Page 13 of Sanctuary
And then there was the spring when Ori turned nineteen and Patton eighteen.
The courting had started to become serious the year before, through the fall and winter. Patton had gritted his teeth and watched silently as the alphas did their best to draw Ori away from him, but Ori had never seemed to take any of them seriously. In fact, he would often make fun of them, gently and not in a mean way, but it gave Patton's heart ease to know that Ori wasn't taking any of them seriously and the hopes he kept trying to crush grew a little stronger with each semi-rejection. Maybe if Ori couldn't settle on an alpha, an established beta with a good job in the pack could try courting him himself. That’s what he told himself when Ori’s visitors became too frequent and the fear of losing him rose sour in his throat.
Though most of the time he knew he should be hoping for Ori to pick a good alpha, a wealthy one, from a good pack.
He lived on those contradictory hopes for a long time, until the day the visitors from the Jordan Bay enclave came.
Oh, they weren't the first visitors. It was common for packs to exchange youngsters, for families to move temporarily to another pack while one of their pups looked for a mate. It was good for the packs, fostered relationships, kept the inbreeding at a minimum. Sometimes the pack Alphas would go around looking to bring young shifters back to their enclave for a year. But among all the visitors who had come to Perseguir for that summer season, these were the ones Patton ended up hating with a passion.
Keith was the name of the son, a young alpha in his prime. He was handsome and blond and he walked with an easy lope that had all the unmated shifters in a frenzy of hormones. He was supposed to be a rising star in Jordan Bay’s Security team. His father's name was Hagen, the Head of Operations at Jordan Bay, his mother a cousin of the Alpha of Winter Moon. Keith was an excellent prospect for an unmated omega. And he and his father spent far too much time with Ori for Patton's comfort.
Ori, however, bloomed under the attention of the new young alpha, and the very particular favor the stranger was showing him. Patton gritted his teeth and forced himself to be happy for his friend, thinking of how good a life Ori would have, mated to someone so obviously rich.
Then one night, when they were sitting in their tree watching the moon hunting its way across the sky and Ori was sharing a bar of chocolate Keith’s Da had given him that day, Ori said, "I think Keith is going to ask to mate me."
"Yeah?" He needed to remember to be happy for Ori. It had been made pretty clear to him in the past couple of years that he couldn't afford to look after Ori the way his friend deserved, and even before his Ma had sat him down to have 'the talk' with him for the second time, he'd known he'd have to give Ori up for Ori's own good. "Do you like him?"
Ori shrugged. "I hardly know him. He seems nice, for an alpha. His Da's been asking me a lot of questions, about how I spend my time, what I like to do, things like that." He put a square of chocolate in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "I guess we're being really old-fashioned, because Keith hasn't asked me a thing."
The hair stood up on the back of Patton's neck, but he ignored it, just like he had ignored it all the other times it happened. It was just his body being primitive and not wanting to let his omega friend go to another shifter. "Probably," he grunted, and ate his own square of chocolate. He would be happy for his friend.
He would.
C H A P T E R E L E V E N
P atton watched the strange courtship progress over the course of the summer and did his best to be happy for his friend. The only thing that worried him was that it seemed that Ori almost spent more time with Keith's Da than with the alpha he was expecting to mate. And everyone in the pack was exquisitely polite to Ori's future packfather, though he wondered if Hagen's position in Jordan Bay might have had something to do with it and whether he was reading too much into it all.
It would be a good mating for Ori. Jordan Bay wasn’t as wealthy as Salma Wood or Mercy Hills, but they did all right for themselves. He’d be far from home, but Ori was a genius at making friends. He wouldn’t be lonely there, and they could always write letters. Though he’d have to find someone to send them for him, since the ban on them spending time together was still in place.
Summer passed and October came. Ori grew more and more tense with each week that passed. "I don't know what's taking so long," he complained during one of their stolen nights in their tree, Ori carrying the latest in a long line of gifts Keith and his Da had given him. He had a container of fresh pineapple tonight, and their mouths burned from the acid, but still, they couldn't stop eating it.
"Maybe he wants to make it special. Romantic. Everyone knows you omegas are romance nuts." Patton dodged the chunk of pineapple Ori threw at him. "Hey, don't waste it!"
"I think there's more where that came from," Ori replied, his tone weirdly thoughtful. "I don't know, something feels off."
Patton leaned back against the trunk of the tree and watched as Ori picked through the chunks of pineapple. He handed one down to Patton before choosing another for himself and nibbling at the corner of it, his brows drawn into a tight frown.
"It's probably just nerves," Ori said finally, his breath coming out like a sigh. "This is my life, you know? My future." Then, softer, as if he hadn't meant Patton to hear it, he said, "I just wish I knew why it scared me so much."
It hurt to hear the fear in Ori's voice, but there wasn't anything he could do about it, so he did his best to distract his friend from his worries. "Did you hear the gossip about Mercy Hills?"
Ori wiped his face and leaned over to peer down at him. "What are they doing now?"
"Only saying that any omega who isn't happy where they are can come live there, and they'll give them a house and send them to school. And give them a job, just like other shifters."
"Really? Are they crazy?" But Ori's expression had gone from determined cheer to thoughtful. “Isn’t Holland the Alpha’s Mate there? They fixed him and now he can have pups?”
Patton shrugged. "I heard they're getting real cozy with humans. Like, inviting them to stay at the enclave and taking money from them. Maybe that’s how they did it."
"But don’t we take money from them?" Ori pointed out, puzzled.
Patton shook his head. "No, not like the pack fund or working outside walls. I mean lots of money. Money for buildings and school and I don't know what else."
"Hmmm." Ori leaned back against the trunk of the tree. "Sounds too good to be true. It's probably all blown out of proportion." Then, "I wonder if Keith would want to move there? Do you think they need more security?"
“You can ask him,” Patton said neutrally and stared down at his half-eaten chunk of pineapple. Somehow, it didn’t look as appetizing as it had just a few moments ago. He grimaced and let it fall quietly to the ground.
T he next day, a message came from Keith’s Da for Ori, asking if he’d like to come over to the guest quarters with his parents for a meal. As was only polite in the situation, Ori’s Paw sent back that they’d love to come and offered Ori’s labor to make the food. Hearing about it had made Ori grimace quietly as soon as he was alone, but it was how things were. And Keith probably wanted to be sure that Ori could cook something that wouldn’t poison him, since he’d be eating Ori’s cooking for the rest of his life. But what to make?
