Heat Race - Tanya Chris Page 0,28

as an alpha. Though his mother’s family could trace their lineage back to Ferris’s founders, the wolf had been so bred out of them by now it’d been generations since they’d produced a hybrid. The trouble was that alphas and omegas couldn’t reproduce anymore. That ability had been lost nearly two hundred years ago. Which meant that to have a child, you needed a woman, and women were full human. Which meant the bloodlines kept getting further diluted.

Elias’s presentation as an alpha had been a triumph, but it turned out his parents weren’t so keen on him being an alpha who submitted to another alpha.

“Why don’t you form your own pack?” his father suggested.

“That’s not how it works, Dad.”

“Then marry a woman and have some babies. Are you sure you wouldn’t be happier with a wife? I’ve been very happy myself.” His father put an arm around his mother, who was close to tears. “All we want is for you to be happy.”

That was both true and not true. His parents loved him—no question—but they were also status seekers.

“Someday there’s going to be a whole town of people descended from me,” Elias told them, playing to the latter. “And at the center of this new town, there’s going to be a statue of me and my mates, just like the one in Founder’s Park. I’ll be revered.”

“But how will they be descended from you?” his mother asked. “I know omegas used to bear children, but Jack Henry can’t.”

No, he couldn’t. Unless he was a throwback the way Jasper was a throwback, capable of bearing children despite his externally male genitalia. Which after last night seemed not impossible.

“It’ll happen the way it’s supposed to happen,” he told his mother, ducking the question for now. “It’s fate, destiny. My destiny.” That sounded so grand. “Can I take my car?” That sounded less grand.

“We gave it to you, didn’t we? It’s yours.”

Good. At least his parents weren’t angry enough about him going off with Jasper to cut him off.

“Galvetta’s only a few hours away,” he reminded them as he hugged his mother goodbye.

“You really think there will be statues?” she asked. “Imagine our bloodline founding two packs. Good genes will tell, I guess. This uber-alpha must’ve picked you for a reason.”

Elias figured it was Jack Henry who’d picked him, but maybe that was how it always worked. Uber-alphas were the ones people wrote ballads about, but at the center of every pack was an omega, and at the center of theirs was Jack Henry. If Elias ever wrote a ballad, that was who he’d write about—the clever and graceful omega who’d started it all.

He threw his things into the trunk and finished making his goodbyes. The sedan his parents had given him for his sixteenth birthday wasn’t what his sixteen-year-old self would’ve chosen, but he was grateful for it now. It would hold all of them and their belonging as they followed Jasper’s motorcycle to an exciting new life.

He headed for Saul’s house to pick him up, following the directions Saul had written down for him. He couldn’t be happier about ending up with Jack Henry—however it’d happened—and Jasper was his alpha, which meant something important. But Saul was a wildcard, a likable guy he’d always struggled to like because he knew how much Jack Henry liked him. They would be packmates now, but wouldn’t they also be rivals? How were three alphas supposed to balance their competing desires for a single omega?

JASPER

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jasper raced down the street toward Jack Henry’s house with the omega clinging to his back, going faster than the speed limit or Jack Henry’s lack of experience with being on the back of a bike would suggest was appropriate. He was so full of adrenalin and excitement he couldn’t make himself slow down. Jack Henry would learn to love being on the bike. Jasper would teach him to ride, buy him his own bike. Hell, he’d get all three of them bikes, take his pack on group rides down winding roads where you could really let the throttle out.

He choked back on the gas as the street grew more residential. He choked back on his enthusiasm too. He didn’t have the money to buy everyone a bike. He had a patch of undeveloped land on the outskirts of Galvetta, a rough cabin he’d been improving in his free time, and that was it. The cabin was about as luxurious as the treehouse, with a privy out back for facilities and