Page 28 of Sanctuary
“Ah,” was all Ori said. He sat quietly while Patton wrapped the cloth around his still bleeding heel, but before Patton could feel too entirely awkward about his confession, Ori made one of his own. “I’d hoped. Really hoped, when I first understood what omega meant. And when you still came around after we were teenagers, I wondered what I could do to make it easier if you wanted to court me, but there wasn’t anything. And everyone was telling me it wasn’t fair to lead you on, because you could never have me.” He sniffed and rubbed at one cheek with the palm of his hand. “In the old days, you mated an omega by going to bed with them when they were in heat. After that, even if they’d been promised elsewhere, they were yours.” He put his hand back on Patton’s, still resting comfortably on Ori’s ankle. “I don’t know how you feel about being mated, but I was in heat our first time. But nobody has to know if you don’t want to be.”
Except they’d had sex while Ori was in heat, and all the oddness of the past few days clicked together into a wonderful, glorious, terrifying suspicion. “Yeah, I’m fine with it.” Patton said, then paused. “Are you okay with that?” It would be terrible if he wasn’t and it hit Patton in that moment that because of what he’d done while Ori was in the grip of his hormones might have taken away a lot of Ori’s choices. From Ori’s point of view, anyway.
Ori tilted his head to the side and gazed up at Patton with curiosity. “With what? Having sex in heat, or being mated?”
“Either? Both? I—” Patton paused a moment to order his thoughts. This relationship stuff was harder than he’d thought it would be—it was nowhere near as straightforward as their childhood games had been. Or, for that matter, plumbing. And the worst of it was that he seemed to be tripping himself up, making things more complicated than they needed to be. He should try to be more like Ori and just accept that it was. Ori was good at that, accepting the things he couldn’t change and working around them. Well, except for that arranged mating, but that was a special case. And Patton didn’t want to change this anyway. “I’m happy to be your mate, if you’re happy with it. I know you weren’t meant for a beta, and that you probably won’t have the kind of life you could have had in Jordan Bay.” He looked down at Ori’s foot, still resting in his lap, and rubbed his thumb absently over the top of it.
Ori patted Patton’s hand, then took it in his. “I’ll have the life I wanted, even though I don’t know what it’ll look like. I’ll have a life with you, and I’ll have an adventure and …other things. That’s more than any other omega gets to have.” He pulled his hand away and Patton watched it twitch toward his belly before Ori balled it into a fist and rested it on his thigh.
“You got cramps?” Patton asked him pointedly. Could Ori know if he was pregnant already? “Or did we do more than just mate each other the night we ran away?”
Ori opened his mouth then closed it, as if he didn’t quite know what to say. He looked away, then up at the stars, then finally back down at Patton. “Would you be upset if I was?”
Patton shrugged. “Not much point in being upset. It’s what it is, right? And Ma always told me that omegas were meant for having babies and that it made them happy. If it makes you happy, I’m happy.” He looked down and felt a warmth that had nothing to do with their little campfire rise in his cheeks. “I mean, we learned in our classes, a little, that heats are when you got babies. It kinda makes sense. I gotta admit, I wasn’t thinkin’ all that clearly that night.” Then he looked up and his face went even hotter. “I’d do it again, anyway.”
“And if there’s a baby?” Ori said slowly.
“Then I guess we’re having a baby,” Patton told him. “I love you. That’s all that matters. Well, that, and I guess if you’re expectin’, we need to make sure we get you to Mercy Hills on time. I don’t know anything about babies, and I expect you’ll want some omegas around you for that part.”
Ori nodded. “I would. And we should be there in plenty of time. And I might not even be pregnant. After all, not all omegas can carry pups.”
He was hiding it well, but Patton could hear the old bitterness, or at least he knew Ori well enough to know where to listen for it. “You’re not Holland,” Patton reminded him. “And if you think, now that I’ve finally got you, I’m going to let you go, you are a dumb omega, Ori.”
Ori looked up at him then, stung, until the meaning of the words sunk in. “You don’t think I’m dumb, though.”
