Page 7 of Omega Haunting

Chapter Five

Astral

Three days without my apple left me pissy. I’d grown attached to the potential of telling my true-mate everything about myself and trying to lead him here. What the hell had my life come to? My family started to notice my bad mood and it was hard to explain to any of them what was going on. I hadn’t told them about the apple. I hadn’t told them anything about what happened on my trip to see Dern that full moon night. The truth was most of the time everyone was so caught up in their own lives, problems, and plans that as long as you showed up for work and didn’t bite anyone or start howling at the shadows most people wouldn’t question what was going on in your life – good or bad. Sometimes that gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted and other times, times like this, it left me without anyone to talk to about it. There was no way I was admitting to anyone that I spent weeks talking to an apple and then summoned up an ancestor whose hungry ass gobbled it up. I was turning into one of those desperate omegas who would do anything to know even a little more about their true-mate. So far I knew he lived far away and his name sounded like Martian.

My wolf whined inside his inner sanctum and I let out a long, slow breath. For a long moment, we ached together. Why did everyone else under the sun and moon get to meet their other half? Why did I have to spend long hours pining and talking to a damn apple instead of wrapped up in the arms of someone who would laugh about this craziness with me?

The first rays of morning sunlight peeked around the edges of my blinds. There were still a few days before the next fullmoon. Had I really spent nearly a whole moon cycle talking to Dern’s apple before it was eaten? Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic. I wanted to bang my head on the wall or to dig a hole so deep into the earth that I could plant myself to grow some damn common sense.

“Astral. Aaasssstraaaaal,”Dern said my name over the pack link.

I blinked. He’d gone more or less mum’s the word on me since handing over the enchanted apple. Even when I told him about what my ancestor told me he shrugged it off. Dern had always been like that, though. He only spoke on his terms and about what he wanted to talk about.

“Yeah?”I sighed back at him, trying to blink away the sleep from my eyes.

“There is a dragon asleep near where y’all keep your stills,”Dern said.“I almost called your parents but figured he’s already drawing a crowd. Better to let you know first.”

“What?”I sat up and rubbed my eyes.“Is this a dream? This sounds like something my fucked-up brain would do to me.”

“Astral, you spent weeks talking through an apple. Now a dragon is asleep not far from where you live. I know there is some reading between the lines to do but if I make it any clearer birds are gonna die flying into the dang point,”Dern growled over the pack link.

Sighing, I swung my legs out of bed and rubbed my face. It wasn’t uncommon for folks to camp out on the back forty of our property. Usually, we let them be for a few nights if they didn’t plunder our stuff and were just passing through. Not every shifter liked or could afford a hotel.

“Is he shifted, Dern?”I asked, picking up my clothes off the floor from the night before.

“Not those. Wear something nice or at least clean,”Dern chided me.

“Stop spying on me over the pack link.”

“I don’t say this often. So, listen up, pupper. This is one time you want to listen to your elder. Get dressed in something clean and come on out. I’m almost there too.”

“What are you gonna do about it?”

“Your dirty clothes or the dragon out in the field?”Dern shot the question back at me as I grabbed clean jeans and a black t-shirt from my closet and ducked into the bathroom to brush my teeth.

“Both,”I rolled my eyes.

“Nothing. I’m just here to see something unfold. This is only the first part of what I need to happen. This starts up a lot of stuff but not everything. Like I said, I only do that damn spell when it benefits me or Ormund. I’m a selfish old hound.”

“Uh…”I said over the pack link and blinked at my reflection.

“Do you mean to tell me my true-mate is squatting behind our houses?”I asked him

“Stop talking like that. You make it sound like he’s out there taking a dump. He’s out cold. Drunk maybe but probably not. It takes a lot of liquor – even moonshine – to get a dragon drunk. He’s probably exhausted from flying through space or how the heck ever he got here.”

I didn’t bother making my way through the house. Once I pulled on the clean shirt over my head – still smelling like lavender from the wash – I ducked out my bedroom window. As soon as I pushed it open, I heard the murmur of the crowd Dern had warned me about. My heart skipped a beat. Was the dragon actually my mate? Was the man I’d spend the rest of my life with really asleep a few minutes run from here?

My wolf’s tail wagged and I didn’t have the heart to tell him to calm down. This might be a false alarm. Sure, we didn’t get a lot of dragons squatting back there but there was a first time for everything. Still, I sprinted barefoot along the familiar pathto the stills. My wolf brushed his furry head against my ribs, threatening to shift if I didn’t get a move on.

“What’s going on out here?” I called out to the crowd.

I sniffed the air but beyond my pack mates I couldn’t smell much. The wind wasn’t blowing in my favor and the burning scent of moonshine covered a multitude of sins and savors.

“You got a lizard problem,” Morgi called back to me, tucking his thick thumbs into his beltloops. “A big one.”

He laughed at his own joke and everyone else rolled their eyes. The urge to race at full speed toward the dragon ate away at me from the inside out but I kept a steady pace not wanting to embarrass myself in front of two handfuls of pack members if this was a false alarm on Dern’s part.

Speaking of Dern, he stood just outside the group with his hands on his hips. He looked bored of all the gossiping going on and I didn’t blame him. Part of me wanted to bark up a storm until everyone got off the damn property. That part of me wanted to shift and run headlong into their knees for daring to stand that close to our true-mate.

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