The Omega's Desperate Escape

Chapter Three

Six years of shitty motels had taught me to appreciate the small things. Hot water that lasted more than three minutes. Locks that actually locked. Beds that didn't smell like the last fifteen people who'd f****d, fought, or died on them.

The Toronto motel failed on all counts, but it had two things going for it: cash-only registration and a back exit that opened onto an alley. In our world, that was luxury.

"Home sweet home." Puck kicked the door shut, arms full of grocery bags that definitely hadn't been paid for. Six years had turned his shoplifting into an art form. Security cameras had blind spots if you knew where to look, and Puck always knew.

I dropped my backpack and watched my family fall into our ritual. Not pack—never pack—but something deeper. Jules went straight for the windows, fingers testing locks and frames with the dedication of someone who'd learned that glass was just another word for vulnerability. Hank checked corners and closets, his bulk moving with that particular grace of predators pretending to be prey. Ami stood in the center like a divining rod, fox senses peeling back layers of scent—old smoke, older desperation, the chemical tang of whatever the last occupants had cooked.

Without words, we moved like a single organism. I took the bathroom, checking behind mildew-stained curtains and testing the window that had been painted shut sometime during the Cold War. Clear. The scratches on my shoulder from last week's fence still wept pink—a registered wolf would have healed in hours, but rogues made do with human-slow recovery. Our bodies knew we didn't belong to the moon anymore, knew we'd severed that connection when we'd chosen freedom over pack law.

"All clear." Hank's rumble carried from the main room. "Junkie threw up in the tub last month, but no threats."

"I'll take first watch tonight." Jules had already claimed the bed with sightlines to both exits, her body angled like a blade ready to strike. "Jinx, you're after me."

The rotation came automatic as breathing. Two always awake while three rested but ready. Real packs might sleep sound knowing their territory was secure, but we'd learned to find safety in vigilance, comfort in the weight of knives under pillows.

"Dibs on the bed by the bathroom." Jules's switchblade danced between her fingers, silver catching the flickering fluorescent light like promises.

Ami touched the wall near the adjoining room, head tilted in that way that meant she was reading stories in the plaster. "Empty. Lock's broken. Want me to—?"

"On it." Puck's lockpicks materialized before she finished. Thirty seconds of metal whispering to metal, and we'd doubled our territory. Another routine carved from necessity—always secure multiple exits, always expand the perimeter. Space meant time, and time meant survival.

"Toronto's different." Puck pulled out his phone, the screen casting blue shadows across his features. The map bloomed with color—territories marked like medieval kingdoms. "Three major packs. Venture controls downtown core, Lakeshore has the waterfront, Highland runs the northern suburbs."

I studied the boundaries while unpacking my knives. One for the ankle holster, one for the jacket, one under the pillow—Jules had taught me the pattern our first year, when my hands still shook and silver still felt like betrayal instead of salvation. Each blade found its home with the reverence of ritual.

"How'd you get this?"

"Darknet forum for unregistered shifters. We share what we know." He zoomed in on downtown, where the territories met like tectonic plates. "See how precise it is? These packs police their borders hard. Outside hunters become their problem, not ours."

"Or they just don't want competition." Jules spoke from her perch, but she was memorizing the map too, filing away escape routes and neutral zones.

"Either way works for us." Hank tested the bed frame with methodical care, checking for weak points that might betray us at the worst moment. "Possessive wolves make the best guard dogs."

A knock shattered our planning. The transformation was instant—Ami and I flanked the door while Jules took high ground on the dresser, a gargoyle ready to drop. Hank positioned himself as shield, all that muscle suddenly purposeful. Puck approached the door with studied casualness, but his hand rested on the knife at his hip, thumb already loosening the sheath.

"Pizza delivery?"

"Wrong room." Puck's voice carried just the right amount of stoned college student.

"Oh. Sorry!"

Footsteps retreated down the hall. We held position for a full minute, breathing in sync, until Ami's subtle nod confirmed the stranger had truly gone. The formation dissolved as smoothly as it had formed. Real packs had territory and walls. We had each other and the paranoia that kept us alive.

"Dinner?" Ami held up a takeout menu once our hearts remembered their normal rhythm. "Golden Dragon promises authentic Szechuan."

"They all promise that." I settled onto my bed, noting how our bodies arranged themselves without thought—Puck between me and the door, Jules maintaining those sightlines, Hank's bulk blocking the window. A protective constellation we'd drawn so many times it had worn grooves in our souls.

"I'll go. Need to scout." The walls pressed too close already, smelling of other people's desperation.

"Take backup." Jules made it an order without raising her voice.

"I'll go." Puck bounced up, energy that never depleted despite years of gas station coffee and adrenaline. "Need to hit an ATM anyway."

Toronto's streets breathed different than any city we'd haunted. October wind carried more than just dying leaves and exhaust—wolf scent layered the air like cologne, bears marked corners with casual ownership, and underneath it all, the sharp tang of cats pretending they weren't watching everything. But these shifters moved without the hypervigilance I recognized. Their spines didn't telegraph constant readiness to run. They smelled of normalcy—coffee and contentment, work stress and dinner plans. Not the acrid fear-sweat of prey expecting silver bullets.

