FATED ESCAPE

Finding my mate was supposed to be the best day of my life. Not the worst.

Everyone told me I should be lucky to have someone as beautiful as the blond- haired, blue-eyed, golden-skinned alpha, Shane Dacre, as my mate.

How can anyone feel lucky with a mate who only laughed when they were walking away from you?

For a year I took it.

I swallowed it all down: all the pain from his secret cruelties, all the disgust in his eyes when he looked at me, all the fury at my standing in the way of his true happiness.

I ate it until nothing tasted the same. Until even my food tasted bitter.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the old alpha, Shane's father Iain, wasn't pushing so hard for an heir.

The most stable packs had an alpha who prepared for the next generation, his father loved to remind Shane at every opportunity with a pointed look aimed my way.

But the heir had to come from his mate's body. Mine.

And so, he came to my bed, still smelling of her. The long blonde-haired, golden-eyed, and equally beautiful Bree.

With my eyes squeezed shut, and my face turned away from him, we would mate in silence to the sharp squeaking of the bedsprings.

The sound shamed me.

And once it was done. Once he was done, he would slip away again. To shower. To return to the one he wanted. To her.

But there was never a child.

It went on and on until the whispers grew so loud and the pity so overwhelming that I would do everything I could to avoid anyone and everyone. My mission in life became to find the perfect hiding place in the extensive Dacre pack forest.

Perfect Shane could do no wrong. It must be plain, brown-haired, Aerin Boone with too many freckles. It must be Aerin who doesn't deserve a mate as perfect and golden as Shane Dacre who was the problem for the lack of an heir.

And then I was out running one day, losing myself in the pure joy of it. As a wolf, I found happiness I could never feel in my human skin. As a wolf, I could pretend to be just a wolf and not a human girl with human pain.

But then I caught his scent. No, I could smell them.

Everything warned me to stay away, to return to the house, to turn back.

I didn't listen.

They were in the stream; Bree and Shane.

And they were naked. He was holding her, and as she stared up into the blue sky, he thrust into her. At his every grunt, I flinched. At her every moan, I felt a stabbing in my heart.

I've never known pain as sharp. It felt like inside I was dying.

Then he was growling, and she was clinging to his shoulders as she gasped out her release.

I couldn't help but notice the way her nails dug into his biceps, and when I lifted my wolf's eyes back up to his face, I found him staring at me.

Being with her wasn't a chore. Wasn't some duty his father pressed on him.

I'd always known it, of course, but to see it, to see how much pleasure she gave him, and he gave her, was something else.

And that wasn't all I saw. There was a bite on her neck. He'd bitten her even though he already had a mate.

My pain poured out of me, ran over the grass and the water until Bree must have felt it because she was lifting her head from where she'd rested it on Shane's shoulder. Before she could, Shane slid his hand around her nape, halting her. Never taking his eyes from mine, he bent his head and kissed her.

So, I ran and I haven't stopped running since then. "Hey, you all right?"

The male voice, coming from much closer to me than should be possible with my shifter nose and ears, has me scrubbing at my wet face with my coat sleeve before I turn away from the window.

His blue eyes are kind, and I wonder, not for the first time, why all the bus drivers I've met so far have been so nice to me.

Maybe it's my age, since at twenty-two, more often than not, I've been the youngest person on the bus. "I'm fine, thank you. Are we here?"

Considering I've had my face glued to the window for hours, I should know. If I'd been paying attention to the world around me instead of reliving my memories, I would know.

He raises his eyebrow but doesn't comment on what has to be a pretty stupid question. "If Winter Lake is where you need to be; yeah, we're here." He nods at the window.

I turn to take in the town just outside.

It's pretty in an old-fashioned way, with pastel-painted shop fronts and what looks like mom-and- pop stores.

No, not pretty, beautiful. A haven.

From where I'm sitting, I can make out a grocery store, post office, bank, hair salon, and a diner.

It looked like the perfect place to disappear when I saw a picture of the town on a postcard in a bus station gift shop. The sort of place no one would ever come looking for me.

