Page 31 of Sanctuary
“Water, yeah.” Okay, Ori understood that.
“We passed some trees a ways back. I’m gonna go scout up that way and find us a nice den.” He stood up and stripped off his shirt, the sun shining on him like a floodlight. Ori took a moment to admire the muscles that Patton had built up digging trenches and putting pipes together, and his body remembered the way those muscles had felt under his hands.
He squirmed in not-entirely-unwelcome discomfort and caught Patton’s grin. “What? I’m not allowed to admire my mate?” he asked with his own grin.
“You make it hard for me to leave,” Patton said, and bent down to steal another kiss. “But I need to go. Be careful, okay?”
“Always. You too.” Ori watched as Patton finished undressing and changed into his wolf form. He accepted a quick nose and a lick from his mate, and dug his fingers into Patton’s ruff for the sheer pleasure of the soft undercoat against his fingertips, then sent Patton off to find them a temporary den.
Once Patton was out of sight, Ori started rearranging his current campsite, unpacking and reorganizing the bags and evaluating everything they had against his need to find something to cushion his aching foot. They were in a region of desert—the likelihood or Patton finding water anywhere was pretty low. But there wasn’t much he could use to replace the sneaker, and the sneaker itself wouldn’t fit any more extra padding inside it. Heck, he’d tried just putting his wrapped foot back in it and had nearly torn the bandaging off again.
Ori threw his sneaker against the rock on the other side of their hiding place and growled. He should be more help on this trip; he was starting to feel like it was all on Patton and he desperately didn’t want it to be like that.
He eyed his heel again and wondered what would happen if he left his sneaker untied while they walked. Or, Patton had a knife in his backpack—he could cut the back off the shoe.
But then it would be ruined.
Damn. Maybe he’d just nap until Patton came back. Lysoonka knew, he was tired and keeping up with Patton was getting harder and harder to do. He didn’t want to hold them back, to make Patton worry. To be the drain on society that omegas were traditionally said to be. He wanted to be an omega like the Mercy Hills omegas, someone with value equal to others in the pack.
Okay, you really are tired, you depressing idiot. Stop thinking those thoughts. Things would look better if he got some sleep, he knew, so he tucked their bags around him and made sure that no one could sneak one away without waking him up.
As soon as he stopped moving, he was fast asleep.
His dreams were both troubled and weirdly comforting. The first ones were hard to figure out, just a sense of something like doom, or failure, but he wouldn’t have put it in either of those boxes. A threat, for sure. Then there was a feeling like time stretching far out ahead of him, and unlike the first dreams, whatever lay at the end, he thought it was good. It felt like safety. He was too tired, even in his dreams, to figure out what it was that was good about the situation and what he thought he should fear. And the last one, just as weird as the others, but when Patton shook him awake in the middle of it, he blurted, “I think we need to go north.”
“North? Why?” Patton shook out his jeans and stepped into them.
“I don’t know. I just feel like it’s a good idea. And there’s more chance of water north, right?”
“Likely,” Patton agreed. “I didn’t find anything close. Places to hole up, all right, but no water. If I take all the bags tomorrow, you think you could walk in wolf form?”
“You can’t carry all that weight.” Ori peered at his foot. “Why don’t we stay at the closest place tonight and move on to one farther north tomorrow. My foot’s a lot better already.”
“You sure? You’re not being tough-guy Ori again, are you? Maybe we should just hole up here for a while—it’s as good as anything.”
“North,” Ori said. “I’ll be fine.” Then the worried lines on Patton’s forehead put their own pressure on him and he softened his stance. “But we can stay here tomorrow if you want. As long as we move farther from the road.”
“If you’re sure you can walk, there’s a good den a couple hours walk from here.”
He could manage a couple of hours, and then he could rest for two or three days, depending on how the water held out. “Let me get my shoe on.”
By the time Ori had his sneaker teased over the lump of bandages on his heel, and had loosened the laces as much as he could, Patton had somehow managed to drape all their bags over his shoulders.
“Don’t argue,” he said, with an expression that said that Pirate Patton was in charge now. “You need to be thinking about taking it easy on your foot. And it’s only a couple of hours.”
Ori paused for a long moment, debating whether to argue the point or just wrest his pack away from Patton, but his first step forward on the injured foot made him change his mind. “Okay. But if you get tired, we stop, or you give one of them to me, got it?”
Patton just smiled at him, and Ori shook his head. His mate might think he’d won, but Ori would deal with that when and if the time came.
C H A P T E R T H I R T Y
I t took way more than the two hours Patton had estimated to find the bolt-hole, but Ori was extremely pleased with it when they arrived. It had obviously been a wash at some time, but the ends had filled in and a tree had fallen over on it. They had shelter, and safety, and could be out of the wind for the night. And no, there wasn’t any water nearby, but their jugs were still mostly full and in a couple of days, they could head back toward the town and find a source of water to fill them again. Then they could strike off to the north, to sooth the prickling on the back of Ori’s neck.
Patton made Ori sit down and rest while he went for firewood. Truthfully, Ori was glad to be quiet for a while, get that damn sneaker off and inspect the damage again. It had rubbed raw for what had to be the fourth time now, but it hadn’t bled much. He changed the gauze and wrapped it up again, then started unpacking, wanting everything set up before the sun went down.
By the time Patton was back with his armload of wood, Ori had created a comfortable den for them and had, despite his sore foot, managed to dig a small pit and to collect enough wood from close by to already have a fire started and a surprise in the works.
“Hey, what were you doing up walking around?” Patton scolded. He set this armload of dead branches down to one side and came to collect a kiss from Ori. “I thought we talked about this.”
