Abel's Omega(Gay Paranomal MM Mpreg Romance) (Mercy Hills Pack Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

  CHAPTER NINETY

  ABOUT ANN-KATRIN

  NEWSLETTER

  OTHER BOOKS BY ANN-KATRIN

  Abel’s Omega

  Mercy Hills Pack Book Two

  By

  Ann-Katrin Byrde

  © 2016 Ann-Katrin Byrde

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. All resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Please don’t read if you are under eighteen.

  To Ashley—you’re a Starr! (See what I did there? Huh? Huh?) But really, thank you for all your help, especially with the baby.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I slipped out of bed as the first light of pre-dawn turned the horizon to gray, careful not to wake my mate Patrick, still sleeping the sleep of the just Alpha. I stepped into my loose maternity pants, and pulled an old t-shirt on over them, smoothing it down over the five-and-a-half month bulge of my belly. The skin around my bellybutton was itchy again and I scratched at it as I bent over the cradle tucked in the corner. Beatrice was still asleep, but I needed to get her out of the bedroom before she woke up and started making noise. Patrick hated having the babies in the bedroom, but it was the one situation that I—a powerless omega—stood my ground on. They were quieter if I could get to them right away and after three babies in three years, the smallest sound woke me so it was even less inconvenience for him.

  I gathered Beatrice carefully up from the cradle and took her to the kitchen with me. She never woke, even when I laid her in a clothes basket on the floor, cushioned with towels and an old blanket that was too shabby even for a shifter enclave. It worked pretty well for a baby mattress and if there were any accidents I didn’t need to worry about it staining.

  One of her dark curls, so much like mine, lay across her eyes and I carefully twitched it away before the tickle woke her. I’d been lucky with Beatrice. She’d started sleeping regularly through the night at one month, and now that she was coming up on her first birthday, I rarely heard a peep out of her from bedtime to morning.

  My other two pups were still asleep; I usually took this quiet part of the day to catch up on chores that were hard to do with their ‘help’. It was a perfect time to do a load of laundry and then start breakfast for the family. Patrick would be up soon—or rather, I would go and carefully wake him, when the time was right.

  It only took a few minutes to gather a load of dark clothing and put it in a bag, then I picked up the baby again and started the walk down to Central, where all the pack's communal resources resided. As the Alpha’s mate, I had keys to most of the buildings—courtesy of Patrick, who liked me to get these sorts of things done without pestering him, and preferred that I do chores that took me out of the house only when he wasn’t around and therefore wouldn’t need me. I used my key to open the door to the laundromat, signed the book so Patrick's account would be debited for the use of the washer and dryer, and loaded everything up.

  Time to go start breakfast.

  Beatrice woke up on the walk home, burbling happily in my ear. "Da da da da da," she repeated over and over, grabbing for my ears and my nose, her little fingers getting tangled in my dark curls.

  "Yes, Dabi," I said, and rubbed my nose against hers. She squealed with laughter, so I did it again, then blew a raspberry against her cheek, because I loved her so much.

  Back at the house, I laid the ratty blanket out on the floor and set her down in the middle of it, before I started about making breakfast. Eggs, sausage, four slices of toast for Patrick. As soon as I had the sausage cooking, I walked pad-foot down the hall to Patrick's bedroom. I never thought of it as mine—Patrick owned the house and I only got to use it because Patrick had seen me once while visiting my original pack, and had made a deal with them to mate me. I was no more to Patrick than something else to show off—his pretty, randy, fertile omega mate.

  I hated him.

>   It wasn't a violent hate. Not anymore. That heat had burned out after the first year, after the first pup and the six months that followed of trying to raise a young alpha, keep a house, and anticipate the needs of a man who made my skin crawl. But a baby—my baby—oh, that had taken a lot of the sting out of the mating.

  I just wished my pack had considered my feelings when they agreed to it.

  A curl of anxiety made my heart speed up as I put a hand on Patrick's shoulder and shook him gently. "Patrick, it's morning." I never knew how he’d react—some mornings he woke up and went about his day like normal, others he was snappish and I walked on eggshells until left.

