The Widowed Alpha's Omega

"If the Alpha sees your face tonight, I'll lock you in the cellar until spring." Warrick Dunn, my stepfather, had said it to me that morning. He didn't even look up from the silver medals he was polishing at the kitchen table. He was dressed in one of his finest outfits, which suited the silver wolf he was, his eyebrows scrunched together, his dark eyes filled with concentration. "I understand," I responded. It was one of the few phrases I was allowed to say to him. "Say it back," he demanded, an edge to his voice. "I stay in the kitchen. Nobody sees me," I repeated. "Nobody smells you, either." Now he looked up. His eyes slid down my body and back up with the same tired disgust he'd worn for twelve years, ever since he married my mother and got me thrown in with the furniture. "Wash the pots. Keep the lamb warm. And take that apron off. You look like a loaf of bread somebody forgot to bake." I took off the apron. Arguing with Warrick was like arguing with a wall, except a wall never took away your dinner or threatened to hit you. Tonight, our Alpha, Lucan Thorne, was coming to our house. My stepbrothers, Bram and Cade, had pulled three young wolves out of a rogue ambush at the north border, and the Alpha wanted to pin their medals on himself. Warrick had talked about nothing else for two weeks. The whole house smelled like roasted lamb and nerves. I was twenty-two, an omega, and what the pack kindly, or not so kindly, called a weak wolf. My wolf, Ember, was small and shy. She hadn't said more than a handful of words to me since I was twelve. No mate. No rank. No seat at any table. I slept in a room behind the pantry, wore my dead mother's dresses let out at the seams, and kept her silver locket under my collar where nobody could grab it. I had made peace with being invisible. I even had a plan. Hide until dessert, steal the leftovers, go to bed full. But then my plan was stomped on, like everything else in my life, when the girl Warrick had hired to serve ran past the kitchen window and threw up in the rose bushes. Warrick said a word I won't repeat, then he turned around, saw me holding a dishrag, and I watched him lose an argument with himself. "You," he said. "Take the wine in." "You said—" "I know what I said! Do you see anyone else here? Eyes on the floor. Pour. Leave. Don't speak, don't breathe loud, don't exist." "I've had lots of practice with that last one," I muttered under my breath, careful that he didn't hear me. If he did, he would berate me for being ungrateful. The dining room was too bright. Candles stood on every surface and the good plates were out. My stepbrothers' mates sat at the table like two cats on a windowsill. Selene, Bram's mate, wore green silk and a smile for everyone but me. Dara, Cade's mate, flicked her red hair over her shoulder and looked at my dress like it had personally offended her. Bram sat tall and loud, golden head up, laughing at his own story. Cade sat beside him, quiet as always, eyes on his plate. He never looked at me in that room. He never looked at me in any room where someone else could see. I kept my own eyes on the floor like I'd been told. The floor showed me a pair of black boots, scuffed at the toes, planted at the head of the table. Then the smell hit me. Cedar. Smoke. Something underneath, deeper, that I had no word for. My skin prickled from my neck to my wrists, and somewhere inside my chest, Ember lifted her head. She hadn't done that in ten years. *Don't,* I told her. *Not now. We're here to serve the wine.* I went to his glass. I should have kept staring at the floor. But I needed to know where the glass was, I told myself, so I looked up for one second. Gray eyes with a scar splitting his left eyebrow. A hard jaw, shadows under his eyes, and a mouth that looked like it had forgotten how to do anything but frown. I had never seen him up close, only from the back of the crowd. Our Alpha, Lucan. He reached for the glass absentmindedly, unaware that I was standing right there. At the same moment I tipped the bottle, and his fingers brushed my knuckles by accident. Heat shot up my arm like lightning finding a tree. I lost control of my limbs, spilling wine across the white tablecloth and knocking over the glass. Ember threw back her head and howled so loudly I almost clapped my hands over my ears. She only had one word, and she said it over and over. Mine. Mine. Mine. The Alpha was on his feet before I could blink. His chair hit the floor behind him. He stared at me, nostrils