There’s also the other thing. The thing I haven’t told anyone.
Her scent is changing.
Stronger. Sweeter. More impossible to ignore.
Every wolf with functioning instincts would feel it.
My wolf tracks the shift with an obsessive attention. The honey-and-musk base note is the same, but that thread underneath, the one that doesn’t read as fully human, is getting stronger. It’s been getting stronger since I met her.
If she’s carrying latent wolf heritage, proximity to me could be waking it up. I’ve heard of it happening. The mate bond pulls at whatever’s dormant, stirs it, brings it closer to the surface. If that’s what’s going on, then every day I spend near her is a day closer to changes she hasn’t consented to and doesn’t understand.
If what’s waking up is what I think it is, the situation is more complicated than a dormant bloodline. She’s an Omega.
Every pack has its hierarchy. Alphas lead. Betas manage. Omegas hold the whole thing together in ways that aren’t obvious until you understand what they do. An Omega isn’t the lowest rank, despite what the word suggests in human usage. In a pack, an Omega issomething closer to the opposite: rare, vital, the emotional centre that keeps a group of dominant, territorial predators from tearing each other apart. Their presence calms aggression, settles disputes, grounds the pack energy that would otherwise run volatile. A pack without an Omega can function. A pack with one thrives.
They’re also vanishingly rare. Most wolves go their entire lives without meeting one. The scent is distinctive, at least to those who know what they’re looking for, and it carries a pull that affects every wolf in range. Not sexual, or not only sexual. Something deeper. An instinctive recognition that this person matters, that their presence changes the chemistry of the group in ways that can’t be replicated.
That pull is what makes Omegas valuable. It’s also what makes them vulnerable. To rogues without pack structure, without the social bonds that keep dominant wolves in check, an Omega isn’t a person. An Omega is a resource. Something to be claimed, controlled, and used to stabilise a group that has no other means of stability.
If Phoebe is an emerging Omega, she’s broadcasting a signal she doesn’t know she’s sending. And every unattached wolf within range is going to hear it.
I need to know what she is. Before I can decide what to tell her or when to tell her, I need to know.
* **
The idea comes to me on Thursday evening, while I’m pretending to read a book and actually staring at the ceiling thinking about the way Phoebe’s hair falls across her face when she’s concentrating.
Tom mentioned a bonfire this weekend. Nothing formal. A few people gathering on the field behind the Hare and Hound with beer, a fire, whatever food people bring. It happens a few times a year when the weather’s decent, and the village needs an excuse to socialise. Humans come, but it’s mostly pack. The field backs onto pack land, and the gathering tends to self-select for people who are comfortable around wolves, even if they don’t know that’s what they’re doing.
If I bring Phoebe to the bonfire, I can watch how she responds to a concentrated group of wolves in human form. The energy around that many pack members is palpable, at least to those who are sensitive to it. Humans usually feel nothing. They might notice the group is unusually close-knit, might pick up on the physical ease between people who’ve run together in other forms, but that’s all.
Someone with latent heritage, though. Someone whose dormant instincts are already stirring. They might feel more. A pull towards certain people. An unease around dominant wolves. An instinctive awarenessof hierarchy that has no basis in anything they consciously understand.
It’s not a perfect test. But it’s a start.
I pick up my phone and draft a text to Phoebe. Delete it. Draft another. Delete that too. Type a third that just saysbonfire Saturday?and stare at it for two minutes like a complete twat before deleting that as well.
My wolf watches this process with what I can only describe as contempt. Fair enough.
On the third attempt, I keep it simple:There’s a bonfire on Saturday behind the pub. Village thing, very casual. Want to come?
The response takes eleven minutes. I know because I count every one of them.
Sounds nice. What should I bring?
Just yourself. I’ll sort the rest.
Okay. See you Saturday then.
I set the phone down and stare at it. Saturday. Two days to plan, two days to prepare, two days to work out what I’m looking for and what I’ll do when I find it.
* * *
Friday passes in a blur of patrol reports and boundary checks and the low-grade anxiety of a man who’s made a plan he’s not sure he wants to succeed. I throw myselfinto the rogue situation because it’s the only problem in my life that responds to straightforward tactical thinking. The rogues have been quiet since the fight, but not gone. Lewis picks up a fresh scent trail on the northern boundary, faint and cautious, as if whoever left it was being careful not to be detected. They’re watching us. Waiting. The organised quality of their movements still bothers me, and I spend an hour with the patrol maps trying to work out what they’re after.
I make a decision my father won’t like. I pull Lewis and Jack off the northern rotation and move them east, closer to the village. The northern boundary is being probed, but the village approach is unguarded between midnight and four, and that gap sits wrong in my gut.
Rebecca finds me at the kitchen table surrounded by papers and mugs of cold tea.
