You ask, feeling yourself growing hot. A guard? You had a goddamn keeper like a child. “You said I was free to roam wherever I wanted on this property!”
“On the property, if you remember correctly,” Price answers. “You stepped over the boundary, and by the sounds of it, you were thinking of making a run for it. Or making plans to do it later.”
“That’s a lie,” you answer, “I was just looking.”
“If you were just looking, you would have gone down the drive. You wandered through the woods to hide. Or so you thought,” Price smirks, knowing he is right. So fucking cocky.
“How many babysitters do I have?” You ask, stabbing at your salad hard enough that the bowl rocks.
“Doesn’t matter. But I did warn you,” Price replies, “this is your one and only free pass. Consider it a gift.”
“Some gift,” you mutter before quickly dropping your eyes as someone snarls deep in their throat. You are toeing the line of their patience.
After a tense few seconds, the conversation picks back up between the four of them. Dismissing you to sit with your thoughts and food. Dinner is delicious. The salad is fresh, the soup is seasonal, and the steak is cooked just as you like it, even if most consider medium well overcooked. Compared to the men, whose plates were bloody when they finished theirs, your steak was a hockey puck.
“What do you want from me?” You dare to ask as dessert is brought out, fruit and freshly made ice cream. One of the staff offers to refill the carafe of wine, which you polished off, but you decline. Your head is already swimming, and you don’t need any more help. “You said we would have dinner and talk, and you haven’t done much talking, except to taunt and berate me.”
“We want you to stay here, get used to the place, and figure yourself out,” Price answers, which makes you raise your eyebrows.
“Figure myself out? What is this some journey of self-discovery you all are taking me on?” You ask, trying not to laugh at how ridiculous that sounds. “I know who I am. I know my purpose, I’ve known it since I was a child. I was perfectly fine until you dragged me here for,” you wave your hand, “for whatever reason.”
“You have no idea what you are,” Garrick answers, which makes you sit up straight. He didn’t say who. He said what. Like you weren’t even good enough to be a person.
“I’m an Unable,” you choke out, sounding sad instead of mad, which makes you even more upset. You wore your title like a badge of honor on the outside, not letting anyone see the pain underneath. To feel broken. To feel less than. To see how others looked at and regarded you as dirt on their shoe. It was all painful.
“A broken Omega that has no purpose here. No purpose with you, with anyone. I belong with the other unables and humans.” You take a breath, “unless my new purpose is to be your plaything. Which I refuse,” you push away your dessert and throw your napkin on the table. “I was the mockery of my family for years, the one they took their frustrations out on, pushed around, and crushed under their feet. I won't be your lac as well. I will throw myself into that goddamn ocean before I let you.”
Fuck you are crying. You can feel the tears lining your eyes, and you blink a few times to try to push them back, but it’s not working.
“You are not broken,” Price growls, and you see his hands curl into fists on the table, as if to hold himself back from leaping across the table at you. “You just haven’t figured out your real purpose yet because you’ve never been given the chance.”
“And I’m going to figure it out here? With you?” You try not to scoff as you wipe away a tear, ruining your attempt at a brave face. “My parents did every test, every study, every stupid ancient remedy to fix me. It didn’t work. It won’t work. I’ve accepted my fate, and I don’t know why you think doing this will change anything. Unless you just want to be cruel for your own amusement.”
“You’ll do what you are told,” MacTavish interjects, his voice hard enough that it almost vibrates from his anger. “Follow the rules, come when you are called, and do as we say. Pretty cushy if you ask me.”
“Fuck you,” you snap at him, not caring that you feel the shift in the air as the anger wafts off him. “Fuck all of you,” you dare, twisting to stare at the rest of them, catching how Riley grabs MacTavish by the shoulder and forcibly keeps him in his seat.
“Go up to your room,” Garrick says, his eyes darting to MacTavish, who is glaring daggers at Price, as if blaming him for the situation all of you are in. “Now.”
“Of course, Wealdend,” you say sarcastically while giving a mock bow.
“Never,” Riley snaps, letting his anger show for the first time that evening, “call us that. We are not your Wealdend.”
You don’t reply. Instead, you turn on your heel and walk out into the hall to find the escort that had brought you standing there. You don’t acknowledge him, and he doesn’t say a word to you as you stomp past, vision blurry from the tears and wine. You barely make it to the stairs before a crash, heavy enough to shake the walls, meets your ears, followed by raised voices.
