Page 10 of Sanctuary
"I wanted you to have them," Patton said.
"I'll make you something," Ori promised. "Look, Maw says I'm not allowed to see you again, or talk to you, or anything. But, do you mind--if I can sneak out of the house? Can I come over?"
"Of course!" Patton reached through the window and took Ori's hand. "You're my best friend. I don't care if they say we can't be friends because you can have babies."
Ori grinned and squeezed his hand. "Good. I don't want to lose my best friend."
A faint cry of "Oooooriiiiiii!" drifted through the trees. Ori glanced over his shoulder and his fingers tightened in Patton's.
"I have to go," he whispered. "I'll come again when I can. Or you can come to me? I'll leave you a note in our tree."
Patton nodded and forced himself to let go of Ori's hand. Ori waved and gave him a wavering smile before he ran off in the direction of the gardens. Patton saw him glance over his shoulder and pick up speed as he rounded the corner of the neighboring trailer, and then the shouts as his family spotted him. He hoped Ori wouldn't get in too much trouble--it seemed inevitable that something was going to happen. There was no way he could lie now about where he'd been.
Raised voices echoed back to him, signaling Ori's capture. And a few minutes later, a loud knocking on the trailer's door gave notice that Patton, too, wasn't going to escape Ori's adventure unscathed.
C H A P T E R E I G H T
O ri was holed up in his bedroom, or more precisely, locked up in it. The family was in an uproar and it was obvious his parents didn’t know what to do with him. He lay on the bed staring at the enticing square of blue sky visible through his now nailed-shut window, then closed his eyes and sighed. This sucked. Badly.
Through the door, he could hear his parents arguing in low, distressed voices. Christian occasionally put a word in, but as far as Ori could tell, he was just stirring the pot. Not surprising—Christian’d always seemed a little embarrassed to have an omega brother.
Suddenly, all the noise outside his room stopped. Shit. He guessed his punishment was coming now.
Voices murmured low, going on long enough that Ori began to wish they’d just come in and get it over with. Then, finally, when he thought he’d explode with anxiety, there was a knock on the door, soft but not tentative. He got up and opened it, steeling himself for his Paw with a belt or maybe something worse.
What he saw was Holland.
Up close, the other omega was even more beautiful than Ori had thought. Not traditionally beautiful, but there was something about his eyes, the way his face was put together that made you look at him and made it hard to tear your gaze away.
“Go for a walk?” he asked. His words twanged, the consonants jumping out at Ori, the r’s more prominent. It was different and interesting, very foreign and he could see in an instant why Hunter had contracted to mate him.
“Okay,” Ori replied, his mind spinning with curiosity. He slipped out of his room, closing the door behind him and slunk out of the trailer in Holland’s wake. He risked a glance at his parents as they walked past them, then hung his head and closed the distance between him and Holland in case they changed their minds.
Holland smiled and linked his arm with Ori’s. “I’m not too familiar with the place yet. Any nice spots to wander where there aren’t a thousand shifters on our heels?”
Ori grimaced. “There’s always someone on my heels.”
“You’re with a mated omega now. No one is going to follow us.” Holland patted Ori’s arm, then followed amiably along as Ori led him out of the town and towards the running place with its trees and creek. For a moment, he debated taking him to his and Patton’s apple tree, but an immediate wave of possessiveness rushed through him and he headed for the creek where it ran straight and boring for about a quarter mile.
“This is nice,” Holland said and let go of Ori to pick up an old dried leaf and toss it in the current. He watched it whirl away on the water, the breeze flirting with his shoulder-length hair. “We never had anything like this back home. Just wells around the town.”
“We used to come out here when we were pups to make boats, but the best places are upstream where the creek’s all crooked.” Ori picked up another leaf, this one green and fresh, and set it in an eddy at the edge of the creek. It bobbed in place for a second, then meandered out a little farther and all of a sudden it was gone. It felt weirdly like his life, or the one he used to have.
“So,” Holland said casually. “That was quite the thing the other day.” He tossed another leaf into the water and pretended to watch it intently, though Ori could feel his attention almost like a hand brushing through his fur.
“Yeah,” Ori said dully and hunched his shoulders against the expected lecture.
“You two been friends a long time?”
Ori nodded.
Holland blew out a breath. “It’s not easy, is it?” He came over to stand beside Ori, staring into the creek. “There’s good things about being omega, but I bet right now you can’t see them all that well.”
Ori shook his head.
“And I bet he just meant to do something nice for you?”
“I wanted the feathers. I was going to make him a shirt,” Ori said dully, and kicked at a half-buried stone until it plopped unhappily into the water.
