Page 13 of The Sad Omega

“Sorry,” he apologized. He ran the back of his hand across his face.

“It’s not you that should be sorry,” I told him. “Who did that to you?”

He didn't answer, just sniffed again.

Now that I knew what to look for, I thought I could make out the dark shadows of more bruises underneath his white t-shirt. I wondered if whoever had done this had intended for them to be concealed beneath his clothes.

“Are there more?” I went to lift the hem of his t-shirt, but he batted my hand away.

“No, it’s fine,” he said, his voice fierce despite cracking.“Let’s get the shopping done.”

I understood that he wanted to let it drop, so I did, but I made a mental note to talk to Talius about it, though I doubted there was much we could do unless Isca asked for help.

???

Isca’s bruises faded, and we didn’t talk about it again. Talius hadn’t forgotten though.

“Hey, Isca,” he said, one day several weeks later when the omega was sitting in the entertainment room gaming with me. “How about coming over for dinner one night, and bringing your alpha? It’s probably about time we met, since we're more or less neighbors.”

Isca bit his lip. Creases formed across his brow. “I could ask him, I suppose. Um, sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but he’s not… not the most sociable, and he’s, er, well I guess you’ll see for yourself,” he trailed off. He was a lot quieter after that, and left soon after.

I had the distinct impression he’d much rather we didn’t meet Zarbius, but I could see why Talius wanted to invite him. We did have misgivings and maybe this would go some way towards determining what was going on in that pack. After all, if Isca was being abused, there were things that could be done about that, weren’t there?

We never did get to meet Zarbius though. Talius sent Isca home with an invitation for Zarbius and Isca to join us for dinner on more than one occasion, but the Alpha always declined. And then other things started happening around the farm, and that was the last we talked of entertaining the other pack Alpha.

Chapter 05

TALIUS

“Hey Talius, do you know where the voltmeter’s gone? I need to check the fence again this morning. That storm last night came through something wicked.”

Johnson, the head beta, was up and in my office early this morning. Branches often fell on the electric fences during storms causing the electricity to short out and if he didn't get onto it quickly, the animals could escape.

“Yeah, it did, didn't it? Voltmeter should be in the shed with the other tools.” I looked up at him. “Not there?”

“Nah. Already looked. Asked around too. Nobody knows where it is.”

“Not again!” I exclaimed, irritably. For weeks now, tools and other expensive items had been going missing around the farm. Some of the missing items were small, like the voltmeter, but others were big – a massive chainsaw we used to cut up the trunks and branches that had fallen on the fences during storms, and even a motorbike – things that couldn’t just get misplaced.

I turned my pen over and over in my fingers, gazing blankly at the far wall while I thought. The pen came down hard on the desk as I realized something. “It's strange, you know. Things seem to go missing on the days Irian and I are both away from the farm.”

“Huh, I hadn't realized that.”

Almost everyone else was normally in the paddocks or away at college during the daytime, and when Irian and I weren't here, this left the house and sheds unattended, except for those with very young children but they tended to stay in the omega house. They'd be unlikely to notice anything unusual.

“Any idea who’s doing this?” I asked him. “I mean, the smaller things could be lost from carelessness, sure, but the bigger ones? No. And we can't actually afford for this to continue. Apart from just the damn inconvenience, it's costing us a fortune. It's not as if farming is particularly profitable, and we do have a lot of mouths to feed.”

Johnson shook his scraggy head, his bushy brows pressed together in a frown. “Nope, no idea at all. None of the workers is consistently careless. This is obviously intentional. But you know, I doubt anyone from the pack would do it, so it’s got to be someone coming onto the farm from outside. Someone who knows when there's going to be nobody around.”

We rarely brought in labour from outside our pack, and I fully trusted everyone here too. We’d never had this sort of problem before and there was no reason we should start having problems within the pack now.

What was different?

I tried to think what had changed. And when I thought back to when the thefts had started, I realized with a sinking feeling in my heart that the first incident had occurred not long after Isca started coming here.

Surely, it couldn’t be him? He was always a perfectly respectful omega, never doing or saying anything out of place. It couldn’t be him. And it was a sobering thought to realize I didn’t want it to be him, perhaps more than I should. I felt sick. Was I allowing my personal feelings to blind me?

What should I do? We’d come so far, he and I. Over the last few months I’d slowly managed to win his trust. If I confronted him over this and he had nothing to do with it, all that would be lost. I’d be just one more alpha that didn’t respect him. When we’d first met, he’d been a downtrodden and sad young man, terrified of any alpha, but over time and with friendship he’d begun to display some level of confidence and even seemed comfortable in my presence. I didn't want him to lose those gains. And I knew it would break Irian's heart if his friend had been stealing from us.