It had been two weeks since Jason had slept in his own bed or held his mate, and he was getting sick of it. He’d hit a dead end on a case he couldn’t have imagined would end up falling into his lap. The doe-eyed omega who had shown up asking for sanctuary for herself and the life growing inside of her was as sweet as they came, but Jason’s life had gotten infinitely more complicated from that day on. For a man who liked to keep things as simple as possible, it was a nightmare he hoped would come to an end soon, but he knew that if he didn’t find a way to help Betty prove her innocence, it was a nightmare that would never come to an end for her.

The teenager had made her share of questionable decisions, including her clandestine relationship with another omega who happened to be the younger brother of her pack Alpha and the intended mate of another regional Alpha. Betty swore she had nothing to do with Ocean’s death and the way her voice strained when she spoke of discovering the news that he’d been shot made Jason believe her. Not that the waifish omega looked like she had it in her to kill anyone to begin with, but convincing her pack of that would be another matter.

As far as Jason had been able to gather, Anthony Dyson was not the kind of pack Alpha who cared for the truth when all he needed was a scapegoat. For all Jason knew, Anthony was the one who’d killed Ocean. In his youth, Jason would have been opposed to the idea of accepting that an Alpha could kill his own brother, and an omega at that, but the way Betty told it, her relationship with Ocean was more than slightly taboo. The fact that they were both omegas alone would have been enough to make it forbidden by North Canyon Pack law, but Ocean was expected to play an important role in stabilizing relations between North Canyon and a neighboring pack. From what Jason knew through the grapevine, his fiancé was not the kind of Alpha you wanted to disappoint.

Jason had been following every lead Betty had given him in an attempt to prove her innocence, but without concrete proof, there was little he could do without alerting her pack to her presence within theirs. She was far from the first omega to run from the law and end up in Silver Rapids. Some were escaping forced marriages while others sought freedom to live a better life with partners deemed unacceptable in their home packs, from other omegas to betas and Alphas who didn’t meet their families’ qualifications in one regard or another. As the pack Alphas, Jason and Kade had always reserved the right to turn anyone away for any reason, but they had yet to do so with anyone who genuinely wanted to start over. As far as he was concerned, the fact that his leniency put a bug up the Federation’s ass was just the icing on the cake.

The only problem was that Betty didn’t want to stay in Silver Rapids. She had a mother back home who loved her, and was willing to overlook her mistakes and help her raise her child, if she could only prove her innocence in the death of the other omega she’d loved so dearly, if recklessly.

Helping her had never really been a matter of choice. Not when Jason had seen the look of pity in his mate’s eyes. Kade was every bit as formidable of a warrior as Jason himself was, but he had a heart made of the fluff they used to stuff teddy bears. He’d taken one look into those watery brown eyes and adopted Betty into their pack.

Jason told himself that was the price he paid for putting off the discussion of starting a family of their own for so damn long. The fact that he and Kade were both Alphas and thus incapable of fathering a biological child of their own had been the primary reason Jason had split from his own pack ten years earlier to start a new life with his mate where the Federation law couldn’t touch them. For him, Kade was enough. He’d always been enough, but he knew his mate wanted more. He wanted the family he’d been denied in his early life, the kind of domestic bliss Jason had turned his back on in order to pursue his mate even if it meant losing his family and his birthright.

Kade insisted that he didn’t care if they went the surrogacy route or chose to adopt a child in need of a family. He just wanted to start that journey, one way or another, and Jason was running out of excuses.

The diner where Jason’s North Canyon point of contact had agreed to meet him was all but empty, and the beta was running twenty minutes late, so Jason didn’t have high hopes that he’d show up at all. He was already considering calling it a day and heading back home, even if it was only to catch his breath and enjoy an evening with his mate before going back out, when Kade’s picture popped up on the screen of his phone.

Jason smiled, his first in the weeks he’d been out on the road. Kade was his opposite in every way other than stature. Blue eyes to his brown, soft, unkempt locks compared to his short, no-nonsense blond. From the moment Kade had set foot in Jason’s home pack, seeking a place to belong, Jason had found his place in the other Alpha’s gaze. It didn’t matter that they were of the same class when their souls seemed to be cut from the same cloth. He’d always imagined he would end up imprinting on an omega, and as the only son of the Vice President of the Federation, it was an expectation everyone else shared as well. Despite never even thinking it was a possibility that he might imprint on another Alpha, there had been no doubt in Jason’s mind from the day he met Kade on. It became a matter of how and when rather than if.

“Hey, babe. I was just thinking I could use hearing your voice right about now,” he said, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.

Usually, the sound of Kade’s voice was enough to give him whatever boost he needed, but the tone of worry and strain as the other Alpha spoke filled him with a different kind of energy. “Jason, I think you need to come home.”

“What’s wrong?” Jason asked, already pulling out his wallet to pay for his coffee. As the Alpha of a pack full of outcasts, wanted men—and women—and people who’d generally just run out of options, he was used to dealing with crises, but Kade was as levelheaded as they came. Whatever the problem was, if it was bad enough to shake him, Jason knew he had reason to be worried. “Are you hurt?”

It could have been any number of things, but Jason wouldn’t put it past his mate to be fatally wounded and stay calm. If it wasn’t that, maybe Betty had gone into labor prematurely. God only knew the poor kid was under enough stress. Jason had had his trepidations about taking her in at first, not because there’d ever actually been another option, but because he knew the scrutiny it would bring down on his pack. North Canyon were the prize show dogs of the Federation, and that kind of attention was the last thing they needed. Nonetheless, he’d gotten attached and saw her as a proxy for the little sister he’d never had.

“No,” Kade said quickly. “I’m fine. No one’s hurt, I just…” He trailed off and Jason could hear his shallow breathing on the other end of the line. “It’s not really the kind of thing I can explain on the phone. Please, just come home when you can.”

“I’m leaving now,” he promised, already heading toward his motorcycle on the other end of the parking lot. “I should be home by sundown.”

“Alright.” There was a hitch in Kade’s voice. Jason had only ever heard him sound like this once before, when they’d both stood in Jason’s parents’ living room and announced that they were going to be together, one way or another. Even if it meant leaving everything else behind. “I love you.”

Jason stopped walking. If there was any doubt that something was wrong with his mate, it was gone now. It wasn’t that they never said the words, just rarely. They’d both always preferred to show it through all the little actions that presented the opportunity throughout the day. Kade bringing him his morning coffee, Jason making sure the other Alpha’s bike was always tuned up and polished because God only knew the thing would be rusted out and rotting if Kade was left to his own devices.

If he felt the need to say those three little words over the phone, that meant he felt the need to remind Jason. It meant he felt like something was about to put their love to the test. While Jason had a few hours to ponder what that might be on his way back, an omega was the very last on the list of possibilities.