Page 138 of Omega's Flight
"Maybe they're wild," Cas suggested. He didn't know much about plants, and as far as he was concerned, one flower was just like another.
Raleigh shrugged and tipped his head back to look up at Cas. "Would you sit down? I'm going to get a crick in my neck."
Cas nodded and slid down the trunk of the tree, his legs stretched out alongside Raleigh's. The omega smiled and laid a hand on Cas's knee, like old mates, all comfortable with each other. He looked away toward the tiny patch of flowers again, then sighed and turned his gaze to meet Cas's. "I thought we should talk."
"Okay." Was that good, or bad?
"I probably should have talked to Bax or Holland first, but this is something that only involves us, right?"
"Raleigh, I don't know what you're talking about yet." But he smiled to make sure that Raleigh knew not to look for a sting in the words.
Raleigh colored slightly. "Sorry, I've been thinking about this all day."
Cas chuckled at that and patted Raleigh's hand on his knee. "It's okay. What is it that you've been thinking about?"
Raleigh stared at him for a moment, then swallowed and nodded. "Don't take this the wrong way, okay? It might take me a while to make it make sense."
"Sure." Cas leaned back and let his eyes rest on Raleigh. He kept his body relaxed, well aware of how much of his body language the man across from him still picked up.
"I know," Raleigh began slowly, his gaze wandering away from Cas's, "That what we've been doing, the way we've been keeping company, that all sets up an expectation. Right?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Keep going." Was Raleigh coming around to the idea of making their relationship official?
"Uh huh." The leg next to Cas's twitched, then settled and Raleigh let his head fall back against the tree trunk, staring up into the blue of the sky above. "I've been thinking about that, a lot."
"Me too." It was tempting to just blurt it out, ask to mate him at the Blood Moon despite the promise he’d made before, but something in the tone of Raleigh’s voice and his choice of words restrained the eager words. "What were you thinking?"
"I... It's sort of tough..." Raleigh stumbled to a halt and threw Cas the kind of under-the-eyelash glance that Cas remembered from when Raleigh had first appeared. Whatever he saw, though, it seemed to reassure him and he took a deep breath and let it out slowly before finishing his thought. "I want you to know how much you mean to me, and I think..." He closed his eyes and grimaced, then opened them again to look straight at Cas. "I don't want to be mated again. Not for now. I know, there's that expectation. I know I'm probably a scandal, and it makes you a scandal. I understand if you want to stop..." His hand tightened on Cas's knee, "But I don't want to stop. I just don't want to be mated."
Well, that's a hole in your balloon, smartass. But he’d known that already. "I can live with that." Step lightly.
"There's another problem."
"Nothing we can't face together," Cas assured him. "What is it?"
Raleigh wiggled closer and settled against his side. "I want to have a pup with you. Which is, you have to admit, kind of a problem." He laced his fingers through Cas's. "Unless I've just scared you off, in which case, I suppose I've just solved all those problems."
Cas's heart had skipped a beat at Raleigh's stated desire, then restarted a huge bounding thump and raced ahead, as if it could already see a pup of his and Raleigh's getting. "No, not scared off." But yeah, he could see the problem. Several of them, actually. Not the least of which was the unexpected stab of pain right in his heart, because he knew that the foundation of this fear of Raleigh’s was the worry that a mating to Cas would eventually turn out the same as Raleigh’s first one to Degan. “I won't act like I'm your mate if you won't." The words tasted like ash in his mouth, but they won him a laugh and half-hearted elbow in the ribs.
"You. I'm glad I found you." Raleigh leaned against him again, his head on Cas's shoulder. "I think we can talk Degan out of this contract, maybe. But there's the problem with the old 'take an omega in heat' tradition. I don't see how to get around that."
Cas gave a one-shouldered shrug so as not to disturb Raleigh and wiggled his arm out so he could put it around the other man's shoulders. "I won't claim you. Nope, not mine. Never saw him before in my life." He got another elbow in the ribs, this one a little harder, and he made an "Ooph!" in response.
"Be serious for a second, okay?" Raleigh sat up, but made sure that Cas's arm stayed around him. "You know that the pack is going to decide we're mated."
Cas looked up at the sky and watched as a cloud turned from a vaguely boat-like shape into something that could have been a running wolf. "I believe they can think what they want to think. If you want a pup, you should have a pup. And if you don't want to be tied down to a mate, you should be free to be free. And they can say what they want and I'll threaten to make them pupsit Pip." It hurt, just a little, to say those words, no matter how much he reminded himself that it wasn't anything he'd done. But they were the words Raleigh needed to hear and Cas was alpha enough to say no to himself for his lover’s sake.
Raleigh relaxed against him and tucked his head in under Cas's chin. "I might still change my mind. I won't promise anything, but I might. I'll try."
Cas put a finger under Raleigh's chin and tipped his head back so he could kiss him. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to. Not things like that, it's not how we work here. You'll change your mind, or you won't. It doesn't make any difference to how I feel about you." And that, it seemed, was the right thing to say, both for his own heart, and for Raleigh, because the kiss that followed was scorching in its passion.
As Raleigh drew him down onto the grass and began undoing the buttons of his shirt, the sweet smell of the unknown flowers surrounded them, like a hint of blessing for the future to come.
C H A P T E R 9 6
I was going to have to talk to Degan at some point. As Cas and I lay in the grass after, I decided it would be better that I did it now. If I wanted that pup, I would only have one month to disentangle myself from Degan, maybe not even that. And as much as Cas and I were enjoying behaving like randy teenagers, he had a streak of honor in him that I hadn't seen often in the alphas back home. Until I was entirely free, I doubted he would be willing to sire a pup on me, if only for the complications it would cause.
And in my own judgment, I agreed with him, because my memories of Degan were of possessiveness to the point of occasional contrariness. Better to approach him now.