“Keep going,” the man says behind you as he glances over his shoulder toward the dining room. “You are to stay in your room tonight.”
“Oh, have I already lost privileges? That didn’t take long.” You laugh bitterly as you make it to the second floor.
“It’s for your safety. Lock your door behind you,” he says as he ushers you toward your room. “I’ll be right outside the door if you need anything. But do not leave your room. Not even to the balcony.”
“I,” you blink at him as he opens your door and gestures for you to go inside with a sense of urgency. “What is going on?”
In response, a howl rips through the house, sending goosebumps down your neck and arms. It’s a haunting sound that makes you freeze. You can feel the anguish in it, the pain, but you feel more longing in it. The want. But what you can’t understand is why one of them would be lamenting that way. Unless perhaps they were in a rut, or close to one, and there was no Omega around. You knew it could be painful, even dangerous, for that to happen. Despite yourself, you feel a tinge of fear for them.
“Who is it?” You ask, moving to go around your escort to find out who it is and help them. You don’t know why, don’t even have time to process it, before you are snapped back to logical thought as your escort gently grabs your arm to keep you in your room.
“Goodnight.” Is his only answer as he shuts the door.
-----------------
Lac - offering, sacrifice
Hyrde - guardian, keeper
-----------------
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Old English - Compound Word - Literal Translation "Soul-Blood"
You were the fourth born into a well known, properly bred, wolf shifter family. The lineage can be traced back to the world's richest and most elite families in North America. You were destined to be another valuable Omega to the family name, a lucrative trade item to grow the political and genetic alliances between packs.
But there was a problem. You never shifted. Never presented. It was thought you were just a late bloomer, but when eighteen came and passed with nothing, you became the family shame.
They attempt to hide you away so that the world will forget about you. Letting the short attention spans of tabloids send all memory of you into the ether, so they could quietly ship you off to live with other 'unables' and regular humans. The world of Shifters is cutthroat. If you didn't fit in the pack, you couldn't be part of the pack. And if you weren't part of the pack, you were a weak link, which your family would have none of.
All is going according to your family's cover up plan until the four Alphas of the legendary 141 pack arrive. They were meant to find the appeal of your younger Omega sister and older twin Betas. But when they cross the threshold of your family's estate, the only scent they can sense is yours.
For you see, you are no broken Omega.
You're a rare, thought to be extinct, prize. An Omega whose change can only be triggered by true Mates. The 141 have been searching for you for years, ignoring those who laughed at them for chasing a myth. You may be the key to continuing their lines and strengthening the shifters who have been in decline for decades.
And they'll do anything to have you.
Masterlist
Original idea here and AO3 for tags here.
Chapter 1 - Anginn
Noun - Neutral Gender - Meaning: Beginning
Chapter 2 - Giefu
Noun - Feminine - Meaning: Gift
Chapter 3 - æðel
Noun - Masculine - Meaning: ancestral land or estate
Chapter 4 - Wrecca
Noun - Masculine - Meaning: wanderer, an exile, an outcast
Chapter 5 - Bræne
Adjective - Neutral Gender - Meaning: burning, consumed by fire
Adjective
Neutral Gender
Meaning: burning, consumed by fire
The bath has gone cold as you continue to lie in it. The bubbles long popped, and the scent of lavender dissipated. But you still linger, unwilling to move just yet. Your body is tired, the familiar ache of overuse burning in your lower back and legs.
The pack has been gone for over three weeks, and you know you should feel grateful for the space. The silence. But you aren't. It feels heavy and hollow at the same time. Like you know something ominous is waiting for you just around the corner, but you also couldn't care less about it. What did it matter really? No one was worried about you, cared about what you were up to, or if you were alright, so why should you?
The only social interaction you've had is with the kitchen staff and your Hyrde, Callum. It wasn't much, really. Just the usual greeting when food was brought to you, or the off chance you spotted Callum lurking around as you went outside for a walk. He did his best not to hover, to stay out of sight as you wandered the grounds. You didn't dare go back into the woods again. Instead, you just walked the vast gardens and sat by the sea. However, it seemed the pack had taken your threat to throw yourself into the sea seriously. Because for all the hiding he did, Callum didn't even try to be out of sight as he stayed within a few feet of you every time you decided to go look at the water.
