Hello, Holly here. I thought I’d hijack Ofelia’s blog for the day 😀
Where do we stand on alphas and omegas? Personally, I like shifter stories, and I have nothing against different pack structures. I’m not a fan of Mpreg stories, though, so there is some navigating when it comes to picking books to read.
To celebrate Big Wind Day, which is on April 12th, I’ve written a story called Blown Away. It’s released tomorrow, yay!
When I started writing, I had this idea of a man being stranded due to the storm. Once, many years ago, there was a terrible storm here in Sweden. I was on a bus and trees fell all over the road blocking us in. We were trapped for hours. So I know you can be trapped by a storm as an ordinary human, but I was in the mood for something paranormal. And what kind of shifter has a special relationship to the wind? A bird, of course.
To up the stakes, I made the bird an omega. In my world, omegas are treasured, so all the alphas want to mate with one. Submissives have to do what the alphas tell them to do, but omegas are outside of the pack structure.
Arvid, our omega, doesn’t want to mate some random guy though and is on the run from a group of alphas trying to catch him. On a normal day, he’d easily have flown away from them, but this is Big Wind Day, so he’s trapped.
And where is he trapped? In Espen’s forest. Espen is a bear shifter, a hungry bear shifter, who has no desire what so ever to brave the storm when he could be at home eating, but he has to defend his territory.
Espen doesn’t believe omegas exists, and had he known Arvid was one, he’d never taken him home, but he couldn’t leave the poor bird in the woods, could he?
Excerpt:
Little by little, Arvid relaxed into the armchair. The fire was warm and while Espen was a bit grumpy, he hadn’t once tried to fuck him. He might be one of the few who couldn’t consider having a male mate, even if he was an omega.
“Ketchup?”
“What?” Arvid yanked his gaze away from the flames.
“Personally, I don’t like it much, but I have a bottle. Use it when I make Bolognese.”
“Oh… eh… yes, please.”
Before Arvid could blink, Espen was in the kitchen, roasting stick still in his hand. As he came back, he had a ketchup bottle under his arm, a kitchen chair in one hand, and his roasting stick in the other. He sat, placed the stick across his lap, and plucked the roasting stick Arvid was holding from his hand. Without a word, he put some ketchup on the hot dog while still attached to the stick, and handed it back to Arvid so he could bite into it.
Before he had taken his first bite, Espen had swallowed his and was putting a new hot dog on the stick. The wind howled, the flames danced, and Arvid had a surreal feeling of being trapped in a dream.
“This making my heart bang like crazy, is it something you can control?”
Arvid shook his head. “You feel what I feel if you’re close to me.”
“And I can’t block it?” The frown wasn’t what Arvid had expected. Most shifters were thrilled to meet an omega.
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you feel what I feel?”
Arvid shook his head.
“So, it’s a pretty crappy skill.”
Arvid stared. “What?” He was an omega, a luna, a some-other-word. He was a prized possession, an asset for the pack, a something else.
“What do you get out of it?”
“Erm… nothing? I don’t have to obey when an alpha tells me to do something.” That was the main thing. The emotional part didn’t matter to him since he didn’t feel other people’s emotions, but he wasn’t predisposed to do something. He had a will of his own. And he treasured it.
Espen pursed his lips and reached for a third hot dog. Where the heck had the second gone? Arvid bit into his first, it was still a bit too hot.
“I guess it’s a big deal when you’re not an alpha.”
It was. “You would never understand the life of a submissive.”
“No.” Espen shook his head. “But I don’t agree with how they’re treated.”
He didn’t? Most alphas thought it was great. “Do you have a… pack?”
“Sleuth.”
“You’re a sleuth?” So cool! Was he working a case? Oh no, what if he was the case? Some rich, crazy alpha had hired him to find Arvid. His heart was beating hard, and Espen grunted.
“Stop it.” He rubbed his chest. “I’m not a sleuth. A pack of bears is called a sleuth. Like… are you a murder?”
“Murder?” Arvid’s voice bounced around the room.
Espen huffed. “Like a murder of crows.”
“Who knows the group words?” Espen was insane.
“A quiver of cobras, a cackle of hyenas, a zeal of zebras—”
“It’s not normal.” Arvid shot him a glare, then he wished he hadn’t because Espen might seem mellow, but he was an alpha.
“Normal.” Espen snorted and reached for a fourth hot dog. Where did they go? Arvid looked around the floor. Did he swallow them whole? He took another bite of his first, now a pleasant temperature.
“And no, I’m not in a… group—rock band or otherwise.” He chuckled. “I’m alone.”
“A lone wolf?”
“Bear, obviously.” Espen flinched as the sound of a window breaking sounded. “It’s the barn.” He stood.
“Where are you going?” Fear awoke in Arvid’s gut. Was there someone out there?
“I need to go put some boards over the windows.”
“Now?”
“Should’ve done it before.” He placed the roasting stick on the chair and headed for the hallway. “I’ll be back soon.”
Blurb:
Espen Urso would rather stay inside and enjoy a nice, sweet cake than be out in the worst storm of the year. But there’s a group of alpha shifters trespassing, and he needs to defend his territory and keep the people in his village safe. A group of wolf shifters he can scare off, but when he realizes they’ve hurt a defenseless little bird, he loses his patience.
Arvid Rai is having a bad day. He’s an omega on the run, with a group of alphas on his tail. If there hadn’t been a storm, he could have easily flown away before the stupid wolves got their hands on him, or the angry bear noticed he was in his territory. But there is a storm, and the idiot who grabbed him broke his wing, so now he can’t fly anywhere. Still, he deems it best to stay with the growly bear rather than having the other alphas fight over him.
Espen has never believed in the myth of omegas, and it isn’t until he takes Arvid in he realizes how much trouble he’ll be in when shifters from near and far learn he has one in his home. Will he be able to keep Arvid safe from other shifters? Is it even possible to defend his territory with an omega in it?
M/M Paranormal Romance: 13,628 words
Amazon :: JMS Books :: books2read/BlownAway
About Holly:
According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee.
Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time.
Connect with Holly @ https://lnk.bio/xpae or visit her website @ hollydaywrites.wordpress.com
Ofelia Grand 