flared, and every drop of color left his face. "No," he said, very quietly. "No." Gasps filled the room, Selene's and Dara's the loudest. They probably thought it was impossible that the Alpha could be my mate, but everyone in the room could see and hear it. The connection was undeniable. "Alpha—" Warrick started from the doorway. "Out." It wasn't a shout. It was the Alpha voice, the kind you feel in your knees. Chairs scraped. Warrick stumbled backward. Selene grabbed Dara's hand. Bram hesitated, then went. Cade went last, and he looked at me, just once, before the door shut. Then it was the two of us, the candles, and the spilled wine. He walked a slow circle around me. I stood there holding the bottle to my chest, because I couldn't figure out how to put it down. *Mate.* Ember growled again, and I wished I could tell her what was going to happen. I could sense it already. "Six years," he said. "For six years, I've asked the Goddess for nothing. I buried my mate with my own hands and I never begged her for one thing." He stopped in front of me. "And she gives me this." "I didn't ask—" "Quiet." He looked at me from head to foot, slowly, the way you look at a coat you've decided not to buy. "Elara could stop a room by walking into it. She could outrun any wolf in my pack. She could stare down a rogue with her hands empty. And you can't pour wine without shaking." My face burned. I gripped the bottle tighter to stop my hands from trembling. I hated that he was right about that part. I had known Elara, our dead Luna. She was magnificent, gracious in every way. Compared to her, I was a downgrade. "You're soft," he said. "You're slow. Your wolf is so weak I barely hear her. And the Moon Goddess thinks this is a gift? This is an insult. This is her spitting on Elara's grave." He sounded even angrier than before. *I should say something clever,* I thought. People in books always say something clever. All I had was a ringing in my ears and Ember's soft whimpering. She had gotten the hint by now. "I, Lucan Thorne, Alpha of Blackridge," he said, his voice flat as a table, "reject you." It felt like someone had reached into my chest and snapped a rib in half. I gasped. The bottle slid out of my fingers and shattered at my feet as I clutched my chest, trying to ease the pain and steady my breathing. But what I couldn't stop thinking about, for days afterward, was that he flinched too. His hand jerked to his own chest, quick, like he'd been punched, and then he dropped it as though he was ashamed to have shown it. "I—" The pain felt like it was ripping my skin apart. I could barely finish my sentence; I couldn't even accept his rejection. That was the thing about being a weak wolf. Something like a rejection could kill you. I could barely breathe, while he stood perfectly composed, ready to forget the whole ordeal. "Don't speak," he said. "I don't want to hear your voice." The door opened slowly. "Alpha," Bram said, walking back into the room, hands up, head lowered, so humble I almost didn't recognize him. "Forgive her. Please. She's a mistake in our house. My stepfather should have kept her locked in the back where she belongs." "I—" I gasped again, the pain slowly subsiding, but it wasn't as if any of them cared. "Shut your mouth, Tilly." He didn't even look at me. "She's weak, Alpha. Useless, really. It's an insult that the Goddess would put her anywhere near you. If it pleases you, let me walk you out. The north patrol report is waiting, and I'd hate for you to waste another breath on this." The Alpha didn't answer for a long second. His eyes stayed on me, and I couldn't read them. They weren't cruel anymore. They were worse. They looked bare, empty. How could he do this and not even feel remorse? "Nobody finds out about this," he warned. "And I never want to see you near the pack house. Not ever. He left. Bram followed, without sparing a glance for someone he had lived with for twelve years. When the door closed behind them, my knees gave out and I sat on the floor, in the wine, in the glass pieces, in my mother's faded dress, and pressed both hands against my chest as if I could hold something in. That was when I saw my wrist. There was a mark on it. Pale and silver, shaped like a crescent moon, glowing the way the real moon glows. It hadn't been there that morning. I knew what it was. Every wolf girl did. A mate mark. But a mate mark only appeared when the bond was accepted, by both sides, under the Moon's eye. He had rejected me. I hadn't said a single word.