Page 1 of Sanctuary
C H A P T E R O N E
"T ake that, Pirate King," Ori shouted and brandished his stick-sword at Patton.
"You'll never take me alive!" Patton yelled and leaped up onto a wobbly pile of old pallets they were using as their pirate ship. The boards wiggled beneath his feet, but he saved himself from falling off by turning it into a wild leap over the puddle on the other side. He got some mud on his pants, but he didn't wear shoes in the summer, so it was his feet that took the brunt of the dirt. His Ma probably wouldn't care, as long as he took a trip through the creek to rinse the worst of it off anyway. Besides, he had the dread Pirate Hunter Ori on his keel, and he needed to defend his ship.
"Prepare to be boarded, Pirate King!" Ori cried. He shook his golden brown curls back out of his eyes and crouched, ready to leap onto Patton’s makeshift galleon.
And then the game was spoiled.
"Ori Perseguir, what are you doing?" Ori's mother came around the side of the building, knocked his sword out of his hands, and grabbed him by his upper arm. "Omegas don't play rough games like that. Especially not with someone who isn't omega. What will the alphas think of you?"
"But it's pirates, Maw!" Ori protested. He threw a helpless glance at Patton, who had climbed back up to sit on the wobbly pile of pallets.
"It's not an appropriate game for omegas. You’re ten years old, you should know better," his mother said. "Get home right now, and do your chores, before I tell your sire about this."
Ori mouthed a 'sorry' to Patton and hunched his shoulders against his mother's insistent pulling.
Patton waved a sad goodbye and watched his friend disappear around the corner, back to his omega world of cooking and cleaning and learning how to take care of babies.
Now the afternoon, which had been full of the promise of excitement and adventure, stretched drearily ahead of him. What could he do to pass the time until his Ma called him to eat? The other pups would probably be playing up on the hill. He could go there and be pretty sure of finding someone to play tag or war with, but it wasn't as much fun as playing with Ori. The other pups just wanted to play the same games over and over again--Ori always had something new to do. Or he'd tow Patton somewhere to show him a new kind of bug, or a plant that they hadn't seen before. Life was never boring with Ori.
Patton dragged himself home and slunk into their trailer. He avoided the soft patch in the floor without even having to think about it, and slumped into a chair at the table where his Ma was kneading bread.
"Something wrong, sweetheart?" she asked. "You want something to drink? We're gonna have meatballs for supper."
"No, not thirsty." He kicked his feet, banging them against the chair legs until Ma stuck her foot out to put a stop to it.
"What's got you so down today, Pat? You not feelin' well?" She left her bread on the table and came around to put the back of her hand against his forehead. He batted it away, and she nodded. "You don't feel warm. Why don't you tell your Ma what's wrong?" She went to the refrigerator anyway and brought him back some bright red juice, moisture beading on the sides of the glass.
He drank it slowly and tried to sort out his thoughts. "Why does Ori have to be an omega?" he finally asked.
She gave him one of those mother looks, the kind that said she understood something he didn't and she'd been waiting for him to ask. "Well, sweetheart, some boys and girls are just born omegas."
"But how do you know?" Ori didn't seem any different from any of the other boys to him. He yelled and played and was really good at throwing rocks and making them go where he wanted them to. So what did the adults see?
"An omega boy has something special, low on his belly--"
"You mean his cock?" Patton asked, glad to finally be talking about something he knew.
His mother chuckled. "No, sweetie. But it's in the same area. It's the place where the babies come out when they're older."
"So Ori can have a baby?" He wasn't sure if he was jealous now or not. It was just another thing that Ori could do that he couldn't. Ori was good at so many things.
"He can't have them yet, but when he's a teenager, yes, though he’ll have to be older in order to mate. What brought all this on?" She frowned, but he thought she was puzzled more than angry. Patton was glad, because he still had questions.
"Why isn't Ori allowed to play? His Maw came and took him home, right in the middle of our game."
She sighed, and went back to kneading her bread. "Omegas have to learn different things than betas do. You have to learn how to work and how to get along with alphas and betas. Ori has to learn how to keep a house and how to look after babies and a mate. There's an awful lot to keeping a house clean and keeping your family fed." She smiled kindly at him. "Once he's a teenager, he'll have alpha suitors who will court him, and he'll be busy trying to find a good mate to look after him and any pups he has." She rolled the dough up in a ball and set it to one side with a cloth over it to rest and rise. "Ori's Maw is doing right by him. He'll be sought after by the alphas, because she's making sure that he knows everything he needs to in order to make a happy home for mate. Which means the better alphas will come looking for him."
Patton kicked his chair once more experimentally, but stopped at his mother's stern look. "Do omegas always have to mate alphas?" he asked.
"Not always," his Ma said. "But usually. It takes an alpha to make the kind of money needed to keep an omega." She closed up the container of flour, and scraped the leftovers that she'd spread over the table into another container to be used when she made bread again.
"Are they really expensive?" He didn't think Ori cost very much. His friend wore hand-me-downs like the rest of the pack, and ran around barefoot all summer to save on the cost of shoes, just like Patton did. Was Patton expensive?
"Well, omegas are homemakers. They don't have jobs around the pack, so whoever they mate has to have a job that will earn enough pack credits for both of them." His Ma put the flour away in its steel container, to keep the bugs and mice out, and closed the cupboard door. She went to the sink and dampened a cloth. "It's usually an alpha who will mate an omega, because they can afford them."
He frowned and thought hard about that. "How much do you have to make to have an omega?"
