“We cannot simply sit back and do nothing!” a voice roared through the room. “Our people were attacked and murdered. Aside from my mate and my eldest son, I lost everyone I brought with me to the gala!”

Several voices echoed the first one, all of them loud and angry. I could only sigh wearily and rub my forehead with my fingers.

Shit.

It had been a few weeks since the attack on Alphas and Omegas. Everyone had gotten back and buried their dead and mourned for them, but this side of the issue hadn't reached a satisfactory conclusion. Everyone was waiting for action to be taken, but nothing had been done yet.

Even though I was technically part of the meeting, along with some pack members as representation for my pack, I hadn't said a word yet. For one, I didn’t know what to say, and neither did I think I could make my voice heard with all the other voices clamoring for attention.

“We have heard your words, and we are not ignoring them,” a representative of the elders’ council spoke up, the rest of them staying silent. “We simply cannot make a move yet until the investigations are done. If we act to hastily, we might end up harming those that do not deserve it.”

“Why not just ask all Betas what the hell happened that night!” another voice shouted.

Just like that, the room descended into loud chaos. Shifters could get headaches, and I thought I was getting one from being around such noise.

The meeting had been going on for a long while. Since this morning, and by the time on my watch, the day was already bleeding into evening. The room was big, not the ordinary council’s audience room, this one almost as big as the gala event room, only darker. With dark walls and bare lighting, if everyone present wasn’t a shifter, we might have been blind once it hit dark out, which was only a couple hours away or so. There were even more people present than there had been at the gala, and the numbers then had gone up to over two hundred. Because there were so many people, only pack Alphas spoke, and their people backed them up.

My pack wasn’t the only one that hadn't said a thing, but we were one of the few.

“Alpha,” a pack member called from my side.

I leaned over to hear what he had to say, listening half-heartedly.

“We can only wait for the meeting to me over,” I murmured back. “What we want to say, everyone else has already said. We can only wait for the council’s verdict at this point.”

Everyone was so busy, even if they could hear me no matter how low I spoke, I knew no one would pay attention. With the way things were going, I had an idea what the council would decide at the end of the meeting, so sticking around this time was a total waste of time, but I knew my pack would be looked down on if I hadn't stayed for the duration of the meeting.

“We all know the Betas were responsible for this attack,” an Alpha said. “So why the hesitation?”

The representative explained, “The ones we need are the masterminds behind the attack. You all know that Betas make up the largest population of all shifters and we can't attack them all. The problem is that the Betas went outside of their packs. They banded together, and we can't really identify who was part of the attack and who wasn’t. If you all have some ideas on how to do this, I will listen to you, gladly.”

There was a short silence, and then the clamor rose up again.

I rubbed my head again, just barely listening to what was going on around me. I had a lot of things to worry about currently, this issue was only one of them. In any case, we could only move once the council gave permission. Those who moved without permission, would be punished by the council. The reason why all the packs listened to them was because they had quite a lot of power besides just being council members. Everyone looked up to them as an elder, even though half of them were at least younger than my late Alpha.

When is this going to end? I grumbled exasperatedly to myself.

For the past few weeks, I had been stressed out. Even after finding out my father and Alpha had died, I didn’t even have time to properly mourn because I had things to do as the successor of his position. I’d hardly had a good night’s sleep since I’d come home, and I had to put up with so much ceremony, like today’s meeting, all for the sake of image.

It was exhausting. And I desperately missed my father every day.

After nearly another hour, finally the room settled. No conclusion had been reached, like I’d guessed, but everyone was placated for now, and they started leaving. We couldn’t all go at the same time, though, and some packs stuck around. Mine happened to be one of those. I wasn’t the only new Alpha present, and pretty much all the packs that had new Alphas were the ones that had to stay longer. I couldn’t slip away.

It was another hour before we could leave, and I stepped out trying not to drag my feet. I could barely see the way forward as it was, my eyesight blurring from too much stress and not enough sleep.

“Max!”

The call of my name was unexpected, the voice a little familiar. I looked up, and my eyes widened, my jaw dropping.

“Evan?” I said, surprised.

What is he doing here?

He gave a small smile and sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, I came with my Alpha and some pack mates. I saw when your party arrived, but you didn’t really see me. I wanted to talk to you, but there wasn’t any time before the meeting…”

“What are you doing here?” I asked the question that was on my mind. “I mean, I don’t mind seeing you, but shouldn’t you be on your way out? Where’s the rest of your pack?”

I could feel the growing curiosity from the people in my group. These were people I’d grown up with, but they had worked with my father before, not me, so I felt a little awkward around them. I turned to them and forced a smile.

“You can all go ahead first, let everyone know I’ll be right behind you.”

They shot curious looks at the two of us, but didn’t say a word and walked away. I watched them leave, letting out a heavy sigh, then turned to Evan.

“Do you mind if we walked outside?” I asked. “There are too many people around here.”

He nodded quickly. “I don’t mind, let’s go!”

I arched an eyebrow. Rather than not minding, he seemed really eager to get me alone, and I wondered what it was he wanted to tell me.

“How are you here, by the way?” I asked, placing a hand on the small of his back as we walked. “I never even noticed…”

He glanced up at me. “You probably didn’t notice, since Alphas sat closer to the front and Omegas were pushed to the back, but I was in the meeting the whole time. There were a lot of people there, though, I didn’t even get to see you during the meeting. My pack was one of the first to leave, and I’ve been waiting for you since.”