After growing frustrated with him as you peered over the edge of a cliff and he grabbed your arm to yank you back, making you fall on your ass, you decided to switch tactics. Instead of being standoffish and acting like you had a death wish to him, you try talking with him.
It's mostly you talking to yourself since he doesn't respond, taking his assignment to observe, protect, and not be friends with the job seriously, but you know he's listening. Especially when you return to your room after taking breakfast in the kitchens to find him with two other men assembling bookshelves, a small coffee table, and a lounge chair in your room. He had been paying attention to your laments about your room being too sparse and needing more storage, apparently.
It took about three days to build and arrange everything as you wanted. Pictures hung up, missing items ordered, then added to the room. You had even replaced the furniture on your small balcony, wanting to purchase and do as much as possible before the pack potentially cut off your supply. But it seems no matter what you pick, what you want, the staff oblige you. Even the frivolous television in your bathroom so you can watch while lounging in the bath. It had been mostly a joke, just to see if they'd do it, but now the bath had become your sanctuary.
With all the time on your hands to do anything, you've caught up on your schoolwork and then some. You have no idea what the plans are for you, so you opt to get ahead as much as possible. Spending hours at a time at the desk, or your new lounge chair, writing papers, researching, answering discussion questions, and taking tests. It was a great way to pass the time, but now you have nothing left to do until the professor gets back to you with feedback.
"Lunch," comes a voice from your room, making you jump a bit in the bath.
"You can leave it!" You call back as you slowly pull yourself out of the water.
The tile floors are heated, but you still shiver as you towel off and groan as you bend too far over, making your back twinge. Grabbing the overlarge robe from the hook, you wander back to your room to find a tray on the ottoman.
Lunch is fresh fruit, salad, and delicate pieces of steak in a sauce. It's delicious even as you're still getting used to how much red meat they send you to eat. It's a wolf thing, you are fully aware, but back home, no one bothered trying to give you any of the good stuff. All the best cuts of meat went to the shifters, especially around heats and ruts, and you were relegated to simple meals.
After checking your schoolwork for any updates, which there are none, you get dressed. It's too stormy outside today to wander the grounds. So instead, you decide it's time to explore more of the house that you haven't been to yet. You've seen all the main living spaces, the library, the garage with all its fancy cars and toys, the kitchen, three dining halls, smoking lounges, offices, guest rooms, and even the staff living and work areas.
Everything that wasn't personal to the pack.
You've avoided their rooms and the alpha den on purpose. You didn't want to follow the draw that seems to tug at your chest every time you leave your room and take a left to the stairs. Their bedrooms are in the same wing, you can scent them. Going to them seems like an invasion of privacy, though. And if you are honest, you don't want to know about them. Getting to know your captors, seeing their personal hidden things behind closed doors, seems too intimate.
Yet here you are, making a right out of your room and heading to the end of the hall. Two rooms to the right are Garrick and Price, two rooms to the left are MacTavish and Riley. You stand at the center, staring at a large painted portrait of the four of them, doing your best not to scoff at the pretentiousness of it, before biting the bullet and going right.
Garrick's room is first. You breathe in the heavy scent of charred amber and teakwood, looking over your shoulder for a moment, before you open the door.
His room closely resembles yours. Sparse but not in an abandoned, unlived way. Everything seems purposeful and has a place, even if there isn't much. The color palette is earthy neutral tones, light browns, sage green, and white. Crisp but still homely. His bed is perfectly made. Overstuffed comforter with matching pillows framed to face the wall of windows, and as you pad in, you take in the view he has of the grounds. It's gorgeous, as much as you hate being trapped, you cannot deny the beauty of the place.
You only look at the view for a moment, you can look out your own bedroom window if you want, before turning your attention to the rest of the room.
His desk is an intricately carved piece with an equally regal chair. You glance at the carvings on the legs, wolves and trees, before turning your attention to what is on top of the desk. Papers are neatly stacked, and you riffle a few before straightening them back again. There is nothing of note there, and you don't want to pry too deeply into his personal affairs. Afraid of what you may or may not find.
His bookshelves are neatly organized, a mixture of pictures, trinkets, and fiction stories. You pull one book from the stacks, curious as to what it is, as the binding is worn down and the corners curled from being handled so often. Clearly a favorite of his. The Wheel of Time.
