CHAPTER 2: GAVIN

Gavin swallowed down a yelp, scrambling to secure the pieces of woods he is holding when someone bumped onto him quite hard. He hugged the pieces of woods closer to his chest, undoubtingly making his already dirty tunic dirtier, but he can’t lose them. He’ll be punished for sure.

He turned his head to see who it was. It turns out to be Leroy, an alpha the same age as him. He has a smug look on his face while looking at him. He pushed his lips into a thin line as he watched the alpha walk away. He internally sighed. Seriously, what do they get by treating him like this? Aren’t they tired? They’ve been doing this his whole life; will they ever stop?

He gets nudged, the woods he’s carrying almost flying for the second time in a row.

“Move, freak. We don’t have time for you to just be standing there,” an elderly omega hissed. She shouldered her way past him. Gavin inhaled a lungful of air, following her example and walking to dispose the woods onto their campfire site.

“Did you hear? A neighboring pack is set to visit us today.”

Gavin stopped on his tracks, in the act of arranging the woods he collected, when he heard the whispers. He subtly angled his head to listen, two omegas are gossiping near him. They’re busy skinning fishes the hunters caught in a nearby river.

“Really?” the other omega replied, he recognizes it as Ylona, the daughter of their pack delta. She tosses a fish into the basket beside her before getting another to skin.

“What pack?”

He pretended to continue arranging the woods, piling them up repeatedly. He strained his ears as their voices get quieter and quieter by the second.

“I’m not sure which, but I heard it’s the Moon Valley Pack. They were seen at the borders of our territory earlier.”

Moon Valley Pack? Huh. He doesn’t know them personally; Gavin thinks he doesn’t really know any other wolf aside from his pack mates. But he has heard the name of that pack before. He thinks it’s a neutral pack, he’s not sure from what district though.

“Oh, the one from the North East?” the other omega, whose voice he now recognizes as Katherine, asked.

There. They said it, from the North East. Why though? What do they owe them for a visit?

“Why are they visiting?” Ylona asked, voicing out the question in his mind.

“You really haven’t heard?”

From the corner of his eyes, he sees Ylona shaking her head. Katherine leans in closer to her, making him lean in to their direction unconsciously too. In the process though, he accidentally nudges down the pile of wood he’s been arranging, well—pretend arranging.

He yelped, quickly arranging them again.

“Stupid omega,” he hears someone whisper from somewhere near him. He ignores it and continues on his task.

He faintly sees the two omegas, Ylona and Katherine, giving him dirty looks as they both stood up, seemingly done in their tasks. He bows his head in shame as he continues to pile up the wood again.

He avoids the dirty looks his pack mates sends his way. When he’s done, he scrambled to stand up, not bothering to even dust his knees off of the dirt from the ground. He ran with his head hang low, avoiding their eyes, and made his way to his shack.

--

He sat inside his shack, holding a wet towel as he wipes the dirt from his body. He already took a bath in the river this morning, but the tasks he was assigned to the whole day made him feel dirty again. He gently wipes at his skin, watches in wonder as his skin slowly clears up again, back to its fair complexion. He carefully wets the cloth in the small basin containing warm water, squeezing it tightly to get rid of the excess water before gently wiping at his face again to make sure there are no dirt left.

He let’s go of the cloth once he’s done, setting it aside somewhere in his shack.

He looks around his shack. It’s really small, just enough for one person to sleep in every night, albeit uncomfortably but he won’t complain. They were nice enough to give him one.

He perks up when he hears a loud knock at his door.

“Elders are calling for omegas, freak!” Andrew, a beta, screams from outside. He recognizes his voice. He thinks he recognizes everyone’s voice in his pack. A result of always being wary around them led him to memorize every detail around them, he thinks even their footsteps he can recognize.

He immediately stands up and reaches for his spare clean tunic. If they are getting visitors later, he should at least look presentable to not embarrass his pack. He’s no one important of course, the lowest of the lowest in his rank, but he still represents the pack in some ways.

After pulling his pants up and patting his tunic down, he ruffles his hair. The white strands soft to touch, and after that, he’s ready to go.

He walked out of his shack and into the grounds of his pack. They are all gathered around the huge campfire. He jogs his way there, standing behind his pack mates. They sent him a glare when he got too close so he stepped back a bit.

He tries to look around, standing in his toes to take a peek of the visiting pack as he cannot see them. He assumes they’re on the opposite side of the circle. Being an omega, although male, he is relatively small and it’s easy for his pack mates who are mostly alphas to tower over him. He dropped on his heels after a while, giving up. He sighed and just stood there. If it wasn’t for his clumsiness earlier, he would have known the reason why they are visiting. Stupid Gavin, he scolds himself.

He can hear the voices of their pack elders, laughing and saying something but he can’t understand them. Their voices are being drowned by the quiet murmuring of the other members in front of him. He stands there, bored. He looks around but settles on staring at his feet and the ground after a while after receiving different dirty looks and glares from his peers for meeting his eyes. He’s used to it but he still sometimes wonders when it will end.

He sighed. He is bored out of his mind. He wonders if he can sneak out of this one, he does not seem to be needed anyway.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed, nor how long has he been looking at his toes trying to entertain his self, but the pack eventually moves. He blinked out of his stupor and walked to catch up to them.