  Patrick growled and shook my hand off. "I'm awake." He didn't look awake, and I’d been on the receiving end of his ‘corrections' before, when I'd taken him at his word and Patrick had slept in. So I began moving about the room, tidying here, folding there, making small noises until Patrick finally sat up and said, "Fuck, Baxter, I'm up. Go make noise somewhere else." And that gave me leave to return to the kitchen.

  Back in the kitchen, Beatrice—silly pup—had crawled off the blanket, heading toward the hallway with the speed and determination of a racing snail. I put her back on her blanket, and cracked the eggs into the frying pan. Four slices of toast into the toaster, a pot of water onto the stove to boil for tea, and then I had to put Beatrice back on the blanket again. "You little crazy pup, stay still. Dabi has work to do." But I couldn't help smiling. She was going be busy once she got her legs underneath her.

  Patrick strode up the hall just as the eggs were done. I’d had four years to perfect this timing, and I was just buttering the last slice of toast as Patrick pulled out his chair and sat down. It wasn't fifteen seconds later that I slid his breakfast in front of him.

  My mate started eating, and when he made no comment on the quality of the food, I went back to making breakfast for the pups. Oatmeal, with a few of the berries I'd scavenged in late summer from a patch that had somehow escaped notice outside the walls of the Jackson-Jellystone Pack. Then again, very few of this pack ever ventured outside walls. In my old pack, it had been common to scavenge for grains and roots and fruit and berries in the land around their enclave, and I’d made it a practice once I’d moved here to befriend the guards so I didn’t have to get permits every time I went out the gates. It had made a huge difference to the food I had to work with and since I really wasn’t that great a cook—the bruises from my first year mated had been proof of that—the fruits of the land often made a difference between food being eaten, and a lecture or worse from Patrick.

  Plus, a few frozen wild strawberries meant that Fan would eat his oatmeal, instead of playing with it and causing a fuss because he couldn’t have eggs and sausage like his father. But, while my mated pack was wealthier than my natal one, it wasn’t that wealthy. We couldn’t afford a protein-rich meal like that every day for the pups. Or for me, for that matter, thought I tried to make sure I got some every day. For the baby. I mostly ate whatever the pups didn’t finish, and leftovers from Patrick’s meals. I did have pre-natal vitamins—Stores got them in on a regular basis, but there were always a few bottles set aside with my name on them, since I spent so much time pregnant.

  Not that I begrudged the pregnancies. It was the man who got the pups on me that I wanted gone.

  While the oatmeal cooked, I put together Patrick’s morning tea and slid it in front of him, then started washing the frying pan. The laundry was probably done now and I wondered if I could slip out and back again before Patrick left.

  Patrick took a sip and made a face. “Where’s the good tea?”

  Oh, shit. “You drank the last of it yesterday evening. I was going to stop at Stores today for more.” It would mean waiting to buy new jeans for Fan, but he could make it through the next week on what still fit him. And I was grateful he would only have to wait a week—where I’d been born, it might have meant doing without. Jackson-Jellystone wasn’t rich, but it was miles ahead of Buffalo Gap.

  “You should have gone yesterday.”

  “I thought the other tin still had some. I’ll go as soon as they’re open.”

  “Hmmph.” But when I tried to pass by him, intending to get Teca up and dressed before I tackled getting our strong-willed boy out of bed, Patrick grabbed my arm, squeezing to the edge of painful. “You need to pay more attention to your job. I picked you up out of the mud, gave you a home, gave you status, when you had nothing going for you but your looks. Don’t forget that. I can repudiate you at any time and send you back to that cardboard camp you call a pack. So if you want to stay here with your precious pups, you need to smarten up.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face and I bowed my head, partly to show him how scared I was, partly to hide the anger that I could never quite squash. “I’m sorry, Patrick. I’ll do better.” The thought of losing my pups, of being forced back to Buffalo Gap, sent a painful surge of nausea through my body. It made me grateful I never got to eat until after everyone else was done, or I might have lost the contents of my stomach then and there, and that would have meant a beating. I waited there, the blood thumping painfully in my arm because of the pressure of Patrick’s hand, and hoped.

  He sniffed, and threw my arm away from him. “I’m going to be outside walls today and I won’t be back until curfew. Make sure you pick up your slack while I’m gone.”