"Interesting," you mumble before you put it back and move to open his closet.
This is where your rooms differ.
Your walk-in closet, which includes a vanity and even a soft armchair, looks paltry compared to his. The closet itself must be at least half the size of his bedroom. Rows upon rows of shirts, all colors of the rainbow, pants, suits, and ties. The center table is nothing but jewelry, watches, and, unsettlingly, a whole section of guns. All gleaming and polished to perfection. You run your fingers over the fabrics as you walk, resisting the growing urge to grab them and just inhale his scent.
Instead, to satisfy the desire, you snatch up a tie from the way back of his collection and shove it in your pocket. With all these clothes, he won't miss it, and it's small enough that you can hide it in your room. Even from yourself, because this was just being silly.
You slip out of his room, quietly shutting the door before you move to Price's. You don't even have to open the door to be hit with his smell, like a slap to the face. Ozone, like the sky right before lightning splits it open, and mahogany.
Where Garrick's had been a bright museum, presenting all of his prized possessions like works of art for people to see, Price's was dark chaos. Dark reds, browns, and brass are the main color themes. The carpet is so plush that your feet sink into it, leaving marks with each step. His curtains are drawn shut to block out the light, so you have to flip a switch for light. Even the bulbs are a warm yellow, casting a soft glow that sends long shadows across the room.
You're careful where you step as you walk, not wanting to knock anything out of its place. It's messy, clothes strewn about, file boxes, and his rifles and guns are just lying about. You aren't sure he'd even notice if you moved things, but you aren't taking that chance. Even mentally noting to rub away your footprints in the maroon carpet when you leave.
His bed isn't made, and you linger next to it as you take in what's on his nightstand. An old receipt, a cap sitting on the lampshade, a few necklace chains in a tangled mess, and a condom packet.
That sight makes you seize up, and you sit down hard on his bed. It feels like a deep betrayal, even though you know rationally that it shouldn't mean anything. He's nothing to you, and you are nothing to him. He's probably bedded so many different Omegas, Betas, non shifters, hell he was a strong enough Alpha he could dominate another Alpha if that was his taste, that you weren't even an afterthought to him. Your fingers fumble as you pick it up, and as if it burns you, throw it in the waste bin that's not far away.
You look for something else to distract you, to push down the bitterness in your throat. You spy a white shirt poking out from under the pillows, and you pull it out and are instantly hit with Garrick's smell. Well. You weren't wrong about his potential taste. Or the two of them just hadn't cleaned up after their last shared conquest, whenever that was.
Out of spite, and not anything else you try to convince yourself, you untangle one of Price's chains. It's a military ID tag, and you wrap it carefully in Garrick's tie in your pocket before shuffling out. Careful to remove any marks that you were there. You know he'll notice the condom missing if he tries to bring someone home, but at the moment, you don't care. Let him struggle.
Staring down the hall where Riley and MacTavish's rooms are, you debate what to do. You aren't sure if you are mentally ready for any more surprises, or if your body could physically take it. Your head is starting to hurt, the pain is just behind your eyes and radiating down to your neck. You write it off as just immersing yourself in all these scents and feelings, but something also feels a bit off. The aches, the headaches, the intense emotions.
You pause. You had already had your period. You weren't due for another for a few weeks. You had never had a heat, never presented, but your body still had some of the regular biological traits. And unfortunately, you still had your cycle. It wasn't always on time. Sometimes it was on schedule, but other times you could miss for months. But you never had it so soon. It was only halfway to your next period.
Well, if you were going to be holed up in bed in agony the next few days, you are going to keep going.
You don't hesitate as you open Riley's room, walking in as if you had every right to be there. But you stop about halfway across the room and turn around, unsure if he even used the room. It's empty of everything save for the essentials.
A bed with black sheets and pillows. An empty desk with a matching empty nightstand. No curtains on the windows. And when you open the closet, everything is the same. The only way you know it's his occupied space is because of the subtle petrichor scent that is almost masked by the smell of freshly blown out fire ash. If it weren't for the scent, you'd suspect the room was a forgotten about storage space.
