My One and Only Alpha

Chapter 1

Louis has never liked being an Omega. Ever since his first heat at the unsuspecting age of thirteen, he has been chasing ways to run from destiny.
As if it wasn’t enough to despise what he was born into, he couldn’t even be what he was correctly. He had never once submitted to an Alpha, even when confronted with their commanding and ensnaring vocal timbre—the howahkan—and ordered to comply directly in his face. Howahkan is the clinical term for that dominant, horridly loud and snappish raise in tone that is incessantly utilized to bring disobedient Omegas to their knees in shame. An unbreakable vow; inescapable order; to every Omega who hears it. Every Omega, save for himself.
Alphas couldn’t control Louis and they hated him for it, but it almost made him laugh—their hatred was nothing in comparison to the searing inferno of disappointment the Omega felt for himself. Nevertheless, the Alphas made the rules, and everything under the sun was their call. Thus, here he was; alone (abandoned) in the middle of a tiresomely overgrown forest, muttering to himself and scrounging the leafy floor for any supper he might find.
His muscles were straining in protest from this hunched and pitiful position he’d spent far too long hunting in, but if he didn’t get anything by sundown, the level of difficulty would prove itself ludicrous. Even if he were to shift to his wolf, his night-vision prowess was laughably nonexistent. He wouldn’t catch a damn thing in the dark. Despite these very reasonable fears, he angrily gave up, taking the loss and falling back against a tree in defeat. The moment he was comfortable, a squirrel bounded across the empty clearing, and he released a cackle of cynical acceptance. I don’t need food.
Unsurprisingly, as it always does when left unattended, his mind wandered to the haunting pit of desolation it perpetually dwelled in, and he found himself regretting every decision he’d ever made up to this point, replaying all those little things he could have done better, done differently, or not done at all.
See, Louis had been irreversibly banished from his home pack—for a many number of reasons—but the ones that stuck out were insolence, disobedience, theft, physical altercations, lying, general disrespect for authority, and frequently slandering the Pack Alpha, regardless of whether Rixon Bahe had it coming every single time or not. Quite the heavy list that had been spoken over his bowed head, icily circling around his neck like his own personal word-noose, stripping him of having any sense of belonging for as long as he lives. And it was entirely his fault.
The list is so much longer, by the way, but he couldn’t possibly remember every black mark he’d committed against the pack laws; he could easier count the rules he had followed. He understood it in hindsight, he’d probably exile himself too, but the banishment ceremony had been unnecessarily humiliating. He had stood atop a sacred stone in the middle of his leering village, surrounded by all three hundred and fifty-two Alphas and Omegas of the Siksika Tribe, like a piece of meat for roast. A large portion of them had even been cheering and dancing in a drum circle, celebrating to the Gods, while he’d shamefully awaited the imminent disownment from his people. Not the fondest last memories he has of them, the rats.
Yet among his entirely too joyous audience there had also stood his crestfallen mother, and the retrospective sight of her was still the rawest, most cuttingly traumatic part of the ordeal. She could do nothing but stare as the situation had unraveled, lest she’d been cast away alongside him, and that was something Louis never would have wanted for her.
So, in turn, Louis had been forced to watch his dear mother silently cry her heart out while he’d tried to console her with his eyes; convey in them just how contrite he truly was. For as he’d been running around breaking rules like twigs, he hadn’t really given much of a thought as to how difficult and depressing it would be for Joéna to live without him, and when he’d finally understood and put that into consideration, it was already too late—and he felt horrible. As a mother of just him, no father to have ever been present, and no other cubs to keep her company, Louis was the only wolf she had. And Louis himself had robbed that from her.
In his prideful defense, Louis never would have expected the expulsion to actually transpire. The banishment ceremony hadn’t been executed in easily over fifty years, and no one in his generation had ever witnessed it. Even more dishonorable for him, the last person to face the backs of the tribe had been a murderer. They were hardly guilty of comparable crimes.
However, a pack member had been removed since then (without the grand ceremony), and this member had been none other than Louis’ own father, for reasons still infuriatingly unknown. A father the Omega had never met, and one his mother would never speak of, but one Louis clearly took after nevertheless. Like father, like son, he mused.
He slammed his head back into the chipped tree bark and squeezed his eyes closed, gripping his shaggy brown hair and whining in despair yet again in the face of his irreparable strife, his actions mirrored to every other time he’s recounted all the details and feelings from that night.
 
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