Perfect, in other words.

"What's the population again?" I ask, unable to stop staring.

"Something like two thousand. But it's a nice town. Friendly."

That's nothing. Coming from Minnesota, it's a drop in the ocean.

Sure, at first, I'll stick out a little since I'm new, but who would think to look for me in a place with a population of two thousand people?

"I like it," I declare.

His bark of laughter has me turning to find him grinning down at me.

"Not many young people do. You'll find it's the older folk who come here. To retire mostly." And with that, the man in a bus driver's uniform strides down to the front of the bus.

Once I've gathered my only piece of luggage-a medium size gray duffel bag, I toss my long dark braid over my shoulder and follow.

"Because there are no jobs?" I'm thinking now I should've thought this through a little more thoroughly since I'm going to need to find a job at some point.

After I ran away from Bree and Shane, I stopped at the house long enough to change, grab his wallet from the dresser, his keys, and then I headed for his car.

Not the flashy red sports car he was fond of reminding me had more purpose than I did, but the silver BMW I knew he wouldn't miss as quickly as his pride and joy.

As soon as I got into the city, I parked his car near the train station and went straight to the bank to withdraw as much money as I could.

Luckily, Shane's dad had us legally registered as husband and wife even though we didn't have a formal ceremony in a church. So, once I showed the bank teller my ID with my married name, they didn't stop me from my request of two thousand dollars, the most I could withdraw in one day.

I hit up Target and filled a shopping cart with food, clothes, and the gray duffel. Afterwards, I got a cab to the bus station where I bought six tickets heading in six different directions from the front desk.

I hung about, waiting until the guy who worked there was busy serving another customer before I quickly bought another ticket at the self-service machine, which was the bus I got on.

Although it seems a touch excessive, I knew I had to do everything I could to get away because no alpha ever lets his mate walk away. Because even though Shane didn't want me, there was no way he would ever let me go, especially with his father pushing him so hard to get me pregnant.

He might not want me, but he needed me.

I'd been running for five days when I started to get sick. And that was when I knew. I was pregnant.

"There are some jobs. Not many, but some." The bus driver opens the doors and as I stare out, suddenly I don't want to step out.

I've been running, always moving, always in motion for nearly three weeks now. Long enough for my sickness to subside, long enough for me to get used to cheap hotel rooms and disgusting bathrooms that were never completely clean.

Who am I kidding, I'm nowhere near used to it. Not even close, which is why I'm here in Winter Lake. A brief stop. My break from nasty motel rooms.

It's hitting me now that this will be it for a while.

This town is so out of the way, there's only one bus that passes through it every week. Just one. So, once I step off this bus, I won't be leaving it for another whole week. It was the biggest appeal of Winter Lake; other than the pretty pastel shop fronts and the quiet serenity I could practically feel through the postcard.

"You change your mind?"

"No." I sling my bag over my shoulder and force myself to take the first steps off the bus. "Just wondering about..."

"Five minutes."

Halfway down the steps, I stop and turn back, my brow wrinkled in confusion. "What?"

"I've got five minutes before I have to leave so I can be in the next town in time. That's how long you've got to figure out if you want to stay or jump back on the bus.

God, am I that easy to read?

"Uh, sure. Whatever," I mutter, but don't tell him to go.

Five minutes sounds just long enough for me to figure out if this town is going to be it, or if my search for a resting place will continue.

After one last glance behind me, I leave the bus driver idling in his seat and head down the street toward the diner, since other than a truck in the gas station, there doesn't appear to be anyone around.

I plan to stick my head in the diner because that'll be where most of the inhabitants of this picturesque town will be at midday.

And if I get any warning signs, it's literally a minute to get back to the bus and tell the driver I've changed my mind.

I make it halfway down the street before I jerk to a stop.

At first, I didn't believe my nose. Frowning, my eyes sweep the streets because I'm distinctly picking up something I shouldn't be smelling.

