Chapter 21


    The Pack Run


    Baron and Angelique werete returning, and there was barely time between their arrival and


    leaving for them to change into sweats before the limousine was out front waiting to take them


    to the Corbyn packnd.


    Angelique was almost fric with energy, her eyes shing with her wolf. “A run is exactly


    what I need tonight,” she wrapped her fingers into the sweat–shirt that Baron wore, and rubbed her


    cheek against him, as if seeking to scent mark him before the run. “A run and a hard, fast, dirty f-


    k,” she purred.


    Jane pressed her side against the door and wondered if there would ever be a point where


    she would wish often enough and fervently enough for invisibility that the universe would grant it to her.


    “Angelique,” Baron jerked his head away from her. “Enough.”


    Angelique threw herself back against the seat, crossing her arms over her chest, petnt. “After


    today, Baron,” she said through her teeth. “I would think you would be a little more appreciative.”


    “I am appreciative,” he said. “But you are pushing boundaries that I am unwilling to cross.”


    “I am the wounded party here,” she hissed. “I am the one who…”


    “Enough” his voice was curt. “Enough. Let‘s just enjoy the run.”


    The interior of the limousine settled into silence and Jane watched their


    reflections in the tinted window. Angelique was brightest, her shining golden


    hair and pink velour tracksuit showing clearly in the ss. The lights picked across the ins of Baron‘s f


    ace dramatically, highlighting the


    perfection


    of his bone structure, his high cheek bones hollowing his cheeks, and his strong jaw just beginning to sh


    ow stubble. The first time she had seen Baron had been at a run just two


    months before. As an omega and younger daughter, she had not been included in the


    social functions of the pack, and the elite of the city, and so she had never encountered him, her only kno


    wledge of him from snippets of conversation


    overheard between her father and sister, and the gossip that circted through the packs during the


    runs.


    Baron‘s grandmother had taken her young family to her parent‘s pack after the loss of her


    mate, and Baron‘s father and Baron had been raised on the other side of the


    country as a result. When Baron had returned, he had already been a sessful


    businessman with considerable wealth behind him, and in the two years since he had been back, he


    had continued to build that wealth and through it obtain a social position in the city‘s elite and the


    various packs.


    That first run, she had seen him the moment he had stepped out of his car, and every instinct


    within her had lit up: mate. He had met her eyes


    several times during the mingling before the run, and she had thought that


    he had felt it too, that immediate connection, that fated pairing between mates.


    After the run, he had somehow been at


    her side as they had waited for the cars to return, and he had asked her name, quietly, with the


    conversations of those around them hiding that they spoke together at all. The next day, her


    father had told her that she would be marrying Baron at the next full moon, as was traditional, and she


    had been thrilled, believing that she had somehow managed to find


    her true mate, and would leave her unhappy family home for a happy marriage.


    She had not seen him again until the wedding –


    he had not called, made no effort to meet her, and small doubts had begun to edge in. However, it


    wasn‘t until the


    moment that she had been waiting for her cue to enter the ceremony and she had heard Alice remark to


    one of the other bridesmaids that it could have been her wedding as


    Baron had asked for her first, and that Jane had been offered instead, like a constion prize, that


    the doubts had begun to really take hold.


    The weight of


    thatment had sat heavily on Jane‘s heart, but she had told herself that she had felt that connection a


    nd that Baron had shared it too, and that had kept her going throughout the day, until he had


    come drunk to her bed, and, in the morning, Angelique had been at the breakfast table. Now, she thought


    watching him in the reflection, here they were at their first run as


    husband and wife, with his mistress openly included and epted, and she knew that Alice had been rig


    ht. Jane had been a fool to think that someone like Baron would see and


    want someone like Jane, that fate would bring two such opposites


    together. Baron had wanted into the Corbyn pack, and Jane had simply been the means by


    which to do so. They were admitted through the


    gates and the limousine joined the slow crawl of cars up to the meeting ground before the


    chauffeurs circled away again. Jane wondered what the human chauffeurs thought of this


    large gathering of people in the center of a private nature reserve at night.


