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Alec had just about got bored of the article he was reading when the knock came. He loved learning, but he wasn't good with academic work when he wasn't being held accountable by a teacher. And now that he was done with his degree and back in the pack, it was hard to imagine getting a job in a hospital—anything that required skills beyond diagnosing a sore throat or an ear infection, really. There was no way his parents would agree to him moving out again.
They were both workaholics, but they believed in the pack above all things, and that meant living at home until you got a mate. They made some exceptions in the name of socializing with their human colleagues, though, which was why they were out late. It was rare, and it was rarer still that Alec got this lucky because when he opened the door he found his midnight visitor was Gabriel Halley.
“Gabriel,” he whispered.
Nobody else was there to hear, but it still felt illicit. It was the first time they had met since Alec had presented alpha.
If he’d thought about it, he’d have expected it to feel stranger than this. Alphas were always pushing each other, trying to gain the upper hand. Not because they needed it, simply to reassure themselves that they were in control. Alec hadn’t liked this new part of his wolf at all—and it had become yet another reason to avoid people—but he was almost as discomfited by its absence.
“Hey,” Gabriel greeted, not loud but not making an effort to whisper. Alec wasn’t sure Gabriel knew how: it seemed almost contrary to his very nature. He was still a head taller than Alec, broad enough across the shoulders that Alec’s wolf should have at least felt threatened and all Alec could focus on were his sky blue eyes and soft blond hair. It shouldn’t have been like that, it’d been bad enough when Alec had been a beta, braving a club in the nearest city just to meet someone he could actually get off with and pretending to his parents that he had a crush on one of the younger girls in their pack to put off their match-making while he finished university.
“Hey,” Alec offered inanely back. “What’s up?”
It came out sounding too formal, awkward. He was an only child and his parents had always spoken to him like he was an adult—by the time he'd started hanging out with other children in school, it'd been too late. Not that he’d ever managed to spend enough time with them: somehow, no matter how much he ran around with them as a wolf, he could never find the rhythm of things when they were human. And it was no better with regular humans—not even his ability to tell whether they were lying or distressed with his acute hearing helped against the conviction that he was doing it wrong.
Gabriel glanced around and Alec's heart stuttered in his chest. He should invite him in, but how would he explain it to his parents? They'd certainly not miss another alpha's scent in their home. Maybe if Alec hadn't been such a recluse...
“You probably haven't heard the news,” Gabriel said, kindly ignoring both Alec's discomfort and appalling manners. Most people who noticed insisted on trying to make Alec more comfortable by asking about it, which of course only made Alec all the more self-conscious. But Gabriel was too confident that he was doing the right thing, and his next words proved more than distraction enough. “But my cousin Raymond has presented omega.”
“Oh, that's...” Alec thought about offering congratulations, but couldn't quite figure out if that was okay. You certainly did it when males presented alpha, but... “I didn't, no.”
“I figured.” Gabriel nodded and met his eyes. It was a dangerous proposition, alone as they were, but Alec's wolf stayed quiet. Not a flicker of unease at having another alpha so close. If anything, it was the memory of Gabriel's bold stare that made him tense. The last time he'd seen that look on the man's face... “He will need alphas, naturally.”
Alphas. Plural, because male omegas were expected to mate with several alphas and start their own packs. And then the context of the conversation caught up with Alec. “You want me?” he blurted out, and immediately felt his face heat up. He didn't mean it like that, but with their history...
Gabriel snorted, eyes bright with laugher. He looked easy and relaxed, just like had usually looked around Alec. Maybe he was reassured that Alec hadn't managed to stop being a total social klutz by becoming an alpha. He'd called it charming once, when... Alec pushed the thought away. He'd embarrassed himself enough already. “I thought you might be interested,” Gabriel continued, flicking his hair away from his face with a flick of his wrist Alec’s eyes couldn’t but track. “And Ray... he didn't expect this.”