Not in a town this small. And not in my perfect hiding place. Shifter. What the fuck is a shifter pack doing here?

Slowly, I turn in a circle and my eyes connect with the guy filling up a battered truck at the gas station. Or at least, that was what it looked like he'd been doing before he scented me, just as I scented him.

Without taking his eyes off of me, he shoves the gas pump back in its slot and straightens from his lean against the truck.

When he takes a step away from the truck he's filling, I get my first unobstructed view of his body.

He's big. At least six feet, which puts him about the same height, if not build, as Shane. This shifter is more heavily muscled than Shane is not that anyone could describe Shane as lean.

My mate has the sort of muscles most women sigh over, something I know all too well because before I knew what my life would be like in the Dacre pack, I sighed just as loudly as they did.

I feel panic surging at the sight of this shifter's heavy muscles and the narrow-eyed steel-gray stare, which tells me he can only be one thing.

Alpha.

My duffel slides off my shoulder and hits the ground with a thud. I barely notice. This brawny, shaved haired, alpha takes another step forward, and I back up. Fast. "Hey, there's no need to-"

I don't stick around to hear what he has to say, or what lies he intends to use to trap me here. Maybe if I was an ordinary shifter, then I wouldn't be breaking out in a cold sweat at the thought of him getting his hands on me.

But I'm special. Different. It's the reason I stayed clear-well clear of any place I knew there were any shifters.

Since we shifters are a violent bunch, there are less packs around than there used to be. Some have been so aggressive, they've imploded and they exist only in shifter memory now, packs like the Raleighs, who even my father used to say he'd hesitate to take one on.

The reason I have so much value is because I can stop a pack from imploding the way the Raleighs did. It's the reason why shifter history is full of stories about omegas being stolen from their homes and never seen again.

When I was younger, I think I was thirteen, I had enough of feeling like I didn't belong, so I ran away from home. My father found me right away. On the long walk home, he told me story after story about attempts to breed more omegas because what I am is so rare.

All that night I thought about what that would be like, to be stolen away to another pack and forced to bear child after child with an alpha who was only interested in producing another omega.

I never tried to run away again.

When my father would hold meetings with other alphas, I saw the greedy way they studied me when he wasn't looking. It wasn't hard to guess what my fate would be if my father wasn't so feared.

Coming from a well-known pack, I know most, if not all, the shifter packs in the states. Or at least I thought I did. This just goes to show how wrong I was.

So, although Shane treated me like I was worthless, I was only worthless to him. There was a reason his father pushed him to get me pregnant when we discovered we were fated mates.

It was the reason which meant that no matter how Shane felt about Bree, once his father learned who or rather what I was, there was no way he would agree to a mating between Shane and Bree.

Shane would have fought his father on it. But the price of Bree would mean handing back his new position as alpha, a position that would revert to the old alpha, his father, who was still young enough to seize control of the pack.

I spin around... and glimpse someone else heading toward me from across the road. Someone who halts as soon as my eyes lock on him.

This other brown-haired shifter in a white tee and blue jeans is less tall, less muscled, and overall, less threatening. The beta, most likely. But that doesn't mean I want him anywhere near me.

His brown eyes are deep with concern, though I don't understand why until I realize I've backed out into the road, and barrelling toward me is a semi-truck going too fast to stop.

Oh God, my baby.

Like one of those too-stupid-to-live characters in a horror movie confronted with the big bad, I freeze instead of running. Sheer terror floods my body that I can't think of anything other than curving an arm protectively around my belly, feeling like my feet are glued to the ground.

After all my running, all the things I've done to stay hidden and not make any mistakes, mine and my baby's life is going to end in a town with a population of two thousand under the wheels of a semi.

I worked so hard. It's just not fair.

Before I know what's happened, a solid weight sends me hurtling out of the way. I hear tires squealing, and the gust of wind that tells me how close the semi came to flattening me, and then my body hits the ground. Hard.

I land awkwardly, and my impact is immediately followed by a series of sharp and overly loud cracks. And then the pain hits, telling me I broke a bone in my right leg. Probably several bones, both big and small.