Once again, I was surprised.

“But we were in there for hours, and I got delayed for over an hour,” I said fretfully. “Weren’t you tired? You could have just gone home.”

Evan shrugged his shoulders, pursing his lips.

“My Alpha didn’t receive any good news, so I know he’ll be in a bad mood. The last time he sent me over here and I went back without the answer he wanted, he got mad at the messenger and I suffered for a couple weeks, even though he was the one to send me in the first place, and there was nothing I could do about the council’s decision. I’ll go back home, eventually. I’m at least prepared this time.”

I frowned at his description of Whit. “When did you come here alone? And what exactly did he do to you? Did he treat you badly?”

He waved his hand at me. “Forget about that, it isn’t anything. There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, actually.”

Once we got outside, we walked around for a bit. There were shifters everywhere. It was growing dark, but quite a few weren’t ready to leave yet. The grounds were wide and we ended up in a garden, bordered by the forest. We stopped a distance away from the trees, finally alone.

“Why did you come looking for me?” I asked immediately. “Do you need something?”

He bit down on his lip and looked away, suddenly looking uneasy. I frowned, wondering what the problem was. I held him by the tops of his arms, rubbing soothingly with my thumbs. Evan’s tensed body relaxed, and he let out a sigh, then looked up at me.

“It’s…something important. I was worried about how to get the information to you, actually, so I’m kinda glad I came today.”

I frowned. “How serious is this? Your wound healed up, didn’t it?”

He didn’t get some weird infection, did he?

Evan gave a mirthless chuckle. “It healed up fine, there’s a bit of a scar now and it’s tender, but it’s not too terrible. And the news…you could say it’s pretty serious. No one else back home knows just yet, but…in a while I won’t be able to hide it.”

He looked up at me, and there was such despair in his eyes that my heart clenched. I waited anxiously for him to tell me what the problem was. Whatever it was, if I could help him, I knew I would do it unconditionally. I was feeling a bit stretched taut with pack matters, but for Evan, I wouldn’t care.

“It’s…about the, uh, last time. When we were together. Max…I’m pregnant.”

His words came out haltingly, and I was both confused and frustrated as he looked for ways to say what he wanted. When he finally said it, though, I went stiff, the words echoing in my ear.

“…Excuse me?”

He sighed, and the sound was shaky. “Max, I’m pregnant with our kid. No one knows yet, but I do. After some time, my scent is going to change, and then my stomach is going to start growing.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked faintly, feeling a light ringing in my ears.

He took one of my hands off his shoulders and brought it down to his stomach. I wondered what for, because he wasn’t even showing yet. But then I felt his hard stomach, and I realized. The last time I’d touched Evan, he felt soft. He circled my hand around his stomach, and I could feel the growing protrusion that was still hidden behind his clothes, and it was hard, not soft.

Evan is pregnant.

The words exploded in my mind, and I wanted to curse. I refrained, though, because I didn’t want to distress him. I’d been around pregnant Omegas before, and making him anxious would be a bad idea.

“How is this possible?” I breathed out. “I mean, can Omegas even get pregnant while they’re not in heat?”

That was the part I was having trouble with. For all the Omegas I’d known that got pregnant, it had only happened after they spent a heat with their Alpha. Evan had definitely not been in heat when we slept together. I knew what a heat felt and scented like. My reaction to him had caught me by surprise, but it wasn’t an Alpha’s attraction to the scent of an Omega in heat; it was definitely my attraction to Evan.

“I researched a little too,” he murmured, looking down to where our hands were still pressed over his stomach. “There are some cases, but I didn’t see anything conclusive. It’s possible I was close to my heat and that’s why it happened, I can't really know since my heats have been haywire ever since. Things are still tense as it is so no one has noticed I’m acting strange yet.”

“You haven’t told anyone?” I asked.

He shook his head and sniffled a little. When he looked up at me, his eyes looked glossy with tears, and I could feel his body start to tremble.

“I haven’t told anyone,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t know how to tell them anything. My parents were okay, but we lost two of our pack members during that attack. I barely ever leave home if not for work, so anyone would guess when the conception happened. I’m certain of the pregnancy, and I’ve made sure no one knows yet, not even Whit or my dad.”

I wondered how he’d managed to hide it. A pregnancy wouldn’t start showing for a few months, but wolves could tell really early on when they had a pregnant Omega nearby, especially by scent. That he had kept it quiet for several weeks was pretty amazing, but the circumstances were definitely special.

“Calm down, Evan,” I said soothingly, seeing some tears drip from his eyes. “I’m sorry you had to deal with this on your own. I wish I would have left you with my number or something. I’m definitely not going to abandon you with this, okay?”

He sniffled some more, and wiped at his eyes, looking up at me with complete trust.

“There is one thing, though…you absolutely need to tell your parents.”

He let out a sigh, looking more relaxed. He nodded his head, and leaned forward to press his forehead against my chest.

“Okay,” he breathed out. “If it’s just that much then I can do it.”

I wrapped my arms around him, hugging him close, and Evan made a soft sound in the back of his throat as he snuggled in my embrace. Where he couldn’t see, my expression crumpled.

Already, I was so fucking stressed I thought I would break down, but this…I couldn’t blame Evan for it, but I now felt like I would come apart at the seams with stress. I just had to keep that knowledge away from Evan, even though it would just add more on top of what I already had to deal with.