“Look out below!” Someone shouted as I came out from Mill 1. I looked up just in time to see a massive pine trunk toppling off the top of the truck. If it hadn’t been for my shifter reflexes, the goddamn thing would have crushed me, but I leapt out of the way as the enormous tree crashed into the ground beside me.

“Shit!” Someone else shouted, and I heard the truck lurch to the side, its springs creaking under the weight of its load of fresh lumber ready to be milled. “You all right down there!?”

I looked up and saw the driver, white as a ghost, looking down at me from the cab of the truck. He hadn’t secured his load, and he knew it, so when he pulled up the slope to the mill, it shifted and sent that pine off the side. Anyone else would have been killed.

“Still in one piece,” I said, grabbing my dick through my jeans and gesturing his way. “No thanks to you.”

“Shit, I’m sorry, Bryce,” the guy said, and I recognized him as a guy named Charlie – or was it Mark?

I’d been working at the Woodcreek Mill in Woodcreek, New Hampshire, now for the last sixteen months, just trying to scrimp by, but so many men came and went at this place that I’d stopped bothering to learn all their names. Judging by this guy’s performance today, he’d be gone pretty soon.

“Don’t worry about me,” I laughed, turning away from the truck and heading back down the hill toward the cafeteria. “Worry about what Henry’s gonna do when he hears about this!”

I heard Charlie, or Mark, or whatever his name was, grumble as he fumbled out of the truck and shouted for men to help him with his load. As I made my way down the sawdust-covered slope of the main road, I brushed off my pants and stepped between two of the buildings, took an enormous breath and wondered what the fuck I was doing with my life.

Sixteen months at this place, milling pine day after day. It sounds romantic to a lot of people, but the truth is it’s a son of a bitch of a job. My hands were callused beyond all recognition, my clothes and lungs were constantly filled with sawdust and the hours were absolutely terrible.

But I needed the money, and having never gone to college or finished high school, there weren’t many prospects for me out there. I’d be damned if I was going to flip burgers with some punk-ass teenage boys talking about losing their virginity to Stephanie at the coffee shop.

People called me rebellious, and I guess that was true. I’d like to say I had a lack of respect for bullshit authority. Being an alpha, I was expected to find a mate, start my own pack, but it just hadn’t happened yet. I’d been in and out of a couple of packs, but disagreements with the leaders always lead to…well, let’s just say a “parting of ways.”

So I’d linked up with a pack who called themselves the Pine Boys, which I thought was pretty pussy sounding, but for once, I kept my opinions to myself. They had a place just outside of Woodcreek, an old motel they’d bought and fixed up. Fixed up to them meant a fresh coat of paint and some Ikea desks.

Our pack leader, Jeremiah, had his own separate building to himself that had been where the previous owner’s family had lived.

The back side of the motel, which he called The Booty Wing, was reserved for his omegas – which were basically nothing more than his breeding pack. He was up to six of them now. Boys, girls, Jeremiah didn’t care. All he wanted was descendants, pups to carry on his legacy as the biggest, baddest alpha the world had ever seen.

He treated them like shit, only paying them attention when they went into heat. Two were pregnant now, one boy and one girl, but instead of assigning some of his betas to watch over them, he left it to the other omegas to deal with. They had strict orders to never leave the compound, and if they chose to disobey, the repercussions were harsh.

Six months ago, a good boy named Stewart tried to run off with one of the pack’s motorcycles. Jeremiah caught him, chained him to a radiator with a bucket for a bathroom and a couple of hardboiled eggs each day for his meals. After that, Stewart barely opened his mouth again without looking at Jeremiah first.

It was a nice day at the mill – warm and sunny with a slight breeze. It was just about time for lunch and I sat there a while as the men made their way down the main road.

Routine.

It was routine, and I hated routine. Every day was the same: wake up, grab my jeans and work shirt, slide into my boots and grab a ride to work with one of the boys from the pack.

Then it was milling lumber all day, unloading trucks, running the logs through the planers and trying not to cough so hard my throat would start bleeding. It wouldn’t have been terrible if the pay was better or if I had a nice warm body waiting for me back at the “lodge,” but that just wasn’t the case.

With a heavy sigh, I stood up, kicked a pile of wood chips at my feet and joined the herd heading for their midday meal.

As I shook the pine dust off my shirt and pulled open the door to the cafeteria, I heard his voice call across the room to me.

“Ayyee, Brycey!” His voice had the rasp of the heavy smoker he was. “Heard you almost got yourself killed out there!”

The Pine Boys betas seated with him laughed heavily, stroking his ego as he looked at me through that shit-eating grin of his. I swallowed my pride, gave him a half smile and found a place in line.

Lunch here was taken out of your pay ahead of time, and was pretty cheap, but the quality reflected that. It was meatloaf, which I was pretty sure was from last week’s batch that they’d just frozen and reheated. I passed on the powdered mashed potatoes but took a scoop of corn.

There was a pub as well, independently operated if you didn’t want what the mill provided you, but they charged gourmet prices for fast food quality meals.

Fuck that.

I turned back to the hall and made my way over to the Pine Boys’ table. Sitting anywhere else would have been a direct insult to Jeremiah, and I wasn’t up for an argument today.

“Almost got your dick squished, eh?” Darren, one of Jeremiah’s betas grinned, his mouth full of mashed potatoes.

“Takes more than a tree trunk to crush this dick,” I told him with an arrogant wink.

“You talk a big game,” he replied. “But I think that’s all it is – talk.”

“Yeah, well, too bad you’ll never find out,” I told him. I could see that one needled him a bit. Darren had a hard-on for me that was obvious to everyone, but I wouldn’t fuck him with Jeremiah’s dick. The guy’d been through half the dudes at the mill, including humans, and who the fuck knew what kind of creatures he had crawling around in that smooth baby’s bottom of an ass he had.

“Brycey,” Jeremiah called from the head of the table. “Gonna need you tonight.”

“What’s up?” I asked, already sure that whatever was coming was going to be bad.

“Need the Booty Wing painted,” he told me. “Some of the boys need help unloading the paint.”

It was a job for betas, not alphas, and Jeremiah knew that. But he also knew how much I hated being told what to do, so he was needling me.

I didn’t have the money to strike out on my own. Half our pay went to the pack fund, which of course was run by Jeremiah. I was stuck.

“Uh huh,” I said into my plate as I stuffed a mouthful of shitty meatloaf into my mouth. “Whatever you say, boss.”

I could practically hear him grinning as he asserted his dominance. The son of a bitch wasn’t even as big as me! He was pretty for an alpha, with a perfect head of blond hair that he always had slicked back on his head, looking more like a handsome beta than a rugged pack leader.

I needed a way out of here.

I needed a mate, a new job and a new place to hang my hat.

And then, as if fate was smiling down on me, I heard the cafeteria door open behind me, and the scent that hit my nostrils shot through me like a shock to the heart.

I turned and saw the most beautiful omega I’d ever laid eyes on walk into the room.

That’s him…