Page 14 of Sanctuary
He ignore the niggling doubt that had taken up residence in the back of his mind.
Ori’s dad had built him a chair for Christmas last year, the kind that you could fold up and take with you, that let you lie back and stretch out a little even while you sat in it. He loved it, and often sat out in it under the tree behind the trailer, where sometimes a breeze would sneak in over the walls and coast through the enclave territory to cool overheated omegas. Today, he brought a notepad and his box of recipes outside with him to work out a menu that wouldn’t leave him all sweaty and melted from the kitchen, but would still taste good.
He was well into his third version of the menu when the sound of feet crunching on the rocky ground broke his concentration.
“Hey,” Patton said. He was carrying a toolbox and had some plastic pipe looped over his shoulder. “I’m here to fix the leak in your Maw’s sink.”
“Awesome!” Ori said, and abandoned his notes in favor of some unexpected and illicit time to spend with Patton. “I didn’t think we were very high on the list.”
Patton shrugged and grinned, his black cowboy hat tipped rakishly back on his head and his eyes glinting in the sun. “Helps when you know someone,” he said in a satisfied tone.
Ori held his breath and reminded himself that Patton was his friend and that he was expecting to be mated soon, probably at Harvest Moon. He shouldn't be looking at his friend, or scenting him in the entirely improper way that he was. But there had been something about the way Patton had looked at him, the absolute confidence of the way he'd declared himself, that called to the deepest parts of Ori. Why can't omegas and betas mate? He's easily as tough as any of the alphas. And a hell of a lot less touchy. Life with Patton would be a lot less dramatic than life with Keith would be, Ori suspected, and that familiar longing rose in him again. He squashed it almost before he felt it, old habits coming to his rescue. He shouldn't be teasing himself--nighttime imaginings were one thing, but he could easily see himself putting a foot wrong in the real world when Patton was around, and he couldn't afford that. "I just need to clean out the cupboard underneath. You want some tea?"
Patton shrugged and it seemed to Ori as if he was trying to caress Ori with his gaze, a phrase he remembered from a romance novel that had been making its way around the enclave. "Sure, if you have some made."
"Sun tea," Ori promised him. "And cold too. Paw fixed whatever was wrong with the refrigerator." He led Patton into the trailer and set him in front of the fan, turning it on to its highest speed. The roof was vented and pulled a lot of the heat up and out of the trailer, but it was still too hot to sit without some air moving around you.
Sneakily, Ori added a bit of honey to the tea, a mix of mint and sage that had steeped in the sun for hours before Ori had strained all the leaves out of it and set it in the refrigerator to chill. Patton accepted his glass with a polite, "Thank you," and took a drink. "This is good," he said, and shot a smile in Ori's direction that went straight to his heart.
Stop tormenting yourself.
Once Ori was sure that Patton was comfortable, he ducked down and began dragging everything out from under the sink, piling it up on the kitchen table. He was lucky everyone had gone out, even Sierra, who had been supposed to keep watch over his virginity. But the temptation of a few hours with her current boyfriend, unfettered by her annoying little omega brother, had lured her out of the trailer. Though not without an, "If anyone comes, you go right back inside and call me, you hear me Ori Perseguir?" At the time, Ori had waved her off and thought privately that she was turning into a younger version of their mother, but now he was glad, because--technically--hadn't he done exactly as he'd been told?
After all, she'd never said he couldn't bring anyone inside with him.
Once he had everything out of the way, he sat back with his arms wrapped around his shins and watched Patton go to work. He moved with such familiar assurance; it took Ori a moment to realize that this was how Patton moved as a wolf as well, and then that took him back to last full moon, when he'd slipped away from his chaperon and gone running all alone.
He'd been desperate for even a short stretch of time where he could just be himself, Ori, and not be the son, the brother, the omega child. The future mate. He'd intended to find Patton and coax him to run a little with him, but the lure of solitude had proven too strong and he'd taken off, adrenaline making everything sharp-edged and vital as he defied the pack.
