Adam Vinick turned off the rental car and just sat for a moment, looking at the house before him. It was an ordinary house, on an ordinary suburban street, shrouded in the semi-dark of a fall evening.

Adam thought it was probably ordinary, anyway. He only knew places like this from television and the occasional obligatory social event. And now here he was for the most humiliating obligatory socializing of all: asking someone Adam had barely been civil to in medical school to save his first professional research project, his life’s work.

Beau Jeffries had been the only other alpha werewolf in their graduating class, and he was a few years older than Adam. Beau had had to work his way through his undergraduate schooling, still picking up occasional shifts as an EMT even when they were in med school. Adam had never paid Beau much attention, partly because Adam was busy with a course load that might have killed a human, finishing his MD/PhD as quickly as possible so he could get a research position.

Partly because Beau was an alpha, and Adam had never met an alpha he liked or trusted.

Beau wasn’t an especially bad guy, as far as Adam knew. He’d never been interested in establishing his dominance over anyone, or seemed threatened by Adam or inclined to threaten him. For an alpha, Beau was probably all right.

On the other hand, Beau had barely gotten out of med school before he was hastily marrying an omega through some matching agency, as if Minnesota were some wild frontier and he required a mail-order bride. As if his first priority after graduation was to build himself a traditional mini-pack.

But Beau had also called Adam for help when he was concerned for his omega husband—and he’d offered to help Adam in return. Beau had invited Adam out here to save his project.

Adam pressed his hands to his closed eyes. I won’t let you down, Dad. I’m going to pull this off. Somehow. And I won’t let anyone else get hurt in the process.

Starting, in fact, with Beau’s husband, Roland Lea. If Adam wasn’t sure Beau was a good guy—and he couldn’t entirely believe that of any alpha—the fastest way to find out for sure was to meet Roland and see for himself. Adam sighed and got out of the car, and as soon as he did he caught Beau’s scent.

He looked up and saw that Beau had come out onto the porch. He would have heard Adam pull up, of course. He would know how long Adam had already hesitated.

Beau waved, redundantly, and called out, “Need a hand with anything?”

“No,” Adam said, and it came out sharply, making his unease too obvious. Stiffly, he added, “Thank you.”

Beau smiled a little, shaking his head. “Come on in, then. Rory won’t be happy till he’s seen you eat something.”

Adam ducked down to retrieve his overnight bag from the backseat of the rental car as the image Beau’s words evoked bloomed in his mind’s eye: Beau relaxing into the privileged comfort of domesticity with an omega trapped in a traditional role. They might be living among humans, but that didn’t mean Roland was truly free. Beau had made ties with some local pack, after all, and persuaded the omega midwives there to teach him; they might be pressuring Beau’s spouse to conform to their standards.

Adam remembered to calm his heartbeat and conjure up something like a smile as he slammed the car door and walked over to join Beau. He was put off-balance, literally and figuratively, when Beau tugged him into a one-armed half-hug, bumping chests and shoulders together.

“It’s good to have you here,” Beau said, with every sound and sign of truth. “I really hope we can be better friends than we were in school.”

Beau had said that, when Adam gave in to desperation and called him for help. Everybody needs people, right? And we’re friends. Kind of pack.

Adam would accept that they’d been kind of pack, in the sense of people you’re stuck with because you can’t escape, but he really didn’t think they’d ever been friends. He didn’t know why they should start now.

He also knew that if he wanted his project to survive, he was going to have to pretend. He’d been good at it once, or good enough to survive, anyway. He could learn that again, no matter how much it felt like finally caving in eight years after he escaped.

“Thanks for having me,” Adam offered. It was easier not to lie outright, and he did owe some gratitude for Beau’s invitation.

“Yeah, of course. We’ve got plenty of room—and I’m keeping you standing on the porch when you’ve been traveling all day. Come on in.”