When you open the closet, you find nothing but dark colors, mostly black, and instead of a mixed collection of watches in the center display case like Garrick, it's all knives. You pull out a drawer from the center piece of furniture, fingers dancing over the lethal blades, when one catches you. It's so sharp you don't even register the cut at first, but when the first drip of blood hits the glass tabletop, you feel the pain. It's a sharp sting, and you instinctively shove your finger in your mouth to suck on it as you search for a rag to clean up the mess. The first thing you find is a face mask, and you wipe up the blood and wrap your finger in it before leaving the closet.
You aren't sure what you expected from Riley, but the lack of anything gives you a sense of emptiness. Did he just not have anything because he didn't want the attachment? Or did he attach so hard he couldn't risk losing it?
The final room seems to call to you like a siren song. Beautiful, but also a warning. The last Alpha that seemed to have little interest in you, who seethed in your presence, and would rather you be gone. Perhaps Edith had already sunk her claws into him out of vengeance. Told him all the horrible things about you and showed how much better she was. Whispered venom in his ear as he pinned her to the bed and fucked her. Smiled prettily at him as he ruined her for both of their pleasure.
Your knees buckle as you lean against the wall between MacTavish and Riley's room. The rage at the thought of Edith even kissing MacTavish hit you like a wave, knocking the literal strength out of you. You groan as you move to push yourself up from the wall, but your arms feel weak. Everything feels weak.
Moving your wrapped hand to your forehead, you nearly flinch at how hot your skin feels. Perhaps it wasn't your period. You're feverish, achy, and weak. Have you somehow caught the flu?
You need to get back to your room and lie down. Forget MacTavish’s room and leave it for another day. But just the thought of the walk from here to there seems insurmountable. Maybe just a rest. A few minutes to breathe and calm your heart, which feels like it's beating in your ears.
Sliding down the wall, you sit with your knees bent, head resting on them as you try to regulate yourself. If you can get back to your room, you can get out of the clothes you're wearing. You had bundled up since the wind seemed to rip through the house, and you're certain the thick layers are what is making you so hot. Then, once you were feeling better from that, you could take a cool shower and lower your body temperature even more. Maybe the kitchen staff could get some flu medicine if they didn't have any on hand. Simple human illnesses were not very common among shifters, so you weren't sure how prepared they were for Unables.
When you try to stand up again on your own, your head spins, and you groan. You were really sick. Fine, leaning on the wall it is. You have no other way to even call for help, the phone at your desk is your only lifeline in this gigantic place. Unless someone is watching the cameras. You glance up, trying to find one, but see that this area of the house is camera free.
Figures.
You make it about halfway back to your room before the ringing in your ears starts, and you drop to your hands and knees. You aren't sure if you're going to be sick from the pressure in your stomach or if you are going to just combust. You retch once. Twice. Nothing comes up, but the pressure seems to only grow stronger. Panic starts to set in as you try to logic out the situation. Maybe your lunch had been bad, and it was food poisoning.
But what food poisoning made you feel like tearing your skin off from being so hot? And more importantly, made you want to crawl back to the Alpha's rooms and slide between their sheets and call for them? None. No illness would make you do that. Only one thing would. You had seen Edith go through it. Your mother. All the Omegas around you. Just not you. Until now. And as the horror of what is happening hits you, Callum comes bounding around the corner.
You aren't sure who is more panicked, him or you, as you look at him crouched in front of you. You can tell he scents you. How, you aren't sure. You aren't sure how any of this is happening, to be honest. You shouldn't have a scent, yet the 141 insisted they could scent you all those weeks ago. You shouldn't be in heat. Yet just the thought about touching yourself, imagining it was Garrick there to relieve the need, nearly makes you climax.
Nothing besides a heat could do that.
"My room," you nearly whine as Callum tries to help you stand.
You can see his pupils are blown as he swallows hard to fight his own instinct. He's a Beta, but it seems your heat is just as overwhelming for him as it is for you. Which isn’t a normal reaction for a Beta. But nothing about your life, or anyone around you, has been normal as of late.
"I will take her," comes a voice, and your eyes cut to the female Beta who runs the kitchen. She seemingly appeared out of nowhere. "Go," she instructs Callum, who is lingering, hands still hovering over your arms as she pulls you away. "Let the Wealdend know." She sniffs the air and cuts him a glare. You can smell Callum’s scent as well, sea salt and wool. It’s subtle, barely there, but it’s enough for you to breathe in as a grounding presence to dull some of the Alpha scents that seem to be swirling in your head.
