Omega Lost (The Rogue Pack Book 7) Read online

  Omega Lost

  Copyright 2018 Samantha Cayto

  Published by Samantha Cayto

  Cover Art by Syneca Featherstone

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Bard sighted his quarry rounding the back of the longhouse. Even in the waning light of the day, it was easy to do using his human eyes. Loki’s long tail of braided white hair hugged the corner of the building, a shining beacon to its owner. Bard’s own hair still hung loose about his shoulders, testament to how quickly he’d dressed after his turn on the perimeter had ended. He always returned to the compound with a heightened sense of concern, not knowing what Loki had been up to in his absence. The bratty omega caused an endless amount of work. He couldn’t be trusted to go any amount of time without causing trouble. Keeping track of the boy exhausted him.

  It also excited him.

  Bard was ashamed to think it, let alone admit it. But there it was anyway—a perverse pleasure in seeking out Loki’s latest transgression and meting out punishment for it. There was something about the omega, something irresistible, that Bard had always been helpless to ignore. The way Loki’s bow-shaped mouth turned down and his disturbingly sultry eyes flashed in anger any time he was thwarted made the boy more alluring to Bard, not less. It had always been so, even when Loki had been far too young for Bard to think anything of the kind. Bard had spent years turning away from the temptation, reminding himself that Loki was still only a pup, and as one of the alpha’s offspring, beyond Bard’s reach.

  Everything had changed, and become more difficult, not less, once they’d run from their birth pack. He’d quashed his feelings and attraction while they’d been feral. The constant fight for survival had done a good job of displacing all stray thoughts of what it might mean to possess such an omega. Now Destin, Loki’s brother, had ensured they were settled once more. The running was over. And, with Destin and their new alpha officially designating Bard as Loki’s keeper, it was impossible to tamp down his attraction to the boy. Nor, did anyone expect him to.

  Except for Loki, of course. He made his disapproval of Bard and his authority more than plain every single, damn day. This one was no exception. The evening meal was due for preparation, so Loki should be in the longhouse helping out. The Rogue Pack was growing fast in a crowded space with new pups adding to the workload. Everyone needed to pull their own weight. Bard had ordered Loki to lend whatever hand the alpha mate required for the domestic chores. The boy had no business lurking alone outside instead. He was up to no good, that much was certain.

  As Bard strode in the boy’s wake, he found him sitting on a large rock in the back. He held a hand pie in one hand. He jerked his head up at Bard’s approach, but the look on his face told Bard that Loki wasn’t surprised to see him coming. The pie hovered around the omega’s pretty face while he watched Bard with a narrow gaze.

  Bard made his own expression go stern. “What are you doing with that?” The scent of the still-warm pie told Bard that it was made from the dried apples Joey had preserved from the previous fall. “You know you’re already being punished. You’re not supposed to have dessert for the rest of the week.” He held out his hand as he neared. “Give it to me.”

  In response to the reprimand and the order, Loki pressed the treat closer to his mouth. He opened his pretty lips and took a big bite out of the pie. He kept his gaze firmly on Bard while he chewed his mouthful with slow deliberation. When he went to eat more, Bard raced to close the gap. He reached out to snatch the pastry away. The omega proved to be too nimble, stuffing the remainder into his mouth. His cheeks bulged with his effort to chew and swallow without choking.

  Pulling up short, Bard folded his arms and watched with a grimace. The infuriating omega was doubling down on his misbehavior. Bard was going to have dream up ever increasing punishments.

  “Bit off more than you can chew, didn’t you, brat? Just to thwart me.” He nodded at the boy. “Well, mind that you don’t choke or I’ll have to give your back a whack.”

  “Wouldn’t you like that?” Loki sneered. He spewed bits of crust as he spoke. “You’ve been dying to get your hands on me for years now.”