"Feel that?" Puck inhaled deeply, chest expanding like he was trying to swallow the whole city.

These weren't our people. Our people checked shadows and mapped exits, carried silver they'd never have chosen and scars that took too long to fade. These Toronto shifters had never been hunted through their own streets.

"There." Puck nodded toward a bank of ATMs tucked between storefronts. "Side approach is clear."

I took position as lookout while he sweet-talked the machine. A wolf passed nearby—young male, reeking of pine sap and leather, definitely pack but the scent wasn't distinctive enough to place. In another city, he would have stopped, circled, challenged. Here, we were just background noise in his Tuesday evening.

"Five hundred." Puck pocketed the cash with fingers that didn't shake anymore. "Enough for a week."

"Food and suppressants." My last bottle rattled in my jacket pocket, maybe ten pills left. Black market hormone blockers weren't cheap, but they were freedom. Six years since my last heat, six years of choosing when and how my body betrayed me.

"Your prescription guy still in Chinatown?"

"Different city, Puck. I'll need to source new ones."

The Golden Dragon squatted between a nail salon advertising in three languages and a shop that couldn't decide if it sold phones or bongs. Neon painted everything the color of fresh wounds. Inside, the décor screamed authenticity through sheer force of red vinyl and golden dragons that looked more like diseased lizards.

"Two of everything. Extra rice."

We waited in chairs held together by duct tape and spite. I cataloged exits from habit—two windows painted shut, one door, kitchen access that probably led to an alley if the fire code meant anything. The bruise on my ribs from last week's escape through a dumpster corral throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Another injury taking its sweet time, another reminder that we'd traded the moon's gifts for something harder to define.

The food came in bags that threatened to split from the weight of American-Chinese excess. We started back, Puck juggling containers while I kept watch. But as we crossed into what the map had marked as Venture territory, the air shifted.

The scent hit like a slap from a god I'd stopped believing in.

Whiskey aged in smoke. Power that didn't need to announce itself. Something wild barely leashed by expensive leather and social contract. It crawled through my suppressant-dulled senses like electricity through water, lighting up pathways I'd thought were dead. My omega instincts—six years silent—suddenly screamed awake.

I stopped so abruptly Puck walked into my back.

"What?" His hand found his knife with the fluid grace of long practice.

"I don't—" But the scent vanished like smoke, leaving only the phantom crawl of recognition across my skin. Not fear. Something worse. Something that made my body remember it was built for more than running.

"Jinx?"

"Nothing. Thought I smelled something." I forced my feet forward, but unease lived in my spine now, vertebra by vertebra. Whatever that was, it had punched through pharmaceutical-grade suppressants like they were tissue paper. "Let's go."

We made it back without incident, but that ghost of scent haunted me. Whiskey and smoke and something that said *mine* in a language older than words.

"Dinner is served." I kicked the door open, shoving the moment down with all the other things I didn't examine too closely.

Our family had transformed the space with the efficiency of people who'd learned home was something you carried, not somewhere you lived. Jules had claimed the adjoining room. Hank had rearranged furniture into defensive positions that looked accidental. Ami had performed whatever fox magic made even the saddest motel rooms feel less like crime scenes waiting to happen.

We ate straight from containers, oil staining our fingers and lips. Puck stole Jules's dumplings with the timing of someone who knew exactly how far he could push. She retaliated by claiming his spring rolls, and for a moment we were just people sharing bad takeout instead of rogues one bad day from disaster.

"So we're staying?" Ami asked eventually, hope creeping into her voice like sunrise. "At least for a while?"

"Week by week." Even Jules sounded less skeptical than usual. Her knife had disappeared, which meant she was relaxing as much as she ever did.

"I need to find a suppressant dealer. Soon." The bottle in my pocket felt lighter already.

They all nodded. My heats were a vulnerability we couldn't afford, not even in a supposedly safe city. The suppressants let me be more than biology, more than an omega waiting for some alpha to catch my scent and decide I was his.

"There's a supernatural clinic in Kensington Market." Puck spoke around a mouthful of noodles. "Under the table stuff. Might have leads."

After dinner, I stood by the window watching Toronto breathe in and out like some great beast. Somewhere out there, three packs held territory with borders drawn in piss and politics. Somewhere, unregistered shifters like us carved out lives in the spaces between. And somewhere—my palm pressed against glass cold as rejection—something had recognized me through six years of chemical walls.

"Can't sleep?" Ami materialized beside me, fox-quiet and fox-clever.

"Just thinking."

She tucked herself against my side, and I wrapped an arm around her automatically. This was pack without the word—the instinctive comfort of touch, the safety of shared warmth. Behind us, Jules cleaned her knives with the meditation of a warrior monk while Puck taught Hank a card trick that probably involved stealing something.

The motel room smelled like grease and hope, gun oil and the particular musk of shifters who belonged to no one but each other. We weren't pack in any way the world would recognize. Packs had alphas and hierarchies, registration papers and territories defended to the death. We were something else—a constellation of damage that had learned to navigate by each other's light.

But as that phantom scent haunted my memory—whiskey and authority and the promise of things I'd trained myself not to want—I wondered if Toronto might change more than just our running pattern.