"If you cannot control yourself, walk away," she snaps, which is enough for him to back up and head for the stairs.
"What's-" you start, but stumble as another shiver runs through you.
You know the first heat was always the worst. You had seen them, read all about them, tried to learn how to force yourself into one to make your change happen. The body didn't know what to do with the flood of hormones, so it sent everything into overdrive, inciting your immune system to fight it. Which is why Omegas always felt so sick at the start. Their bodies would grow used to it after a few heats, and the illness would subside. But before modern medicine, some Omegas would die from the first few. Unable to regulate their body temperature, their blood pressure, or even the bleeding. Sometimes a mating could stave off the worst of it, but that wasn't always a guarantee.
And with that thought, the panic of death greatly overwhelms the feeling of sickness and mortification. You are so late in life to begin cycles. Would your body ever get used to it? Were you too old to fight it? You had already periods, heavy bloody periods, and you can feel the slickness between your legs. You were going to bleed out on the floor.
"I have something," the woman says kindly as she shoulders open your bedroom door, as if sensing the shift in your thought process. "To suppress. They tried to be here for your first, but they were called away."
You mumble something as she sets you on the bed, and your hands instantly grab at your pants, expecting to see bright red blood there. There isn't anything, and as the woman comes back with a glass of water and a pill, you stare at it.
"It will knock you out," she begins to explain, but that sets you off in a higher panic.
You didn't want to go to sleep and never wake up. Alone.
"I'll be here. You are not the first Omega I have sat with during their first heat," she smiles, something you weren't aware she was able to do. "I've already called the doctor, and we will keep you comfortable through all of it." She holds out the water and pill again, and you take it, gulping it down.
"How is this even possible?" You barely rasp out before you rip off your sweatshirt and kick off your pants. They feel like they’re suffocating you from the warmth. You don't even care that you are sitting there in your underwear with this woman, the rush of cold air feels like heaven on your skin.
"I'm not the one to answer that," she answers as she gestures for you to climb into the bed. "The Wealdend will explain it all when they get here. Once you are safely on the other side of it and they are prepared to see you."
Prepared to see you? As if this were some sort of gruesome thing to witness, and they had to mentally prepare themselves to see you in this state.
"Ah, you found some tācen," she gives you a knowing smile as she picks up your pants to fold them, finding Garrick's tie and Price's necklace in the pocket.
She had already seen the mask that was still wrapped around your finger, which you currently have a death grip on. You instantly snap your hand out and grab the other items from her. Perhaps it was rude, but they were yours, and only yours, and you didn't want her touching them. But it doesn't seem to bother her, she just gives you a knowing smile.
You slip between your pile of pillows, all of them crowded at the center of the bed where you sleep instead of lined on the headboard. Your other comfort items are there, soft blankets, a few stuffies and you gently tuck the three things you took from the Alphas right by your head.
You have a million questions and even more concerns, but you can't concentrate on them. All you can think about is feeling like you are burning from the inside out, the need to have an alpha there to protect you, and the overwhelming desire that makes you curl your legs up tight just to provide some relief from the pressure between your legs.
Slipping into a weird twilight state from the pill the woman gave you, you toss and turn. You aren't sure whether time is passing fast or barely moving at all. Shapes and shadows fill your vision when you open your eyes. Familiar and foreign voices rattle in your mind. Hands softly touch your arms, making you flinch away. They aren't the hands you want. Need. More pills are slipped under your tongue, and an IV needle is slid into your arm, cold fluid flowing through your veins, making you shiver.
"How long," comes a voice, cutting through the fog like a beacon. It's clear as day, as if it were spoken right in your ear. It makes you jolt, and you sit up, reaching for it, even if your brain was sluggish with drugs.
It's MacTavish. He's standing by the door, arms crossed, feet planted in a dominant stance as he looks down at the doctor. He looks agitated, a muscle ticking in his jaw as he waits for an answer.
And he's all you want. The siren call you felt to go to his room ratchets up tenfold as you look at him. Danger and desire war inside you as your blood sings his name in your ears.
"At least another two days. Sometimes it can be longer for the first, especially given-" She trails off, and they both turn to face you, realizing you have sat up.
"MacTavish," you whine out, voice pathetic and so full of need you would die of shame if you were in your right mind.
