Unwanted Omega Read online

  Table of Contents

  Unwanted Omega

  Book Details

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  About the Author

  UNWANTED

  OMEGA

  CAITLIN RICCI

  Mated against their will and forced to have a child, Thomas and Helena hope now that they've done their duty, their alpha will leave them in peace to heal, raise their child—and allow Helena to spend more time with her secret lover, who is also Thomas's sister. When that hope is shattered, they try to bow out by claiming they're too busy raising their first child to have a second.

  In response, the alpha gives them an omega, Owen, to help ease the burden. Rather than cave to Abraham's demands again, Thomas and Helena are determined to fight back—but first they need to figure out whether or not they can trust Owen...

  Unwanted Omega

  By Caitlin Ricci

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by James Loke Hale

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition August 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Caitlin Ricci

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781684313426

  CHAPTER ONE

  Thomas

  I woke up and turned in my big bed so that I could look outside and see the sunrise coming over the Colorado plains. Downstairs my sister was already singing to my son, Jonathan. Her girlfriend, Helena, who was also my wife, would be down there with her. It would have been a good morning, except that Helena and I were to see our alpha today.

  Pulling myself out of bed, I stretched and dragged some pants on. I was barely functional as I came downstairs for some coffee, but I couldn't stay in bed all day either. It was Saturday, and there was work to be done well before Helena and I made the trek to go see our alpha in Denver. We lived about an hour east, in Bennett, in a house he had provided for us when we were mated, and he lived on the west side of Denver almost to Lakewood. Helena and I didn't enjoy the trip through Denver on the highways, but I knew our time was up. Something was happening. We were rarely called to him. Phone calls each week had been sufficient for a year now. But now he required us to meet with him and my stomach was tight at the thought of what he could want from us now.

  When I came downstairs and went into the kitchen I found Helena and Lily together at the table, their hands joined as they leaned against each other.

  Our son had cereal in front of him and he smiled at me as I came closer. I kissed his cheek and ruffled his black hair. When he squealed, the women in my life smiled at me.

  "Sleep well, Thomas?" Lily teased me.

  I went to the coffee machine and poured myself a cup. "Better than you two probably." They kept quiet when they were together, for my sake, and also not to wake Jonathan. At nearly a year old he was much better about sleeping through the night and none of us wanted to jinx that.

  "I don't want to see Abraham today, but I know we have to," Helena said with a sigh. She was angry. I knew that already. But we wouldn't get into it in front of Lily again.

  I wholeheartedly agreed with her, but I sipped my coffee instead. She didn't need me to tell her just how much I wished that we didn't have to go see him this morning. At least Lily was exempt. Our alpha, Abraham, didn't like having babies around so Jonathan was to be kept away until he was able to control himself, in the alpha's words. The longer I could keep Jonathan away from him, the happier I'd be. I wanted them all away from him. We would be better off as humans without someone over us, controlling every aspect of our lives. I didn't know what Abraham would want from us right now. We had produced a child, like he'd demanded, and our work should have been done for a while.

  Since this meeting likely had nothing to do with Jonathan, my gut said Abraham wanted to talk about Lily. She'd been mated, once, but hadn't produced a child and the arrangement had been dissolved after a year. Helena and I had been lucky that way. Neither of us had wanted this mating, but we got along at least, and I was happy for her and Lily. It was good to see Lily happy with someone at last.

  I looked at them both. My sister was worried. She always was whenever we had to go see Abraham. Helena looked annoyed with me. I knew her position on the matter, and how much she wished that I could be the alpha instead of Abraham, but that wasn't the life I wanted for myself or for them. If I had my way I would have wished that we had all been born human, then none of this would have been pushed on us at all and we wouldn't have this worry now.

  "If you two want to take off for a bit, I can handle Jonathan," I told them. He was just smiling at me and eating his cereal anyway.

  "We'll go out to the garden then. I'm sure there are some new weeds to pull," Lily said. She tugged Helena along behind her and I went back to sipping my coffee. I heard them out by the apple trees and I knew they were arguing, but even with my werewolf hearing I couldn't make out exactly what they were saying. I could guess it easily enough though. Lily and Helena wanted to be together. I wanted that for them too. I loved our son, but he was the only good thing to come out of our arranged mating.

  I was done with my coffee so I picked him up, slinging him onto my hip as I put my cup in the sink and rinsed it out. He looked more like Helena than like me. She had big green eyes and dark hair, just like he did. I was never really sure what to say to him, this child neither of us had wanted but we both now loved, so I kissed him on his cheeks and carried him into the living room.

  "Hey baby," I said as I checked him, making sure his diaper was still good to go. Lily loved taking care of him. She was a great second mom to him, and had she been less assertive she would have made a fine omega. But my sister wasn't meek, and her mothering nature only extended to the wolves she loved. Everyone else could go rot as far as she was concerned. I didn't blame her for that attitude one bit since that was how I felt most days too.

