All Good Things: The Omega Auction Chronicles, #13

All Good Things

Kian Rhodes

Nom de Plume Publications

www.NDPPublications.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-945854-60-6

ISBN-10:  1-945854-60-X

All content including, but not limited to, characters and situations are the intellectual property of the author and may not be used in any way without prior written approval.

Copyright © 2017 All Rights Reserved

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue

Prologue

Trevor

Trev? Clint's sleepy voice came from the doorway to our bedroom. Why are you up? Are the kids okay?

They're fine. I forced myself to look up from the cup of tea that seemed to always be in front of me lately. I'd kept on a little more weight than I wanted after I'd had the twins and the herbal blend from the spice shop in town was supposed to help me take it off.

Clint sat next to me on the sofa and pulled me close, inhaling my scent with a contented sigh.

Scenting a mate was a normal behavior – not just for my Alpha werewolf, but for all wolf shifters. Still, for reasons I couldn't put my finger on, the intimate behavior irritated me. I shrugged out of his embrace, standing up to refill my half-empty teacup from the still warm pot in the kitchen.

Honey? What's wrong? As it had so often lately, concern crept into Clint's voice as he followed me to the kitchen.

Nothing, I muttered as I stared out the window at the blinding midday sun. It was the fifth day in a row – or was it the sixth? – that I'd found myself awake in the middle of the day with an undefinable itch under my skin. My close proximity to Clint in the bed was too irritating to allow me to fall back asleep. I can't sleep. You should go back to bed.

Please, I thought to myself, leave me be.

Why? Clint's confused response came immediately, reminding me of our telepathic link, telling me that I was allowed no secrets from this Alpha – not even in my own mind. Honey, have I done something?

No. Of course not, I answered aloud, swallowing a sudden wave of anger at the lack of privacy in my life. I'm just cranky. I can't seem to sleep lately, and everything is starting to feel a bit..stifling.

Everything? Clint said quietly. Or just us? Me?

When I couldn't respond, Clint's jaw tightened.

I see. He stood silently for a long moment, and then lifted one large hand toward my back but let it fall when a wave of irritation washed through me. It wasn't enough that he could hear all my thoughts, he could feel my emotions, also. I'll be in the bedroom if you want to talk.

I nodded, keeping my eyes fixed on a point in the distant forest and trying to keep my mind clear.

I waited until the sounds of Clint resettling in the bed died away before draining my nearly full teacup, placing it in the sink, and walking out into the sun-drenched courtyard in front of the packhouse. 

Settling onto the wooden steps leading up to the porch, I ran my fingers over the satin-smooth redwood. It was the same spot where Clint had found me fighting back tears, an Omega in heat waiting for him inside. Everything I'd thought I knew about Alphas was tossed out the figurative window when he'd passed her over to his brother. 

Back then, the step had been rough and weathered. Clint had replaced the wood in the porch and the steps while I was carrying, not wanting to risk our pups getting painful splinters in their paws when they started scampering around.

Like so many other tasks he filled his spare time with, Clint hadn't bragged on it or expected thanks. Clint was an Alpha in every sense of the word; he saw what his pack needed and he provided it. He was an excellent mate and an unusually devoted father to our pups, so why wasn't that enough for me anymore?

Restless and ill at ease with the thoughts that were running through my mind, I began to wander around the nearly deserted compound that made up the heart of our – of Coruscation – territory.

There was the small herb garden that I had planted soon after Clint had bought me. After a productive spring and summer, the coolness of the fall nights was beginning to take its toll. The once vibrant plants were thinning and drooping.

The three large dormitory buildings that the pack had built together to house the Omegas that Clint, Colt, Rafe, and Colby had rescued lurked along one side, slightly out of the wheel-spoke pattern that the small houses were laid out in. One of the buildings sat empty now; the Omegas it used to house had all found mates and moved on.  The rest were all adjusting well and managed their own medication and daily care now.

Across the path was the small play area for the pups, complete with a Lupine Warrior training course that Clint had built over the summer. All of the pack's pups were obsessed with the television show and trained long hours every night on the agility style obstacles when they weren't in school.

I closed my eyes and pictured my own pups on it a few nights before. Rafe and Colby's daughter, Leia, the sweetheart of the Blood Valley pack, had stayed with us for a few days and, as always, she was inseparable from my twins. That night the pups had bounced and climbed, run and weaved, jumped and dodged until just watching them made me dizzy. In the end, it was the fearless little girl that had bested all the others to become the queen of the course.

Turning away, I focused on other spots – some with nothing but a memory to mark them.

The courtyard in front of the packhouse where the Coruscation pack had accepted me as their Omega and submitted to me when I was still human.

The spot on the back porch steps where the plan to save the kidnapped Omegas had been hatched which was, coincidentally, the same spot where Clint and Colt had told Rafe how to find Colin Tarling's missing Omega, Kenny. 

There was the large open field in the distance where the first dragon I'd ever seen – Alpha Falk – had risked the wrath of the werewolf pack and settled without warning to seek my help for his sick Omega. In the dirt drive beside the packhouse, there was a still slightly darkened patch of soil where the leader of the Omega kidnapping ring had bled out when Falk severed his head from his body as retribution for striking his daughter, Ionela, and attempting to kidnap his Omega, Cian.

Stumbling back inside, I leaned against the wall as the memories continued to assault me. The guest room which was serving as the twin's nursery while Clint finished adding two more bedrooms onto the house. The room where I could still see myself defending the filthy, battered unconscious white wolf that became my best friend.

Clint's office where we had spent countless hours working with Drey Christof to help Thane, the rescued Omega he risked everything to claim, as he fought to avoid being returned to an Alpha who had never wanted him.

It was as if every pivotal moment of the past two years of my life was intertwined with this place, so why did it seem like I belonged there less and less every day?

Clint

Before I'd taken leadership of the Coruscation pack, I was a leader in the Böxenwolf Brigade. Before that, I was a member of a secret special forces division of the Council of Packs Military Forces. Helpless wasn't an emotion that I was used to. Still, as Trevor pulled away from me yet again, that was precisely how I felt.

I went back to bed, giving him the space that he was looking for, but in my heart I knew that we couldn't go on like this any longer. We were going to have to talk, even if all signs pointed to the possibility that I wasn't going to like the outcome.

I heard the door creak closed behind Trevor as he moved outside. Like the distance between us, his midday excursions were increasing. He spent more time awake when the pack was asleep; moving about restlessly in his human form. He was sleeping more at night when the rest of us were awake, and he had skipped the last two pack runs.

When I thought about it, I couldn't seem to remember the last time I had seen one of his shifted forms. For a being who used to delight in the ability to shift, to run in the woods with his pups, the entire situation seemed....unnatural.

TREVOR HAD TAKEN TO crawling into bed for a nap as soon as Eric and Adrian had been delivered to the tutors at the pack schoolhouse. Most nights, the nap lasted until it was time to bring the boys home. On more than one occasion, the tutor had walked them home after all the other children were gone when Trevor had