  “Yes, Patrick,” I said, using the most submissive tone I could muster, and then I made my escape down the hall to Teca’s room.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My day was spent in blissful solitude, except for the company of my pups, who didn’t detract from the sense of peace at all. They even went to bed on time, and right to sleep, and I had a few moments after the last of the housework was done to curl up on the couch with a new romance novel, complete with open-shirted hottie on the cover. They were my secret pleasure, bought from the scrapings of the household budget, pennies saved here and there by trading labor or skill with other shifters. Patrick didn’t know about them, and I never planned that he would. He’d take them, or make fun of me for them, or worse—take them as a criticism of him.

  This one was a cowboy story, and I squirmed in wistful arousal while the cowboy took his city-boy lover in the open, under the stars. Some day, I’d like to do that, though not with Patrick. But if I could have a man like the cowboy, strong but loving, I was sure it would be…an experience.

  The knob on the front door rattled just after curfew, and I crammed the book back down in its hiding place under the couch cushions. Patrick walked into the living room and my night went straight to hell right after.

  I braced myself against the mattress on hands and knees as Patrick pounded into me from behind. Sex was never about me, but all about Patrick, and Patrick's Alpha status, and Patrick's pride in having a young, pretty omega for a mate. An omega that was less than a month away from giving him a fourth child, a fact he never seemed to get tired of bragging about. My own distaste for him didn’t mean I never had an orgasm—omegas were known for their arousability—but they’d been fewer and fewer lately.

  I hoped this one was a girl. At least I sort of got to keep them, Patrick being mostly interested in our firstborn son, Fan. If it was a girl, maybe Patrick would be disappointed in me too, and start leaving me alone in the bedroom. That was really all I wanted out of the situation.

  Well, that, and my baby. I loved my babies. Even Fan, spoiled as he was by his father. Patrick wanted Fan to grow up to be Alpha of a pack, like he was. I would rather he wasn't—my experience with Alphas wasn't one I wanted my first-born child to wreak on anyone. But what good would wishing do? Fan would be what his alpha father wanted him to be, because no one paid attention to omegas.

  Patrick grunted and shifted his grip, changing the angle between us. Good, he must be close. I put a hand to my swollen belly, where the baby squirmed and kicked in an attempt to tell the world that he or she wasn't at all pleased with the pummeling. Patrick's grunts and growls grew l
ouder, and I cast an anxious glance over at the cradle beside the bed, where our third child, Beatrice, was sleeping. Her eyelids twitched—a sure sign that the noise was going to wake her up.

  "Patrick, you're going to wake the baby," I whispered, careful to keep my tone submissive. Patrick thought omegas should be seen and not heard, and in the beginning of our mating he’d often backed up his beliefs with some less civilized responses. Like a slap across the face, or a belt across the ass.

  Beatrice whimpered and I bit my lip. Patrick was taking forever tonight. If he didn’t show signs of finishing soon, I was going to have to…move things along. I hated doing this, but it was the quickest way to get my mate off.

  I tightened the muscles of my ass and began to move with Patrick's motions, as if I couldn't help myself. A few breathy moans on my part to make the deception more real, and I finally felt that swelling sensation inside my body, a sure sign of Patrick knotting, his orgasm as agonizingly slow tonight as the lead-up to it. The bulge of his cock pressed against my womb, uncomfortable for me at this stage of the pregnancy, and upsetting to the baby, who kicked and punched in revenge. I grunted as one particularly strong kick hit me under the ribs, but then Patrick was done, sliding out of me to fall back on the bed. Beatrice started making little yips and yaws, the warning signs of a full-out wail.

  Quick as a shot, I was out of the bed to pick her up. And maybe to get as far away from Patrick as I could without getting in trouble. I took my moments of happiness where I could find them.

  "You spoil that kid. She needs to learn to sleep through the night." Patrick's eyes gleamed in the light from the hallway.

  "It was just the noise. She'll go back to sleep soon." I began a gentle bouncing in place, swaying back and forth as I hummed with the baby's head against my chest. The one in my belly stretched and I thought that, if only Patrick weren't here, I could be happy.

  But happy wasn't really in the cards for an omega.

  Beatrice was an easy pup, and quickly soothed back to sleep. I placed her carefully in her crib, then crawled back into the bed. My faint hope that Patrick had already gone to sleep vanished when my mate’s burly arm wrapped around my waist. His fingers spread out over the curve of my belly as if he were claiming it for his own.