  I'd never pictured myself as being a father. I'd never really wanted to be either. But now that we had Jonathan, I was happy to have him in our lives. I just wished that it hadn't hurt Helena so much to have him. She'd hated me for a long time because of what we'd done together, and I understood. We hadn't had a choice in the matter. The alpha had put us together to have a child and so we'd made one. I'd never wanted to be human more than when he'd put us together.

  None of that was Jonathan's fault though. He was a happy little baby who smiled all the time and liked having his belly kissed.

  He especially liked when I shifted as I did right then, and when I put my snout against his tummy to tickle him. Jonathan grabbed my big ears and squealed, tugging at my ears and then my fur. Someday he'd learn how to shift and then we would run together as a family, but for now he was just a baby, as human looking as any other.

  I loved that he played with me and seemed fascinated with the fact that we could all shift. I drew the line at having him shove his tiny fingers into my mouth. I pulled back and returned to my human shape. He was a good baby, always pretty quiet and always happy. I laid down beside him on the couch and fixed his shirt. I didn't want to go see Abraham that morning, even though that was what was expected of us. I wanted to stay there next to my son and pretend that this was our life. I wanted us to have this simple family where my sister and her mate c
ould garden together and the child we all loved would never have to grow up with the shadow of an alpha hanging over him.

  But that was not our life and I knew even before Helena came back inside to get me that I didn't have time to daydream about such things.

  "Thomas?" she quietly called to me.

  I turned over and sighed. "I'll go get showered and be down in a few minutes." I lifted Jonathan to my chest and then handed him off to his mother.

  "He has wolf hair on him again," she said, the laugh clear in her teasing words.

  I snorted. "He likes when I shift." I continued on upstairs as Lily came back inside.

  "Is that right? Do you like it when Daddy becomes a big scary wolf?" Lily laughed along with Helena and I paused at the top of the stairs to be able to watch the three of them. They were my family and I wished that I could do more to protect them and keep them as happy as they were in that moment.

  Lily said goodbye to us on the front porch. She made Jonathan wave to us too, holding up his little arm and swaying it along with hers as if he had any idea what that meant. "We'll miss you!" she called out to us.

  Helena ran back and gave her another kiss before we left. I knew then how worried she really was. We didn't really have neighbors, but she was usually more careful about publicly showing her affection to Lily than that. I got it though. At any point Abraham could decide that this arrangement didn't work or that he wanted to try my sister with a male again to see if she could manage to get pregnant and add another child to the pack. Her place in this family was tenuous, as much as I wished that it wasn't.

  We had to tread carefully and make sure Abraham knew just how much she was needed in our lives, how lost we would be without her there with us. If he ever suspected that Helena wanted Lily around for more than someone to help her raise our son Abraham would take Lily away in an instant. I was lucky that he'd never found out that I was bi or that Helena and Lily were lesbians. We were in dangerous territory with him, and we had to tread carefully because we knew how quickly everything could come crashing down around us.

  Helena chose the music when I drove. It kept her off telling me how to drive. Today she put on something soft and slow as I got us onto I-70. We had a long way to go and I didn't mind the gentler choice in music. It was what she normally played to get Jonathan to go to sleep when he was being fussy, but I had no idea what the actual name of the band was. I hadn't really paid all that much attention to her music. We all had other things on our minds.

  "Who is this?" I asked her as I set the cruise control and leaned back in the seat.

  She glanced at me then went back to looking out the window. "The Weepies. Thomas..."

  I caught the purse of her lips out of the corner of my eye. She'd chosen to wear makeup today. A deep red lipstick that made her skin look even paler. She had the classic beauty of Elizabeth Taylor. We could have been happy together, but I was pretty sure she was never going to forgive me for not fighting back when we'd been ordered to have a child. She'd hated it, and she'd hated me for what I'd had to do to her.

  It wasn't like I'd enjoyed having sex with my sister's girlfriend, but I had come and that was enough for Helena.

  "Whatever it is, Helena, can it wait until after we're done with Abraham?" I asked her.

  She sighed. I knew she wanted to argue. I didn't blame her for that at all. I wasn't her favorite person by far and I knew that I wasn't easy to get along with either, though I was trying.

  "Be our alpha. Overthrow Abraham," she urged me.

  Talking like that was treason, but I knew there was no way he could hear us. We'd checked the car for bugs multiple times. We were safe from his prying eyes. "Helena, as angry as you are about having to birth a child for the pack—"

  She hissed at me and I shut up instantly. "I love our son. Don't you doubt that."

  "I don't," I assured her, though I knew if she and Lily could have had a child without my involvement she would have gladly chosen that. I would have too.

  Helena turned in her seat to be able to glare at me better. "Don't you want to be happy though, Thomas? Honestly? If you could have a man in your life? If you could fall in love? Wouldn't you want that? We made a child. We're stuck with each other. Lily isn't so lucky. I can't have her taken from us."