I'm gasping as searing agony blows through me, then my vision goes blurry, like that moment just before you drift off to sleep. As if you're not really awake, but you know you're not sleeping either.

For a single second, I feel the weight of a stare on my face. I get the sense someone is leaning over me, maybe even saying something.

As time goes by, my vision doesn't get any clearer-if anything, it gets worse.

Then I blink, and the sharp agony radiating outward from my leg grows until I'd do anything, give anything to escape it. I blink again, feeling a tear slide down the side of my face to be buried in my long, dark hair.

The next time I open my eyes, it's to blackness. Or maybe I don't open my eyes at all because in this dark place there's no light or sound or pain.

There's nothing.

Male voices coming from a few feet away wake me.

I open my eyes and fix my gaze on a solid dark wood door, but I don't move.

"She's pregnant. And in case you didn't notice, she's also mated. We need to find out why she's here and return her. I doubt her mate will be happy finding her here." It's the brawny shifter.

Even though the voices are coming from just outside a door that someone has left open a crack, I know it must be the alpha shifter from the gas station. Clearly, he must not have guessed what I am to be so eager to send me away. If he knew, I doubt he'd be so against my staying.

Not that I want to, and not that I intend to.

I shift my gaze away from the door, wanting to take advantage of my alone time to examine the room. I'm guessing the beta, the wolf with the warm brown eyes, brought me.

Sooner rather than later, one of them will realize I'm awake and come looking for answers to their questions. Answers that I have no intention of giving them.

The rich and strangely comforting masculine scent in this sparsely decorated bedroom clues me in that I'm in a guy's room. Probably the betas'. God, I hope it's the beta and not the gruff alpha who sounds like he would've preferred if the semi had flattened me.

"She's hurt. And she was running, in case you missed it. Or were you not paying attention to the duffel and the way she sprinted away from you the second she realized she'd stumbled into a town of shifters?"

This other voice is softer, friendlier, and the one I'm guessing is the beta who saved me from my fate.

A town of shifters?

I can't believe I'm this unlucky, I think with a grimace.

And then I turn a little so I can see even more of this room filled with dark wood furnishings, and the lowered blinds preventing me from telling what time it is.

As I shift to examine even more, I suck in a sharp breath at the searing agony shooting up my leg at my tiny movement.

My eyes widen at the sight of my right leg that someone-again I'm guessing the beta-has heavily bandaged before strapping on a leg brace. But that's not all.

There are two large cushions set on either side to keep my leg straight. That's when I know it's bad because we shifters heal fast.

We don't need heavy bandages or leg braces. And the pain. The slightest movement has my eyes watering, so I lie back down on the bed and try not to breathe, let alone move.

I remember hearing a series of cracks, so I must've broken my leg in several places, that much is clear. Just how long it's going to take me to recover is a mystery because I've never hurt myself as bad as this before.

What's disturbing is I have no memory of going to the hospital, or of anything other than nearly being run over by a semi, and being tackled out of the way. But someone bandaged my leg, and removed my jeans and t-shirt, replacing it with an oversized white t-shirt that hits me to mid-thigh.

All of that happened, but when? How much time has passed?

"It looks worse than it is." A voice says from the door, startling me.

In a desperate attempt to scramble away from him, I overbalance and thud to the floor. Crying out, my world goes hazy with pain, making me blind to everything other than a need for it to end.

Then the brown-haired wolf, the one with the kind eyes, is gently picking me up and depositing me back into the bed. "You're not having the best luck, are you?"

Ain't that the truth.

"What do you want from me?" My voice is shrill, and I lean away from him, even as he's backing up with his hands raised in the universal sign of peace.

"Nothing. Just for you to rest and get well so."

"Can you force me to stay? Is that it?" My voice rises an octave higher.

Confusion swirls in his eyes. "Look, we have no intention of forcing you to stay. You can leave whenever you want."

I open my mouth.

"Once you're well enough." He cuts in smoothly as he retreats to the doorway.

