Marlowe Roy's Blog

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THE ALPHA'S RESURRECTION
Chapter One
Zorah

The touch skimmed down her neck like the slow meander of a single tear. Nearly imperceptible, the mere suggestion of a sensation near the top of her spine, it wheedled along her hairline. Feathering into her hair, the soft stroke of so many invisible fingers coaxed an unwilling shiver from her sensitized skin.

“. . . And then he opened his eyes and said, ‘what did I miss?’” Matteo brayed at the culmination of his anecdote, his loud guffaw jarring Zorah out of the seductive reverie. Bowing her head, she composed a weak smile and pretended to hide a giggle she couldn’t bring herself to fake for the story she hadn’t been paying attention to.

It was always like that when the touch found her. Seduced by its eerie, whispered caress, everything else faded from existence.

Back in the moment, Zorah scanned the gathered crowd. Around the firepit, with the alcohol flowing and the guitar twanging, the Pack party steadily gained steam. She ought to be circulating, getting to know the quieter Alphas who took a backseat to the more aggressive suitors like Matteo and Riddick, looking for the best mate she could choose. That had been her plan, after all. Her plan for the party. Her plan for the summer. Her plan for the rest of her life. A plan proving to be more difficult than anticipated.

It was fast becoming a problem. Between managing Grace and Lars’s unruly brood and helping with chores around the village, her days evaporated like water on hot stone. In a few short weeks, her parents would arrive at Morris Hill to fetch her home and finalize her mating to Nelson. A grimace pulled at her lips at the thought of her cousin’s grabby hands and oversized, rubbery lips. He was Alpha, sure, but a less appealing one she’d never met. Not that her parents cared. Omegas were rare, and as the only Omega of child-bearing age in River Bend, they intended to leverage her Omega status in the most advantageous way possible.

“Are you excited about the Omega bunkhouse?” Matteo asked, sliding his head into her wandering field of vision.

Schooling her features, Zorah raised her cup to her lips. The strong liquor and tart berry juice mix was a rare treat. At home, even as a fully grown twenty-six-year-old Omega, she’d never been permitted to partake. Yet another resentment to add to the long list of constraints and prohibitions she’d lived with her entire life.

Buying time with an overly large gulp, Zorah studied Matteo’s expectant face. An agreeable enough Alpha, irreverent and funny, with a fun disposition and easy smile, yet, like all the unmated Alphas vying daily for her attention, her Omega nature remained stubbornly unmoved.

“When will it be done, do you think?” she asked.

The Omega bunkhouse was the second large building project the Morris Hill Pack had undertaken that summer. The first being the reconstructed mess hall, and its completion provided the cause for the evening’s celebration. The original mess hall burned down during an attack by a rogue gang of Alphas earlier in the summer. Zorah’s memories of that night blurred together in a smear of red flame, black soot, crying children, and the howls of the dying rogues, summarily dispatched by furious Morris Hill Alphas defending their homes and families. She’d retreated to Hunter’s cabin, along with the other Omegas and pups, to wait out the fight.

Everyone in Morris Hill survived, but the mess hall had not. As a further complication, after the smoke had cleared from the fight, a half dozen terrified, unmated Omegas the rogues had been trafficking were discovered, and the Pack had nowhere to house them other than temporary tents. In the six weeks since, the Alphas busted tail to rebuild the mess hall from the ground up and added two new structures to the village: a bunkhouse for unmated Omegas and a private cabin for Omegas undergoing a Heat, unofficially dubbed the “Heat Hut.”

Zorah, for her part, lived with Grace and Lars while she took care of their kids, so the controversy around the Omega bunkhouse didn’t affect her. But it remained a hot topic of conversation among the Alphas. They would much prefer the unmated Omegas become mated Omegas to solve the housing problem, but that was not the Morris Hill way. Here, Zorah learned — to her absolute astonishment — Omegas chose whom they mated, not the other way around. If her parents had known this was the custom in Morris Hill, they would’ve never consented to her visit.

“Another week to finish the cladding.” Matteo rocked his head side to side. “Maybe two. Working on beds to go inside. It’ll be nice for you all, much better than the stinky old Alpha bunk.”

Zorah smiled. “Is it really smelly? Don’t you clean it?”

Matteo wrinkled his nose. “I don’t want to clean up after those slobs. Riddick can mop up his own j**z puddle,” he quipped, tossing the jibe at Riddick as the curly-haired Alpha sauntered up to join their conversation. As usual, any Alpha occupying Zorah’s attention one-on-one got interrupted by another one, or two, or three. “That’s if he can pry his hands off his c**k long enough to grip a broom.”

“Hey, Zorah.” Unfazed, Riddick flashed his high-beam smile, complete with a glinting gold tooth, and pulled at the healing scar that slashed across his cheek — a souvenir from the attack.

Despite her inner Omega’s obstinate disinterest, Zorah couldn’t deny his rakish good looks. With tawny brown skin and a wild tumble of cinnamon ringlets sprouting every which way, she could find no physical fault with him. Yet her Omega was silent.

Riddick’s fingers teased a soft hello against her elbow as he positioned himself close to her side. Of all of the Alphas, Riddick pursued her affections with a relaxed, but determined, focus.

Matteo’s brows dipped toward the bridge of his nose at the cozy insinuation, and Zorah flashed him a quick, conciliatory smile to dispel tension. For a bunch of tough Alphas, their emotions bruised easily enough, at least where courting her was concerned.

“We’re talking about the Alpha bunkhouse,” she said to Riddick. “Matteo says it stinks, but maybe once all the construction is done, you’ll have time to clean up. Or perhaps you could bribe some Omegas to help you.”