Beau turned away, preceding Adam through the door and into the brightly lit home, warm and full of cooking smells. It was like stepping into a TV screen showing some fantasy of picture-perfect omega homemaking.

Roland stepped into view a second after Adam pulled the door shut behind him, and it was almost a relief to see him wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead of... heels, an apron, and pearls, or whatever the male equivalent was. He was wearing a colorful lightweight scarf draped around his neck—hiding a bonding bite? Or something worse?

There was tension in Roland’s stance, and low-grade fear in his scent. Adam forced himself to pretend not to notice. He couldn’t be obvious, not yet, with Beau standing there cheerfully introducing them like he saw nothing wrong here.

“Rory, this is Adam. Adam, my husband Roland, the reason I haven’t completely failed out of my residency yet.”

Roland smiled, but wouldn’t meet Adam’s eyes except in quick glances. “No yet about it, honey, you’re finishing. Adam, have you had dinner? We already ate, but I can heat something up, or we were just about to have dessert—strawberry pie?”

“Pie would be great,” Adam agreed, studying Roland intently, trying to diagnose his nervousness.

Roland backed away into the kitchen, and Beau said, “Come on, let’s sit. I told Rory a little about your project, but I’m sure you want to explain it yourself if he’s going to participate.”

Roland had his back turned, cutting slices of pie and plating them, but Adam could feel the intensity of his attention.

“You don’t have to, Roland,” Adam said, pitching his voice for doctorly seriousness without edging into alpha command. “If you’re uncomfortable at all, it’s not necessary.”

Beau was giving him an odd look—Beau knew how desperate Adam was for participants in the study—but that didn’t matter. Adam wasn’t going to accept participants who were being pressured to participate by their alphas, period.

Roland looked over his shoulder, once again meeting Adam’s eyes for just a split second before he ducked his head again. “No, I don’t mind. Beau said it’s just a DNA sample and some questionnaires?”

“At this point, just the DNA sample and a very basic survey,” Adam allowed. “And the sample is just a cheek swab. Then, if you agree to be contacted for further stages of the study, we’ll be doing more detailed questionnaires and so on. The idea is just to get a baseline of omega genetics and biology—we know almost nothing, really.”

Roland came to the table balancing three plates and a bowl of freshly-whipped cream, and distributed them before he sat down, glancing to Beau and then Adam without making any move to taste his own portion. Beau took a heaping spoonful of the whipped cream and pushed the bowl toward Adam.

“This looks very good,” Adam said, because Beau hadn’t said anything and someone should pay attention to Roland’s efforts.

“It’s easier than it looks,” Roland said quietly. Adam pushed the whipped cream toward him, and Roland took only a scant spoonful, glancing toward Beau again and making no move to taste his dessert. Beau, meanwhile, had crammed his mouth full and made a cheerful encouraging noise as he chewed.

Roland blushed and dropped his gaze, prodding the slice of pie with his fork as he said, “You, um... I guess when you say ‘we’ know nothing, you mean... doctors?”

“The medical and scientific community, yes,” Adam said. “Midwives presumably have a great deal of traditional and practical knowledge, but that information is all kept within the pack structure and hidden from outsiders. And, obviously, it’s not based on anything we can validate scientifically—no proper studies, and so forth.”

Roland darted a glance at him, then over to Beau again, and nodded slightly, finally taking a morsel of pie.

Adam remembered to actually take his own first bite, and he was startled for a moment at how... almost familiar it tasted. How... right, he supposed. This had been made by a werewolf who knew how to cook for werewolves, with none of the nagging irritation of the chemicals and shortcuts that crept into humans’ food.

“This is really good,” Adam said as soon as he’d swallowed the first bite, but Roland didn’t look up at all at that, just mumbled something that was unintelligible even to werewolf hearing.

“Stop, you’ll make him blush,” Beau said, with an edge of seriousness under the cheer. “So you’re looking to systematize omega medicine—just because it’s under-studied? It’s not like werewolves of any aspect get a lot of formal medical care.”

