Six Years Ago

“He has no idea, does he?”

Zander looked up from his beer and smiled at his best friend, Alec. Alec and his twin, Dustin, had taken their soon-to-be-mated buddy out for one last night of debauchery, but since Zander was hopelessly in love, they’d ended up throwing darts and tossing back beers at the Watering Hole instead.

The trio was originally supposed to have four, but Greg had gone off on some last-minute mission. He and Zander had been hunting partners for years and friends longer than that. Everyone joked that their little group had two sets of twins, even though only Dustin and Alec were related. They’d all been inseparable since elementary school, and even though they had all started to go their separate ways, the group had returned to Sawyers to celebrate what was bound to be the happiest day of Zander’s life. Alec was home from college, and Dustin, whose idea of a day off was stopping for breakfast before putting the cattle out to pasture, had spent the day running errands for the impending ceremony.

Zander knew a bachelor party was a rite of passage, but even though he was spending the night with two of the three men he proudly called brother, his thoughts were with the omega across town. Darren had moved into the pack their junior year of high school, and he’d been part of the crew ever since then. At first, Greg and the others had complained, but after Darren had drank them all under the table and hustled their asses at pool, they’d decided he belonged alright. Ever since then, it had been the five of them.

The following night, it would just be Zander and Darren. Zander was the type of Alpha who’d never shied away from the idea of forever. Maybe it was just because Darren, the trash-talking, hard-drinking, fast-thinking omega who’d blown onto the plains like a whirlwind when Zander was only seventeen had been the first omega--the first person--Zander had ever loved. It had been an instant attraction and years of wondering what it might be like to imprint on someone were answered in a single moment.

Zander still remembered how he’d felt when Darren had walked into the store he’d been working at the summer before he started bounty hunting with Greg. The omega’s tousled black hair was always brown at the roots because he couldn’t be bothered with the minimal upkeep, and it had been longer then, so it fell into his heavily-lined eyes. In a town like Sawyers, even the omegas tended to keep to the standard uniform of flannel shirts and work jeans. Darren was a breath of fresh air in his heavy leather jacket with chains hanging from jeans that were practically painted on.

Zander had stood there behind the counter, staring like an idiot while Darren moved around the store. He wasn’t quite sure what to do when the omega slipped a lighter into his pocket and kept going, only bringing a candy bar and a newspaper to the front to pay. One look in those big blue eyes and Zander had forgotten all about the stolen lighter, and his ability to speak.

Of course, he’d paid for the lighter later, but he’d never told Darren. No reason for the omega to know he was a complete goody two shoes. He was already funny enough about imprinting. When Zander had finally recovered enough to speak and ring him out, he’d felt his time slipping away with each beep of the scanner.

“You new in town?” he’d asked.

“Yeah. My mom’s shacking up with some guy through Futurus, so,” he’d said, as if the rest was obvious, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“Right. Yeah, I heard a few Alphas sent for mates,” Zander had said, clearing his throat. The Futurus Initiative was still a small company, but the eager CEO had big plans and there had scarcely been a regional event without some representative pushing pamphlets and free swag. “I’m Zander.”

Darren had stared down at his offered hand for a minute before smirking and taking it. “Darren. Tell me you’re not into all that lame arranged mate bullshit.”

“No,” Zander had snorted, handing Darren his bag. “Of course not. Futurus is lame.”

“Right.” With a laugh, Darren had turned to leave. “Nice to meet you, Zander.”

“Wait,” he’d called, emboldened only by the threat of letting his future walk through that door.

“What?”

“There’s this party tonight. Since you’re new in town, I thought you might wanna go. With me.”

Darren had stopped and folded his arms. “Are you asking me out?”

“Yeah.” Zander had forgotten how to swallow. “Guess so.”

Over the years, Zander had grown accustomed to the fact that the omega never really laughed so much as he snorted derisively, but that first time still set his heart aflutter. “You’re a kid.”

“I’m seventeen,” he’d protested.

“Right. A kid.”

“Well, how old are you?”

“Nineteen. And before you give me that look, nineteen in omega years and nineteen in Alpha years are two different things.”

Zander had rolled his eyes. “I’m not asking you to marry me or anything. It’s just a party.” He could feel another rejection coming, so he’d added, “There’ll be beer.”

That had gotten Darren’s attention. Of course, he’d still have to find a way to sneak beer in without Dustin and Alec’s hawk-eyed mother noticing, but it was well worth it for the chance to buy himself more time alone with the omega he already couldn’t picture life without.

As much as he’d wanted to come out with it then in the front room of Bill’s convenience store, something had held him back. It was both the need to make sure that when he did confess that he’d imprinted, it happened in a more romantic setting, and the gut instinct that told him Darren wouldn’t be all that eager to accept it.

