Chapter Text
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tower Hamlets Council Housing for Roving Packs
Isle of Dogs
London
Greg had worked on road crews long enough to distinguish between a jack hammer migraine and the pressure headache from a road roller. Back when there were borders in Europe, Eamonn’s trailer would have been searched in Fishguard, and they would have found the poteen firewater that was the cause of Greg’s extreme condition. He briefly wondered if anyone had put Damson to bed last night, but then the meagre contents of his stomach made their reappearance. He staggered to the adjoining communal bathroom just in time.
“Welcome home Gregor Abel.” He snarled to himself.
Eamonn’s mate Donny had already kitted out the bathroom like a good omega. There was shop brand soap, shampoo, conditioner and toothpaste. Some of their fox kits had been early risers because there were only three toothbrushes still in their wrappings. Greg helped himself to one and scrubbed his mouth. He made a gap toothed smile in the mirror and stole some of Eamonn’s brylcream to slick back his steel grey hair. Sometimes he regretted the teeth he had lost in bar brawls, territory challenges, and fighting for money, but his knuckle scars and boxer’s grin had served him well when facing other alphas and looking for security work.
Back in his new room, Greg unpacked the duffel he had flung into the corner the evening before. It was full of Damson’s clothes. Rooting between the child’s soft pants and tops knitted by Donny, Greg found relatively clean denims and a grandfather shirt. As he dressed he reflected on his long circular journey back to his home city.
He supposed the bastards in the West London Wolf Pack were still thriving without him, their disowned son. He shook off the very old feeling of not measuring up. It was thirty seven years ago. Alpha Williams had long since passed on and his son Steve, Greg’s childhood playmate, was now Pack Alpha. It was possible that Steve would welcome him home, but Greg had no intention of making a sentimental visit.
The grey walled, threadbare carpeted room wasn’t the worst place Greg had lived. Over the years wanderlust had carried him across Europe and down through Asia. He had driven heavy goods vehicles across autobahns. He had helped rebuild Sarajevo for the price of a roof over his head. He had spent two years in the mountains of Croatia helping the alpha widow of the Plitvica Alpha trace and reform her pack on the shores of the lakes. She’d wanted him to stay but he wasn’t pack member material and the itch was back under his skin.
He had taken a job on a cargo freighter. He’d crossed the Indian Ocean on a Richings Oil tanker and spent a year in Darwin as a bartender. He’d shacked up with a pouty female omega who didn’t know her place. He had fled Australia when she had called in her family alphas, because he had flushed her hidden heat sups down the toilet. He wouldn’t have hurt her, just let her know he didn’t tolerate disobedience. He would have bred her if she hadn’t showed her true defiant colours.
In Columbia he had worked as bodyguard for a were-jaguar rich kid. It was a cushy number. Too cushy, there was no challenge and Greg was bored. He heard that there was a property boom in Ireland. He needed to return to physical work. Eamonn O’Brien, an alpha fox, who had worked the road crew in Scotland with him back in the eighties, had his own construction company based out of Cork. Greg spent three years laying down new roads around sprawling housing estates built onto tiny villages. When the bottom fell out of the property market, they took casual work and did up neglected pack houses. Eamonn had his omega, Donny, faithfully waiting for him. Half the fox pack was made up of their offspring and Greg was envious. He didn’t think he had left a trail of pups across the globe. If he did they were probably omegas.
The first babe, Lisa, was the reason he was a lone wolf. Sonya, the beta daughter of the Dover Pack Alpha, was studying in London and living with the West London Pack. She was a devious conniving bitch. She made Greg swear off betas for life. Greg was sixteen, virile, knot-mad and he knew he was handsome. Sonya was twenty, horny, and determined. It wasn’t so amusing for her when she was heavy with Greg’s pup. Alpha Williams didn’t want to hear that it was Sonya’s choice to mate with him. Expelled and sore he followed Sonya to Dover. She protested that Greg had been an infatuation, a sixteen year old virile alpha to sooth the four years older beta’s desires. Greg seethed but demanded his rights as alpha father. He stood up to the Dover Alpha, who agreed to give his daughter over for mating. Sonya went into labour two months premature, a week before their planned mating. The baby, Lisa, an omega, didn’t make it. The Dover pack ran Greg out of their territory before Sonya was released from hospital.
Greg burned a path of underage drinking and hard living through Manchester and Birmingham. He took construction work but didn’t settle, kept moving north, away from London.
