Characters / Mercy Hills Pack

Main Couples

Mating the Omega

Jason

Jason has spent his life troubled by the legend of the True Omega, which he is marked as by having two heats a year instead of one. The only thing he knows about the legend is that the alphas in his pack believe mating him will grant them a divine boon to their influence and prosperity. Years ago, the top Alpha in Jason's pack made it clear he would go to any lengths to claim that mythic power for himself, prompting Jason's family to flee and break the law by hiding among humans.

After an attack by the Alpha's enforcers who nearly kill his father, Jason decides it's not worth hiding anymore and that he will find the best pack he can, hoping to exchange his servitude and supposed power for even a little stability and medical care. Mercy Hills is said to be a rich pack, where he figures that at least he won't want for basic necessities even if he loses his freedom.

• Call to Agriculture: Second to his father's life and well-being, all Jason wants is a garden.
• Experienced Protagonist: Before the book starts, he's already survived more violence than any other omega in the series.
• Grass is Greener: Jason's family flees their original pack to hide in the human world, and he eventually decides that settling for the best pack he can find is safer than life on the run.
• In Harmony with Nature: It's said that all omegas have an innate drive to nurture, that this drive is especially pronounced in so-called True Omegas, and Jason's expression of this is an extraordinary talent for gardening.
• Misery Builds Character: Applies to all the main omegas to some degree, but Jason endures years of violent pursuit and multiple near-fatal attacks, and comes out of it as a person who is said to have set in motion a course correction for his entire species.
• Security Blanket / Tragic Keepsake: His deceased mother's blanket, one of the few things Jason holds on to in his family's years of running.

Mac

Head of Mercy Hills' security team who happens to be the first in the pack to (almost literally) run into Jason.

• Flat Character: Mac is almost entirely defined by following other characters' leads. He has no particular goals or direction of his own. YMMV on how much this is due to Early-Installment Weirdness, but he doesn't have many outstanding characteristics even compared to Jason and William, let alone any later characters. Nor does he get any development as the series progresses.
• Indubitably Uninteresting Individual: He's interested in Jason, he doesn't want to step on anyone's toes, and that's pretty much all there is to him. On the other hand, boring is exactly what Jason was hoping for, so at least he's well-matched to his mate.

Abel's Omega

Bax

Alpha's Mate to Patrick, leader of the Jackson-Jellystone pack. Bax's life is typical for an omega: a loveless mating with someone who chose him as a trophy, kept either pregnant or nursing all the time, and walking a delicate tightrope between being neglected and being abused. He expected that his life would always just be this way, and he was determined to accept it as long as he and his babies could stay together.

And then Patrick dies in a drunken car accident, and because his mate had done nothing to prepare for such a possibility, Bax is left at the mercy of the new Alpha, Roland. He continues to endure even being pressed into more abject servitude and forced to sleep on a porch with all his pups, until Roland offers Bax as a mate to attract the shifter doctor, Sebastian, to Jackson-Jellystone and Sebastian refuses to take Bax's pups as well. After the desperate omega sees a TV news segment about Mercy Hills' legal battle to protect Jason from being forcibly returned to Montana Border, Bax piles his family into a van and flees to plea for sanctuary at Mercy Hills.

• Behind Every Great Man: Bax mentions that he "sometimes" helped his deceased mate Patrick with paperwork, as if his experience and insight —and Patrick's negligence to do the slightest bit of paperwork even to ensure a future for his heir— didn't make it abundantly clear that he had been doing all the actual work of running Jackson-Jellystone, and was unable to claim credit for it due to the status of omegas.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Bax can gracefully navigate around the most arcane and explicitly bigoted systems, without stirring backlash, and leaving all parties placated at the end.

Abel

Abel is the series' first Alpha of Mercy Hills, and is The Man With The Plan. He's on a personal mission to follow through on the progressive efforts of the pack's previous Alphas and to make things better for his whole society while he's at it.

• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Abel had to go through a number of challenge fights to become Alpha, including one by the shifter doctor, Sebastian, who would later challenge him again over Bax.
• Big Damn Hero: All the main love interests have or develop a streak of this, but it's specifically a character-defining trait for Abel.
• Gracefully Demoted: Abel conspires with Quin to accept the pack council's judgment that Abel "stole" two True Omegas and must step down, only for Quin to step smoothly into the vacancy.
• I Own This Town: While it doesn't appear that either of the Mercy Hills Alphas are held to maintaining a line between personal and pack funds, Abel is the one seen treating packs funds like his own, and at one point outright says they're his.
• Money Is Not Power: Averted. The shifters know well that money is power, as most packs are hauntingly poor and even Mercy Hills falls well below the poverty line by human standards. Abel uses this to smoothe a few wounded egos, and stab a few others, by providing a show of relative economic power with an open bar at his and Bax's mating ceremony.
• Rich Kid Turned Social Activist: Mercy Hills is richer than the rest, Abel's family in particular has a lineage of Alpha's and Alpha's Mates, and he wants prosperity for all his people.
• Tech Bro: Abel runs a software company that produced an inventory system, and, at the time of this book, was developing a mobile game called "Alpha Hunt" which was mostly Abel's personal project.
• Tell Me How You Fight: When Sebastian challenges Bax and Abel's mating, Abel's behavior in the fight is a clear crystallization of his personality: confident, logical, and perceptive.

