My One and Only Alpha

Chapter 10

The days and weeks progressed as such: three days of patrol and/or guard, and four days of food gathering. A notably drained Chibs and Jax had come back to work after six days of solitude from the pack, and they’d received unanimous hollers and howls from Chehalis upon their return in congratulations of their heat-mating. Heats were always celebrated by wolves; they were considered sacred and beautiful occurrences, and Louis couldn’t ever understand why. Nobody had ever been interested in his (when he did have them), so he’d never felt desirable or worthy of praise. He could, however, understand why other Omegas were seen as beautiful—they were always glowing.
Life had resumed after their return, and it had meant Chibs resumed his postponed position as the warrior leader and daily trainer. Louis was happy to get to know him too—and show off his skills to the chief—but the loss of Harry every day in the longhouse meant Louis had gotten significantly less interactions with the Pack Alpha on a daily basis. So, maybe he wasn’t completely happy.
He still went out of his way to find the Pack Alpha regardless of his responsibilities. His breaks from crop duty came in the form of ‘casual strolls’ around the Chehalis village, and these ‘casual strolls’ almost predictably passed by Harry’s home every time. Sometimes he’d be outside smoking a pipe with Zayn, sometimes he was nowhere to be found, but Louis enjoyed that all the same because he was able to just walk past his teepee and hungrily breath in the scent like he’d been underwater for an entire day.
In the evenings, when he was officially off work (because he wasn’t ever assigned night shifts as an Omega), he would stop by the log council house to hear the musical sounds of Harry’s professional voice rumbling through the acoustics of the structure, but he could never stay long because an Alpha would come outside and shoo him off. His obsession with the Pack Alpha was turning into a bit of an ongoing saga among his friend group, and though he couldn’t deny it, he certainly tried to.
Harry didn’t show any interest in him at all, apart from subtle glances and light-lipped smiles whenever their eyes momentarily met, or he answered a question of Louis’ when he came in to help with trainings every once in a while, (because Louis never shied away from the chance to ask him a question), but other than those few instances, Louis was nothing more than an Omega living in the borders of his pack.
To ebb the antsy frustration of the Alpha’s disinterest, he left himself in the hands of his family, and they held him up like the roots of an ancient oak. He turned to them, and they turned to him, supporting, encouraging, and loving each other as though the same blood flowed through their veins. That’s what an Omega relationship was like. It was everything, and it was all at once.
He’d grown closer to the Alphas Zayn, Katniss, Parsel, and that irritatingly protective Norman as he continued to spend time with the warrior comrades as well, but Louis’ Omegas had taken the top slot of his affections—they were his irreplaceable and treasured family, and he loved them more than anything.
Niall had been the last and most recent Omega for Louis to bond with, and yes, you heard him correctly. Niall. Louis always grins when he relives the nervous moment when Niall professed his sincerities and asked Louis for his friendship. They may have bonded last, but it was also the strongest he’d formed out of the lot, and it had happened in a passing moment…
 