Narrowing my eyes, I examine him more closely. He might have kind eyes, but he's no pushover.

And he seems the sort that can persuade you to do things you don't want to. My lips are thin.

A charmer then, like Shane Dacre.

"And once the bus arrives."

Shit. The bus. The driver would've gone. Five minutes, he said. It could've been five days, and I'd be none the wiser. Just as I'm poised to ask what day it is and how long I've been here, he speaks.

"Why would you think we'd force you to stay?" His question is quiet, and his gaze never leaves my face.

This wolf doesn't seem the sort to miss anything.

I'd better be damn careful what I say around him.

"I can't imagine you have many shifter women here," I say evasively.

"We have some." As if sensing my unease, he breaks eye contact and crosses over to the window. I watch the lean muscles in his arms, exposed by his white t-shirt, as he winds the blind up to flood the room with light.

"Enough that we have no reason to be forcing any to stay against their will. Especially pregnant mated ones."

I should've been thinking up a story about why I'm running. And I would have... if I'd been expecting to stumble into a town full of shifters.

"Well, that's a relief," I say, ignoring his mention of my delicate condition.

Once he's finished lifting the blind to reveal a bright blue sky with the same white fluffy clouds from my postcard of the town, he turns to face me.

He looks like he can't be that much older than Shane. Maybe he's in his mid-twenties or even younger, but there's something about the way he leans back against the wall with his arms folded over his chest that gives the impression of him being older. More mature.

"Mmm," he murmurs.

It's a sound loaded with meaning. It could mean anything from okay, I believe you, to you big fat liar what are you hiding, even to, well this is boring, I should go find something more interesting to do than find out why a pregnant shifter has suddenly turned up in my town.

"The other shifter," I start, and then promptly realize I don't have a clue what I'm about to say.

The brown-eyed shifter doesn't cut in or assume anything, he regards me steadily as if waiting for me to figure out what I want to say. As if he's prepared to wait forever, and then some.

His patience untwists my tongue faster than anything else he could've said or done.

Eventually, I swallow. "He won't... he won't try to force me to stay.

Will he?" He frowns. "No, Bennett won't force you to stay."

I narrow my eyes, disbelieving. "You sound pretty sure. But I know alphas and once they've made their mind up about something, nothing will change it. So, tell me the truth. Will he force me to stay?"

Several seconds pass before he rises from his lean against the wall, his gaze never leaving my face.

"I promise you that the Winter Lake Alpha will not force you to do anything you don't want to." He sounds so assured, so confident, that if I hadn't seen the other guy-the Bennett guy-from the way this guy just spoke to me, I'd assume he was the alpha.

But before I can chase that thought down the rabbit hole and see where it takes me, I notice something I should've spotted before, distracting me. I blink so I can focus on it all the clearer.

Just beneath the surface of him I see his pain, and it's so sharp, I wonder how I missed it at first, given this is what I am, and it's what I've been able to do since I was a child.

I see a shifter's pain, and I can heal them. It's one of the things I can do which gives me the title of Omega. To stem aggression in a pack?

That takes will and control, but this other thing, this healing? This takes no effort at all.

In a world where omegas are rare, my gift makes me valuable, even if I'm not as strong and as aggressive as other wolves. I'm not submissive, but I'm not dominant either, which, in Shane's eyes, makes me worthless. Weak. Useless.

"You want to tell me your name?" he asks when I don't respond.

I startle and jerk my gaze away because I'm realizing that for several seconds, it may even be minutes, I've been doing nothing but staring at this beta without saying a word. Probably without blinking.

Feeling myself blushing, embarrassed to have been caught staring at him as intensely as I was, I struggle to think of something to say. It's made worse because the faint smile curving his lips tells me he didn't miss my attention.

I can't tell him I was staring because I find him attractive, even if it's true, and I can't tell him I was trying to understand the nature of his pain.

While his soul is a lovely aquamarine blue, his edges are ragged and torn as if he never recovered from some emotional hurt that he suffered a long time ago.