Duke's Baby Deal

Bram

The only omega born in Mercy Hills in several decades, Bram has both benefited from and struggled with the pack's uncertainty about what to do with him. On the one hand, having no omegas around made Mercy Hills lose a lot of the prejudice, leaving Bram with a degree of freedom that the new omega transplants are shocked by. On the other hand, it also created an environment where the young shifter was uniquely scrutinized, leaving him itchy to break boundaries with no peers to help him navigate safely.

• Breaking the Glass Ceiling: He has strong career ambitions, even though it takes some doing for Duke and Abel to convince him to take the opportunities.
• Destructive Romance: Bram plays a dangerous game flirting with other alphas in an attempt to make Duke jealous enough to claim him. It does indeed create a disaster when Bram misses a pack party due to his heat, and one of his suitors hunts him down and rapes him, impregnating Bram and creating the spiritual and physical link that omegas form when they have sex during their heat.

Duke

• Bumbling Dad: Unusually for this trope, it's Duke's seriousness that makes him a bit awkward. He stands back and observes most things until they reach a point where he has to act, and then he's more like a charging bull than a wolf.
• Pastimes Prove Personality: He's a skilled carpenter, indicative of his slow, deliberate, and attentive personality.

Omega's Alpha

Holland

• All Therapists Are Muggles: When Holland sits in on one of Quin's therapy sessions to talk about adopting Abigail and Dorian, he comes away feeling like the therapist really just doesn't understand pack (including such obviously shifter-exclusive experiences like children needing adults to care for them).
• Ambiguously Gay: Holland attempts to deny this when a human misunderstands how shifter sexuality works, and ends up settling for a compromise of Ambiguously Bi instead.
• Epiphany Therapy: He's held back from acting on his attraction to Quin by the fear that he'd just be rejected again for being barren. Under Quin's unwavering interest, he eventually concludes that he should at least be allowed to find some temporary comfort and pleasure. And later still, the problem with his fertility is corrected, freeing him completely from that fear and anxiety.
• Only in It for the Money: Getting humans familiar with shifters is important to him but ultimately, it's the pay that convinces Holland to enter the modeling industry.
• Penny Among Diamonds: Becoming Alpha's Mate and a fashion model connects him to politicians and designers, and he never seems to stop being conscious of the disparity between their wealth and his people's poverty.
• Power Dynamics Kink: Holland plies Quin into a "bad secretary" roleplay, to both amusing and erotic results.
• Tear Up the Contract: His former mate literally does this when repudiating the omega for being infertile.

Quin

• Ambiguously Bi: It's vaguely suggested that Quin's past lovers included women and men, though women are never confirmed.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: While Quin doesn't have to literally fight for the Alpha position like Abel did, when the pack council opens the floor to volunteers after forcing Abel to step down, not a single other Alpha —including those who had just moments earlier been eager to insert their own puppets to control a wealthy pack— had the nerve to challenge him.
• Broken Ace: Portrayed as by far the most alpha alpha in the series, as well as physically the largest, strongest, and most trained, Quin also suffers from PTSD and severe anxiety about hurting others with his trauma.
• Majorly Awesome: His military subordinates remember him as both terrifyingly effective at war and a stalwart, compassionate leader. They nicknamed him Devil Dog. The glass ceiling for shifters in the military meant that the highest rank he officially received was Master Sergeant.

Legally Mated

Garrick

• Allegorical Character: A biological omega who lives and identifies as a gamma shifter, Garrick represents a transgender experience in an omegaverse world.
• Rules Lawyer: Quite literally. Although his actual training is in contract law, Garrick handles all the general legal advice for Mercy Hills, and he's never shown to be wrong.

Laine

• Allegorical Character: The only human among the main couples, Laine represents a bridge beginning to form between his and Garrick's species.

Sanctuary

Ori

• Allegorical Character: An omega mated to a beta, and part of the first main couple to approach Mercy Hills after the formation of the sanctuary program, Ori represents the fulfillment of Mercy Hills' goals, and the future for omegas and all his people.
• First Period Panic: Ori's first heat brings a number of changes that overwhelm and depress the young shifter, including being prevented from spending time with his best friend, and being moved into the omega classes in school.
• Growing Up Sucks: Ori fears growing up because he doesn't want the kind of life expected of omegas, especially when the adults force him to separate from his beta best friend in order to keep company with other omegas, and the alphas who will assess him as a mate.
• Innocence Lost: In his early childhood, Ori is straightforward and confident. By the end of the book, the trauma he and Patton endure has made him nervous and drastically quieter.

