Page 35 of Wolf Lost

One of the messengers was seated at the table, with an older couple and a young woman. The couple was at least in their sixties, and both looked work roughened, like maybe they were farmers. Sawyer didn’t know if people were farmers in Colorado, but the man was wearing a suit with one of those leather bolo ties, so maybe they had come from someplace like Texas.

What Sawyer knew about farming wasn’t much more than what he knew about the military. Leaving Bakersfield had been eye-opening on what Sawyer didn’t know.

The younger woman looked maybe Sawyer’s age and resembled the couple enough that she might have been their child, with similar dark hair and the woman’s blue eyes. When Sawyer managed to sort out the scents in the room, he realized that she was an omega like him.

For the first time, he felt a stab of real hope about the meeting. If they respected an omega enough to bring her to a meeting like this, surely it meant that they considered her a capable adult.

The whole party stood to greet them, and a second later, they were all standing around the table—Shanes on one side, Kismet pack on the other.

The older man, whom Sawyer had immediately assumed to be the alpha based on age and gender, looked confused. He turned to the woman, but before he got a word out, she let out a sharp bark of laughter.

“That explains why our Max was so confused about you lot, now, doesn’t it?” She looked each of them in the eye, and unerringly, her gaze turned back to Gavin at the end. She stuck out her hand. “Alpha Kismet. Or is there another pack name you’d prefer?”

Gavin shook her hand, and then his head. “Kismet is perfect, Alpha Shane.”

“Let’s all stop standing around like we’ve got our thumbs up our behinds and get down to business, then.” She and Gavin took their seats, followed by everyone else in no particular order. “But first, let’s order dinner. Traveling takes it out of me. I could eat a whole cow.”

“Finally, a reasonable wolf,” Dez muttered, clearly intending it to be loud enough for everyone to hear. “I was starting to think they were all nuts.”

The woman laughed again. Sawyer could feel his shoulders start to relax.

“I’m Miranda Shane,” the alpha introduced. “My husband, Norman, our daughter and heir, Willa, and you’ve already met my second, Max.”

Willa gave Sawyer a slightly sad look. “Max said he thought one of you was an omega. I was kind of hoping you were the alpha.”

Sawyer’s eyes pricked with tears, and he turned his face into Dez’s shoulder. She’d hoped he was in charge. She was the heir to a pack.

They weren’t going to try to send him back.

“I’m sorry,” Willa was saying. “Did I say something wrong? Is it—”

“Why don’t we get the business out of the way?” Dez asked. “Since it looks like it’s going to be simpler than we thought. This is Sawyer. He’s twenty-five, an omega, and he came to us to escape the Bakersfield pack because they were trying to force him to marry their fucking psycho alpha.”

There was silence at the table for a moment before the alpha’s brassy voice filled the room. “This is thechildthey say you’ve kidnapped? A grown damn adult? Jesus, I thought maybe it was a kid in an ugly marriage separation.”

“No, ma’am,” Ash said. “Just Sawyer. They think omegas are property.”

Sawyer looked back up and grabbed his napkin to wipe his eyes in time to see Willa turning up her nose. “I told you I didn’t like the Bakersfield alpha, Mother.”

Miranda Shane pursed her lips as she watched Sawyer. “You did. I thought he was one of those fancy city boys who’d never done a day’s work in his life.” She looked them all over and nodded approvingly. “You know the type. Big fake smiles, expensive suits that look like they borrowed them from daddy.”

Dez squeezed his hand, and Sawyer almost laughed. “We do,” Dez agreed. “I can’t say it surprises me to hear that. Probably drives a flashy car his pack paid for.”

Miranda scowled at that. “That he does. I always heard good things about the Bakersfield pack, but I guess the situation has changed there.”

Sawyer buried his face back in his napkin, and Willa sighed in frustration. “Mother.”

“Sorry.” Miranda said, voice strangely contrite for an alpha not of Sawyer’s pack. “I’m terribly sorry, young man. It seems I have chronic foot-in-mouth disease and don’t think enough before I talk.”

Sawyer wiped his face, drew himself up, and looked the alpha in the eye. Not as a challenge, but in the way other members of his pack did, to show his sincerity. “There’s no need. You couldn’t know what’s been going on there.”

“Can you tell us?” Willa asked.

He turned, offered her the same eye contact, and nodded. “I can.”

* * *

“I’m never goingto eat again,” Ash mumbled as they got into the house at nearly midnight. “Ancestors, I’ve never met a pack who could put it away like that.”

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