    Baron kept Jane’s hand on his arm, as if it were a formal gathering rather than just a run, preventing her


    from


    slipping to edges as she normally would. “I have not forgotten that you owe me an exnation, Jane,” he


    said under his breath as he made his way to where her family were gathered. Jane flicked her eyes up


    to him and away, pain and anger wing its way through her chest. “Why does it even matter?”


    “What do you mean by that?” He frowned.


    “Baron,” Matthew Corbyn greeted him.


    “We will talk soon,” Baron muttered under his breath to Jane before smiling


    widely and stepping towards Matthew, releasing Jane in order to shake hands. Jane took


    the opportunity to let the pack swallow her, easing her way back to the


    edges where she could slip into the shadows of the trees.


    She slipped off her shoes and tucked them into the roots of the tree. There had been many pack


    runs during her life when she had shifted back


    after to find that her clothing and shoes had gone missing, and so she had learned to undress in secret,


    hiding her clothing.


    “Have you got the picture?” A beta only a year or two her senior asked his


    friend as they stopped on the opposite side of her tree. “I didn‘t get it


    during the first round. I‘m told it‘s really something.”


    “Here,” his friend pulled his phone out of his


    shoe. They were both barefoot, beginning to strip ready for the shift to wolf, and phones and wallets were


    being stuffed into the toes of shoes for safe keeping. He flicked through, and Jane saw herself on the


    screen, bare, the sh of the camera picking up every detail.


    “Oh god,” the first guy moaned. “Send it to me. F-K, that‘s f–king hot.”


    “Isn‘t it just. You know what they say about omegas though” the second replied.


    “Do you think it‘s true?”


    “From that photo, yeah, don‘t you? Western would never say though, lucky bastard,” the


    second turned off his phone and returned it to his shoe.


    “And there‘s not exactly a lot of them around, so we‘re not likely to ever know.”


    “They say she almost caused a mob when she went on heat. Howe we didn‘t know about


    omegas until she‘s already f–king married to Western? I always thought they were, you know, like


    cubs, mentally deficit or something.”


    “I didn‘t even know she was an omega, I just thought she was being ostracized for some reason,” the


    other shrugged as he stripped to his skin. The rest of their conversation was carried on in wolf-


    form as they shifted, sitting next to the neat piles of their clothing, waiting for the signal that the pack


    was moving into the forest.


    Jane pressed her back up against the tree, her heart racing in her chest. The signal was given, and there


    were barks and howls, the ground shaking under the mass of foot falls as the pack raced across the


    clearing and into the trees on the opposite side to Jane’s position.


    She stripped off her clothing, pushing them into a knot in the tree, and


    shifted into her wolf, stretching and shaking out her silvery–brown coat. The air was heavy with the scent


    of other wolves, too thick for her to be able to tell if any came to close, and so, as she always


    did, she picked her way carefully through the forest, following the shadows, until she was sure that she


    had put enough distance between her and them in order to run.


    She flew through the undergrowth, lost in the wildness of her own nature, the sound of her own


    footfalls, the pull of her breath, the feel of the air passing through her coat, the scents


    of the forest, and the secrets of the night.


    It was this feeling that she tried to capture in her human form when she ran, the


    feeling of oneness with the world around her, the sense of ce and belonging, of beingplete and


    whole in herself.


    She slowed as she reached her special ce, going down on her belly


    to wriggle through the ckberries that guarded it, before shifting back to


    human form. She carefully picked her way through the rocks until she could wade


    into the water, the chill of it against her skin stealing her


    breath as she limated and the bank sucking at her toes. She dove under striking out into the center of


    the pond, turning over under the water in order to see the perfect, bright circle of


    the moon pulled into distortion by the ripples. She surfaced, and felt hands catch her, pulling her up


    against a hard body, skin warm against hers.


    N?velDrama.Org: text ? owner.


    “Did you think I wouldn‘t notice you sneak away?” Baron wondered.