Omega Hunted by Linsey Moon
2
The screen doorslammed behind him as he left, and Savannah heard his truck start a moment later. She waited until the rumble of its engine had faded into the distance before she got up from the table, clearing up after breakfast.
Her parents were both off to work and her brother was at school and she'd have the house to herself for most of the day. She intended to spend as little time as possible inside it.
The garden and the tree farm were all that kept her sane when she felt like she couldn't stand being in the house a second longer. She'd grown up running through the acres of pine and spruce that surrounded the house, pine needles in her hair and sap causing the dirt to stick to her bare feet. She loved the trees, more than she had words to describe.
To her father they were just lumber, but she found them fascinating, from the delicate geometry in how they spaced their leaves and branches, to the animals and insects they sheltered, to the way their roots cooperated with fungus to form intricate networks miles across. When she'd been young enough to think she might someday have a normal life, she'd wanted to work as a forester and study trees. Now she knew that was unlikely to ever happen. Even when she eventually got the pheromone blockers and the fake ID she needed to live as a beta, she could never work a job that looked too closely at her background, or that required her to stay in one place. The one truth Savannah had learned about being an omega was that it meant you had no real choices.
She finished up her chores around the house, then went out into the garden, still fuming and repeating the argument in her head even as she got to work tending her plants. She brought her battered old CD player with her and put on a Fleetwood Mac album, singing along while she worked.
The garden was the one concession her father had ever made to her desire not to hide indoors at all times. He'd hoped by giving her a safe place to run around outside, she'd stop taking off into the woods so often. It hadn't worked, but she loved the garden anyway. It was a large space, surrounded on all sides by a high wooden privacy fence and crowded to bursting with plants.
A narrow stone path wound between brick bordered beds that filled every available inch, overflowing with vegetables, flowers and herbs. She even had blueberry bushes and a gnarled apple tree as old as she was, and a couple of chickens that wandered around underfoot and picked at her vegetables if she wasn't paying attention. She'd been trying to talk her father into helping her build an apiary so she could keep bees.
Once she was out in the garden, surrounded by green and growing things and music in the air, it was hard to stay angry. Her father had given up a lot and risked more to keep her from growing up a slave, and she didn't want to be ungrateful. He only ever had her best interests in mind. She loved her family and this house, even if being trapped here made her want to tear her hair out sometimes. But she couldn't spend the rest of her life in hiding. There was so much more she wanted to do.
"Hello, anyone home?"
Savannah froze. The voice had come from the front of the house, from the driveway. It was the voice of a man, and not a voice she recognized. She hadn't heard a car pull up. Had they walked up the drive from the road? She was already crouching, down among the spinach pulling weeds, and she stayed low, edging behind a dense cluster of purple flowering joe-pye weed.
"Sorry, I know you're there," the stranger called apologetically, and she heard him coming closer. "I heard you singing. Look, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to bother you. My car broke down a little way down the road and I was just hoping I could use your phone?"
They were standing just on the other side of the fence now, trying to look through the slats. Savannah retreated further behind the flowers.
"Hello?" he called again. "Please, I know you're in there. I could really use some help."
He found the fence gate and rattled it experimentally. It was locked from the inside, but Savannah's heart rate spiked in sudden alarm.
"Sorry," she called out, her voice catching, hoping if she answered him he'd just go away. "I don't have a phone. Try further down the road, I think there's a gas station."
"I can't walk that far," the man complained. "Please, I'm really in a hurry. My job depends on this. Can you just lend me your cell phone for five minutes?"
"I'm sorry, I really don't have one," Savannah called back, and it wasn't even a lie. Dad thought having an extra phone line would look suspicious, and Savannah had no one to call anyway. She certainly wasn't letting this stranger into the house to use the ancient landline. "I can't help you, I'm sorry."
She felt bad turning the guy down, he sounded desperate, but she wasn't stupid. Even if she weren't an omega letting this guy in while she was home by herself would be a bad idea.