Patton

• Feeling Their Age: Patton gets frustrated at his inability to oppose the adults who force their expectations onto him and Ori.
• Growing Up Sucks: Inverted. Patton wants to grow up faster to be able to provide for and protect Ori.

Omega's Flight

Raleigh

First introduced in Abel's Omega, where he gets in trouble with his mate, Degan, over a shirt given to him by Bax. Abel resolves the trouble and whispers to Raleigh to contact him or Laine if he ever needs help in the future. Raleigh finally takes the offer when his oldest daughter sees Degan hitting him, and the beating threatens to cause the pregnant Raleigh to miscarry.

• Stepford Smiler: Omegas typically have to put on some degree of act to ensure their stress and trauma doesn't raise conflict, but Raleigh did it to such a degree that he eventually faints from the strain when his past and present collide.

Cas

Youngest brother to Quin, Abel and Kaden, and a tax lawyer-in-training.

• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Although he isn't reckless, Cas is more of a clown than his brothers, and certainly prefers taking life easy compared to Abel's and Quinn's intense heroic drive.

Lone Wolf's Omega

Salem

Damian

Omega's Heart

Felix

Kaden

Cale's Arctic Wolf

Upcoming book.

Cale

Holland's omega younger brother.

Noel

A young alpha of a Canadian shifter community

Children

Called "pups" in-universe. Most have little characterization on account of being infants and toddlers for most of the series.

All the pups, in order of bearer and appearance, are:

Jason's: Macy and Seb.
Bax's: Fan, Teca, Beatrice, Noah, Taden, Ryker.
Bram's: Isolde, Jed, Vawn.
Holland's: Agatha and Dorian (adopted), Zane.
Ori's: Willie Rose

Fan

• Bratty Half-Pint: The alpha heir of a pack Alpha, Fan was heading this way under Patrick's "care", and that attitude really came to a peak due to stress after Patrick's death and after Bax moves himself and his pups to Mercy Hills. Before mating Bax, Abel takes some time with Fan to provide the boy with a better role model.
• Child Prodigy: Abel discovers Fan has a prodigious talent for assembling and disassembling computers, and gives the young shifter access to piles of parts for practice, as well as some online programming games hosted by universities.

Other Characters

In order of appearance:

William

Orvin

• Super-Persistent Predator: Somehow, his enforcers manage to follow Jason's family everywhere for years.

Patrick

Roland

Sebastian

A rare breed of shifter doctor trained in both human and traditional shifter medicine. All the packs contributed to his education, he's fully aware of how valuable that makes him, and is fully willing to leverage that value to the benefit of his own ego.

• Smug Snake: He acts like the rest of shifter society owes him anything and everything he wants before he'll deign to give them his services.
• Smug Super: And, unfortunately, he's justified in thinking that way. Few packs have any licensed medical practitioners at all, let alone a fully trained doctor.

Mitchel

Alpha of the Buffalo Gap pack, and uncle to Bax, Holland, and Usher. He's a stern, traditional man. He does care for his nephews in his way, but also holds conservative views about how omegas should behave and is quick to blame them any time they experience hardship.

• Blame the Paramour: It isn't explained how the affair started, but Mitchel holds the power of life and death over omegas like Usher. Though Usher tries to find love and care in the relationship, it isn't something he ever really had the power to refuse or leave, and Mitchel still has the nerve to blame the young omega for his despair and suicide.

Usher

An omega cousin of Bax who also endures a typical omega life but, unlike Bax, never has an opportunity to break away and change his fortunes.

• Accents Aren't Hereditary: Zigzagged. Usher speaks in a smooth, slow drawl but Bax's internal dialogue notes that Usher "was as twangy as I was" when they were younger.
• A Deadly Affair: Usher was involved in an unhappy affair with Mitchel, a contributing factor to the depression that would kill him.
• Mutual Envy: When they were younger, Bax longed for Usher's sleek hair and would practice walking like his long-legged cousin. Later, Usher envied Bax his mate who wasn't totally disinterested, and Bax's pups.
• Tragic Stillbirth: He suffered the loss of a baby some time before Bax's visit back home, and it triggered a spiraling depression that ultimately caused Usher to take his own life.

President Robert Whitney

Evelyn Whitney

Veronica

Mother to Quin, Abel, and Cas. Given half an opportunity, she will make sure you know she was Alpha's Mate twice and that her alpha lineage goes back fourteen generations.

• Nepotism: She's convinced that her family history means her sons are destined to rule. And don't try to tell her that an Alpha isn't a ruler.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: While Cas hoped Holland would tear into his mother at the first offense, Quin and Abel attempted to assure Holland that she'd love him once she met him. They were very wrong. She spends her entire visit picking at everything her son-in-law does, while he very determinedly and patiently tries to learn something from her about being Alpha's Mate. She does eventually push Holland much, much too far and he threatens to literally throw her out.