Monica Devine, real name Mildred Devlin, left Greg sleep off his hangover after he had only paid for an hour of her time. Wooing without the benefit of pheromones or heats was hard work. By then after a year of walking behind a truck of hot tar filling potholes, Greg wasn’t fazed by hard work. He asked Eamonn what to do. He’d wooed Donny with dead rabbits and promises to keep him filled with kits. Millie accepted Greg’s chocolates and promises to fill her like no human client could do. She rode his knot like a belly dancer and spoke guttural smut in his ear. She hooked him and pinned him to her twelfth floor flat like no-one had done before or after. When their child was wolf he pounded his chest as if the primate animal side howled instinctive alphaness as much as his wolf. When the blood test showed he had seeded an omega again, it dented his pride. However he raised that boy right. He had beautiful posture when he knelt for his father. A slight nudging with his thumb on the infant’s chin from as soon as he could hold his head up, meant the boy grew up knowing to lower his eyes in an alpha’s presence. He had never seen an omega child as well behaved as his Jake. His mother, the human, was intolerable. As the years passed, Greg took more and more work that required him to stay away from home. He knew she’d returned to whoring. He wanted to break away but the sight of his beautiful demure gentle omega son kept pulling him back. He’d bought him a copy of Tensure’s seminal work on the training of the perfect omega mate. When Greg was a boy, it had been banned from pack schools. The Victorian language was difficult for a nine year old, and he didn’t want his son frightened by the descriptions of old time omega confinement cells, but he knew his son’s first heat was approaching. Greg might not be there and the child needed to have guidance on how to behave if other lone alphas came to claim him.
While Greg worked a three month contract on a factory build, Millie found Tensure under Jake‘s bed and she read it. She tried to shut the door on Greg’s face when he came home, pockets stuffed with money and a knotting dildo for Jake. He knew Jake could hear everything through the paper thin walls. Most of the neighbours must have heard Millie’s screamed accusations that he was trying to train her son to be a wolf’s slave and his roars that she would have him be a human whore. The bitch had packed the small bag of belongings he kept at the flat. He threw his wages on the kitchen table. She demanded he leave. He went to Jake. When Greg lifted his tear streaked face from the floor and helped him onto his knees, the boy threw his arms around his neck and pleaded with him not to go. The alpha soothed his son, stroking that spot on the back of the neck that helped reduce omega hysteria. He made his boy promise to be good and to remember his place as wolf. When he walked out that night his alpha rage burned white hot. He was tempted to call Eamonn, who was planning on taking Donny and their first three fox kits back to Ireland. He could have asked him if he would let him and his omega son tag along. Instead he had gotten drunk in Strathclyde and beaten a whore with all the punches he had wanted to give Millie. Her pimp was a cold son of bitch called Erskine. He gave Greg twenty four hours to get out of Glasgow. He was on the ferry to Zeebrugge the next morning.
Approaching fifty Greg hadn’t contemplated becoming a father again. Eileen had three children by two other fathers, all human like the thirty year old siren. Vulpine Construction had gone belly up by then. The O’Brien Fox Pack and Greg were finishing the roads and paths of a ghost estate outside Mallow. Eileen was one of those humans who had a previously unacted upon fetish for a wolf knot. Greg was happy to oblige. She wouldn’t believe there was a chance her baby would be wolf. Greg explained to her in simple language about Jake and how if there was any were-DNA on her family tree his alpha seed would activate it. It was only when the neonatal nurse in Cork Maternity Hospital did a gender test at his insistence and it came back as omega, did Eileen go into delayed shock. Greg had to leave on the Monday morning to get back to work. When a social worker came to talk to her and hand over a supply of reinforced baby bottle teats and a pamphlet on how to care for your werecreature child, Eileen refused to see her son again. They treated her for post natal depression, but she still refused to name or hold him. She said she would trade him for a bottle of wine, and the nurses named him Damson because one of them had a husband who made Damson Plum Wine. On Friday evening, stinking of tar and weary from a rush of overtime and pressure to finish their contract without time penalties, Greg walked into the hospital. Eileen was gone home. Damson was ready to be discharged to foster care or into his father’s arms. Donny, Aisling and Eammon’s eldest beta, Siobhan, dealt with the newborn until he shifted at his second full moon. Then Greg took him back. He would raise Damson in Jake’s image, a perfect omega bitch.
Eamonn’s jocular greeting of good morning made Greg come out of his musings.
“Good for fucking what?” Greg grouched. He stood and stretched, “Seen Damson?”
“Aisling has him.” Eamonn referred to his twelve year old omega daughter. Greg nodded. He thought Eamonn was too easy on Aisling and Keith, his two omegas among his fourteen kits. All the children ran wild. Greg made a note to watch Damson’s behaviour more carefully.
The fox alpha threw a copy of Werewolf News on the chest of drawers, “Legal notices, Greg. Inside the back page.”
“Fuck off, Eamo. Unless I got left a legacy from some snooty London uncle, I don’t give a rat’s ass what’s going on in Pack society.”
“I think you’ll be interested in this one. Clear off your morning after head. Read the New Pack Announcements.”
“Ha! Good One, Foxy Loxy. It must be decades since there was an entry under that heading.”
“Well there is this morning, shit for brains, and there is an Abel on it.”
