Page 4 of Rome's Mate: Hunted Omegas

“That offer is fine. Tell me, am I wrong in assuming that you have a birthday coming up?”

“I do.” The minute she brought up Amelia’s birthday, she put together an outfit that would work with the boots.

“Please do me the honor of wearing them for your birthday, and they are yours.”

“I can pay.” She didn’t want to fleece the woman. Not after she treated her so nicely.

“Live, little wolf, and you will give me everything I want.” Amelia’s eyes went wide, and she looked for Nicole to see if she heard the woman’s words.

“Those boots are beautiful,” Nicole said. “Where did you get them from?”

Amelia turned to the woman’s stand, but it was gone. There was nothing there but a patch of grass.

“There was a stand here with an old woman selling boots.” She stumbled, trying to tell Nicole what had happened. Several of the pack watched her with suspicion in their eyes. Nicole pulled her away, giving the pack a ‘there’s nothing to see here’ look.

“I’m telling you, the stand was there,” Amelia hissed when they were away from the pack.

“I believe you. You’re holding boots that you didn’t come with, and no one else was selling footwear. What did she say to you?”

“She told me to live.” They wandered through the woods that surrounded the pack lands. Amelia led them to her mother’s grave, where they sat looking at the tall trees and listening to the birds that stopped and sang for her mother.

Amelia sat enjoying the birds' song when she thought she felt eyes on her. She looked up to catch an outline through the trees; it looked like the wolf who used to care for her as a child. Shaking her head, she blinked, and the female was gone. She shook her head and put it down to missing her mom.

“It always feels like the birds know my mom is there, and they stop to give homage to her.”

“I like to think that the goddess Luna sends them here to let your mom know she has not been forgotten.” Amelia nodded. The goddess Luna wasn’t real. She’d been told that her whole life. Still, there were times when she stood under the moon and could feel it caress and hug her like the goddess was doing what her mother couldn’t. She kept those fanciful thoughts to herself.

She took a deep breath. The woman’s whispered words for her to live were reverberating in her head. She looked at her mom’s grave, and she could almost hear her say, live for me.

How could she replace the blackness of her naming day with life and brightness?

Chapter Two

Rome stood at thewindow looking over the backyard that was plowed and ready for him to romp in it with his wolf or throw a backyard party. Beyond that was the forest where his pack ran. They let out their wolves and howled at the moon. He bought this land long before there was a city or ordinances, and he’d been grandfathered into allowing wild animals to roam free on his property as long as they were never caught attacking any humans.

As if. He owned all the land around for miles. He sighed when he caught the scent of his second approaching. Saul reached out to him mentally and Rome invited him in. He wasn’t getting any work done. His office was large, with an enormous desk next to the other window and two chairs in front of it. He also had a sitting area where he could talk to his council and a couch if he needed a nap away from the council or the pack. He’d brought a designer in recently who’d done his office in typical gray and black. A man’s office, according to her.

“Knock, knock.” Saul knocked on the door as he said the words.

“Come in.” Rome turned his back to the window and looked at his second, who was one of his best friends. “What’s happening?”

“You tell me. The pack is restless, as if they were gearing up for something.”

“Which pack, the outer or the inner?” The inner pack were the hunters that were with him the day the stag was killed, and they were cursed with immortal life. The outer pack was those they picked up along the way. Rome and his wolves swore to keep them safe. The new pack members swore fealty and to keep their secrets. The pack, as a whole, thrived with new members and children being born all the time.

“Both. There’s a restlessness in the air. Tell me you don’t feel it.” He felt it. The fact that he hadn’t realized it was bothering the others showed how much it was bothering him. He was waiting, his world was waiting, but neither he nor his wolf knew what they were waiting for.

He looked at the time on his phone. It wasn’t even ten a.m. “Let’s declare today a holiday and have a pack picnic and then a pack run tonight.”

“I think that will help. It will mitigate some of the restlessness the pack is feeling.” Saul picked up his phone, called the kitchen, and told them what the alpha wanted. Then he called the enforcers to tell them to inform the pack it was a holiday, and they were celebrating. No one would care what they were celebrating, and it wouldn’t be the first time their alpha called for an impromptu holiday.

“You have no idea what is happening?” Saul asked as he sat down in one of Rome’s plush chairs.

“No, but I dreamed of the white stag last night under the moon. The goddess is speaking, but what is she saying?”

“Do you think the white stag is out there?” Saul stood and went to the window Rome had been standing at.

“Maybe.” Over the years, the white stag had followed them from land to land until they finally landed, where they were now, roughly three hundred years ago. He stayed around long enough to realize they weren’t planning on leaving, and then he was gone. Rome initially thought he took the goddess’s blessing with him, but he hadn’t. The land was blessed, and the wolves of the pack were blessed. To see the stag again, after so many years, not only had him yearning for the stag and the goddess, but it also had him treading lightly. The stag was a message from the goddess. Change was coming, and he’d lived long enough to be weary of change.

---