Page 8 of Wolf Lost

For a few minutes, everyone was silent, focused on eating.

“So,” anchovy guy said when he finished his first slice, already reaching for a second. “I’m Gavin. You’ve met Dez,” he motioned to the beautiful alpha who’d chased off the beta goons, whom Sawyer was determinedly trying not to think of as “his alpha,” and then to the other. “And that’s Asher. Ash.”

“And you’re all alphas,” Sawyer said, looking at each of them again. This time they met his eye, but in that human way that said they were acknowledging his presence and words, not the wolf way that was intended to establish dominance.

“We are,” Ash agreed, his voice soft. “I was born this way, Desmond and Gavin were bitten. Just over a month ago.”

Sawyer couldn’t have been more shocked. “Bitten alphas? I’ve never heard of that.”

“Well, now, we don’t know if I’d have been an alpha naturally like you two. I killed the alpha who—who bit us.” Gavin said. He was leaning forward, toward Sawyer, elbows braced on his knees and a sad, earnest expression on his face. It was like it was important that Sawyer understood his alphahood was contingent on having taken it—but not because he was proud of it.

Desmond snorted and tossed the crust of his first slice at Gavin’s head. “Please. You were our alpha before that. Before we knew werewolves were a thing.”

Shockingly, Asher nodded. “Since the day we met.”

Sawyer had to concentrate on not choking on his pizza. Not one, but two alphas, one of them born that way, deferring to another. The guy must really be something, even if he did eat anchovy pizza.

“So like Ash told you,” Gavin said, inclining his head in the other alpha’s direction. “We’re new to this. Ash is a great teacher, but it’s only been five weeks. I apologize in advance for any awkwardness we cause with our rudimentary understanding of werewolves.”

“Now that you know we’re gonna be clueless and rude,” Dez said, pulling open the pizza box nearest Sawyer, the supreme. He pulled out two slices to set on his plate, and then two more, and leaned across to set them on Sawyer’s. “Who are you, why were those guys chasing you, and what the hell’s an omega?”

The other two groaned at him, but Dez shrugged, took a huge bite of his pizza and leaned back to look at Sawyer, waiting for his answers.

Damn it all, but Sawyer wanted to jump in his lap and kiss him. Maybe the blasé attitude was because Dez didn’t know about omegas and his opinion would change, but Sawyer had never been protected by someone who didn’t then coddle him. It was a heady combination.

He wanted to curl back up in the man’s bed forever, but with Dez in it.

He’d been asked a question, though, and the other person in the room who knew, Ash, was waiting for Sawyer to answer. Letting him define himself without interruption.

So he did.

6

Man in Black

Sawyer’s story was horrific; there was no other way to look at it.

A member of his pack, under threat of being expelled for being a dangerous, unattached alpha, proved himself to be exactly that by killing Sawyer’s father, the previous alpha.

“Why didn’t anyone do anything?” Gavin asked. He was a great leader, but sometimes he had a hard time seeing the darkness in people. Ash was worse, innocent to the point of putting himself in danger because he was always trying to see the best in everyone.

That was why they needed Dez.

“Because it was easier not to. None of them wanted the fight, so it was easier to sit back and watch someone else suffer.” He stretched his leg out in front of himself, propping his socked foot up on the coffee table a little way away from the closed pizza boxes. Gavin made a face but didn’t say anything. He never would when it came to Dez’s injured leg, and Dez had to admit to occasionally taking advantage of that. He turned back to Sawyer. “Anyone in your situation would have left. Why didn’t he just let you go?”

Sawyer made his own disgusted face, beating out Gavin’s by a mile. “He thinks if he marries me, it legitimizes his leadership.”

Ash stared at him, blinking repeatedly. “He wants to marry you? Does he not plan to—to—you know, have kids?”

“I suspect I’d have a convenient accident when he finds a woman he wants to have kids with,” Sawyer said, all nonchalant, like he’d considered all possibilities and this one seemed like the natural, sensible conclusion. No adoption, no surrogates, straight to murder.

Little wonder, really, since this Mark guy had already proven his willingness to casually commit murder. Mark. It was such a benign name for a murderous sociopathic wannabe rapist. Seemed like he ought to be named something like Vlad or Attila.

“And as for omegas,” Sawyer broke into Dez’s thoughts with the last answer. “We’re... that is, we’re kind of the opposite of you alphas. We’re supposed to be nurturers. Caretakers.”

“Supposed to be?” Gavin asked earnestly, as Gavin was wont to do.

Sawyer sighed and looked down at his half-eaten second slice of pizza. “I don’t have a maternal bone in my body. I’m not good with kids. I can’t cook. And I’m not a female omega, so I can’t evenhavekids.”

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