Alec's stomach twisted in sympathy. He had been a slight kid, too skinny, and too fond of books. He was grown now, smaller than Gabriel certainly but not sticking out among alphas. But he’d never forgotten. People had expected it of him. For a while, he'd expected it of himself, and then, when he'd hit puberty and he'd realised he didn't like women... He’d been so relieved to still be a beta when he was accepted to university that he hadn't even minded that his parents insisted he come home every weekend. Or almost every weekend, once he'd had a room of his own and a little solitude, he hadn’t wanted to give it up. He’d been back often enough, and sometimes he'd just gone out instead—when he didn't have to spend the whole day in the library, thanking his lucky stars that he didn't need more than three hours of sleep a night and wondering how humans even managed with their fragile, needy bodies. The night he'd met Gabriel there for the first time, he'd been so sleep deprived that he'd thought he was imagining the scent of another wolf.
“That’s rough,” he said to Gabriel. A poor description of what that poor guy must have been feeling. But there was no point babbling; he could never find the right words for things like this.
The other alpha nodded like that made sense to him. “Yeah, so he needs good people.”
And Gabriel thought Alec was a good person. Or, more likely, he thought Alec was harmless enough to have around his precious cousin. “I...”
“Unless you have...?” Gabriel frowned, purposely trailing off, not like he was truly unsure but like other people raised their voice to signal a question. Alec didn’t think Gabriel was capable of doubt, he just mimicked it to be polite.
“What? No? Who would... You know my parents,” Alec said. He was uncomfortable, he bet Gabriel didn’t lack for offers—the only reason he was single was that he was both an alpha and gay. So was Alec, but for him it was just the last straw: he knew he looked good enough, but he couldn’t have maintained a relationship for longer than a couple of dates. Except for whatever Gabriel and he had been doing, Alec hadn’t even managed to keep a lover around for long.
He only realised he'd lowered his gaze from another alpha's after the fact. But the idea of meeting Gabriel's proud stare after that was simply unbearable. His wolf wasn't complaining, he thought, so fuck it.
“Yes, I remember your ‘girlfriend’,” Gabriel agreed. Alec tried to repress his wince at that. He hadn't meant to tell the other man that, but it was the kind of thing that slipped out when you met someone in a similar situation. Except Gabriel hadn't been too proud to tell his parents that he was not going to mate a female omega, no matter how attractive he would find her during the full moon. “So I thought this would be ideal.”
“Yes,” Alec agreed at once, then paused, cringing at how desperate he sounded. “This would be perfect. But I need... I'll call you tomorrow,” he concluded, looking up for just a second.
“Sure,” Gabriel agreed.
“Good, um, thanks,” he added. Alec caught his nod out of the corner of his eye, just as he was turning away.
He froze, raised his head back up when he realised he had almost turned his back to another alpha. It was beyond offensive, making it clear you didn't consider them a threat, didn't think of them as an equal. Gabriel was still watching him, pulse steady. He didn't look angry, nor bothered. “You have my number, right?”
“Yes,” Alec said too fast. “I... yeah.”
He shouldn't have, he realised. Because the only reason he had it was so he and Gabriel could contact each other when they were both back in the pack's territory and too busy to manage the trip to the city. Gabriel had given him his number so they could meet up to fool around, and Alec hadn't erased it. He tried not to panic. He could have forgotten; it didn't need to mean he still wanted... There was no way Gabriel could miss his steady descent into terror, but he simply gave Alec another nod and half turned his body away. Then he paused, half turned and spoke like that, not facing Alec now. Was that offensive? Alec wasn’t offended. “You know I will... offer, myself, I mean.”
To his cousin the omega. Alec hadn’t realised. So they must not have been that closely related, then. It explained why Gabriel was going out of his way to help him. Now he saw the logic to it: Gabriel didn’t want any alphas in the new pack that would challenge him, and he knew he could trust Alec never to do that. He swallowed the pain and the anger both. What had he expected? Not even his own wolf thought Alec was a threat, and what other reason could Gabriel have to single him out? There had to be other gay alpha wolves in a pack as big as theirs, and someone like Gabriel probably knew them all.
And here was Alec thinking that Gabriel remembered their times together fondly, that he’d want Alec around for his own sake…
“Yes,” he lied, fully aware Gabriel could tell.
“Cool then, talk to you later.” He turned fully around at that, and Alec quickly followed, turning his own back to him. It didn’t matter, not with them. Not when Alec wasn’t even a real alpha.
He fumbled the door, even though it wasn't even locked, and then pressed his back against it as relief crashed over him in the silent, empty home. He hated it, but if he was alone, at least he couldn't fuck up.