  Bard averted his eyes from the disgusting sight of masticated food and the scalding condemnation that he couldn’t deny with any vehemence. He had been dying to get his hands on the boy, after all, if not for years, at least in the last few months. Loki was close to having his first heat. His scent had changed in not-so-subtle and enticing ways that drove a dominant mad with arousal. It left Bard hard and wanting most nights. Thank the Gods, Loki bedded down in Craig’s home under Mabel’s watchful eye. It gave Bard time and opportunity to relieve himself in the communal men’s room. It was a thing that males did and no one thought twice about it, except that Bard assumed his roommates knew the source of his constant hard-on.

  It was embarrassing.

  He turned his gaze back to Loki. “Don’t bait me further, boy. You will not like the feel of my hand on you, I can assure you of that.”

  With a shrug and a swipe at the crumbs on his lips, Loki replied, “Like I don’t know how to take a beating.”

  The casual brag of how well the omega could withstand corporal punishment made Bard’s blood freeze. It left him instantly regretting his rash response. He knew only too well how Loki had been chastised by his sire. The alpha had treated everyone in their old pack with equal brutality. Not that such behavior among their kind was rare. Far from it. It was Lorcan and the way he reigned over the Rogue Pack that stood out as an anomaly. And, Bard was heartily grateful for it. Servient shifters should never be treated with undue harshness, omegas most of all.

  He dropped his arms in the hopes of throttling down the tension. “I would never hurt you like that. I would hope you’d know that by now. Even if I were so inclined, you must realize neither Destin nor our alpha would permit it.”

  Loki made a moue of his mouth and shrugged again. “Whatever. They put you in charge of me without my consent, so I don’t think it matters very much how you wield your power. It’s all the same to me, and I hate it,” he added with a flash of his eyes that never failed to send blood rushing to Bard’s cock.

  But his words cut deep, enough that Bard’s anger over the stolen pie abated and took a back seat to his instinctive need to reassure the boy. Being Loki’s temporary guardian meant managing him with a firm, yet fair hand. While Loki’s actions with the pie couldn’t be ignored or trivialized, Bard didn’t want him to be overly fearful, either.

  “It should matter,” he said softly. “I am not your guardian to make you miserable. It’s simply a matter of your needing guidance and obviously the alpha doesn’t have the time to keep track of you. Nor should he. And, Destin has new responsibilities as a beta of this pack. He has to focus on doing his duty well.”

  The guy also was entitled to have some kind of personal life after devoting so many years to protecting Loki from their sire, then caring for him while they were running feral. Bard hadn’t missed how his life-long friend looked at Deirdre. The man was in love and if Bard was any judge of females, Deirdre was also. They deserved a chance at finding out if two betas could actually mate and make a life together. A bratty younger brother hovering around and driving them crazy was not conducive to courting.

  Loki huffed. “He just wants time to
sniff around that beta female.”

  The omega’s observation didn’t come as a surprise. The boy was smart. He acted like a dumb pup most of the time, but that was all pretense. Bard knew it was. Loki missed nothing, his sharp, intelligent gaze always taking in what was happening. People underestimated him, so they spoke freely where he could hear when they might have been more circumspect with someone else.

  Yeah, there was no fooling Loki. The omega knew how much his brother wanted Deirdre and unfortunately how much Bard wanted him. He likely also knew how far he could push before Bard lost his temper. Like now. With his lips still shiny from the sugary pie filling, Loki knew that there was no chance of Bard actually cuffing the insolent expression off his pretty face. A well-placed smack on the boy’s rump, however…

  He moved quickly before he could think better of it. Grabbing Loki’s upper arm, he hauled the boy onto his feet and delivered one severe wallop to the omega’s small, tight ass. The shriek of outrage was more satisfying than Bard wanted it to be.

  He glared down into Loki’s furious face. “You will not disrespect your brother, who has sacrificed everything for you. He has the right to seek his own happiness now, and if he finds love with Deirdre, all the better. You will not run riot in this pack after Lorcan graciously took us in. And you will apologize to Joey for taking advantage of his hard work and generosity by stealing that pie.”