They'd found him hours later at the far end of the enclave, curled up on the bank of the creek right where it slid inside the enclave walls through an old steel grate. Still alone. He'd been scolded, but they'd seemed to accept his explanation that everything was moving so fast, that so many things were changing in his life, and he'd just needed some time to put things straight in his head. It had been the right answer, because he'd been coddled and petted after and the adults had made a fuss over him for the rest of the night, in between their off-color comments that Ori just barely knew enough to understand.
They'd all laughed as he turned bright red, and then they'd started to tease him with half-explanations that only made his frustration worse. Most of their conversations had made his imagination race like a pup after mouse, which was fine. And normal. But it troubled him that the face he saw in erotic imaginings wasn’t Keith’s, but Patton's. Shouldn't he be daydreaming about his future mate? It felt disloyal, but was it then disloyal to Patton to not dream about him? He was the one Ori would take by choice, but choice wasn't often offered to omegas.
Ori shook himself back to the present. Patton was nearly done, twisting something inside the cupboard with short, decisive movements before grunting and crawling back out of the space. "That should do it," he said. "Let me know if it happens again, I had to kind of jury-rig a fix and I'm not sure it'll hold, but your Maw really needs to get her pipes all redone." His eyes met Ori's and he froze, mouth slightly open, and then he huffed a breath in through his parted lips and turned red. "I'd better get going, got another couple of stops yet today." He scrambled to his feet and packed his tools away, never looking directly at Ori. "See ya." He bolted out the door without waiting for Ori to say goodbye.
Slowly, Ori climbed back to his feet and went to the door, watching Patton's straight back and broad shoulders disappear down the lane between the houses. Damn you for not being an alpha.
C H A P T E R T W E L V E
N ot long after their conversation about Mercy Hills and only a couple of days after that awkward moment in the trailer, Patton woke to a frantic tapping on his window, loud enough that he panicked that it would wake his little brother in the bedroom next door. It stopped as soon as he crawled up to the window and he slid the sash open to find a frantic Ori pacing back and forth outside.
"Patton, you have to help me," Ori cried, then clapped his hands over his mouth at Patton's frantic shushing gesture. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he whispered. "It's just--it's all going to the Barrenlands."
Patton's eyes widened--he'd never heard Ori use a word like that before. "What happened?"
"I'm not meant for Keith," Ori told him, in a voice tight with horror. "I'm meant for Hagen." His knees buckled beneath him and he sagged to the ground. "I can't, I can't, I can't," he mumbled, and began to weep quietly into his hands. “I tried. I really did. I tried so hard to be good, to do what was expected. I knew I couldn’t have a choice in who I mated, but I never thought they’d just hand me off like a piece of candy in trade for training for some of our deltas. I’m the same age as his son!”
"Shit," Patton whispered, and climbed out the window. "Let's go to our tree," he suggested. "We can talk."
Ori nodded, his face still buried in his hands, and Patton found himself leading Ori out of the town like his friend was blind. Perhaps he was, from the tears that spilled out of his eyes. His weight as he leaned on Patton grew heavier with each step.
They collapsed together underneath their tree and for the first time in forever, Patton was able to wrap his arms around Ori and hold him close without the crushing guilt that had always followed that thought before. "Shhh, it'll be okay. Can you refuse him?" They couldn't be that primitive, could they?
"The contract is signed, all it takes is the... the--" Ori took a deep breath, and blurted, "The consummation. When I go into heat." He curled closer inside the circle of Patton's arms. “He says I can have a ceremony after he’s taken me in heat.” His body twitched in Patton’s embrace as if he were trying to shake off the thought or memory and he sobbed like his heart was breaking.
Maybe it was--for sure, Patton's had gone painfully still for a long moment, then burst into movement again with a sound like an explosion in his brain. "We'll fix it. We'll talk to your parents, they won't want to see you mated to someone more than twice your age."
Ori started to laugh, half-hysterical. "They signed the contract, Pat. They signed it. It's a done deal."
