Page 3 of Rome's Mate: Hunted Omegas

“I think I can see things, you know this.” The one time she’d gotten the courage to tell her father, he’d waved it away with his hand. He said she was just going through puberty. What she thought she saw was just her imagination. She tried not to pay attention, but too many of the things she saw happened.

“You know, I always believed you.”

“I know. What you don’t know is lately I’ve been dreaming about my naming day. Everything stops, it goes black. As in, there is no tomorrow.”

Nicole’s body thumped against the couch, and she pulled Amelia close. She’d had a dream or two that the same would happen to her, but she pushed them away. She was half-human, which was why she didn’t have a wolf. Nicole shook her head. The problem was Amelia, not her. As much as shewanted to wave her cousin’s concerns away, she’d heard the pack whispering about what would happen on Amelia’s naming day. They seemed to relish the thought that she would be this abomination called an omega. A shiver of dread went down her back. She loved her pack, but they were scaring her.

“What are we going to do?” Amelia thought about it, snuggling down further into the plush couch and her cousin’s warmth. Death seemed the only choice for her. She didn’t want to die. It didn’t seem all that fair to her.

“What can I do?” Nicole gave her a blank look. “That’s what I thought. Let’s go for a walk.”

Her father was careful to keep her away from the pack about the time she turned thirteen. It was apparent at that age that she didn’t have a wolf inside of her like the other children. Nicole didn’t have one either, but it had been a fifty percent chance with her since her mother was human.

There were times Amelia wished she was half human, but it felt disgraceful to her mother. That always made her feel guilt. Her mom died to give her life. She needed to be thankful for everything she had.

“James is watching us,” Nicole hissed. “Just ignore him and keep walking.”

James had been one of her best friends when they went to school together. Then his wolf came out. He believed, the entire pack believed he’d be an alpha. When he emerged as a strong beta, bitterness became his crutch. The friendship he and Amelia had died on the ground of his first change.

He walked faster to catch up with them. “I smell an abomination.” He carefully scented Amelia and Nicole. “If I were you, Nicole, I wouldn’t walk so close to her. Someone might think there were two of you instead of one.”

“I’m surprised you can scent anything with the stubby nose of yours.” Amelia flicked her eyes over him and then turned her head in an obvious dismissal.

“You think you’re so high and mighty because your daddy is the alpha? What will he do when he’s forced to watch the pack tear apart his precious daughter?”

“Why would you even want to be part of something like that?” Nicole asked. She was close to losing her temper.

“Don’t you feel it in your blood? It’s like a fever that won’t let you go. Rend, tear, kill the abomination. Make the world pure again. How do you not feel it, Nicole? You should want to kill Amelia every time the two of you are together. The feeling has been growing stronger for years.” He stopped walking, watching them move along. “The pack will not be denied, Amelia. I’m sorry you couldn’t be beta, like I am.”

“He’s sorry you couldn’t be a beta.” Nicole rolled her eyes. She said her mama taught her how to do that.

“He meant it. I don’t think he wants to kill me. He might be bitter about not being an alpha. But to him, it’s better to be beta than whatever I am.” She could have called herself an abomination or an omega. There wasn’t much to find in the wolf world when it came to that term. She knew that in the human world it meant the end or the last. Alpha and omega. The beginning and the end. What that term had to do with her was something she still didn’t understand.

The most she was able to hear and understand came from eavesdropping when no one knew she was around. Omegas were females who were to receive the goddess Luna’s blessing on their twenty-fifth birthday. That blessing made them abominations that must be killed before she reached down and touched them. None of it made any sense. Why did they want to kill her because her wolf failed to present? The same happened to Nicole, andthey were okay with that, although no alpha would mate with a female wolf whose wolf never presented.

Nicole searched for her mate from the time she turned eighteen. She hadn’t found him in the pack. Amelia never searched. She knew no male wolf would talk to her. She’d snuck into the human community, but the boys there shied away from her like she had the mythical cooties.

On Thursday, there was always a community swap outside where people swapped and sold their wares. That’s where they were looking around at the bright clothes for sale. A pair of boots caught Amelia’s eyes. They were black with a sole that looked like she could walk in them all day or go hiking and they would mold to her feet, invigorating her, making the walk or hike better.

She pushed against Nicole and walked over to get a better look at the boots. The woman selling them was much older. Amelia couldn’t remember seeing her around the pack, but she loved the way the woman smiled at her.

“What can I help you with, little wolf?”

Amelia smiled. She couldn’t help it when the woman called her little wolf. No one ever thought to acknowledge that she was a wolf.

“Those black boots caught my attention.” The woman handed them to her. Amelia’s eyes widened as she looked at the black wolves that howled, lining the seams of the boots. They seemed larger than life. Her fingers caressed one wolf, her breath taken away with the detail, but also with the sheer presence of the wolf.

“Try them on, little wolf.”

Amelia knew she hadn’t brought anything to trade, but she couldn’t help but try them on. She expected them to be too hot on her feet since it was the end of summer, but they weren’t. They felt like they were made for her.

“What do you think?”

There weren’t many things in life she wanted, but these boots were one of them. “They are beautiful. They fit like they were made for me.”

“You honor me, little wolf.”

“I have nothing on me to trade for them. If you let me go home and return, I can buy them from you.”

---