  For a few tense seconds, Loki panted with his anger, speechless for once. “I didn’t ask for Destin to force me from our home and I didn’t ask to be part of this pack. I don’t want to be here. You can beat me bloody and I won’t change my feelings about that.”

  The omega’s mouth formed a thin line before he continued. “I won’t apologize to Joey because he made those pies for everyone. It’s not him that won’t let me eat one. He won’t care.”

  That was true. Joey was a sweet omega who wanted to feed the pack all the time to the best of his ability. He, like most of the rest of the pack, indulged Loki as if he were still a young pup. It would probably embarrass Joey if Bard marched Loki into the kitchen and forced him to apologize about eating a stupid hand pie that Joey would have freely given under other circumstances.

  No, this was Bard’s problem, and he needn’t involve anyone else. Although Loki hadn’t said the words out loud, they both knew he was laying the blame for his actions at Bard’s feet. Given how much the omega loved sweets, denying him dessert seemed the best way to punish him. This was the first time to Bard’s knowledge that Loki had blatantly disobeyed by stealing something out from under Joey’s and the kitchen sigmas’ noses. He didn’t want any of them to get into trouble with Lorcan or their mates over not keeping a better eye out. They had their duties, and keeping track of Loki wasn’t one of them.

  “It’s amazing how one little omega can cause so much trouble in the pack.” He made the observation out loud before he realized what he was doing.

  Loki sneered once more. “If you don’t like it, take me home.”

  This was a recurring demand that Loki had made to first Destin, now Bard. And the sad thing was Bard understood the boy’s feelings. It had been brutal to leave their pack for parts unknown. Survival had been difficult until they’d found a haven with the Rogues. Bard missed his homeland as much as Loki did, but unlike Loki, Bard knew they could never return. Not for the first time, he wished Destin would give Loki the horrible truth of what had driven them to flee. It would devastate the omega, yet without the knowledge, he would never stop wanting to go back.

  He would never stop resenting, if not hating Destin, Bard and Carr for forcing him to leave his home.

  “Come on,” he said with a weary tone. “It’s time for the evening meal. Now it’s two weeks with no dessert. You have to learn how to behave, Loki. We all follow orders. You and me both. There’s no sense in railing against your status. It’s not like we have a choice in where we sit in the pack hierarchy.”

  Loki allowed Bard to tug him back to the longhouse. Fighting him would be pointless. There was no way to best the gamma physically. Bard was bigger than most and Loki was smaller. Like everything else in his life, his tiny size sucked. He’d learned early in life to pick his battles. While Bard wasn’t giving him any choice, he was only taking him back to where Loki wanted to be anyway.

  The stolen pie sat heavily in his stomach. Not that he would ever acknowledge that fact. He’d intended to nibble slowly at the treat while he took advantage of the lull before evening meal was served. His new home was beautiful even though it would soon be too hot for his comfort. He enjoyed a bit of solitude at the edge of the forest, secure in the knowledge that the pack lands were well guarded. It was Bard’s untimely arrival that had ruined everything. There had been no peace after all, and Loki had stuffed the pie down his throat out of perverseness. He’d rather make himself sick than give in to the gamma’s rule.

  Still, the evening meal was undoubtedly ready and his appetite was keen despite the pie taking up a lot of room. The smell of venison wafted from the kitchen window, making saliva pool in his mouth. He couldn’t wait to tuck into a large plateful of meat and whatever other tempting food Joey had prepared. His stomach always found space for more. It seemed lately that his hunger was never truly satisfied. He didn’t like the implication of that and refused to examine it too carefully.

  The fact that he was forced to eat beside Bard was another thing he tried to put aside. Destin had betrayed him twice over as far as Loki was concerned. The first being when he’d dragged him, confused and fearful, from their home.

  The second was giving him over to Bard. Why his brother had done so remained a sore and confusing point with Loki. Well, not so confusing. He understood why, and the knowledge infuriated him. It wasn’t Loki’s fault that he now lived within the orbit of a powerful alpha who wasn’t his sire. Nature was taking its course and the dominants in the pack had planned out Loki’s fate in predictable fashion.

