Annie Nicholas: Omegas In Love

Stuffing his credit card and receipt into his wallet, Tyler stepped onto the main street of Chinatown.

An antique red archway covered the entrance to the tourist trap to keep evil spirits away and good luck in. Sticking his hand in his jacket pocket, he rubbed the small, velvet jewelry box he’d placed there earlier today. He could use all the luck he could get–just because Katrina was his mate, didn’t mean she’d agree to get married.

Raised in an all-wolf-shifter community in rural Mongolia, she didn’t think like American shifters. Like him. He took a deep, shaky breath. Marriage was a foreign ritual to her.

He’d chosen this location not just for his superstitions, but for its significance. Katrina worked in the area, a place where the old Asian world met the new, as an interpreter for some of the local companies.

She waited under the arch, facing him, her delicate eyebrows furrowed. An Asian man he didn’t recognize spoke with her.

Facing the stranger’s back, Tyler could only see his short black hair and long fall trench coat.

A sharp stab of jealousy drove him to quicken his pace. He couldn’t help it. As a shifter, possession was nine-tenths of the law, and Katrina belonged to him.

Passing half a dozen souvenir shops offering cheap trinkets, Tyler trotted along Wentworth Avenue. Katrina’s raised voice reached his ears, but he couldn’t understand Mandarin. He growled low in his chest. His mate didn’t yell often.

Three other men broke from the crowd and surrounded the arguing couple.

Tyler’s heart rate took off like a locomotive on a downhill slide. He smelled shifters. Non-Vasi shifters on their territory. Surrounding his mate.

The Asian stranger grabbed her arm and yanked her into his embrace.

“Hey!” It took every ounce of Tyler’s control to keep his beast from busting out on the tourist filled streets of Chicago’s biggest attraction. He shoved the stranger from behind, knocking Katrina from his arms.

She stumbled and landed hard on the ground. Tears stained her cheeks. The cold wind blew strands of long, black hair across her face.

“Get your hands off her.” He bent to help her, but the stranger blocked him. Straightening, Tyler glared at Katrina’s assailant and met a cold, dark stare.

His beast rose closer to the surface and clouded his thoughts. She belonged to him and this male thought to block his way. The only solution was to tear this asshole limb from limb. “Get out of my way.” He spoke each word separately and clearly to get his point across.

“This is none of your concern.” The stranger spoke with a thick accent like Katrina’s.

“You’re on Vasi territory. Anything that happens here is my concern. And she belongs to me.” Tyler pointed to Katrina, then back to himself.

“Chinatown is not Vasi territory. Never has been and never will be. And this female mated me before she ran away.” Crossing his arms, the stranger planted himself in front of Tyler. “She still belongs to me and has never been yours to take.”

Tyler’s jaw hung as if on broken hinges. He shot her a questioning look, but she stared at the ground, not meeting his gaze. Katrina hated to speak about her past. Now, he knew why.

She wiped her face, huddled on the ground, and didn’t deny a thing.

Every bit of joy in his life lay with Katrina, but truth’s claws dug into his heart. He didn’t know which hurt more, the lies or the way she hunched on the ground, submitting to this stranger like an omega all over again.

One of the surrounding males took her by the arms and assisted her to her feet.

She took a step toward Tyler, reached out her hand, and spoke his name in a tone laced with regret. Tear-filled eyes pleaded with him.

Fuck shifter laws. Fuck this stranger. And fuck any territory he stepped on. No one would make him give her up. “I’ll ask politely one last time, buddy.” Tyler’s glare challenged the stranger. “Let her go.”

The Asian trailed a look down his thin body and back. “Or what? You will sell me insurance?”

Tyler relaxed his hold on his beast.

It burst from his body in a spray of clothes and blood. Bipedal, he towered over the unknown shifters.

Cries from the humans crowding the street filled the air. Not everyday a lanky redhead exploded into three hundred pounds of teeth and claws. Werewolves scaring the locals only caused the pack trouble, but this was an emergency. His alpha would just have to take it out of his hide.

With a full back-handed swing, Tyler knocked the stranger out of his path to Katrina.

The man who had helped her to stand snatched her away into the panicked crowd.

As if waking from a nightmare, she shook her head, then kicked and screamed until they were swallowed from his view.

Leaping after her, Tyler was intercepted midair. He hit the pavement with a bone-crunching impact. Air rushed out of his lungs while stars whirled around his head, yet he still managed to roll from the attack. He might not train like Eric, his alpha, or Robert, his beta, but Katrina had forced him to learn the basics of keeping his hide intact.

He jumped to his feet and faced his opponent. The dark, cold eyes of the unknown Asian male stared back from the face of the beast who’d attacked him. His companions had shifted, too.

Impending death confronted Tyler. Three shifters against one were terrible odds, especially for a shifter who worked as a real estate agent.

The streets had emptied quickly and the faint sound of sirens reached them.

Stalking away, the stranger didn’t even give Tyler a backward glance, although the other two prowled closer.

In the distance, he heard Katrina scream his name. Tears sprung to his eyes at the cry. He was supposed to protect her. A vise squeezed his chest. Breathing became difficult around his breaking heart. Red became the only color he could see.

His opponents coordinated their attacks and jumped him together.

Katrina attempted to transform into her wolf-beast form as Chen’s guard dragged her through the panicked human crowd. Her beast didn’t respond. Sharp claws of fear tore into her heart. What was wrong?

Her beast used to cower like this in the past when faced with Chen, but they’d grown so much since escaping to America. It only took one moment in her old alpha’s presence and they’d lost all they had gained. No, please no, she needed to connect with her beast and fight.

She looked at her true mate a last time as he stood in his red tinged magnificent form against Chen and his pack mates. Their gazes met and she reached for him, hoping one day he might forgive her secrets.

If only the past would have remained buried. No one knew of her life in China–she wanted the depravity forgotten. Her best friend, Sugar, had once told her to build a wall around the haunting memories, and she had. Now, Chen, her worst nightmare, showed up here, halfway around the world.

What did an alpha of a large shifter clan want with the lowest of daughters of her birth pack? She’d been nothing but garbage to him. There must be other females with the same pure shifter blood as her. Chen could mate and torture one of them. What made her so special?

She struggled in the guard’s arms, twisting and turning until she sank her flat, human teeth into his neck.

With a cry, he pulled her off by yanking on her long hair, then slapped her across the face hard enough to rattle her thoughts. Such hits had been common in her youth but it had been years since anyone had laid an unkind hand on her. Limp, she wasn’t difficult for him to carry and take away from Chinatown. The place where she’d met a misfit pack of omega shifters. The place she’d felt most at home. The place where Tyler had kissed her for the first time.