Page 35 of Fractured Fang: Omega

I wasn’t sure how much it was a different time and how much it was that packs stayed to themselves and, therefore, didn’t feel the pressure to do better—to be better—to be the pack the wolves deserved instead of the ones they were stuck with. But I wasn’t going to argue with him about that. This was a ginormous step for Phillip, and as long as my mate felt comfortable with it, I would extend that olive branch.

“Things have changed. And unfortunately, I seem to be living a little bit in the old ways. Too much so. I knew better, but when it comes to my kids, I worry. So much. Not being in contact with you for the past five years was hard on us, and I thought maybe now you could settle down and stay with us.”

“Well, I’m going to stay with Fractured Fang. I’m just not going to become a teacher or a doctor or a healer; I’m going to paint.” My mate stood firm. “It’s my gift and can be very profitable for our pack.”

“I know, son. I just need to learn to let go of my baggage. I was projecting my past onto your future, and that’s not fair to anyone.” Phillip pushed his hair off of his brow. Edith stood at his side, holding his hand.

“The first pack we tried to join wouldn’t accept an alpha male as a chef. That was omega work, not work for an alpha. They wouldn’t accept your mother, a woman, on their construction crew. It was the same as other packs we tried to join. It left us nervous and scared. When we finally did find a place where we belonged, it was more in the human world than anything else,” Edith said. “We didn’t want that for you all.”

“You know Fractured Fang is different,” I said.

“We know it in our heads, but our hearts still tell us that people can hurt us and… well, it takes time,” Phillip said. “Even when we arrived here, we were prepared to leave if they couldn’t accept the skillsets we had. That’s why we tried to teach you boys differently than what we were taught. I… I never let you boys help in the kitchen. Unlearning that level of fear is hard. Your mom and I do fine on our own, but when it comes to you boys… we worry.”

“We’ll help you learn together,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Gabe agreed.

“I’ll help,” Levi said, and he stepped forward and slipped his hand into Phillip’s.

A tear fell down the side of Phillip’s face. “Thanks, Levi. You can go ahead and call me Pop-pop. That’s what all my grandpups call me.”

We spent the next hour sitting around the dining room table, eating cookies, drinking tea, and basically making a new start. We talked about all the exciting things my mate had lined up for his art, plans for the cabin, and our optimism that our family was about to grow.

What we didn’t talk about was Levi’s history. That would come later. Levi didn’t need to relive it, especially not for the benefit of other adults’ curiosity. Sure, Wilder would need to know. But that could wait.

This time was about the pack coming together to welcome a new member into their fold, a time for Levi to meet his cousins and his aunt and uncle, to meet the witches who would help him hone his skills, and to eat his weight in cookies.

Chapter 18

Gabe

Ididn’tknowawhole ton about being in a pack. In fact, I knew less than almost everyone in the pack at the moment. Living for many years in the human world gave me a very different perspective on a lot of things. And one evening, the discussion turned to packs in general and their various traditions. We had yet to establish any traditions, so it was decided we needed our own.

It was Troy who had first brought it up. His birth pack was more terrible than my parent’s birth pack. He looked forward to establishing new traditions that his twins could carry on.

All of me loved that idea. Well, all of me but my stomach. It turned out my car sickness wasn’t motion-related at all, something I discovered after worshipping the porcelain goddess. I’d already suspected I was carrying our pup, but after puking, I finally got up the nerve to ask Franklin about it.

He had been the pack doctor in Steelwick, and I supposed he was ours as well, although we didn’t refer to him as such. Instead, we called him the Alpha-Mate, which he was. He just also happened to be both a doctor and a healer. Franklin had confirmed my pregnancy almost instantly.

I had bolted to find my mate, who was in the middle of a lesson with Levi where they were talking about frogs, of all things. My mate might not be able to order a meal in sign language, but if the need ever arose, he could describe a frog like a boss. At least from the little I was able to see before they both caught me standing there watching him.

Looking back on it, I didn’t know who was more excited out of the three of us when I shared the news. And really, it didn’t matter. The fact that the three of us were blissed out over the news was everything.

“What do you think?” Wilder had said, and I had to pull myself back to the conversation at hand.

It had been brought up that three of our pack members—the alpha and two betas—had been mated without ever having a formal ceremony. I hadn’t even known they were a thing, but the longing in the eyes of pretty much all of them told me that it was something they had longed to experience but just hadn’t.

“I think a formal mating ceremony is a great idea.” For me, it didn’t matter much at all. Mated was mated, but if they wanted to introduce a mating ceremony, who was I to stop them?

The witches all looked at us with confusion, the young witches, anyway. Franklin had been pack since before he arrived here; he knew the scoop. The witches, not so much.

Once we had May, Kate, and Allistaire filled in with the information about what a mating ceremony was, everyone seemed to decide all at once that we needed to have a combined one. Sort of a making up for lost time kind of thing.

That was how I found myself standing with my mate, our hands bound together with everyone in the pack watching us. I couldn’t even be mad at it. Celebrating my love for Macs was something I aspired to do daily—not in this way, but still…

We weren’t alone in doing this either, but we might as well be. I only saw Macs. At least until my mother started to get a bit…well, my mother.

She tearfully patted her cheek with a handkerchief as if I hadn’t been mated to Macs for several weeks now, as if this had been her losing her son to a new pack where she might not see him again for who knew how long, if ever. This was starting a new tradition, one that would carry forward to future generations if we did it right. Being the first time, I suspected we would find a lot of things to improve upon as far as logistics, anyway. Like, maybe using wool as our binding cloth was not a good idea. It itched like crazy.

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