Page 21 of The Feisty Omega

Whoomp!But they didn’t fall to the floor, landing instead in a squirming, wriggling pile. A tiny hand flailed from beneath the pile of moving blankets, and I grasped it and pulled the tiny pup out. This time the blankets hit the ground, but a pair of pretty green eyes shone up at me, a beaming smile across the young face. It didn’t seem to matter that I hadn’t seen them for nearly a year, these guys were really pleased to see me!

What had I been missing living without a pack all these years?

A low growl beside me reminded me Mar was waiting. He glared at the little shifter getting up from the ground, as if it was his fault the blankets had fallen. The pup totally ignored him. A few other young shifters had gathered by now, all chattering and excited.

I blinked away the blurriness in my vision. They remembered me. And they were happy to see me. It was like… like we were pack. This pack, these shifters, had claimed me as one of their own.

“Hey,” I said. “Let me get myself settled and I’ll come out and play with you guys, okay?”

Excited chattering bombarded us as more shifters gathered, and someone ran off, either to tell the others or maybe to fetch a ball or something. I stepped inside the cool, dark building and tossed the blankets onto the closest free bunk. Mar was a dour presence at my side and I couldn’t help but notice none of the shifters paid him any notice. As Alpha’s son, he would be expected to take over leadership of the pack, when the time came, but if he couldn’t command respect now…

That just made me think of Tal, and I bit my lip uncertainly.

Would he be pleased to see me? I didn’t think I could bear it if he wasn’t, though if he wasn’t, I told myself, I’d just use all my tricks to get him to like me. That was one advantage of the life I’d led so far… I was adaptable and I knew how to get along with people.

Despite my little mental pep talk, however, I was nervous. What if he’d outgrown me? Last Christmas when we’d met, he’d still had one foot half in childhood… this year would be different.

“Are you really going to play with the kids?” Mar grumbled, his voice low and sulky.

“Um…yeah? We had a lot of fun last year.”

“Yeah, but you’re older now… surely, you don’t want to run around playing kids’ games,” he scoffed, derisively. “Why don’t you come back up to the house with me?”

“Well, I promised them. I don’t want to disappoint them,” I pointed out, diplomatically. I briefly considered Tal’s suspicion about Mar’s interest in me, and I shuddered. He didn’t seem to love his pack the way a future Pack Alpha should. I was pretty sure I would hate to be partnered with him.

I reminded myself I was nobody’s pawn. This undesired mating wasn’t going to happen.

“Well, I’ll see you at dinner, I guess,” Mar said grudgingly as we walked out together.

“Sure. Thanks for the help.”

“Welcome.” As he walked off, I noticed how the young shifters scattered around him, trying to get out of his way. I couldn’t help feeling a slither of sympathy. Maybe it was just lonely being the future leader, maybe people treated you differently. I didn’t know him well enough to know.

I didn’t have time to think about it because a moment later a searing pain exploded in my thigh with a loudthwack!

“Yeow!” I yelled, as a grinning youngster raced away, then stooped to scoop up the ball spinning at my feet.

I spent the next hour playing with the young ones, chasing, hiding, pelting balls at each other, though I was careful not to throw them too hard. I might have missed accidentally-on-purpose more times than I actually made contact. And I might have sometimes ‘not seen’ the little shifter creeping up on me out of the corner of my eye. But that was all fine. I was there to have fun, not to win.

The game I wanted to win was an entirely different one.

Excitement levels were high and it wasn’t just my arrival; there was a definite electricity in the air, a sharpness, a sort of magic. It was, after all, Christmas Eve.

As we played, I cast furtive glances down towards Tal’s house. The door was shut, and I hadn’t seen anyone come in or out. Maybe he wasn’t home, but hewouldbe home for Christmas, right?

After an hour or so, I was exhausted, and it was dinner time anyway. The younger shifters I’d been playing with were called in one by one, until it was just me and a couple of the older young ones hanging around under the big tree. None of the older adolescents were out here. In fact, I hadn’t seen any of them since we’d arrived.

Tal’s door still hadn’t opened, or if it had, I’d missed seeing it.

With a sigh, and a leaden feeling in my chest, I got to my feet, brushing off the dirt and leaves. A couple of pairs of eyes tracked mine.

“I guess I better go in for dinner.”

The two shifters looked at each other.

“Are you staying with Alpha and his family?”

They mustn’t have seen me move my things into the dormitory.

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