"Fine, forget the phone," the man said with an impatient sigh. "Could you give me a hand changing a flat tire? I don't even have one of those, what are they called, the big wrenches? For taking the tire off?"
Savannah chewed her lip, thinking about it, and about how to get this guy to leave as fast as possible.
"...I can't help you change it," she said after a long moment. "But I can lend you the wrench. And a jack, if you need it."
"That would be amazing, thank you so much!" the man said gratefully, breathing a sigh of relief.
"Wait there," Savannah said, straightening up cautiously. "I'll go get them. I'll be right back."
She hurried into the house through the side door, into the garage where her father kept his tools, and dug through the metal storage cabinets until she found the tire iron and the small jack. It took several minutes, so she was already apologizing as she stepped back out into the garden, turning towards the gate, her eyes on the tools in her arms.
"Sorry, I'm back, I went ahead and grabbed the tire pressure gauge while I was looking so—"
She looked up, and froze. The gate was open.
"Thank you," said the man, behind her, and she whirled to face him, heart in her throat. He backed away immediately, empty hands raised. He was older, maybe late 30's, but handsome, with a strong jaw and sharp dark eyes. He was smiling, and Savannah wasn't sure she liked his smile. With alarm, she caught his scent, a deep note like spicy wood smoke, and realized he was an alpha.
"Sorry, didn't mean to spook you," he said. "You were gone for a while so I just let myself in. You have a beautiful garden here."
He didn’t just let himself in… he broke into the garden.
"Thank you. Please leave," Savannah said stiffly, somewhere between terror and outrage. She shoved the tools into his arms. "Just put them in the mailbox when you're done, I'll get them later."
"Yes ma'am," the man replied, still smiling too wide for Savannah's comfort. "Thank you again. You're a life saver."
He took the tools and he circled around her and left, closing the garden gate behind him.
Savannah ran at once to the living room and watched through the curtains of the front window as he walked back down the long dirt driveway, which vanished into the trees before it reached the road. She watched until he was gone, and then a good while longer just to make sure he didn't come back. Then she went through the house making sure all the doors and windows were closed and locked. That wood smoke smell stayed in her nose for a long time, keeping her on edge.
If he had been close enough for her to scent him, then he had definitely scented her.
She could only hope he hadn't been paying enough attention to identify what he'd smelled. Most people had never met an omega. He might just think she was a weird smelling beta. If he had recognized what she was, then she just had to hope that lending him tools to fix his car was enough to make him take pity on her.
She didn't go outside for the rest of the day, too afraid he would show up again, except once in the afternoon, shortly before her family was due to get home. She ran down to the mailbox to retrieve the tools, which the man had left there obediently. She sprinted back like the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels, but nothing chased her.
She put the tools back where they belonged, and her family came home for dinner, and she said nothing about the visitor. Her father would have panicked. He might have insisted the whole family pack up and move over a close call like that. They were already in the middle of nowhere. She didn't want to end up trapped forever in some shack in the Alaskan wilderness when he decided that was the only place safe enough. Still she waited, tense as a violin string, waiting for the sky to come crashing down.
But the evening came to a close and nothing happened. She went to bed, still worried but somewhat relieved. He must not have noticed. Everything would be fine.
Now it was a few hours later and she was staring at the same man, wearing a DOA vest and handing what looked like a stack of folded dollar bills to a local cop. He looked up, catching her staring, and smiled at her, like this was all a funny joke.
It was her fault. She had done this to her family. She must have messed up somehow. Maybe someone really had seen her from the road. Maybe it was the online work. Or some other mistake she couldn't even think of. Whatever it was, they'd sent a DOA agent to investigate, and she'd let him get close enough to scent her and confirm what they already suspected.
She hung her head, bitter tears stinging her eyes. They'd been so careful for so many years, and in one day she'd ruined her family's lives. No, she thought, as the tears overwhelmed her. She'd ruined their lives nine years ago, the day she'd discovered she was an omega.