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When we first arrived at Grand Prairie, I couldn’t believe that they maintained such peace that there were jobs for people that didn’t involve fighting or food. In the Wilds, Mother, River, and I spent every waking moment foraging, scavenging, or killing Biters, so it never occurred to me that there was more to life than survival.
Mother was too young when the Split happened to have learned how to read or write past basic necessity, and as such, River and I didn’t know how either. Luckily for us, Grand Prairie is a diverse compound, situated just east of the Great River. Due to its proximity to a larger city, the original settlers were a mix of academics, researchers, tradesfolk, and farmers. Before the world totally collapsed, Soline had been a student at one of the last standing universities up north, and now she takes it upon herself to teach anyone willing to listen.
Soline believes in the importance of humans recording their lives and honoring the past. She says that if we don’t record our world, thousands of years from now, when we’re nothing more than a carbon smear in the dirt, future people will make the same mistakes we did. That’s why Soline makes us keep personal journals, and every day we catalog events, scan radio stations for word from others, and pore through her greatest treasures, her books.
In the beginning of my life here, I immediately glued myself to Soline, who dazzled me with her breadth of knowledge, sharp hazel eyes, and a thirst for more. When I showed a high aptitude for reading and writing, she took me under her wing as a junior historian, which is how I became close to Vale when she moved here four years ago. After ten years under Soline’s guidance, I’m proficient in a lot of things to do with academia and take great pride in helping her with her library.
For the rest of the week, Vale and I are on radio duty, which means we sit and scan through all the radio stations on repeat, checking for messages, or in some cases, attempting to spy on conversations. Grand Prairie has the best communication set up in this part of the country, able to reach folks from mountain range to mountain range. Despite the impressive tech, radio comms is my least favorite rotation, but maybe the monotony will allow me time to process the reality that very soon, I’ll be mated to someone who isn’t my scent-match.
[ 2 ]
FERRIS
Grand Prairie Compound
Days Since Last Attack: 83
Despite my orders to increase perimeter patrols, my instincts are not satiated. There’s an itch under my skin that I cannot scratch, a feeling that something is coming. It would be all too easy to blame it on her, but this feels distinctly different than the gut-wrenching heartbreak that’s been making me sick.
She’ll be getting off work soon. My body buzzes, all my muscles tensing with the effort to keep myself in place and not stalk across the compound to the small building where she works. My instincts demand that I go to her, talk to her, scent her. We need to have a discussion about her being matched. Every single argument I’ve had in my mind about why I can’t be with her has been disrupted by the reality that she’ll bond someone that’s not me. I feel unmoored.
My inner alpha wants me to corner her, capture her, take her somewhere private, apologize on my knees, bury my face in her pussy, then bite her pretty little neck. Raine makes me actually feel like an alpha, makes me want to give in to the instincts I spend so much time fighting.
I picture her with another alpha’s bite, and a growl rises in my throat, startling June, the beta guard next to me. “See something?” she asks, eyes narrowing on the tree line as her skin pales further with worry.
“Nah,” I brush her off. She shoots me a look full of pity, and if I didn’t know any better, I would think she knows. But that’s impossible. No one knows the dark secrets in my heart. No one knows how many times I’ve been so fucking close to breaking, or how many times I almost made her mine. Holding myself back from Raine is torture, a pain far worse than starvation. Or maybe it’s a different kind of starvation, one that gnaws at your soul instead of your stomach.
“It’s been nearly three months since the last horde,” June muses. “That might be a new record.”
The ever-gaping space between attacks has been a boon in some ways, granting us time to repair some of the damaged buildings and walls from the summer storms, but it grates on me. We haven’t even had loners at the gates asking to trade or begging for residence. It’s been eerily quiet.
As I watch the sun sink further behind the autumn-colored trees, I can’t take it anymore, and I make an excuse about needing to check something. June looks at me long and hard, with kind brown eyes that appear older and wiser than her years. “Even when humans lived long lives, they were plagued with regret. We don’t have the luxury of either, Captain.”
For a second I think I might cry. It’s not like I haven’t genuinely considered throwing everything away to be with Raine. I have. So many fucking times—it’s a miracle I’m still sane. My dreams at night are filled with visions of her brown hair that glows like maple tree syrup in the sun, or her green eyes, pink-flushed rosy skin, and freckle-covered nose. Each night I paint a fantasy on the backs of my eyelids where she and I are together. But I came here as a newly exiled alpha, saved from the Wilds by the graciousness of an up-and-coming leader—River.
He owns my loyalty. He basically owns me. Some days it feels like I traded one cage for another, like I never learned my lesson when it comes to dominant alphas. Except I did learn my lesson, the really fucking hard way, and that’s why I cannot physically make myself go against River. I must do everything in my power to never become like my father—not more than I already have.
River fully expects us to bond an omega together, one that can never be his sister. While we don’t share bites, he and I are an assembly-registered pack, and if I leave his pack, I’d lose everything. My position, my life here in Grand Prairie, and worse, being with Raine would mean that she loses everything too. Maybe at one point I wanted to believe that River would understand our feelings, and he’d do anything to keep his little sister happy and safe, but the truth is, he’s just like all the other dominant alphas in this world. He wants what he wants, when he wants it.
What he wants is me. The orphan alpha he led home like a stray dog.
I don’t think that River is as bad as my family—the very folks that exiled me—I just think he’s in a position that requires finesse in all things and loyalty deeper than a well. I know that if I left his pack, it would leave him vulnerable. It would make this compound vulnerable, thereby making her vulnerable.
If I have her, I could banish us to the Wilds, or risk political upheaval and violence within our community. Either way, her safety is compromised.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve belonged to her, body and soul, from the first moment I scented her newly emerged omega perfume just after her twenty-first birthday three years ago. I can still remember the feeling of waking up with the most delicious taste coating my tongue; something dark and creamy, like spiced molasses poured over sweet cream. It changed me.
The morning Raine emerged, her mother, Zana, told us with tears in her eyes and awe coating her throat that Raine smelled like root beer. Zana had been a mere girl when the Split happened and society fell, but she remembered her favorite soda like it had only been a few days since she last had a sip. She told us that on her last birthday before the collapse, her parents splurged to buy a bottle of root beer to share. I think Raine’s scent was a gift, both to me and to her mother.
Now, every time I get a hit of her bubbly spiciness, my mouth waters for something I can’t have, much like the soda I imagine her skin tastes like. It drives me so fucking crazy, I’ve followed behind her with my mouth open just to get a taste of her on my tongue. Any hint of her scent is enough to quiet the constant worry in my head. Raine makes me feel alive after a life of people making me feel like dirt.
But risking everything isn’t worth risking her life. It’s safer to see her live without me, and I won’t feel guilt for robbing her of that choice if it means letting her live at all.
I smile at June, but I know my eyes remain dead. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
River is waiting for me on our front porch when I get back to the cabin. “Hey, man,” he sighs, looking exhausted. “I’m going to see Leigh tonight and thought maybe you’d want to come this time?”
The reason River probably isn’t more upset about the assembly’s pressure to get Raine out of our home is that he’s been seeing an omega. She’s a sweet woman with gentle brown eyes and a heart-shaped face, who happens to be one of only a few omegas that are age-appropriate for us and currently living in Grand Prairie. He hasn’t told me directly, but I know him well enough now that it’s obvious he wants to mate Leigh and expects me to do the same.