“Nope.” Patton set Ori’s foot down and crawled over to add some wood to the fire. “I know you’re smarter than I am, in lots of ways. So stop believing things that only a dummy would. You’re mine, I’ve fought damn hard, and so have you. And it would take a hell of a lot more than not being able to have pups to make me give you up. Like, maybe if you went on a rampage and axe-murdered entire families, I might have to have a think about our future together.” He’d meant it to make Ori laugh and ease the tension, and it worked.
Ori stifled a chuckle. “You mean, like in that movie last month?” He laughed again and rubbed his lip, but when Patton raised his brows at him, he just shook his head and grinned like he’d just caught the juiciest rabbit in the burrow.
“Yeah.” Patton grinned at him, glad to have teased Ori out of his dreary mood. “Anything less than that, and I think we’d just have to have a discussion.”
Ori levered himself over to settle beside Patton again, soaking up the heat of the fire as the air cooled around them. “I’m glad.”
Patton was pleased to see that Ori kept his injured foot up off the ground and, without thinking, he reached out to stretch Ori’s leg over his again. “I did a lot of thinking today, while we were walking,” he admitted. “I know everyone in the pack seems to get mated so they can have pups. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, that they wouldn’t mate someone who they could enjoy their life with.”
“I think I can answer that.” Ori wiggled over to lay his head on Patton’s shoulder, and sighed happily when Patton put his arm around him. “You see,” Ori continued, “It’s about money. Or credits. Or both. Pups are expensive, in both labor and things you need to buy. If you love someone, but all either of you are going to have is the stipend, then you can’t afford pups because the stipend really doesn’t cover much. Didn’t you do a budgeting class in school?”
Patton shook his head, fascinated. “I guess they thought my mate would do it?”
Ori pursed his lips and frowned. “Maybe. You are a beta, after all. But I bet the gammas and deltas got them, though, in case they mated up. And omegas always do, because we’re always mating to someone higher in the pack structure.” He sighed. “Basically, if all you both have is the stipend, you can feed yourselves and buy clothes if you absolutely have to, though that usually comes out of the food budget. You can have a room in a bunkhouse, but that’s all it covers. That’s why you try to mate someone who does something to earn extra pack credits, so you can have your own place, or more clothing, or better food. Or pups. And as an omega, all I’d get is the stipend.” He reached up and pulled Patton’s arm closer around him. “Even as a beta, you get paid less than an alpha, and you would have had to support me too.”
“I would have.”
Ori leaned a little harder into him. “I know you would have tried. I didn’t want to do that to you either, make you work all hours of the day and night so I could sit home and pop out pups. It’s not right, and what’s the point of being mated to you if I never saw you?” He tilted his head back, and Patton felt the brush of lips against his jaw. "I'll take my chances in Mercy Hills."
“And you’re sure they'll be better?” After all, they hadn't been there, didn't know anyone who had. Who was to say that they weren't exactly like Perseguir?
“I think so. You’re not the only one who’s been doing some thinking.”
Ori chuckled softly, his body shaking against Patton’s. “Look at Holland, in all those magazines. And the other omega, in college. And those are the ones we can see. What about the other ones? Iszak never came home—I heard he found a mate there and that he was happy and busy and they were expecting a pup, but that was a couple of years ago. But I know his family were upset, because he said in one of his letters that, until the pup was born, he was going to be helping out in their warehouse, keeping track of food stocks and they thought that was terrible. Like he was being asked to do things he couldn’t do.” Ori sighed and his body slumped a little harder against Patton’s. “It’s nothing for sure that I can lay out on a table for you, but the clues all add up to something pretty convincing.”
Patton hoped he was right. It was hard to know what the right choices were. Maybe they should have gone south, met up with some of the wild shifters in Mexico, where the government didn’t much care as long as they didn’t cause problems for the humans. Or just found themselves a place out in the woods somewhere, where they could build a little house and make their own way without having to worry about anyone finding them. But what kind of life was that for Ori?
No kind of life at all.
No, they’d try Mercy Hills and, if things didn’t go to plan there, well— they’d already escaped one enclave. A second one should be easier, right?
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - S E V E N
