"There are some jobs. Not many, but some." The bus driver opens the doors and 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 motel 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, that 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 don'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 Kieran. This shifter is more heavily muscled than Kieran is—not that anyone could describe Kieran 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 Winter Lake, 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-grey 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 fewer packs around than there used to be. Some have been so aggressive, that 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 Novad 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. Or at least I thought I did. This just goes to show how wrong I was.
So, although Kieran 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 Kieran felt about Nova, once his father learned who or rather what I was, there was no way he would agree to a mating between Kieran and Nova.
Kieran could've fought his father on it. But the price of Nova 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 and 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, my 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 tyres 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, and 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 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 total 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.