Page 8 of Sanctuary
Stashed in a little hollow, where a tree had fallen over a few years ago, he found the pheasants, three of them piled on top of each other. He barked in excitement and howled to let the pack know he'd found his prey, then carefully arranged the dead birds so he could pick them up by the necks and carry them back to Ori.
They met up with him not twenty paces outside the orchard, the other young wolves. The slower ones. They sniffed around him, sniffed the pheasants, and then surrounded him to follow his trek back to the clearing with his prize.
The entire way there, his imagination played out the scene that would happen when he gave the pheasants to Ori. At first, he thought, Ori would be surprised, but then he would be pleased and he would accept his gift as it was intended. And maybe next full moon he'd dance with Patton.
Only with Patton.
That was as far as his imagination could take him though--he had no idea what came after, or even what he wanted. Just that he wanted Ori to himself again, like it had been up until this past year. Not that Ori had changed, not really. Not that much. But there were a lot of new things going on in his life now, and he wasn't even in classes at school with Patton now. He had all the regular school that an omega needed, Patton's Ma had explained, and now he would concentrate on the classes and learning he needed to make a good mate.
Patton burst into the clearing, scanning the open grass for his friend, but Ori wasn't there. Patton put the pheasants down in an out of the way place and lay down beside them with his muzzle between his paws. He refused any invitations to play, because if he left, someone might steal his gift. Or he might miss Ori coming back from wherever he was. So he waited, and waited as the moon crawled across the sky, until the rest of the teenagers came howling and jumping back into the clearing. Patton sat up and watched for Ori, and then suddenly his friend was there, jumping on top of him and grinning his wolf grin.
Patton yipped at him, then carefully picked up the pheasants and carried them over to lay them at Ori's feet.
Ori's response was everything he could have hoped for. His ears pricked forward and his tail went up. He sniffed the pheasants carefully and then leaned forward to touch his nose to Patton.
And that was when Patton's world was torn to shreds.
One of the elders--he never did figure out who it was--grabbed the back of Patton's neck between strong jaws and dragged him ruthlessly away from Ori and Ori's present. In the middle of his fear and confusion, though, he couldn't miss Ori's yelp of dismay and he struggled wildly against the ever-tightening grip on his spine as he was hauled across the clearing. Ori gave one more loud, painful yelp and then went silent and Patton's heart froze for an instant before it began beating again with a painful thump. He tried even harder to escape, and was knocked to the ground and held their by the weight of at least two adult wolves. Someone, he wasn’t sure who, forced his change to start and he gasped for breath as the weight of his captors crushed him against the soil. He couldn’t hear Ori, couldn’t see him, and he didn’t know why, but he was terrified for his friend, worried that his gift had been the kind of thing that ruined an omega, whatever that meant.
Patton went numb, his mind so caught up on worry for Ori that he hardly noticed when the beating began.
C H A P T E R S I X
A melia dug her teeth into Ori's ruff and dragged him away from his pheasants. Not that he was thinking about them at the moment--a half dozen other shifters had piled on top of Patton and Ori couldn't see anything of him beneath the roiling mass of older wolves. He could hear them though, or rather, hear Patton's yelps and whines for mercy, his confusion blatantly obvious underneath the snarls of the angry adults. Ori nipped at one of Amelia's front legs, trying to tell her to let go, but she tightened her grip on his neck, then shook him until he couldn't hold back his own yelp of pain.
And all the while, in the background, Patton's beating continued.
They dragged him back to the omegas' tent, Amelia and the other wolves who'd been acting as chaperons, ignoring his protests. He made long grooves in the soil, digging his feet in and sitting all his weight down on his hind paws, partly for Patton, partly out of sheer stubbornness. They were acting like he and Patton had done something wrong, terribly wrong, and the injustice of it all made him so mad he did literally see red. He growled at them as they pulled him through the door into the tent, and then the Alpha's Mate was there and he felt that crushing pressure, so much the opposite of when he changed shape on his own, and his body gave up, letting the Mate take control of his form.
Ori lay on the dirt floor and curled into a ball, trying to stifle the sobs that shook his body. He felt the brush of fur against his back and then moments later, a hand on his shoulder. "Get up and get dressed, Ori." It was the Mate, and there was no ignoring that order. Ori wiped his eyes on the back of one hand and pushed himself to sitting. He slapped away the hands trying to help him--damn them all, anyway--and had to grit his teeth against a rude retort when he heard one of the adults say, "Let him. He's has a shock--give him a moment."
Someone set his clothing down beside him and backed away, leaving him to dress himself.
He could feel the places where Amelia's teeth had clamped down on him, points of pain on the back of his neck. He rubbed his hand over them, then picked up his jeans and pulled them awkwardly over his feet. Someone tried to help him up when he wobbled to his feet to pull them all the way up, and he snarled and batted their hands away too--he didn't want their help, or need it.
What he wanted was Patton.
He heard voices outside the tent flap, and someone put a hand in the small of his back and gently shoved him in the direction of the opening. His heart started pounding even faster, if that was even possible, and he swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth as he ducked under the flap and stepped out in the moonlight. His Paw was standing beside the Alpha with a disappointed expression on his face. Behind them, Ori could see Hunter and, wrapped around Hunter's arm like he thought it would protect him from what was coming, was Holland. Though why Holland would be nervous, Ori couldn't figure until Holland's eyes met his. Even then, Ori wasn't sure what exactly had been the problem, he just knew he was in big trouble, so big that Holland was scared for him, and his knees went weak with anticipation.
The Alpha said something low to Ori's Paw and patted him on the shoulder, then walked off. He gave Ori a hard look as he passed by and Ori's knees bent, as if he could cower and lower his tail in this form as well as his wolf one.
"Come on, boy," Ori's Paw said gruffly, and took his upper arm in a firm grip. He half-led, half-dragged Ori out of the clearing and Ori only had a moment to take in Holland's sympathetic look and the avid ones on the rest of the pack before he'd been pulled into the trees and his Paw said, "What in the name of the Wolf God were thinking out there, boy? And what have you been doing to give him ideas like that?"
"What's the problem with it?" Ori protested, then stumbled as his Paw yanked on his arm, and if he'd thought they were hurrying before, they were moving like the wind now. "Paw, slow down, you're gonna make me fall!"
His Paw snarled, but he did slow down a little. "Just you be quiet 'til we get home. I need to think."
They walked the rest of the way in silence, the air around them thick with unsaid emotion. Ori's tongue had glued itself to the roof of his mouth and his mind ran in circles, worrying about Patton but too frightened to ask.
They got to the trailer and his Paw made him sit in one of the kitchen chairs and fold his hands in his lap like when he'd been a pup and first learning his manners. "I'm gonna see if your Maw is near," Paw said, and pinned him in place with a fierce glare. "Don't you move from that chair."
Ori nodded and took one deep shaky breath as his Paw watched. "I won't."
"Good." His Paw paused and Ori thought he was going to say something, but then he looked away and disappeared out the door.
Time stretched and while Ori knew it was only minutes--they had an old clock on the wall above the kitchen table--it felt like days to him. And then the door creaked open and he only had a moment to wish he was back in that infinite-seeming stretch of time before his parents stood in front of him. And they were definitely less happy to be there than Ori was to have them there.
Maw sighed and gave Ori a wounded look. "You foolish, foolish omega boy, what on earth were you thinking, letting that beta boy court you?"