He moves instinctively, stepping around the doctor, but she is quick to block his path. Even as he snarls and bares his teeth at her.
"Not now," she warns. "You know the plan. It's not fair to her," she reasons as he goes to shove past her again, but another person blocks his path. Callum. He must have returned at some point. MacTavish could tear him apart without breaking a sweat, but Callum doesn't back down. They stare at one another for a moment, but when the doctor places a placating hand on MacTavish's arm, he backs up.
The touch makes you narrow your eyes, and you move in the bed as if you were going to climb out, but the Beta that has helped you this whole time stops you.
"She is not a threat," she assures you, “they came home for you, and they will be here when it's over. The faster you rest, the faster it will go."
"But," you mumble, eyes cutting back to MacTavish, who is still watching you with a predatory gleam. You know if he just helps you, it could be over now. Your body is screaming for him. For him to climb into this bed and have you. To claim you. Mark you with his scent and extinguish the burn.
"We'll talk," MacTavish promises, his eyes locked on yours as he unwraps something from around his wrist, “take this and rest.” He orders as he passes it to the doctor, as if afraid if he gets any closer he wouldn’t be able to contain himself.
Without waiting for your response, he turns and walks out. His steps halting as if he were fighting the urge to come back to you.
You feel the cry in your chest before you let it out, and the doctor quickly shushes you, giving you another pill. And as she settles you back on the pillow, she gives you the dark blue bandana from MacTavish to add to your collection. The strong fresh scent of charcoal and old books eases you back into a twilight state as you silently pray for this to end.
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I researched scents for a long time to come up with ones that were strong, complemented one another, and still had a recurring theme since they are all tied together. Burning/scorching and earthy…could be a little hint for a future theme. We'll get to readers scent in a bit to see just how she ties in 💙
Let me know what you think! This one makes me nervous to update since it's become so popular.
Tag List: @ironicadventures, @hypertail, @boldlyherdream, @listen-to-navi, @eyeswidecovered, @haurasha, @salsafrattale, @lilynotdilly
Any other followers that would like to be tagged, just let me know💙. Please have your age in your bio, or you won't be added.
With three movies to compare between, I really appreciate how each Knives Out movie explores justice from a different thematic angle, not based on the murder that was committed but based on the cruelty that led to that murder.
In Knives Out, a compassionate, ethical young woman treats everyone around her with generosity, and the people around her repeatedly try to take advantage of her kindness to force her into losing the fortune that was gifted to her by a dear friend. There, justice means that she keeps the fortune and decides that actually, she doesn't have to be kind and giving to people who've proven themselves assholes.
In Glass Onion, a woman loses her sister to a gang of wealthy, successful people who've sacrificed their principles for the sake of ambition and ego. There, justice means that everyone involved will be made notorious: whatever their other accomplishments, they will forever be known for being complicit in the burning of the most famous painting in history.
In Wake Up Dead Man, the church takes advantage of a young girl's loyalty and faith to place her under a lifelong burden and fill her with guilt, shame, and hatred. Justice means helping her understand what was done to her and the women around her, and giving her compassion so she can find peace.
This is cool because it means the movies contradict each other! The compassionate justice of Wake Up Dead Man would be totally misplaced in Knives Out, and so would the toppling-monuments justice of Glass Onion. And because each movie has something different to say, they all stand on their own and feel fresh.
This is also why Benoit Blanc is the uniting figure but never the protagonist of these movies. He's an agent of legal justice in that he's the detective and it's his job to figure out whodunnit, but the protagonist -- Marta, Andi and now Jud -- is always the character who delivers thematic justice.
Where the heck are you guys? Can we get a community started on Tumblr? Or a discord server? I really wanna yap about the third movie. I know you guys exist.
Can you like or reblog this too in general if you're fans of the franchise? Looking to follow more people!
i want them to keep making those magician movies. like fast and furious films, i want there to be an improbable number of 'Now You See Me' films which get more and more abusurd as the fanchise goes on. at some point they go to space. another time they race cars. this must carry on for at least twelve movies, ideally longer. if possible there is a spin off tv show which is a critical and commercial failure. Jason Statham has a cameo.
i can sense that shippers will want charlie x bosco. DO NOT forget june. this is the most obvious polycule ever. its CALLED now you see me THREE because there are THREE of them and they are in LOVE. send post
