Runaway Omega and Her Three Alpha Exes

"Take it back," I said. "Look me in the eye and tell me you made a mistake." Alpha Caden Morrow did not look at me. He stood by the window with his arms crossed, his back half-turned, staring at the rain sliding down the glass. His jaw was working like he was chewing something bitter but refused to spit it out. That told me everything. I had come to his room at dawn. I had knocked twice, soft, the way I always did, the way that said it's just me and not some threat requiring the alpha's full attention. He opened the door wearing gray sleep pants and no shirt, hair still pressed flat on one side, and the moment he saw my face his expression closed like a window being latched. I was shaking. I had been shaking since I left the clinic the night before, walking home in the dark with the paper folded in my hand and the numbers on it rearranging themselves into something I could not pretend away. "Caden." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. "Say something." He finally turned. His steel-gray eyes moved over me the way they moved over a problem he needed to solve quickly and forget about. That was a new look. I had not seen it aimed at me before. "How far along?" he asked. "Six weeks." The word six sat in the air between us. Six weeks ago was my eighteenth birthday. Six weeks ago was the only night that would explain this. He exhaled through his nose and looked back at the window. "Does anyone else know?" "No." "Keep it that way." He said it flat, like an instruction to a staff member. Like I was staff. Maybe I always had been and I was only now understanding that. "We'll figure out what to do." "We." I repeated the word because something about it felt wrong. The way he said it did not sound like two people deciding together. It sounded like one person deciding and the other one being managed. "Caden, it isn't only yours. That night — all three of you were there. I have to tell Riven and Dax." He turned fully then. His face did something I had never seen it do. It went very still and very cold at the exact same time. "No," he said. "You don't." "I don't know whose it is," I said, and the shame of saying it out loud made my throat tighten, but I pushed through. "That's the truth and you know it's the truth." He walked toward me slowly. He stopped close enough that I had to look up. His height had never bothered me before. That morning it did. "Sera." His voice was quiet. More dangerous that way. "Think carefully about what you're saying. Think about what happens to you if you walk into this pack and tell people you were with three alphas at once. Think about what the Council does to omegas who make accusations about alphas without proof." I stood there and felt the floor shifting under me. "I'm not making an accusation," I said. "I'm telling you the truth." "The truth." He almost laughed. Almost. "The truth is that three alphas are going to go on to lead their packs, marry their mates, and build their legacies. And you are one omega without an active wolf who made a choice that night just like we all did." He stepped back. "Don't make it our problem, Sera." I had known Caden Morrow since I was eleven years old. He used to let me borrow his training jacket when it was cold at the academy. He used to call me stubborn little wolf as a joke, because my wolf had never woken up, and somehow he said it like it was endearing and not a flaw. I had trusted him the way you trust a wall. The way you lean on something and stop thinking about whether it might move. It moved. "I'll talk to Riven and Dax myself," I said. "Sera." The warning in his voice was sharp enough to cut. "You can't stop me from talking to them." I turned toward the door. My hand found the handle and I held it because I needed to hold something solid. "And when this is over, whatever they say, I want you to know that I came to you first because I thought you would be different." I opened the door. "You should get that taken care of," he said behind me. "The sooner the better." I walked out. I did not close the door softly the way I usually did. I closed it hard enough that the sound carried down the corridor and woke the morning up around me. Outside, the rain came down in long pale sheets. I stood under the overhang with my arms wrapped around my waist and my teeth pressed together to keep them from chattering. My amber eyes stung. I would not cry on his doorstep. I would absolutely not give that corridor any part of my grief. I had two more conversations ahead of me. I walked toward the east wing of the academy, where Riven Ashcroft had been given the best room, because Riven always had the best of everything and saw no reason to argue with the arrangement. I knocked on his door. He opened it with a grin already in place, the way he always did, like life was one long pleasant interruption. He was dressed, which surprised me. His tawny eyes moved over my face and the grin dialed back two degrees. "Sera. You look terrible." "I need to talk to you." "Come in." He stepped aside. His room smelled like cedar and coffee. He had been up for a while. There was a book open face-down on the bed. I stood in the middle of the room and told him. I did not build up to it. I had learned in the last hour that building up to it only gave the other person time to build a wall. "I'm pregnant," I said. "Six weeks. It's from that night. Yours or Caden's or Dax's. I don't know which." Riven went very quiet. He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at his hands. "Hm," he said. "Hm," I repeated back at him, and my voice cracked on the single syllable. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Sera. That night was... we were all in a strange place. You know that. It was your birthday, there was a lot going on, and we all—" He stopped. Looked at me. Looked away. "Are you certain you're pregnant? Have you seen a doctor?" "I have the report in my bag." I touched the strap. He did not ask to see it. He nodded once, slowly. "I need you to not do anything rash with this information," he said. The word rash. The same word used for children throwing fits. For weather that ruined plans. "I'm not doing anything rash," I said. "I'm telling you the truth." "Right." He stood and walked to the window. His window also had rain on it. I noticed that absently, the way you notice something unimportant when the important thing is too large to look at directly. "The thing is, Sera, I have a pack to go home to after graduation. My father is already arranging—" He paused. "This can't follow me home. You understand that." "I'm not a thing that follows you," I said. "I didn't mean it that way." "How did you mean it?" He turned. His face was soft in the way that was worse than hard, the way that said I feel bad about this but not bad enough to do anything differently. "Get rid of it," he said. "I'll cover the cost. No one has to know." I had thought, walking across the courtyard in the rain, that I was prepared. I had thought the conversation with Caden had used up my capacity for shock. It had not. I picked up my bag and walked to the door. "Dax is next," I said. "Sera—" "Goodbye, Riven." I found Dax Hale in the training yard behind the east dormitory. He was alone, moving through forms with a wooden practice staff, his pale green eyes focused somewhere beyond the fence. His auburn hair was dark at the temples from sweat. He saw me coming and set the staff down against the fence post. He looked at my face. He already knew. I watched it happen. Something in his expression went quiet before I opened my mouth, like his body understood what the next few minutes were going to cost. "How bad?" he said. "Six weeks," I said. He closed his eyes. Opened them. Looked at the fence. "I should have—" he started. "Yes," I said. "You should have." We stood there for a moment with the rain tapping the dirt around us. "I can't claim it, Sera." His voice was low and miserable. "My pack is watching everything I do. My father is sick. If this comes out—" "I know," I said. "I've heard the reasons. All of them, in different words, this morning." I looked at him directly. "I just wanted you to know. Because I thought, at least one of you—" I stopped. "I'm sorry," he said, and he sounded like he meant it. That was the worst part. He sounded like he genuinely meant it, and it made not one shred of difference. "So am I," I said. I walked away. Behind me, I heard him pick the staff back up. I did not look back. I did not know yet, standing in that rain-soaked training yard at eighteen years old with no wolf and no money and a life inside me that nobody wanted to claim, that this was the beginning of the part of my story that would matter. The part where I stopped waiting for someone to choose me. And chose myself instead.