“The ultimate goal is twofold,” Adam said, falling into a practiced explanation. “One is simply to demystify omegas, who are the most misunderstood population of werewolves when it comes to human perception, since there are no human omegas. More information, good, solid scientific information, can only help to normalize omegas, and thus all werewolves, for humans.”

Beau took another bite of pie and nodded, looking faintly impatient. Beau, of course, had gotten into medicine because he was interested in saving individual lives, directly. He wouldn’t understand the role of medical research in the kind of systematic change Adam was trying to spark.

“The other goal is to—in the long run, when trust has been established and sufficient baseline understanding of the biology involved has developed—to broaden the availability, and improve the quality, of the care omegas specifically do need. To make obstetrical and gynecological care available outside of the pack structure. Suppressants—”

Roland’s fork clicked sharply against his plate, and he looked up for a second right at Adam. Then he dropped his gaze, his hand going to the scarf around his throat. Beau leaned toward him, putting a heavy hand on his slim shoulder.

Adam gritted his teeth to keep from doing or saying anything stupid.

“Rory’s, uh, had some experience with suppressants,” Beau said, looking toward Adam but still squeezing Rory’s shoulder. “Not... good experience. Not great experience with midwives, either, before we moved here.”

Right. Beau had told him that when he called Adam for help—Roland had been on suppressants too long and they’d made him ill. Obviously, from the tone of Beau’s voice, he considered Roland’s use of suppressants to be firmly in the past—but if Roland knew there was some hope for safe suppressants, would he be able to contemplate other options for himself?

“I want to formulate something that works on a safer model, eventually,” Adam said, speaking to the top of Roland’s bowed head. “Something like what humans who have menstrual cycles use—hormonal, disrupting the cycle that way. But that’s going to require gaining some understanding of how the omega reproductive cycle works, and how exactly the moon’s influence ties in. Still, I’m confident we’ll have something ready to at least test within a few years, as long as we can get this survey off the ground as a starting point.”

Beau cleared his throat pointedly, leaning forward to put himself in Adam’s line of sight and still keeping his grip on Roland. Adam’s hand closed into a fist under the table and he forced it open.

“So what’s the hitch with the survey?” Beau asked, even though Adam had already told him this part; it was what had prompted Beau to invite him here. “What’s slowing you down?”

Adam glared directly at Beau. “Well, as you know, most omegas live either in closed pack communities or with their alpha mates. Advertisements to recruit participants normally go to colleges and universities within a hundred miles of our offices in Maryland, but in the last few months that’s turned up exactly nine omega respondents, and seven of them were faculty spouses.”

Beau raised his eyebrows. “I know that’s not getting you far as a statistical sample, but...”

“The statistical sample is three, so far,” Adam corrected sharply. “I wasn’t able to accept most of them into the survey. Ethical concerns are paramount to me, and there are some inherent, and hopefully obvious, difficulties with being sure of the informed and free consent of participants who are recruited by their alphas on my behalf.”

Oh, hell. That had been too direct, but Beau still had his hand on Roland’s shoulder and Roland still smelled like fear and misery, and now they were both giving him narrow looks. Adam wanted to bite his own tongue off for being so incautious, when it was Roland who would suffer for his lack of tact.

“Adam,” Roland said slowly, his voice shaking a little, “I think I know what your actual problem recruiting omegas is, if this is your approach.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said, looking back and forth between Roland and Beau, without the first idea of where to start defusing this situation or controlling the damage.

Beau shook his head, letting out a tense little huff that might have been a laugh. “If it’s any consolation, baby, he’s like this all the time. Very egalitarian, really.”

Adam wanted to snarl, but Roland turned his stony look on Beau, fearlessly quelling. Beau quickly raised his hands in surrender and sat back, yielding the floor to Roland.

That... began to look like Adam had miscalculated earlier in this process than he’d thought.