How right that impulse had been.

Four-and-a-half-years later, Zander knew Darren more than he knew himself, but he still hadn’t told the omega the truth.

Darren had shown up to that first date, to Zander’s surprise, and they’d spent the whole night talking until the sun came up over the plains. What Darren had told him during those long hours—hours that had been both the best of Zander’s life and the end of his adolescence—had only confirmed that not only was it not the right time to confess to imprinting, but that there might never be one.

Darren had confessed that his mother had gone to Futurus not out of desperate circumstances but in search of a cure for her grief. The mate who’d marked her, the one who’d deemed her worthy of carrying his child and supporting his dreams of starting his own company while she worked long hours waiting tables to make ends meet, had imprinted on an omega half her age and left her and Darren the same week. It didn’t matter that she bore his mark, that the separation was torment for her and for the teenage child he’d left without a second thought. They were old news, a crumbling stepping stone on his path to destined love and felicity.

Futurus had offered them a way out. An end to the physical and emotional pain that Darren had watched eat away at the once vibrant woman who’d given him life and years of unconditional love and support. They had scientists who specialized in isolating the traits that made Alphas and omegas unique through years of careful study and experimental treatments in cases not unlike Samantha’s. They could help release her from the mark in the same way she’d be released if her mate had died, but it required the mark of another. An Alpha whose only demands of her would be that she fulfill her biological imperative as an omega to give him an heir, but never her heart.

Zander had learned that Darren didn’t mind his stepfather. Christopher was a good man, if a bit stiff, and he’d never tried to make Darren like him. He was older, and after the death of his destined mate, he wasn’t interested in romance, but his barren mate had never given him the heir he needed to secure his company’s legacy. He was good to Samantha, which was what mattered, and she’d found some semblance of peace in her new life. It wasn’t a love match, but every day that passed, Darren woke a bit less afraid that he’d go into her room only to find an empty bottle of sleeping pills and the fulfillment of the nightmare that had plagued him throughout the worst of it. Her pain was lessened by the new bond she’d forged with her mate through platonic devotion and mutual respect, but it had become clear that night that Darren’s pain was still as raw and volatile as it had been the day his father left.

He hated the man, and for that, Zander couldn’t blame him. More than that, though, he hated the Spirits and shunned the destiny they passed down like a blessing to some and a sentence on others. He swore he’d never let an Alpha mark him, and if one ever imprinted on him, he’d tell him to fuck off on principle and take the next train to the other side of the world.

Zander’s heart had sunk as Darren confided in him, but what could he say? How could he assure a perfect stranger that what had happened to his mother was never going to happen to him? They would just be more empty, meaningless words from an Alpha.

Instead, Zander had chosen to prove his devotion with action and over those last four years, the stone wall around Darren’s heart had gradually worn down. It was still there, but sometimes he’d let it down long enough for Zander to come in. He still remained as embittered toward the idea of imprinting as he always had been, so when he’d looked Zander in the eye one night while they were tied and told him he wanted to wear his mating mark, the Alpha had assumed it was a joke at first. The stony resolve in Darren’s eyes told him a different story.

Six months later, they were on the cusp of forever. For a long time, keeping the secret of the true extent of their connection had eaten away at Zander, but he’d learned to live with the guilt. Telling Darren the truth would be for himself, not for the omega’s benefit. It would be a selfish act born of the need to possess his omega. Darren was already giving him so much by allowing him to place a mark, knowing full well what the cost would be if Zander ever betrayed him the way his father had betrayed his mother.

The rest could wait. Forever, if it had to. Zander told himself it was that, and not the fear that always lingered that even though he had needed Darren from the very start, the omega might one day disappear in the same whirlwind that had picked him up and dropped him into Zander’s life.

Sometimes Zander felt like he was in love with an electron. The only damn science class he’d ever paid attention to was physics, and only then because the teacher was hot, but one lecture in particular had always stuck in his mind. She’d said that electrons were always moving around the nucleus of an atom, always hovering around outside of things, wanting to be part of them but never taking the risk of getting too close. Their negative charge always kept everything else at a distance.

The funny thing about electrons was that observing them changed their behavior. You could never really know everything there was to know about one, because the moment you started watching it, it changed. Even when it was moving in its natural state, it was always going too fast to observe.

Zander had come to accept a long time ago that he could love Darren and spend his whole life with the omega without ever knowing all of him. It was the element of mystery that at once made the omega so alluring and the only thing that had ever scared the shit out of his Alpha. Some part of him had always feared that the moment he tried to pin Darren down would be the moment he lost him.

The next morning, when he’d woken up to find a letter on his nightstand and spent what was supposed to be the day of his mating ceremony learning that his destined mate and the hunting partner he’d once called brother had run off together, Zander’s worst nightmare came true.