to him, then tipped his head back to share some with Saul. The final swallow was all his. They were bonded now, the four of them. His omega, his alphas, his pack.
The next morning, before the sun rose high enough to send the temperature soaring, Jasper got his new pack moving. He sprang down from the tree in wolf form and enjoyed a few minutes of snuffling around with his heightened senses. He could smell last night’s fight—his victory—and the sex it’d led to. He could smell the four of them together, a mish-mash of scents that would eventually mean pack.
The others came down from the tree one by one. Saul hung from the lowest branch for a moment before dropping to the ground with an ungainly thud. He’d worn jeans for the race, and they were all buttoned up now with his t-shirt skimming his waistband. Despite having spent the night in a tree, he looked almost preppy, his blond hair slicked into order and his eyes shy.
Jasper shifted into human form and laid an arm across his back. He refused to let Saul retreat into a rigid presentation of what an alpha was supposed to be. “Doing okay, big guy?”
“Yeah.” Saul shot him a quick glance out of the corner of his eye and then, not seeming to mind what he saw, turned to him more fully. “Doing great.” He smiled like he might appreciate a good morning kiss, so Jasper gave him one. His previous experiences with fucking alphas had been more contentious, less sweet, but the more he got to know Saul, the more he realized Saul was sweet all the way through.
Their kiss was interrupted by the sound of Elias making his descent. He lowered a sturdy branch and used it like a ladder. Last night, Elias had pointed that branch at Jasper like a weapon. Only Jack Henry’s interference had stopped him from showing Elias what happened to alphas who threatened him. Physically, Elias wasn’t much of a challenge, but if there was going to be any challenge to Jasper’s authority as pack leader, he could guess where it would come from. Elias was too smart—too much of an independent thinker—for automatic compliance, but that brain of his would come in handy for problem solving, and Jasper liked that Elias had tried to defend Jack Henry even when he’d been totally outmanned.
Elias stood slightly apart from him and Saul as the three of them watched Jack Henry dismount. And it was a dismount, complete with a back summersault he landed with a flourish. Jasper grinned at his omega. He was going to be a handful. A precious-but-not-easy centerpiece to their pack.
“Good morning, beautiful.” He lifted Jack Henry’s hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it. Jack Henry tilted his head and allowed Jasper to nuzzle into his neck where he’d sunk his teeth last night. He could smell all four of them in the healing wound. “You smell delicious. Still got a little heat running through you?”
“It’s not bad.” Jack Henry was quiet this morning, a contrast to all that screaming he’d done while getting fucked last night, including the orders he’d given and his demands for more. He’d been a live wire then, taking everything the three of them could give him, but they were all feeling uncertain now, including Jasper himself. His job was to make sure the others didn’t realize that.
“What happens next?” Elias asked. His khakis were no longer crisply pressed, and his hair stood up in a cowlick Jasper smoothed down for him.
“Next, we present ourselves as a pack. There’s going to be some surprise,” he warned as he dusted off the back of Elias’s pants and straightened his shirt before turning his attention to Jack Henry. Since Jack Henry hadn’t worn anything except a pair of track pants, there wasn’t much to fix, but he didn’t like the omega’s chest being bare. He offered his vest, which Jack Henry snatched up with an appreciative sniff at the black leather.
“I didn’t think uber-alphas were real,” Saul admitted.
“Of course they’re real,” Elias said. “Our town was founded by one.”
“Our town was founded five hundred years ago,” Jack Henry pointed out. “Are we going to found a town?”
“Not today,” Jasper said with a grin, as if had this all planned out. “I thought we’d go back to the town I was born in. Galvetta. They know about me there.”
They knew he could shift in Galvetta—he’d gotten into too much