“Adam,” Roland said grimly. “Do you just... assume that every omega is helpless to resist their alpha’s influence? To challenge their authority? You think omegas can’t make free choices because alphas just run roughshod over them?”

Adam gritted his teeth hard and did not think of his dad crying, his father shouting. “I realize that there are enlightened alphas—”

Roland made a frustrated noise and jerked the scarf away from his throat, revealing a healed bonding bite—and the uglier scars of silver burns, faded but recognizable. “The alpha I was with before Beau kept me collared, Adam. I took suppressants continuously for a year after I left him—after I left him, not got rescued from him by some other alpha sticking his moon-fucking nose in—because I was that scared of losing control by going into heat. And I almost died of it, because you are right about exactly one thing: suppressants are poison. That’s what Beau rescued me from. Okay? Clear?”

Adam sat back in his seat and nodded, knowing very well that Roland had not actually invited him to speak.

“Because of my history,” Roland went on, biting words off with furious precision, “I get nervous and shy around strange alphas and it takes most of my concentration to stay calm and socialize normally. Especially if the strange alpha seems angry and aggressive, because there’s no surer way for an omega to get hurt than to be in range when an alpha is angry and has no one else to take it out on.”

Adam spoke before he thought, because if he let himself think, if he let a silence fall, then he would hear nothing but sobs being unsuccessfully muffled against the top of his own head as his dad clutched him for comfort.

“I know,” he snapped, and then, more softly, as Roland scowled at him. “I... remember that. From being an omega’s only child.”

There was an abrupt drop in the level of tension in the room, and Adam looked away sharply, hating it. He definitely was not going to dredge this up with every potential survey participant until he reached a meaningful n value, but... well. He owed it to Roland.

“My dad couldn’t leave,” Adam said, forcing the words out. They sounded as angry as Roland’s had, even though Roland was the furthest thing from a suitable target for his anger. “Not with me to think of. A lone omega with a child, before the Revelation, without access to suppressants...”

“He is the one who inspired you, then,” Beau said, as if that answered some suspicion Beau had been harboring for a long time, which was strange. Adam would have sworn he’d never mentioned his dad to Beau at all.

Beau went on hastily, “My adviser mentioned the papers he wrote—Daryl Vinick, right?—about werewolf transformation and omega anatomy. They were submitted to a few journals and circulated informally, but it was right at the start of the Revelation. No one in the medical community was taking our existence seriously yet, and he was an independent scholar. No institutional backing, so...”

Adam stared at Beau, his mind gone white with shock and the deliberate effort not to think about his dad’s home lab, the stacks of paper, the notebooks filled with his dad’s handwriting, which Adam had faithfully imitated.

The smell of the flames, after, and his father silhouetted by that flickering light as he fed in fistfuls of paper.

He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times and then said, “Do you—do you have them? I...” Adam swallowed hard. “He... died. When I was ten. I don’t have any of his work, his papers. Nothing.”

Beau’s eyes went wide.

Adam gritted his teeth against the awful feeling of exposure, the knowledge that they were watching him now with something like pity. He’d preferred the part where it seemed like they were about to kick him out of the house.

“I don’t,” Beau said after a pause. “They weren’t relevant to my studies, and I don’t know if Dr. Ross has copies himself, but I’m sure he can track them down. Probably just electronic copies, but I’m sure I can get them for you.”

Adam swallowed and gave a stiff little nod. He couldn’t quite force out a thank you, yet. Not to an alpha. Not right now.

Beau looked to Roland, and though Adam didn’t look directly at either of them he thought it was one of those silently-communicating looks, a whole conversation in microexpressions and posture. Adam closed his eyes, resisting the urge to look, to torture himself with how wrong he’d gotten this. Roland was all right; Roland didn’t need Adam blundering in and trying to help.

This was why Adam tried to stick with helping on the systemic level. When it came to individual people, he wasn’t much more use now than he’d been as a ten-year-old. He hadn’t been any help to anyone then.