  "If I tried to move against him Abraham would have our heads and I can't risk him coming after you, or Jonathan, or Lily. Don't ask me to risk our family."

  "You're risking your sister every day you leave him in power over us," she argued. "He paid for our house and he takes care of us financially, and I know that may make things easy for us at times since we don't have to work beyond taking care of our son but that's not enough of a reason to risk Lily."

  The worst part of it was that I knew she was right. We could get to his house and he could tell me that my sister was going to move in with a strange man and bear his child and I would have no say. Neither would she. It was only luck that Lily and Helena had fallen in love, that they'd gotten along at all. We'd certainly never had a say in it or designed it that way at all. If they hadn't become instant friends things would be even more miserable for us.

  "You don't care that she could be raped every day for the rest of her life and—"

  I had to pull over onto the side of the highway. My shift was too close, and I was barely in control of myself as it was. I tightened my hands over the steering wheel. The worn-out leather was rough against my palms.

  "I won't let that happen."

  Helena came closer, leaning her cheek against my shoulder. "Thomas, you need to do something. If my voice meant anything in this pack I would have used it long ago. I love her so much and I hate that at any moment Abraham can take her away from me. From us. Don't let him. Please. Don't doom your sister to that life. She got lucky with the last one. It was seen as his fault that she couldn't get pregnant."

  I got back on the road. We were expected to be at Abraham's house at nine. Being late wouldn't be good for either of us and it would draw even more of his attention onto us. The best thing we could hope to be with him was some footnote in his ledger. Just the small family who lived on the plains and didn't make trouble for him or anyone else. The pack was large. We were spread all over the state, but no one lived more than two hours away from him. Well within distance to come when we were called to his side. Abraham kept a few of the pack with him sometimes, but never more than two or three. He led our pack through financial control, and through the fear he kept us all in constantly.

  "Thomas..."

  I huffed. "I'll think about it."

  "That's not good enough. What if—"

  I couldn't. I just couldn't with her anymore. I needed to drive. And I needed to not be thinking about some werewolf raping my little sister all for the sake of adding more children for the pack so that Abraham had more people to control. "Please. Enough. I'll think about it. But that's the best I can do. And I won't promise you more than that."

  We couldn't leave the pack. He had already said that none of us were allowed to just up and leave him. As fertile, able bodied members of his pack he would rather see us dead than with someone else's pack. So that left someone taking over the pack from him. As much as Helena wanted that to be me, I didn't see how it ever would be. I wasn't a fighter, but then again, I'd been a teenager when Lily had been given to her last mate. So had she, but I hadn't realized what it had meant at the time. Now I wish I had fought harder back then, and I knew I wouldn't be okay with Abraham taking her away from me again.

  I pulled off I-70 and went south. We were almost there, and I felt my skin tingling the closer we got to the alpha. Helena rubbed her arms, so she must have been feeling it as well. That simple awareness to let us know that we were near him. Maybe to some werewolves it felt good. I hated that sensation. I hated knowing that he was nearby. That I was stuck with him for an alpha when almost anyone else would have been better.

  Abraham lived in a normal-looking house. Just four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and ligh
t gray siding. None of the humans who lived on his street would have had any idea that he was an alpha werewolf, or that the people who visited him each week were also werewolves.

  Helena could have easily gotten the door for herself, but once I was parked along the street in front of his house I got out and opened her door for her. She gave me a look, but it was only on her face for a moment before she was back to looking completely calm again. She hated that I had to get the door for her. It was just another way that Abraham controlled us through his expectations of the pack and how good werewolves treated each other. The women accepted the help of the men and were supposed to want to be baby making machines. We were simply supposed to want to have sex with them all day and let them raise our children, I guessed. Neither prospect worked for us.

  I took her hand and she plastered a smile on her face. "Less teeth," I whispered. She looked like she wanted to sink her canines into his throat and leave him on the rug to bleed out.

  She adjusted her smile and then she bit her sharp nails into my palm. I winced and led her up the pathway toward Abraham's front door.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Owen

  I heard the car pull up and I took my position by the front door. I was prepared to take coats, hold babies, and offer tea. Whatever was needed of me.

  Abraham hadn't told me much about the pair of werewolves that I opened the door for so I made my own assumptions. They were tense with each other although they did hold hands. I assumed they'd had an arranged mating, as most young werewolves did. I'd never been paired with anyone that way. I'd cowered since birth, having little spine and no real will of my own. I'd been instantly dubbed an omega, the lowest ranking member of any pack I was in, and simply there to take care of the rest of them in whatever way my alpha said I should. I would have loved a larger purpose and a more permanent place in a pack, but that was not offered to omegas.

  They had no coats for me to take so I gave them each a little bow. "Hello, I am Owen, Abraham's newest omega. He's waiting for you both out back. May I bring you some tea after I take you to him?"