  It’s not fair!

  He didn’t utter the words out loud because he had too much pride and it wouldn’t do him any good. Fairness had nothing to do with the life of an omega. He was destined to be buffeted around by dominant pack members, his wishes and feelings being of no consequence. He understood it, but he was hardly resigned to it. Maybe that made him a bad omega. If so, tough. The others in similar situations, those he knew and even liked, could never persuade him that mating with Bard would be a good thing. Sure, they had each found their happiness, yet there were others like Ryan who spent his days caring for a pup he was never given a choice about having. Loki would be damned if he would end up like that.

  The question was how he could manage to avoid that fate. He’d thought long and hard about it and still didn’t have a viable plan. For the moment, all he could do was at least appreciate that he was well-fed and safe. Bard never denied him meals and that single wallop to his ass hardly signified as any kind of real punishment. However else Loki felt about his situation, he wasn’t afraid. That was a positive change from his old pack, although he was loathe to admit it.

  He dragged his feet only a little as Bard tugged him up the back steps and into the kitchen. Sigmas were racing back and forth to pile the food onto the long trestle table in the great room. With so many mouths to feed, meals had become hectic affairs. Loki didn’t mind. He liked the noise and crowd. It reminded him of how he’d grown up. Except here, all the pack members acted happy and relaxed. That was something he did find astounding. Lorcan was way different than Loki’s sire had been. This alpha was respected, but not feared.

  Joey came rushing by. Despite what he’d told Bard, Loki did feel guilty over stealing. Loki fought Bard’s hold and tried to skid to a halt. “Joey, wait.” The omega stopped and looked over his shoulder.

  Surprisingly, Bard let go of Loki’s wrist. “Go make your apologies, then. I’ll be waiting at our usual table.”

  Loki grimaced, half wanting to argue the point of both. It would be stupidly pointless because telling Joey he was sorry
was something Loki wanted to do out of respect to the other omega. Not sitting with Bard wasn’t really an option, either. It would only lead to being physically forced to. Loki’s pride didn’t like the idea of being dragged across the great room.

  Turning his back on the already retreating gamma, he faced Joey. “I, um, just wanted to tell you that I snagged one of the hand pies a little while ago and ate it.” He snatched the end of his ponytail and ran it through his fingers.

  Joey smiled. “That’s okay. I made enough for everyone. I need to use up the last of the dried apples anyway.” He slid closer and eyed the doorway to the great room. “Honestly, I put them out to cool by the window because I thought you might want to take one. I know how hard it is for you to go without dessert. I hope Bard wasn’t too mad.”

  Loki smirked, trying to hide how touched he was that that this omega who wielded so much power in the pack would think of him. “Naw, you know him, all bark and no bite.”

  Joey snorted. “Oh, I know. I’m mated to one of those myself. Still, it’s no fun when they’re angry. I bet you’re banned from eating sweets for a lot longer now.”

  Loki feigned indifference. “A couple of weeks. Like I’m going to obey that order any more than I have the others.”

  Joey’s eyes skittered away. “You know I’ve found that it can be really easy to get your way with a dominant if you use the right approach. A few smiles and kind words and you could have that gamma hand-feeding you anything you want. Would it really be so bad? I mean that guy is like sex on two massively muscled legs.”

  A strange flash of heat suffused Loki’s body, followed by a stranger feeling of possessiveness. “Better not let your mate hear you talk about another shifter like that.”

  Joey’s eyes widened before his lids dropped again and he smirked. “Don’t worry about me, sweetie. When my man gets jealous he works it out by fucking me senseless. It’s a win-win. Seems to me you should focus more on why you suddenly looked like you wanted to turn me into a hand pie. I think you should give that some thought while you hurry to your gamma’s side. You don’t want to make him mad enough to come drag you over.”