That's the thing with souls, you can hide your expression and your emotions at least on a surface level, but you can never hide the effect it has on your soul. At least not from an omega. Not from me.

It's a good thing that omegas are so rare because if I got within sight of another one, I don't know how I'd begin to hide what I am or explain why my soul is so battered and bruised.

"I'm guessing that's a no," he says when I don't answer.

Instead of answering, I turn to the overstuffed bookcases, which take up almost an entire wall of this not-exactly-small bedroom. "Whose room is this?"

In part, it's my less-than-subtle attempt to distract him, but it's also a genuine desire to know because I refuse to believe that any guy who takes such an interest in books is a bad guy.

"Mine."

Right, because this is his room, which means I'm in his bed wearing nothing but a white t-shirt that has to be one of his.

Once again, I feel my face heat. "Oh."

I should know that already, given the room is full of his rich scent that makes me think of warm nights in front of an open fire, and roasting marshmallows.

When I feel brave enough to dart a glance in his direction, I find he's wearing another faint smile. "I'm Mack."

I raise my eyebrow. "What, no surname?"

The smile develops into a full grin, and it's so gorgeous that I know I must be staring, but this time not to get a deeper peek at the wounds in his soul.

"Sure I do. But how about we trade for it? One first name." He gestures at me. "For one surname," he says, pointing at himself.

I considered making one up, but in the end, I decided to give him my real name. That way, I won't have to worry about remembering a fake name for however long I'm stuck here. Which, considering the state of my leg, might be a while. "Aerin."

"Winters." He replies right after. Then he pauses and tilts his head to examine me. "Aerin, huh? Pretty."

Oh my God, I have got to stop blushing.

"It's just a name," I say with a shrug, feigning indifference. "And Winters? Like the name of the town?"

The aquamarine blue of his soul turns the darker, redder shade of a soul in pain. "Yeah, I took it as my own when we settled here."

I'm desperate to know why a pack of shifters have made a home for themselves in a town where old people retire. I want to ask why my innocent question makes his pain sharp enough that I feel myself reaching out to heal him without conscious thought.

Just as I place mental fingers on the most ragged of the tears to his soul, I realize what I'm doing and jerk away. If this guy-this Mack figures out what I am, he'll tell his alpha for sure, and that'll be it. There'll be no leaving for me, ever.

"I'm tired," I announce before turning my head away to stare at the bookcase, even though I know it's rude.

All I can do is hope that my touch was light enough that Mack didn't feel the beginning of my healing touch. Some shifters are so sensitive they would feel even that. I just have to hope that Mack isn't one of them.

For a moment there's silence at my back and I tense, thinking I've given myself away. But then he speaks. "You must be. Sleep as long as you want, and when you're hungry, just shout and I'll bring something up to you."

Definitely the beta.

His words silence the tiny nagging voice in my head that he's anything more than a beta. After living with my father, then Shane and his father, not to mention the countless other alphas I've had the displeasure to meet, there's no way Mack is one.

He's too... accommodating to be anything other than a beta. Which is a relief that I haven't been unlucky enough to land myself in an alpha's bed. My situation then would be a million times worse.

I relax the second he steps out and closes the door behind him.

The beta in my father's pack loved reading as well, and he was nice-kind.

Considering the favorite sport of most shifters seems to be fighting, my father's beta, Moses, stood out. It's only because of his position as beta, and his mate's as pack healer, that the rest of the pack didn't view his love of reading as a weakness that they needed to beat out of him. I was saved by the same fate because I was the alpha's daughter.

Others that the pack viewed as weak weren't so lucky.

Mack seems the same as Moses, quiet but with a hidden strength beneath the surface. I just hope the alpha here likes him enough for Mack to be able to keep him as far away from me as possible.

I place my hand over my belly. Although it's still flat, in a few months that will no longer be true. Again, I try to estimate how far along I am, but it's as impossible now as it was when I first discovered I was pregnant in a filthy roadside bathroom with a lock that didn't work properly.