Beau got up and walked out, giving Adam’s shoulder a rough pat in passing. That left Adam at the table with Roland, and after a moment, Adam dared to look at the omega. His scarf was still out of place, showing his throat, but his posture had gone soft, and the look on his face as he studied Adam was thoughtful.

“I’m... really sorry,” Adam offered stiffly.

Roland smiled a little and shook his head. “Eat your pie, Adam. And... I think you’d best let me lead, when we go to the pack lands tomorrow.”

Adam hadn’t felt as nervous about defending his dissertation as he felt on the way to the Niemi pack lands. He was driving, and Rory—as he’d told Adam to call him over a breakfast that now felt like concrete in Adam’s stomach—was navigating from the passenger seat.

Adam rubbed his thumb over the knot of his tie. He shouldn’t have worn one. It was a human thing; it would only make it more obvious than it already was that he didn’t belong. But he’d wanted to show respect and seriousness, and that included dressing formally. Didn’t it? There were probably other things he’d know to do if he’d grown up really within a pack and not just sort of... down the street from it.

He was going to fuck this up in the first minute. He was going to get rejected by a whole pack’s omegas instead of just one on one. He—

“So, Beau kind of told me, but I didn’t really catch all the science,” Rory said. “He said you were interested in me and my brother and my dad, as a case study? I assume that’s not just because we’d double the size of your survey.”

Adam could almost feel his brain jumping tracks to focus on the genuinely interesting research question of the Lea family. “Yes. Well, you’re the only case I know of where an omega werewolf doesn’t have an omega werewolf parent, and if there’s a Y chromosome gene complex that can be passed through humans, that would explain you and also explain omegas who manifest as such after they’re bitten.”

Rory made an interested and encouraging noise, but did not look particularly enlightened by that explanation. Right. That had probably not actually been an explanation, especially for a layperson.

“So, uh... you—can you tell me what you know about the X and Y chromosomes? So I know how much to explain.”

“Uh,” Rory bit his lip, looking and smelling nervous as he considered. Adam tried to remember what Beau had told him about how much education Rory had gotten. Not much, he thought. Shit, if he offended Rory he wasn’t even going to get through the door with the Niemis, and he hadn’t even meant to be insulting.

But after a moment Rory said slowly, “They... they’re called sex chromosomes, right? Because—gender is,” Rory waved at his head. “What you know about yourself and who you are, but—sex, which reproductive organs you have, that’s determined by the X and Y chromosomes. XX is like my mom, XY is like my dad.”

“Right,” Adam said. Rory’s mom was a beta female, looking normal enough to humans that she had given birth in a hospital without raising any suspicions; Rory’s father was human and had presumably done the normal sort of inseminating process. “So... which chromosomes do you have? You’re an omega, so you could bear a child like your mom, but your parents assumed you were male at birth, just... by the looks of you.”

Rory frowned. “I... Oh. So omegas have different chromosomes?”

Adam nodded. “Well, I think you probably have the same Y chromosome your dad has—that’s the only way you get a Y chromosome, is by inheriting it from your parent, and your mom is XX. But your dad is human, and only werewolves can be omegas, so your dad isn’t one even if he has the genes. If I’m right, there will be some genes that show up in you and your dad and your brother, on the Y chromosome, that match up with all the other omegas we survey, but not any werewolves who aren’t omegas.”

“But,” Rory was still frowning. “So... anything to do with—” Rory waved vaguely at his lap, “It can only be on those chromosomes? Because there are... twenty-three, right? With all different stuff on all of them?”

“Mm,” Adam said. “Well, the thing about the omega trait is that it either shows up or it doesn’t. The stuff that makes an alpha an alpha, the physical traits—pheromones, stature, uh—” Adam cleared his throat, “knots. They can show up in people who aren’t alphas, or male, and people can have one or two traits but not others. So those must be different genes, and they’re probably scattered across different chromosomes, so an alpha’s children can inherit some but not others.”

