Page 3 of Sanctuary
"Drink your tea," his mother told him sternly. "It won't be long before the others are up and I think this conversation is better had without an audience."
Ori's hand went to his mug, obedience a long ingrained habit in him, and picked it up to sip at it.
His mother watched him drink, a slight frown creasing the skin between her eyebrows and pinching the corners of her mouth. "You know that your job is to raise a family and keep a house. Would a gamma or delta have a job that could afford to pay for you to live in a house? Buy you food and electricity and clothing for you and your pups? No." She shook her head.
"Well, why couldn't I get a job? I could look after pups," Ori offered the only thing he really knew how to do. "Or clean the pack buildings."
"The Alpha would never let you do that. Imagine, a pack making an omega work like any other shifter. You'd think we were Mercy Hills, using their omegas as beasts of burden instead of letting them fulfill their destiny." She cupped her hands around her own mug and looked down into its depths. "It's hard for a mother to have these sorts of conversations with their children, particularly their omega pups. But I know you've had the lessons on what an omega is and why they're so special. So you understand that once you're mated, you won't have time to work outside the home. Which means you need a mate who can earn enough to keep you. Do you want to be poor? For your pups to be poor? Do you want to have to decide which of your pups get clothes that fit this year, or spend all your spare time trying to keep clothes that should be rags in one piece so the next pup in line will have something to cover themselves with?"
Ori shook his head in horrified confusion.
"No, you're a good boy, a kind boy. You wouldn't wish that on your pups, I know you. So you see how important it is that you mate as well as you can. You have to behave properly, and learn everything you can that will make you attractive to a good alpha. And once you're mated, you'll find you won't want to work outside the home. Omegas are meant to be homemakers. They're happiest when they're doing what they're meant to."
Funny, he didn't feel happy about it. But there were the old stories that the other omegas told, about how once you mated, you stopped being interested in anyone except your mate. Like something about mating bound you to that one shifter forever.
"Anyway," his Maw said and put her mug down. She had an air of excitement about her all of a sudden, and her eyes were bright. "Because it's your first Birth Moon not running with the pups, we got you a present, me and your Paw."
"A present?" Ori sat back in surprise. His parents had enough trouble, being a gamma and a delta, just keeping the house in one piece and clothes on everyone's backs. Where did they find money for a present?
"Yes, a present," she said. "You wait here." She disappeared toward the back of the trailer, where she and his Paw slept, and he heard the scrape of a drawer being opened before she came back out again. "Your Paw has something for you too, he's just gone to get some of it."
Well, that was a weird thing to say, but Ori didn't pay it much mind, because of the pile of fabric in his Maw's hands. No, not fabric--clothes. And they looked--store bought. He practically snatched them out of her hands, only long training keeping from any more rudeness than that. "Oh, Maw." They were beautiful--not the cheap t-shirts and jeans that were practically the uniform here at Perseguir. Admittedly, it was still jeans, but they were dark and new and weighed more than any three pairs of the ones he already had. And a shirt, a real grown-up shirt with buttons and long sleeves, in a light fabric that felt as soft as a butterfly's wings against his skin. "Thank you," he whispered, his throat closing over with emotion. He'd never gotten anything like this before in his life, ever. They couldn't afford it. "How did you manage it?"
She sat down beside him and began laying the shirt out so he could appreciate the pattern built into the fabric. Unlike most packmade clothes that were all one color and then embroidered over for fancy, this shirt had the pattern dyed into it with fancy colors, lots of blues and greens and gold and he shivered in delight at the thought of wearing it.
"Your Paw and I talked about it and now that you're getting to be a grown-up, you deserve to have a nice outfit. You've always been a good boy. You can wear this to the run tonight, kind of a celebration of becoming a teenager." She stroked the fabric with one hand, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles. "My little boy's growing up," she said in a choked voice and sniffed.
"I can always go knock over the water barrel again," Ori offered, reminding her of one infamous incident in their family when he'd gone tearing around the end of the trailer and run straight into the newly filled barrel.
She laughed and hugged him. "No, that's okay. It's part of life, just hard to imagine. It seems like just yesterday I was holding you in my arms and changing your diapers."
"Maw!" Ori protested, but hugged her back.
"There," she said, and wiped underneath one eye. "You finish your breakfast. I need to find out what's taking your Paw so long."
But almost as soon as Ori had shoved the rest of his sausage in his mouth, he heard a thud and a rattle and some banging outside the trailer.
"Oh, there he is." She went to the door and called, "Randy, are you coming to tell him with me?"
"Be right there," Ori heard from outside, and a moment later, his Paw came through the door. "You didn't tell him yet?"
"Wanted you to be here for it. It's really your part of the present," his Maw said and kissed his Paw fondly.
Paw hugged her and kissed her back, then thumped into the chair across from Ori, where Maw's mug still sat. "Well, Ori, you're growing up now and that means a few changes."
"Maw said," Ori answered, curious. What could Paw be giving him that was different or more than what Maw had already?
His Paw grunted. "Well, being an omega and coming into that age, it's not proper for you to be sleeping in a room with someone. It'll take a couple of days, but me and Sander and Jacko are gonna add a little room on, just on the other side of your Maw's and mine. And that will be yours."
His own room! Ori forgot his outrage at the new restrictions on his life at the thought of having a place that would be just his, where he could keep things without his sisters and brothers snooping through them.
At his Maw’s gesture, he wolfed down the rest of his breakfast and followed his Paw outside to see Sander and Jacko measuring out the space for his new room. They said hi and asked him how he was and if he was excited for tonight, like any other grown-up, except there was a funny undercurrent in their voices. He ignored his unease while he answered their questions politely, then asked, “Paw, can I go tell Patton?” Patton would be jealous, Ori thought gleefully, but maybe when he turned thirteen he could get his own room too. He was still only twelve and, Ori realized with a pang of sadness, for the first time, they wouldn’t be running together for full moon.
His Paw threw a glance at his Maw, and she put her arm around Ori’s shoulders. “Come inside, we need to talk about that.” And she led him around the end of the trailer, though the sinking feeling in his stomach had already told him what she was going to say.
So when his Maw turned to him just outside the door, he crossed his arms over his chest and said, “No.”
“Ori, you have to understand—”
