Page 132 of Omega's Heart
Cale tilted his part of the sheet toward the light. “Does that look like a trail of pawprints to anyone?”
I stopped laughing because more than three in a row meant moving. Though maybe my move to Mercy Hills covered that?
Holland seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Felix moved to Mercy Hills. Kaden was halfway around the world. That’s probably all it is.”
We went through the entire sheet and found some small health problems but no deaths, which was good. I wanted to keep my mate for a long, long time. A home, but I’d already known about that. Three pups, which wasn’t as many as I’d dreamed of but I was getting older and I’d take what I could get. It was still more than I had now.
There wasn’t much else that could be read from them. Raleigh thought he saw a rise in status but it was so faded and mixed in with other streaks that it was hard to say if it was or not.
“Wait,” Ori said, spreading out a corner of the sheet. “Are you sure this isn’t another pup?”
We all bent our heads over the ragged streak of paint and debated how much it looked like the symbol for a pup, until Bax reached out and folded the corner of the sheet over the paint. “I don’t think it is,” he said, his cheeks gone two shades paler. “The alphas should be back from the hunt soon, right? We should clean up.”
Holland sent him a questioning look but took over bundling the sheet up into a ball and set it on the edge of the table. “Julius, do you remember how to get back to the clearing?”
“I think so?” my former apartment-mate said, though his tone made it obvious that he really didn’t.
Holland just nodded briskly. “Take Cale and go see if you can find out where the alphas are?” His eyes met Cale’s and whatever it was that passed between them, Cale simply nodded and held out a hand to Julius. “Come on, Jules, let’s find you someone new to flirt with.”
“Oh, I don’t flirt!” Julius protested as he was led out the door.”
“Then what do you call what you were up to last night?” was Cale’s calm reply and then the door closed, cutting off anything else of their conversation.
“I’ll get started on the dishes if you two want to gather them up,” Bax said, his tone entirely normal once again.
I wanted to see what was on that corner of the sheet, so as soon as he turned his back I shook it out and had it spread out on the table before either of them could stop me.
It only took me a moment to find the corner he’d been looking at, as long as it took for Bax to turn around and gasp, but then I saw what Bax had seen. It did kind of look like a pup and, not far from it, the broken crossed branch that I’d always been told meant death. That one of my pups might die, either right after being born or when they were older, I’d always accepted, in the way that you accept other unlikely possibilities but never really believe they might happen. And I didn’t really believe in the sheets anyway—they were just old grannie tales, meant for fun, and maybe a long time ago they’d had meaning but not now.
But I sat down in that chair and stared at those images and wondered how I could avoid this happening and a wave of fear and despair swept over me, followed right after by a rage like I’d never experienced before in my life. “No,” I said, wondering why my jaw hurt, and then I realized I was grinding my teeth together like I’d suddenly turned into a hungry deer. “I won’t believe that.”
“It’s not real, Felix, you know that,” Bax soothed, but I’d seen his face and knew he had to be thinking that if the True Omega was real, then maybe this was too. Even Raleigh looked tense, moving jerkily around the room collecting dishes and putting things away.
“I wouldn’t say it was certain that that’s what those symbols are,” Holland said in a measured voice that somehow brought a sense of calm to the room. “Bax, you remember back home, if there was a sheet that was hard to read, they’d take it to the grannies and see what they had to say?” He looked calmly over at me. “Is there someone here with a knack for the sheets?”
I thought about it for a minute. “My great-grandmother, but she might not be up. She likes to have breakfast and then nap again.” I felt a stab of guilt—I’d been so busy lately I hadn’t been keeping up with things at home. For all I knew, she’d gone to the Moonlands and I just hadn’t heard.
No, Dad would have told me.
“Do you want to call and see if she’s up?” Holland said, offering his phone.
“Oh, there’s a landline in here,” I said without thinking. “I, uh, unplugged the phone when we were setting up yesterday.” My cheeks grew warm again, until I remembered the sheets. It isn’t real, they’re just a mating tradition. But I couldn’t shake the creepy crawly feeling in the hairs of my neck. “I’ll call.” I knew Great-Gram’s number off by heart and it wasn’t long before my aunt picked up the phone.
“Felix? What are you doing making phone calls on your first mated morning?”
“Hi, Aunt Allora. Is Great-Gram up right now? I have a question for her.”
“She is. You want me to put her on?”
“Can we come over? It’ll just take a minute.”
She sounded amused. “Should I put tea on?”
Aargh. “No, it’s just a quick question. And then we have to get to the breakfast.” Only immediate family and the Mercy Hills shifters who’d made the trip would be at the breakfast, unlike last night’s supper.
“All right. I’ll let her know you’re coming.”
We said our good-byes and then I looked at the rest of the group. “I guess we’re going to my aunt’s?”
