Page 10 of The Gift
“Easily done. I need to say I’m sorry for my behaviour over the last few days. I hooked up, lost track of time, and I don’t like that. Kind of knocked me out of my lane, but you know I don’t do that often.”
“You met someone?” Henley asks, surprised, faster than I could figure out what to say.
“In a sense. Anyway, what about if we go have a bite to eat. Get out of here for an hour or two and have a beer, a game of pool, shoot the shit and be normal?” He laughs, his usual chuckle, flicking his shoulders up.
He looks and sounds like himself, but I know he hasn’t been. He’s been hiding in his room, hiding away from all this, and we need answers.
“Stop trying not to tell us about your hook up. You never do one-night stands, what gives,” Koda asks, beating me and Hen to the interrogation.
Reno goes quiet, his eyes race past me and out the window, far away from here. Well, that’s what it feels like. And then maybe he finds answers but his attention comes back to us. He looks over each of us, we don’t have secrets but he’s not sharing so maybe we do.
“Come on. What gives?” Henley straightens up, finally getting on the same page as I am.
“I might have fucked up, I’m not sure yet,” he offers regretfully before he shutters down and locks up, ending the discussion.
Reno most certainly is not a man who loses track of time, or himself. He has a need for control and stability that rivals an alpha’s, but a small slip up in his DNA ensured he only has the ability to act like one, but never actually be one. Henley on the other hand is nothing but alpha. Only with us do we see a softer side, but he has a line, and if you cross it, he’s done. But even that isn’t right. He is driven, crazed by the need to provide and save us from the decimation his own family suffered.
That was a different time in a sense. A time where omegas were nearly as prolific in our population as betas. A dime a dozen. Then almost overnight the number of them being born plummeted. A lot of speculation later, including environmental impacts, societal needs, natural evolution were bantered around as reasons omega numbers dropped, but nothing concrete came to light. With the birth rates plummeting to nearly non-fucking-existent, omegas were locked away, put behind glass and ‘protected’ for their own good.
Where an alpha supposedly has the intelligence, the ability to cut through the occasionally rough waters of emotions and make decisions based on survival, an omega was the opposite. They made decisions based on their ‘feelings’ or under the influence of their heat which supposedly wasn’t safe for anyone, especially when they became so vulnerable. And prized.
With a huge hole that threatened to shake our foundations to the ground, people scrambled or stole. They made decisions entirely upon perceptions that a pack without an omega was broken, which was a bit ironic considering the blight that had been painted on omegas from the get-go. Add in the outcome pertaining to genetics, an alpha and an omega made an alpha, mostly. Or an omega. And alpha and a beta, there was an eighty percent chance that the child would be born beta. Though that number had dropped coinciding with the number of omegas around.
Alphas were a necessary pillar of our society, for they were purported to be more intelligent, they understood the machinations of technology and medicine without trying. Finance was another of their fortes and for that reason they held up pillars of society… they were and still are the fucking pillars.
Irrespective, nearly every government around the world enlisted the help of scientists, psychologists, economists, you name it, they were involved, to solve the riddle of why there was a large drop in the number of alphas being born.
Most people went back to study the reason why, but there were a few, most notoriously the Regalo Project, that jumped so far ahead of our time that it was initially touted as insightful, ground-breaking, until their work was uncovered as little more than a laboratory where intentional changes were made. Super charged omegas in a sense, that ensured an heir would be born. A strong, healthy, alpha heir.
And then they started selling their wares as The Gift. Because it was. What better way to celebrate life than to buy your loved one, the gift of life. They were bred to breed. Perhaps they should have changed them so they no longer had a voice, or eyes to see what we had made them become.
Sadder still was that a huge majority of packs across the country put their hand up to be a part of the program. Ours included, because a pack with more alphas was a strong, successful pack. A pack with an heir had a future.
And now we were going to chase those from the project down again and drag them back into our world, for safety reasons. Neglecting the fact that they’ve been fucking surviving perfectly without us, except for the stealthy fuck that was starting to pluck them out of existence quicker than Reno does his eyebrows.
“I don’t ask much, but I’m not spilling on what happened. I’m not ready,” he starts, and Koda wisely thumps him in the arm.
“Are you safe?”
Reno nods back quickly.
“Is our pack safe?”
He does it again.
“Keep your secret then, Reno. Don’t hide away from us though. You’re not that person, we’re not that pack. And you’re shouting tonight since you suggested it.”
Bailey
“Let’s do the last bit again, Bailey. Can you add a little more… empathy to your voice?”
I swing around and glare at our illustrious sound producer Jordy through the window separating us. He flicks his middle finger up at me. I’d barely finished reading the last line and he was on my ass. And yeah, it was his job and he was a sound god, but he could have waited, given me half a second to preen.
“Stop being difficult and do it again. At least give us a five-minute break before we have to be on our best behaviour.” He chuckles as he fiddles with the sound grab, his head bobbing up and down as he keeps teasing me while running through what we’ve recorded already.
I’m usually one of those lucky ones that can nab the emotion and conflict perfectly the first time. Not today though. We’ve been doing this cut for the past forty minutes and despite Jordy only joking about another five minutes it won’t be enough for me to finish up. Nor will those five minutes allow us the chance to get our crap together, get our team spirit back to hoo-hah level.
Although, in some respects I’m stoked, I’m not the only one feeling out of sorts because of our impending first meet and greet with the pack, the alpha team accompanying us on the road.