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“Louis, come on...get Wewe, we gotta go mash the berries,” Draco urged, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he carefully dropped the last of his baskets beside the wheeler (they’d long since run out of room this shift).
Louis nodded and called out adoringly for his little Wewe, who now responds comprehensively to his given name, and waited for the telltale scuttles, cooing at him as he ran out from under the shrugs of the crop. He put the bunny onto his shoulder, and was just turning to venture to the Keep when he was once again met with Niall right in front of him. “Oh,” he remarked, pointedly not meeting the Omega’s eyes as he nervously greeted him. “Hi, Niall.”
Niall slowly set down his basket as he had last time, but instead of heatedly glaring or snapping in irritation, the Omega yanked Louis into his arms and began to sob. “I’m so sorry, Louis. You were disowned from your pack, and it was only your first day in a new place, and I let my jealousy control me. I was so mean to you, please forgive me. You’re close with my Zayn now, and I don’t want to have ruined a friendship between the three of us over something so trivial,” he confessed, his shame a cutting blade as he wept into Louis’ shoulder.
Louis whined in joy and allowed Niall to pour his soul out through his teary eyes, but he didn’t have the heart to let him continue for long. He scented the Omega’s neck and purred into his ear, soothing his sobs away until the blonde relaxed into their embrace, then promptly taking his opportunity to speak: “Niall, darling—it’s okay. Really, it is. You were just reacting to feeling threatened; if I didn’t understand that, I wouldn’t be a wolf. I’d be a frog. I’m sorry I made you feel that way; it was never, ever my intention. I’m just happy you don’t hate me,” he laughed, scratching at the Omega’s scalp and kissing his temple.
“Gods, Louis...no. I could never hate you,” Niall swore adamantly, violently shaking his head and whipping Louis with his wayward hair. “It just took me far too long to calm down, and I’ll never forgive myself for making your first day so stressful,” he sighed, reluctantly pulling back and wiping his face dry from tears.
“My first day was stressful regardless, so don’t worry. I’ve put up with a lot more than an angry Omega,” Louis teased, patting Niall on his bright head and giving him a friendly wink.
With both boys giggling in elation from finally settling their differences, they parted with a barrage of more hugs, and intense promises to start spending time with each other.
Louis couldn’t hide his smile as he and Draco strolled to the Keep, and Draco made sure to rub it in.
“See?” the white-haired Omega drawled knowingly, elbowing Louis in the side. “I told you he’d come around. All of us knew you’d be friends.”
Louis rolled his eyes from being patronized, but he couldn’t be annoyed at the ‘I told you so.' It was too true. "You were right,” he admitted, grinning from ear to ear and possibly skipping the rest of the journey.
 
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That bout of emotional apologies and forgiveness had occurred around three weeks ago, and now it was getting hard to keep Louis and Niall separate. Louis often wandered into Niall’s teepee at random times in the night to gossip amongst each other, stuck in a happy cooing bubble, and obliviously impervious to Zayn’s groans at being rudely awoken. The Alpha, assumedly, knew better than to come between two omkins, because he never told them to shut up, or Louis to leave.
‘Omkin’ was a term Louis hadn’t ever heard in Siksika, but he’d quickly gathered that it was Chehalis’s word for the close relationship that Omegas always form when time was spent together. Back in Siksika, this bond was referred to as ‘family mates,’ and Louis was once again impressed with how much more creative this territory was to his home pack. Alphas had the same bond with their kin as well, here called ‘alkin,’ and Harry’s bond with most of his council Alphas was easily the strongest example of an alkin here.
Louis’ omkin was compiled Draco, Jax, Peeta, Kurt, Niall, and Camila; and he wouldn’t ever discount Jade even if he didn’t see her as much. He’d come to understand these mentioned Omegas, including Jax, had already shared the bond of omkin with each other, and Louis had unknowingly filled the space of the ‘missing member’ they all felt they had. Just hearing that made Louis complete in places he hadn’t even known he was empty, and his omkin promised they felt quite the same. The unity was nearly fulfilling enough to plug the void that was festering within him from being without an Alpha mate, and that was saying something—because that pain was a bottomless sinkhole.
That vague ‘Alpha mate,’ of course, being Harry Styles. Louis wasn’t just without an Alpha—he was without the Alpha. Without Harry. The seraphic Pack Alpha of Louis’ wildest dreams, who, as previously stated, still held him at a maddeningly wide arm’s distance, and showed no signs he would someday let him in. But oh, how Louis imagined that day. The Omega was frequently fantasizing about a high-strung emotional event that would come along and force them to admit their feelings—if Harry even had any, that is. Harry’s hidden feelings are also a manifestation of Louis’ wildest dreams.
Though it may look hopeless from all angles, Louis’ mother had always told him: "Setting impossible goals is always the action that leads you to what you truly need," and he plans to live by that exclusively until his needs were acquired and captured. He /may/ be misinterpreting the saying completely, because it's technically meant to encourage accepting minor failures, but he didn’t care—that could be overlooked. Harry was what he needed, and this was an indeed an impossible goal, but Harry was his, and he was going to overcome the odds to claim him, end of story…
 
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