Page 118 of Omega's Flight
As I walked up the pathway toward my first stop of the day, I realized that the warm relaxed feeling I'd had almost since I'd arrived here wasn't just being warm and fed and safe. It was the way you felt when you had friends you could count on.
I spent the rest of the day with a smile as wide as the wall on my face.
C H A P T E R 8 4
A t home that evening, I put the pups to bed as usual, but my mind was elsewhere the entire time. I hadn't realized it was as bad as it was until Pip lost her patience with me and took the storybook I was reading from me to read it herself to her brother and sister. I was of two minds whether I wanted to be around when Degan arrived. On one hand, I thought it might make things easier if I wasn't. Let him get settled in, see the difference between Jackson-Jellystone and Mercy Hills.
On the other hand, it might be just as wise to make it absolutely clear from the start that he wasn't moving in with me and that I had no intention of going back with him.
You haven't got a clue what you're going to do, do you? I hadn't even heard back from Bax and Abel yet about whether I could talk to Cas.
The pups drifted off to sleep. I picked up little Henry and carried him to his room, my nose stuck down into his curls to breathe in that freshly washed baby scent. Yes, he wasn't a baby anymore, but he just had that lovely clean baby-like smell. It made my hormones restless, or maybe that was just my brain racing in circles around a certain problem named Cas.
Once he was tucked in, I tried burning off that strange energy by picking up after my pups. They were supposed to do that themselves but I hadn't had the time tonight to hover over them and make them do it, so the house looked like it was shedding its spring coat of puppy clothes and toys. It helped a little, but not enough.
It had been a sultry day and the evening air was still warm and smelled like green growing things, so I went out onto the porch to enjoy the breeze and watch the stars wheel overhead.
"Evenin', Raleigh," I heard Patton say from his porch. He was sitting in the rocking chair, slowly swaying forward and back with Willie Rose asleep on his shoulder.
"Evening, Pat," I said back, then descended the stairs to go climb his. If my pups woke up, I'd hear them through the open windows. "Ori sleeping?"
"He's having a shower. Rose had a bit of an accident all over him." He smiled at his daughter and kissed her ear. "Yours all asleep?"
"Yes, finally," I said, and sat down in the other chair. "How's your apprenticeship going?"
"Good. There's a lot to be done, with the new houses and the hospital and fixing up the old places. I'm getting way more experience here than I would back home." He fell silent for a moment and I could tell it troubled him.
"Do you miss it? Home?" I asked. I didn't, not really, but Jackson-Jellystone had never really felt like home to me, and I'd already worn out my home-sickness for Nevada Ashes when I'd mated.
He was quiet for a long time, long enough that I worried that I'd touched a nerve or hurt him badly.
"Sometimes. But I don't miss it much, not knowing that back there I could never be with Ori. I miss my family and Ori misses his, but I know for sure I wouldn't change a thing except maybe to get us here faster. Somehow. I don't think he'd go back either. Not willingly." He stared off into the darkness on the other side of the porch railing. "Might not matter what we want anyway, right?" The steady rocking of the chair never changed and I had a feeling that here was a beta that would be a match for any alpha who got in his way. Over this anyway.
"I think," I said slowly, "that anyone going up against Mercy Hills is going to find themselves in a fight with a much bigger wolf than they realized." I thought about Bram and his magic fingers, Jason putting the potato plant back in the soil and just knowing it would still grow, Holland combing through the worst of my memories and pinching off the parts that hurt too bad to even squint at. How much lighter I'd felt since I came to Mercy Hills. "This is your home, Pat. Yours and Ori's and Willie Rose's. I don't see how Perseguir can take that from you now."
"Besides," Ori's quiet voice said from the door. "I'm ruined now, right? No respectable alpha will have me after all this." He stepped out onto the porch, smelling of soap, and came around to drop kisses on the heads of his daughter and his mate. "I'll take her in and put her to bed if you want to relax."
"Oh, I don't know," Pat said and even without looking I could hear the smile in his voice. "I'm right comfortable here. You sit yourself down for a bit, Ori, and take a break."
Ori laughed and turned over an empty five gallon bucket that had been hiding behind Pat's chair, using it as a stool. "You two look good together." He put a hand on his mate's knee and leaned back against the railing. "How are you, Raleigh?" He posed the question delicately, but I knew he was asking about Degan.
"I'm fine," I said. "We've got everything set up. Holland's arranged to credit me some hours to fill the house with furniture and food and stuff." It was coming out of something he called the 'guest budget' and I wondered how many different budgets he carried around in his head, each one ticking away the cost of every action by a packmember. One positive thing that had come out of Degan's arrival was that all my old furniture would be moved to his house, and new things built by Duke would replace them in mine. They'd be plain, he apologized for that, and then promised he'd come by to carve them later once they were in place. Which was ridiculous, but he wouldn't listen when I tried to tell him that. "It's my favorite part," he'd confessed with a hangdog look that made me laugh and feel a moment of jealousy of Bram.
"I'll lend you a hand," Ori said. "I'm getting a little cabin fever here."
"You should get out more," I told him. "There's lots to do." Too much, really. We could spend all day going to playdates or storytime or just wandering around the park playing on the puppy jungle gym there.
"No, I'm fine here," Ori said quietly.
"There's nothing wrong," Pat said quietly, "with making some friends here." On the surface, his words were innocuous, but I read between the lines to the intent behind them.
"Ori, you don't need to worry about Perseguir taking you back." I leaned forward intently. "It's okay to put down roots."
Ori smiled at me in an attempt at reassurance, but it fell woefully short. "I'm just so busy all the time. Don't you worry about me."
"Ori," Pat said, his tone flat. They'd obviously had this argument before. Pat turned to me and said, "He had a letter from his Maw yesterday.
"Pat's right," I told him. "Don't believe what they're telling you. Degan's been telling me I have to go home with him. He thinks he's just humoring me right now. Do you really believe that they're going to let him force me back?" I put more strength into the words than I was feeling, because Ori's uncertainty was beginning to infect my own mood. What if Degan managed to force my hand? Could I go back to Jackson-Jellystone for the sake of my pups?