Rory nodded slowly. “Why...”

“Well,” Adam said. “The leading theory is that alpha traits all evolved to make the people who had them more satisfying mates—for omegas, particularly.”

Rory let out a startled little laugh. “So alphas only exist to please omegas?”

Adam smiled a little. “Obviously a lesson too many alphas have forgotten.”

Rory snorted. “Okay, so—so alphas have a bunch of different genes because they show up differently. But omegas... we all have—” Rory waved at his belly again, “the same setup, basically, and we all go through heat, so it has to be one gene?”

Adam nodded. “I think so. In humans, anyone who doesn’t present exactly the standard XX or XY anatomy is called intersex—but there are any number of different ways that manifests, from all different causes. By human standards, omegas are intersex too, but as far as we can tell, omegas all have roughly the same anatomy, which must mean one gene, one cause. And because it also never crosses over with XX people—as far as I know, anyone with a vulva has a menstrual cycle, not a heat cycle—it has to be on the one chromosome they can’t inherit, by definition. Of course, we might find out it’s more complicated than that, but—”

“That’s why you have to do the study,” Rory said, pointing out the turn Adam needed to make.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “If we do the study, then we’ll know how families like yours happen, genetically speaking, and omegas will be able to understand that much more about how their own bodies—”

A house appeared, and Rory pointed to a parking space in front of it. They’d arrived, and Adam had spent the last ten minutes thinking about his study and what it could accomplish instead of worrying about meeting the midwives.

He looked over at Rory. “Did you just ask to distract me?”

Rory winked. “No, really, I wanted to know. You just... stay here, I’m going to go over some things with the Aunties. Prepare the ground. Okay?”

Adam smiled grimly. “Warn them about me, you mean?”

“I’m sure you’ll try to be on your best behavior,” Rory said, patting him briskly on one arm. “Shouldn’t take long, anyway. You can walk over to the lake if you want to stretch your legs, it’s just down that way. I’ll call for you if you’re not in sight when they’re ready to let you in the door.”

Adam knew when he was being dismissed, and perhaps not particularly trusted not to eavesdrop. More to the point, Rory probably didn’t trust Adam not to say something disastrous about what he heard while eavesdropping; Rory probably wasn’t even wrong about that. Adam got out of the car when Rory did and headed down the path Rory had indicated.

He tried to focus on what he was here for. He was recruiting participants for his study; having no pack connections himself, he was employing a friend’s connection to make contact with a group of omegas. The midwives might agree to participate themselves, but could also potentially recruit dozens of other omegas through the Niemi pack. That was what he wanted—what he needed. Even twenty or thirty might be enough to convince his supervisor to let the study continue, at least for a while.

It didn’t matter that Rory was in there right now pitching Adam’s project for him with only a layperson’s understanding, and probably telling them more about Adam and his dad than he wanted strangers to know. If they were willing to listen at all, they had to be different from the midwives of his father’s pack, who had done nothing to help his dad until it was too late.

It had been more than a decade, though. It must have been closer to thirty years ago when his dad first met those midwives. A lot had changed since then, with the Revelation. Beau had told Adam a little of his own bad experience with the pack where he’d been born, and how differently the Niemis looked at things.

But Beau wanted to help humans, using a werewolf’s abilities. Adam wanted to break the very power of the midwives by dragging the care of omegas into the daylight, systematizing and medicalizing it. He had to think they were going to feel a little differently about him.

It occurred to him suddenly to wonder if the midwives had heard of him, or of his dad. Neither of them had taken the name of his father’s pack, but he had no idea what connections the Niemis might have with that pack, or what they might have heard of his dad from disapproving midwives. He did know the midwives talked to each other; they organized the exchanges between packs, where teenagers swapped around to meet packs they hadn’t been raised in—and potential romantic partners they weren’t too closely related to.