He’s confused, where are they going?

He follows closely, keeping a safe distance as they had expressed multiple times in the past that they don’t want to be anywhere near the “freak”. He wants to ask what’s happening but he knows he’ll just receive dirty looks, or worst be pushed aside. So, he just resorted to blindly follow them, he’s sure he’ll find out later.

They reached the center of their pack grounds. The space is lined with benches facing an elevated platform. It is where pack meetings usually happen. It only added to his confusion, what is happening?

They stopped on the benches, he remained standing along with some others who weren’t able to find an available seat. An elder from his pack stood in front on the platform, clapping his hand three times to get their attention. Gavin only then have caught sight of the visiting packs as they stood behind the elder.

Gavin looked at them with fascination. It’s his first-time seeing wolves from a different pack. They look vastly different from the people of his pack, so different from the ebony hair and obsidian eyes. These wolves have hairs the color of ashes, and eyes of the same shade but darker. He figures maybe their features are the reason why they are called the Moon Valley Pack, they resemble the moon. Their builds are bigger too, he bets they make great hunters.

He observes them, eyes roaming around every member. He gasps and suddenly hides when he made an eye contact. The gaze is piercing, dark grey eyes staring right at him. He tries to peek again, and sighs when he sees the man looking at somewhere else. He thinks it’s the pack alpha, based on the charcoal-colored bandana wrapped on his forehead. He mentally apologizes for the disrespect he just made.

“Everyone!” the elder, Delta Joseph, called out loudly in front. His hands made a wide gesture in front of him, showing the visiting pack behind him.

“The pack alpha’s son, Alpha Ainar, will now choose his mate. Group according to your ranks.”

Gavin’s breath hitched. Pack alpha’s son…mate? What is happening? What do they mean? Why here?

He watched the people from his pack, ranging from ages 17-24, slowly walk to line up according to their ranks. Some are visibly excited, liking the idea of being mated to a future pack alpha. Gavin isn’t though, he’s just genuinely confused.

His eyes drifted to the front where he once again meets the eyes of the pack alpha, but he was quick to avert his gaze again. He’s aware he must be eye-catching, not because he’s deadly attractive, but because of his literal appearance. His skin is paler than the moon, almost translucent under the light of the sun, his hair is white as snow which makes him stand out even more. Plus, his eyes, they’re blue, too different from his pack. He’s wearing a white tunic too. Bad move, he concludes.

He thinks he sees the pack alpha take his eyes off of him, making him release a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. The alpha whispers something into their elder’s ear, Delta Joseph’s eyes flew to him.

Shit. Is he going to get punished?

Last time he accidentally met the eyes of their pack alpha, he got thrown into their prison after getting beaten up, and then starved for days. It’s not a very pleasant experience and he experienced something worse from them too for a different reason but it’s not something he would want to experience again. Would they punish him again?

He got pulled out of his thoughts when the elder’s voice resounded in the large space again.

“Make sure everyone who are of age lines up. Their future pack alpha is choosing, we need to be careful.”

He pushed himself to move at that, his plan of not joining obviously would not succeed. He stood behind the line of omegas. They did not pay attention to him, they never did, except when they’re hurting him of course. It’s a past time they love. He took advantage of his build and hid behind their bodies; his features are making him standout, white among the sea of black in his pack, and he knows what he’s doing would not really make a difference.

Don’t get him wrong, of course he doesn’t think he’s worthy. It just became a habit for him, to make himself look smaller, to hide himself well so he won’t be noticeable, so his pack members won’t see him thus can’t hurt him.

“Alpha Ainar will be choosing now.”

Gavin made himself smaller at that, wrapped his arms around his own waist and hunched his shoulders, going as far as looking down.

There are three lines, the alpha, beta and omega. The alpha would surely find someone there.

It was taking long and Gavin doesn’t see what’s happening, busied himself by staring at his feet again. He understands that there are a lot of potential mates here but isn’t it taking too long?

He heard audible gasps from around him and he sighed in relief, finally, but he doesn’t look up. For a moment, people started to murmur. He’s getting curious but he doesn’t want to look up. He eventually sees the weight of many people looking at him, is he doing something wrong? Mixture of disbelief, distress and irritation permeated the air. What is happening to warrant this reaction?

Then it dawned on him, he smelled him. Fuck, he smelled him. Rain water, musk, earth. The smell is so potent, it’s overwhelming for him and almost made his knees buckle. The feeling is too familiar from the pack stories he only ever heard.

He doesn’t know what it means but his blood ran cold in his veins, his heart pounding loud.

Fuck.

He slowly looked up, head raising painfully slow. His suspicions are confirmed when he meets the alpha’s eyes, glinting gold. He smells heavenly to him, so alpha. A whine is threatening to escape his throat, a natural response for a situation like this.

He can feel his pack’s stares at him, they somehow moved aside to reveal him from the end of the line but his focus remained on the alpha in front of him. Eyes glinting gold, briefly closing to inhale his scent who he’s sure is as equally potent and heavenly for the alpha.

Gavin exhales a shaky breath.

Looks like the pack alpha’s son has found his mate.