“Give it to me.” Greg leaned forward to pick up the newspaper as Eamonn snatched it back.
“The Wolf Council of Great Britain and Northern Ireland announces the registration of the Amell-Roché Pack.” Eamonn intoned and pointed at the legal advertisement with a fat finger.
“I can bloody well read it on my own.” Greg growled made to snatch the newspaper.
Eamonn pulled it out of his grasp, “Location: Clachan Mor, Tiree.”
“Where the fuck is that?”
“One of those godforsaken Scottish isles, I think.”
“Not one of my alpha cousins from London town then.” Greg huffed. A squeal of laughter and running feet passed his bedroom door.
Eamonn put on a newscaster’s voice, “Pack Alpha, Stephen Amell, Wolf.”
“I’ve heard that name.” Greg mused while he stuck his head out into the hallway checking if it was his son.
“It says previously of Richings. He’s that Pack Alpha contender who lost his leg and his mind or something.” Eamonn replied.
“He hardly lost his mind if he is a new Pack Alpha.” Greg responded drily.
“Suppose,” Eamonn allowed. That was as close as either alpha would get to an admittance of being wrong. “Alpha-mate, Aubrey Webb-Amell, omega wolf, previously of Lochgilphead.”
“And he got himself an omega-mate. Fair dues.” Greg set out a pair of track pants and a green t-shirt. He stuffed the rest of Damson’s clothes into a drawer.
“Jesus Christ, you need a fucking mate Greg,” Eamonn ducked a head out the door and spotted one of his daughters, “Thea, go and ask your mother to send over some coffee would you pet?”
“So where is the mystery Abel in all of this?” Greg asked. It would never be his Glasgow dwelling son would it? He had lost track of Jake. Seven years ago he had taken a weekend break from his new job with Vulpine Construction and attempted to break into Millie’s flat. It was occupied by four very frightened students. He’d found Millie’s grave but not Jake. The Wolf Council had no record of him since Greg had registered his gender at birth. There was no mating registered. He wasn’t on the electoral roll or in the phone book. Greg had even risked one of Erskine’s brothels in a mix of dread and hope, but it had been a bust.
“Pack Second, Sebastian Roché, Alpha, wolf, Richings.” Eamonn took the only chair in the room and kicked back his heels. “Third, Colton Benedict, Alpha Hybrid, previously of Haven.”
“Gack! I thought this was a wolf pack.” Greg stuck his tongue out as if he had tasted something bad.
“Third-mate, Willa Holland-Benedict, Omega Hybrid, of Donovan Lynx Pride. They mix it up don’t they? Must be a modern thing. Pack members; Kate Cassidy, Beta Wolf, Penzance, Emily Bett Rickards, Omega Hybrid of Glasgow, Jake Abel, Omega Wolf, previously of Glasgow. The generational requirement is met by the impending birth of the Pack Alpha’s first pups.”
The bundle of his own clothes that Greg was transferring to the other drawers fell in a heap to the floor.
“Greg. Greg?” Eamonn’s shouts were ignored. The fox smacked him upside his head.
“What? Could it be him?”
“How many other unmated omega wolves by that name do you think there are in Scotland?”
“Why is he on an island? Where has he been for the last sixteen years? Don’t look at me like that. I know I didn’t actively search for him but I went to Glasgow. I tried. You bring me that copy of Werewolf News because I look at the mating notices every week. Fuck, I look at the death notices too. I never expected to find him in a New Pack Announcement.” Greg bent down to pick up his clothes. “I bet he is still pretty, willowy and respectful.”
“Be prepared Greg. He’s probably barren and hunched. He is last on the list. The Alpha-mate must need a nanny for those pups.”
Greg growled and thumped the bedstead with his fist. “My son will not be another omega’s bitch. If he is dried up, I’ll give him a role here. You always say I need an omega to take care of me and Damson. My own blood can do it. Unmated omegas should care for their elderly parents. That is the pack way.”
“You are hardly elderly Greg. He might have been friends with this Aubrey for many years. He may have volunteered to be the pack child carer.”
“Wait till you see him Eamo. Your Donny is an example to those modern omegas, but I raised that boy like a Tensure example.”
Aisling knocked and came in with the coffee. “Mother says he has lunch prepared when you are ready.”
Greg looked at the omega fox and grinned, “Aisling pet, you’re good on the computer?”
“Yes, alpha.”
“When you go back to your rooms, find me a cheap flight to Glasgow. I’ll be over once I’ve packed a bag. Eamo, any chance of a lift to the airport?”
“Sean will give you a ride to the airport. He has only been dying for a reason to slip out and explore the city. Are you sure about this?”
“As much as I’ll ever be.”
“Okay then. I’ll ask Donny to make up another room.”
“Thank you, but a pallet here will be perfect if you can spare one.”
“What will you do if he won’t come?”
“He’ll come. I’m his father.”