Adam had declined to be exchanged, when he arrived at that age, but the midwives of his father’s pack hadn’t seemed particularly interested in sending him to another pack to represent them, either. He’d been tempted to lobby for it, then, to try to spread the ideas they probably didn’t want him contaminating other werewolves with. But in the end, he’d preferred to stay where he was, powering through every AP class he could fit into his junior year class schedule, his eyes already on escaping to college and then med school.

And that escape had brought him right back here, which could have been some kind of cosmic message, if Adam believed in that sort of thing. Instead, it was just frustrating.

He continued down the path with his hands jammed into his pockets, only dimly noticing the brilliant fall colors of the trees around him. He could hear the lapping of water ahead, which, along with the rustling of leaves, provided enough white noise that he couldn’t hear anything of the rest of the pack.

Except, he realized as he came around a curve to see the glittering expanse of a small lake ahead of him, he could hear someone nearby.

He could hear someone crying.

He froze for a moment, automatically trying to locate the sound even though he wasn’t at all sure he should be doing anything about it. He wasn’t good at dealing with people who were upset; judging by last night’s effort as well as a lifetime’s experience, he was only likely to make it worse.

At least he knew this person wasn’t crying because of him; they were upwind and out of sight.

Or... was it a test of some kind? Rory had sent him down this path, after all. Did the midwives want to see Adam show compassion or some such thing? Prove himself somehow before they would consider helping him?

Adam gritted his teeth and took a few more steps forward, reminding himself to behave like the good guy in a fairy tale, and then he caught a whiff of werewolf scent from the same direction as the quiet weeping.

It smelled of omega and terror. Utter, absolute fear. It couldn’t possibly be feigned.

Adam still struggled for a moment with his instincts—don’t be a fucking alpha, don’t act like you can’t help yourself at the first whiff of pheromones, for fuck’s sake—but the best he could do was to walk in long, hurried strides instead of breaking into a run. He kept his hands jammed in his pockets, clenched into fists as they were, as he strode halfway around the little lake, following scent and sound.

He stopped short several yards away when he spotted the source.

The omega, who he thought was probably close to his own age, had dark curly hair in a short mop. They were wrapped in a blanket, leaning half upright against the broad trunk of an enormous tree. Their bare feet had slipped out and were turning red with cold.

Their face was wet with tears, but their eyes were closed, their whole body limp with sleep.

Adam could smell them more clearly, more than just fear and omega, and his whole body tensed with the urge to comfort and protect. It felt like fighting a blizzard wind as he struggled to stand still, to do anything but rush to the omega’s side and hold them.

Adam gritted his teeth, covering his mouth and nose with one hand to muffle the scent. He would not be this kind of alpha; he would not be ruled by these barbaric instincts. He’d come upon someone taking a nap outside and having a nightmare. The omega was obviously perfectly safe, if genuinely distressed.

The soft crying—as if they were trying to be quiet and failing—and the scent of intense fear didn’t let up, and neither did the overpowering compulsion to do something.

After a moment Adam began to actually hurt with the effort of standing still. It was cruel, wasn’t it? He was letting someone suffer, just to deny his own instincts. He could wake the omega and still not—not—

Adam walked closer, one careful step at a time. The omega was clutching something under the blanket, he saw. A small pillow, or maybe even a stuffed toy. Clearly it was no comfort.

Adam knew that he, a stranger and an alpha, wouldn’t be any more comfort to a vulnerable, frightened omega, but he couldn’t ignore the scent of fear and the pull of his own instincts. He knew it was the wrong choice, one of a dozen wrong choices—even if this was a test, he wasn’t at all sure what the right choice could be—but he crouched down and reached out to the omega, tapping his fingertips against one blanket-covered arm.

The omega’s eyes flashed open. They were a startlingly vivid blue, the pupils contracted tight—seeing nothing, Adam was sure. The omega didn’t move to get away from him, didn’t show any real sign of awareness.

With those wide, unseeing eyes fixed on Adam, the omega whispered, “Run.”