Just an Omega? Think Again, Alpha

"Happy Birthday to me." I said it out loud to nobody. The trailer was empty and I was alone on the couch with a thin blanket pulled over me and the sound of rain hammering the metal roof above my head. I sat up and pushed the blanket off and looked out the small window. The sky was dark grey and water was running down the glass in sheets. It was going to be a bad day. I got up and went to the kitchen and stopped when I saw it. A vase of wildflowers sitting on the counter. Purple ones. My favorites. And a folded note propped in front of them with my name on it in my mother's handwriting. I opened it. Zara, Happy Birthday, baby. I'm sorry I couldn't be here when you woke up. I picked up an extra shift at the diner. The Mendez job starts at noon so I won't be home until after midnight. There's bread and peanut butter in the cupboard. I know it's not much. But you are everything to me. Eighteen years ago you came into this world screaming and you haven't stopped since. I love that about you. Don't let them break you today. Love, Mom. I folded the note and put it in my pocket. "She picked those herself," Storm said inside my head. Storm was my wolf. She had been with me since I was fifteen. She had never fully shifted. The pack doctor said that was not unusual for a low-ranked wolf. Sometimes it just took longer. "She walked to the field behind the school fence before her shift started. I could smell the mud on her shoes last night." "I know," I said. I stood there for a second looking at those flowers. My mother worked three jobs. She had been doing it for five years, since the day Former Alpha Hector Drake stripped us of everything after my father died. My father, Seth Cole, was the Beta of Ironwood Pack. Not just any Beta. The kind that wolves told stories about. Trusted, trained, the Alpha's second in everything. When I was thirteen, then-Alpha Hector Drake sent him alone into the northern border where a rival pack had been raiding. No backup team. No warning. Just my father and an order. He never came back. Three days after his funeral, Hector stripped our house, our car, my father's rank, and every benefit that came with it. My mother and I were reassigned to the lowest ranking in the pack. Below omega. They put us in this trailer at the edge of the trees and charged us full pack rates for the privilege. That was five years ago. Now Hector's son Caius Drake was Alpha and he was every bit as cold and untouchable as his father had been. I grabbed my bag, put on my worn raincoat and my black boots, and stepped out into the rain. It was everything I expected. Cold, heavy, relentless. By the time I reached the paved road my jeans were soaked from the knee down and water was dripping from my braid down the back of my neck. I walked the whole forty minutes to Thornfield Academy without passing a single person I knew. When I finally pushed through the school doors I was dripping onto the floor. I peeled off my raincoat and shoved it in my locker and started pulling out my textbooks for first period. I heard them before I saw them. That was always how it was with Derek Vaughn's group. They didn't care about volume. The whole hallway belonged to them and they walked like they knew it. I did not turn around. I kept my eyes on my locker and let them come. There were six of them. Derek at the front, broad in his expensive jacket. His friends behind him. And Chloe Park, Derek's girlfriend, who used to be mine. We used to share lunches. She used to help me with my hair. That was before. As the group passed behind me, Derek's shoulder swung wide. It hit the open locker door and slammed the metal edge into my face just above my eye. His friends laughed. They kept walking. I pulled my head back. Touched the spot. My fingers came away with blood. "Hey!" I growled. The group stopped. Storm went very still inside me. Derek turned around. He looked at me the way he always looked at me, like I was something someone had tracked in on their shoe. "You talking to me?" he said. "I don't see anyone else walking away," I said. He handed his bag to the friend beside him and came back toward me slowly, taking his time. He wanted me to see him coming. He wanted the hallway to watch. "You know what I love about you, Zara?" he said. He was close now. "You actually still act like you matter." "You hit me in the face," I said. "That's all that happened." He moved into my space. "No one is going to help you," he said, low enough that only I could hear. "Not here. Not anywhere. You're nothing. You know that better than anyone." I looked him straight in the eye. He smiled. He thought I was done. He turned around. I grabbed the back of his collar, spun him, and drove the heel of my palm straight into the bridge of his nose. The c***k went down the whole hallway. Derek stumbled two full steps with blood pouring over his lip. His friends froze. People around us stopped walking. "You," he started. "Next time watch where you're going," I said. He rushed me. I stepped left, grabbed his arm, and redirected his weight into the locker bank. He hit them face-first. His friends started moving and I put my back against the wall and got my hands up because five against one was always going to hurt no matter what I did. "What is going on here?" The voice came from the far end of the hall. Deep, practiced, the kind that expected immediate silence. Principal Hadley walked fast toward us. The crowd dissolved in seconds. Derek's friends straightened up and became very interested in their phones. Derek was on his feet with a piece of his shirt pressed to his nose, blood on his collar. "She attacked me," he said immediately. "My office," Hadley said. He looked at me. "Both of you." I grabbed my textbooks and followed. Inside Hadley's office I sat and looked at the wall. Derek sat two chairs over holding tissue to his nose. Hadley said wait here and walked back out. The door opened again almost immediately. It was not Hadley. Beta Ronan Ash stood in the doorway. Black jacket, shaved head, eyes that gave away nothing. He was Caius Drake's Beta. He was never at the school. "You're coming with me," he said. "I have class." "You're coming with me," he said again. I stood up. We drove to Drake Manor in silence. The Packhouse sat on the hill above Thornfield, all dark stone and tall windows, the kind of building that said without words that some wolves mattered and most did not. I had not been inside it since I was thirteen. Ronan walked me through the front hall and into the left wing. Down a corridor. To a heavy mahogany door at the end. He knocked twice. "Send them in." The voice from the other side was low and steady and completely controlled. Ronan pushed the door open and I walked in. Large office. Dark wood desk. Floor-to-ceiling shelves. Rain on the windows at the far wall. Behind the desk sat Alpha Caius Drake. He looked up. And the floor stopped being solid under my feet. The room tilted. My hand shot out and grabbed the back of the chair nearest to me. His scent reached me like something physical. Pine and cold air and something deep beneath it I had no name for. Storm slammed against the inside of my chest so hard I almost lost my balance. I gripped the chair. He watched me with amber eyes and nothing moved on his face. I opened my mouth. One word came out before I could stop it. "Mate."