Riddick rocked back on his heels, eyes sparkling in the reflected firelight. “That would be such a kind gesture, we would be so appreciative.”

Zorah’s smile stretched. “I said bribe, not guilt.” She rested her index finger on her chin in mock contemplation. “Maybe you could offer a trade. Do you have anything to exchange?”

“And before you open your mouth to offer your dick,” Matteo interjected, “think of something she might actually want.”

Suppressing a genuine giggle, Zorah flashed Matteo a chiding look at his vulgar joke. He never censored himself in deference to her supposed delicate Omega sensibilities. None of them did. But once she got over the initial shock, Zorah found she liked the scandalized thrill of the off-color jokes, and not just for the transgressive exhilaration, either. The ribald banter underscored another important difference between Morris Hill and River Bend: no one here treated her as a fragile, precious thing to be coddled and sheltered. Here she was a whole person. A desirable Omega, yes, but a flower that could bloom freely in the sun, not one preserved between pages of a book, pressed flat and unchanging, forever.

“Well . . .” Riddick drawled the word. “That’s an interesting question. What might entice a sweet Omega like our little Zorah here?”

The hated endearment doused her good humor like a guttered flame.

Little Zorah doesn’t know what’s best.
Listen to your parents, little Zorah.
Little Zorah isn’t ready for that quite yet.

She couldn’t blame Riddick. He had no way of knowing the mountain of condescending lectures and admonishments piled on “Little Zorah” over the course of her life. Sometimes she imagined Little Zorah as her evil twin arch nemesis: the sweet, naive, compliant Omega everyone expected her to be. Up until the moment she rode away from home, her parents and her Pack controlled every aspect of her existence: her dress, her education, her activities, her interests. It felt like being forced to wear too-small shoes and then blamed when you couldn’t walk.

But Zorah didn’t want to hobble through life in too-small shoes. She wanted to throw them off and run. The question was: where was she running, and to whom?

Oblivious to her soured mood, Riddick snuck his arm around her waist and threw her a saucy grin. “Let’s take a walk and discuss what I might have to offer. What do you say? Care to join me for a moonlit stroll?”

Before she could answer, another unmistakable touch tingled against her nape. More forceful, like a taunt or a warning, it reverberated deep in her body, like the rumble of an earthquake that only she could feel. Zorah took an involuntary step backward and scanned the darkness beyond the fire, seeking the source of the elusive, invisible prickle. Another brush came, this one lighter and more cajoling, a puff of humid breath behind her ear.

It was nothing new. In the weeks since the sensation first wove its way into her awareness, she’d never once laid eyes on her watcher. But she knew him all the same. She knew the way his attention warmed when she laughed. She knew the way it sharpened when she flirted. And, most perplexing of all, she knew the way he recoiled when she sought him out.

Shards of orange firelight slashed against the rough-hewn village structures and flickered against the trees in the surrounding forest as Zorah glared into the black night. Some presence hovered in the gathering darkness, teasing her with these fleeting touches that seemed to communicate so much and yet nothing at all. Sudden frustration surged. Her watcher did not want her to go for an evening stroll with Riddick, yet they refused to come out into the light and even talk to her. It was beyond maddening.

Zorah drained her cup, letting the strong liquor swirl around her taste buds and fortify her nerves. Enough was enough.

“Not right now, sorry,” she said, handing Riddick her empty cup and inventing a plausible excuse. “I need to ask Grace about Ginny’s rash before she goes to bed. I’ll find you later.”

Riddick opened his mouth to protest, but Zorah didn’t wait to hear it. Feet crunching in the dry August grass, she waved off calls to her as she skirted past Packmates enjoying the party. Their laughs and raised voices chafed against her frazzled nerves as she narrowed her eyes and peered into the endless blank spaces between the trees. The touch lingered, a barely-there weight on the curve of her shoulder. Lessened in intensity, but present and real.

At the edge of the clearing, she charged into the tree cover, the depth of night folding around her like a blanket. Head swiveling this way and that, she sought to locate the source of the touch but came up empty. He must be hiding here somewhere. But where? Who was it? Why did she feel him — and she was rather certain it was a him — in a way she felt no one else? Was he special to her in some way, or she to him? Her illusory fated mate?

Her fated mate. As if the phrase was an antidote to the sensation, the touch faded away. No lingering tingle. No alluring caress. Nothing. Gone as if it never existed. A desolate emptiness yawned open behind Zorah’s ribs. An acute aloneness that left her feeling abandoned, neglected, and, strangely, let down.

It couldn’t be her fated mate. At any rate, her mother Ida argued fated mates were a fairy tale. Many Omegas, she alleged, never found a fated mate and were happy enough to make do with another. But, in Zorah’s (perhaps childish) estimation, a non-fated-mating was fine for other Omegas, but surely, she would find hers.

Problem was, Prince Charming Alpha was overdue on his long-awaited appearance. All she had to show after two months here was a cast of suitors, a weird sensation on the back of her neck, and a stomach tied in knots with worry.

With one last fruitless inspection of her surroundings, she pivoted back toward the party. She’d find Riddick and take the stupid walk. Even if she didn’t have a fated mate, and never made that special Alpha-Omega bond, she’d gladly accept him, Matteo, or any number of Morris Hill Alphas before she’d mate with Nelson. Stomping out of the trees, Zorah gritted her teeth. She’d welcome a lifetime of emptiness in place of a lifetime of oppression. No matter what, she had to choose one of these Alphas. And soon.

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