“Yes. She’d had two previous pregnancies. One still birth and another who died very young and who was believed to be an omega. If this babe was not an alpha, they said ‘measures’ might be taken.”
“What do you mean ‘measures’? You can’t…not a baby. They wouldn’t hurt a little baby. Did you think that was what they meant?”
“I thought it enough that I wrapped you in a blanket, tucked you in my bag, walked out, and never returned.”
“But, they might not have hurt the other children, and ‘measures’ is so vague.”
Her eyes held pity. “I couldn’t take that chance. I’ve never delivered a child only to leave it in hands I believed would harm it.”
“But…you were visiting family. They could have been forced to tell where you took me. Wouldn’t it have been safer to leave me at an orphanage?”
“As a shifter baby? Oh no. I couldn’t do that. I’ve seen what happens to shifter children in the human system.”
“Better that than having them find me here at your home.”
“Oh, little girl, do you really think this is my home? This run-down excuse for a shed? This was just where I landed when I stopped running. I don’t own this place; I don’t know who if anyone does. My house is a hundred miles from here, rented out now.”
“I don’t even know who I am.” And I couldn’t go home. Even if I wanted to, it wasn’t safe. After breakfast, Marie got another call to a confinement, and she left, begging me not to go anywhere until she got back and we could talk some more.
I didn’t promise, too angry at Marie for making so many decisions for me, taking me without giving my mother a say, and forcing me to live in this tumbledown cabin all these years. While she actually had a real house rented out. With plumbing! Not that I’d ever experienced it, but it sure looked good online.
Definitely time to leave, but how? I had no money and since I’d been kidnapped at birth, no proof it ever happened. No ID, which all the world seemed to require. Marie planned to keep me hidden forever.
I went to the laptop and brought it up with some vague idea of finding my family. But what if they traced me? Then a popup ad covered the bottom of the screen, trying to sell me miniatures. Like the ones I did. I used to do bigger art, but the cabin began to fill up and I had to go smaller. The prices were really good, but with no identity, even if I could sell them online, I’d have no way to set up a site or a way to be paid. More research provided some brick and mortars including The Coop. It was not far away and seemed to be on the bus route. Would they care about ID?
I could sneak away and see if I could make it work.
Chapter Four
Archer
I sighed, knees in the dirt, fingernails caked with dark soil. Maybe I should’ve gone to school like Justice to become some kind of super cyber security…whatever the hell he did.
The midmorning sun beat down on my face while I tended to the budding tomatoes. Big Boys along with grape and cherry varieties. Cantaloupes flourished already.
Turned out, I was good at growing things. And tending animals. And cooking. Not the way I imagined life would be when I was a kid, but I’d never wanted big things. Trauma did that to people. I didn’t dream of mansions and fancy cars and vacations. I dreamed of a stable home. Food on the table. Smiles shared. A family that didn’t die too early at the hands of a murderer.
With the weeds picked, I turned up the little radio I picked up at the thrift store and listened to the local station while I was moving from animal to animal, making sure they were as well taken care of as we were.
Who knew how much cows ate? Not me. Not when I started, at least. The goats did a great job of handling the grass and even out-of-control brush surrounding our home. Every six to eight weeks, I’d lead them to a new bit of land. We never had to mow the grass even once.
Archer did all the incubating and baby chicken stuff in the morning and took care of the chickens in the afternoons, but the feeding and watering was on me. I’d already fed and watered them once but, with the temperatures rising by the day and the little shits always knocking the water over, I had to stay on top of it.
My stomach grumbled once I was done and I turned off the radio and stood there, hands on my hips.
On days like this, I needed an excursion. Just a little bit of time away from the house.
“Justice,” I called out, a bit nervous. When the man worked, he was laser-focused; once, he didn’t hear me when I was standing right next to him and his laptop.
“Yeah?” he called from, surprisingly, the kitchen. His hair was mussed and he had on his black-rimmed glasses that he wore only when his eyes were sore or twitching. We didn’t really know what he did for work exactly. Only that it required the fastest Wi-Fi and working long hours, into the wee hours of the morning.
We didn’t ask.
One time, he tried to explain it. It was a shit show.
Something we didn’t talk about, like the fact that we were an omega-less sleuth. Three alpha bears. No omega. No mate. No one.
Just each other.
